Kathy Sierra, an educational expert and technical trainer, has an excellent post on “the role of ambiguity in the learning process”:http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/the_best_thing_.html. If you’re not a technical person, don’t get thrown by the talk about “Web 2.0″ at the beginning–just know that it’s a new idea that’s still pretty vague and undefined. You don’t even need to read the article to continue on in this post, if you trust my summarization of Kathy’s points.
Kathy’s post relates a longtime frustration of mine that I’ve struggled to put into words: the illiteracy of American Protestants when it comes to visual art.
h3. The Backdrop
In the Western world, we spend a good portion of our education learning how to read, write, and interpret the written word (grammar, sentence structure, poety, interpreting allegory, the classics, etc.). Most American high school graduates leave school having gained some exposure to Shakespeare, Dickinson, Jane Austen and other masters of the written word.
Visual art, on the other hand, is an elective. You could easily graduate from high school without taking a single art class, without learning about the Renassiance artists or the Impressionists. This lack of education is further compounded by the historical absence of visual art from Protestant worship, due to the backlash against Catholic “idolatry” during the Reformation.
Consequently most American Protestants have little experience at interpreting visual artwork, due to lack of opportunities within the educational system and their church communities.
h3. Back to Ambiguity
So what does this have to do with ambiguity? Artists of all stripes know that (as Kathy puts it) “…if you’re trying to help someone learn, inspire them, motivate them, engage them, involve them, or just get some kind of a reaction beyond mental and emotional flatline, turn down the gain in strategic places.” “Turn down the gain” means to making something less than crystal clear. Nothing helps implant a concept in a brain like having to work that concept out on your own. This is not a revoltionary statement.
This statement is just an extension of knowing that the life lessons experienced first hand are the ones best learned. If we have to wrestle with something and work it out on our own, our brain isn’t going to lose the rewards gained at the end of the struggle.
h3. The Problem with Art
The problem is that, through lack of exercise, American Protestants have become lazy when it comes to wrestling with ambiguity in visual art. We don’t have the experience doing it, it’s hard, it takes too much time and thought, it’s not interesting… we just don’t do it. So when we encounter artwork that contains ambiguity, rather than attempting to work it out and thereby learn something, we just move on. Give us our artwork “Thomas Kincaide-style”:http://www.thomaskinkade.com/: nice and fluffy with no heavy mental lifting involved. All we really want is something easy on the eyes and pretty in the living room.
The whole situation reminds me of the Newsboys song, “Lost the Plot”:
When you come back again
would you bring me something from the fridge?
Heard a rumour that the end is near
but I just got comfortable here.
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