Discovery of ART

  From Point to Movement to Spatial melody 
Senses in the Recognition of Our World  
10 Jan 06
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No artists has ever produced the things as beauty as the things created by nature.

Reason: Later explanation

C.F.Lau 7 Nov 2005

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It seems that it is not the case. We normally believe that some artists should have produced something which is more beautiful than the things come from nature. However I noted that it is difficult for people really recognize and appreciate the beauty come from nature. I believe people can appreciate or recognize more about the things around us is when our mind has nothing from our past experience. That is the time when we were baby [or perhaps before age 7] before, nearly nothing being known by us at that time but we had innate ability. At that time the ability of appreciation is much higher than at the present when we become adults. One example is when we are in a quiet and calm condition, we like natural things around us more than we are in a busy or under work pressure condition. Our mind are interrupted by our experience and knowledge we learnt in schools and from parents. It is difficult for us to believe it is the case.

However, I believe that as an artist, he / she should have higher appreciation ability than those people who are not artists. So he / she should like the things come from nature more than other people.

As famous artists, Van Gogh, Beethoven, Leonardo Da Vinci, I think they integrated the beauty of nature very well to produce beautiful things.

More: Later Explanation

C.F.Lau  24 Nov 2005

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Leonardo Da Vinci had his paintings in a serious position (or exact position) model. I remember that one unfinished painting showed that before painting with clothes, he started with human bones drawing. As usual it is not the case, we paint from what we see. However, it will mostly get into trouble because the determination of exact position in space is difficult in our mind. In order to get the exact position, from his known knowledge of bone structure, he then determine the points on the surface of clothes. He tried to catch the real structure position of the surface of clothes. Leonardo was a person of full curiosity about our nature, sketching of our inside body organs, flowers and plants leads him knowing what the beauty of our nature is, and perhaps no one in this world for ever as much as he knew our body structure with beauty inside.    

Next to Van Gogh  (Explain later)

C.F.Lau,  4 Jan 2006

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On the other hand, Van Gogh had different approach to learn about nature, or perhaps he did not know himself. In his paintings, mostly outdoor works, he painted the plants, flowers, trees, moon, sunlight, his painting using different colors for the surfaces of objects to express his own emotion or express for what he liked (or really speaking to express what he thought what the beauty he realized in the composition in his paintings.) Mostly people think that is very personal, to me that is not so. The main subject leading to know (or perhaps he did not know that) the beauty of nature is his brushing the surfaces of natural things. His brushing and brushing led him so excited to follow the melody of nature, his speed in brushing was so fast or perhaps no one in western painters has such fast speed. To me I think the speed is as least twice or perhaps more than ten times than ordinary painters' speed. Even in some paintings I cannot follow his brushings, in the paintings mostly produced in the period near the end of his life. This fast brushings led his mind so excited (if we follow we also so excited) or even tend to be mad. All his energy was put on the work during the paintings. In this situation he developed his paintings, just like a musician in the developing of the composition of a fantastic music. His paintings did not very take care of exact positions of objects in the later period of his paintings but show the fantastic melody of nature, even deeper than the paintings developed by Picasso in this direction.

Next Beethoven (Explain Later)

10 Jan 2006
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It is surprise to think how a person who became deaf but his power in the composition of music could become more and more powerful and fantastic than he was not deaf before. Something could be interesting to think that using pair of our ears to listen to the music and then make correction or modification for the music in the composition. If it is the case then Beethoven would not have such method. In fact in the composition, not only our experience and knowledge obtained from other people is important things, the main subject is the working of our mind. It is difficult to think that melody of nature can make us have more powerful mind and music is just a tool to help us to do this. Through his eyes the notes of music appeared in his mind and the direct feeling of them perhaps might be even better than hearing the music. Nothing heard around us perhaps can make our mind clearer and perhaps make us know more real situations and the things around us. Truth is beauty. But it is difficult to appreciate the truth. His heart was so calm and quiet but the generation of music was along natural melody and through gradual development in a path. In art we can think of it as a growth but with a certain rule. A rule that is very flexible, very very flexible, like a nature that can create things. How can we think that no trees in this world are the same, no persons in this world have the same face. In fact no artists have ever produced or think of such number of different things that each contains certain beauty inside, but normally we ignore them. As a musician or an artist, the feeling from our surroundings is more sensitive. Although no ears could hear the sound from his surroundings, Beethoven still could use his eyes, hands in touching, skins to feel about surroundings. Just wandering along the countryside, he could gain the melody come from nature surrounding him. Pastoral and moonlight could be used to describe how the beauty of nature is.

Although there were so many famous artists in our history and they have made significant works for us to learn the beauty of nature, I still think the real situation can be much deeper than human beings can reach. Nature [is] like an onion. We stand on the surface we can only know the things on the surface. When we tear one layer off, we know the things on that layer but not yet inside involved several layers. In fact it is even difficult to tear off one layer only.   

C.F.Lau,  9 Mar 2006

[.....] materials edited on 20 May 2006

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Some ancient famous Chinese painters told that "師於自然". There can be two different interpretations of the words. The first one is the commonly believed that the painter can learn from nature. It has no special meaning since we can also learn from nature but mainly the knowledge come from other people or from our experience- from books, from the talking of parents or other people and etc. The second one is we think that the nature is our teacher, the knowledge has been coming directly from nature. In this case the unlimited knowledge of nature becomes our main resource. In fact we still do not know many things about nature. Some knowledge is very deep that very few people know them just like university level mathematics or the level of Bach's music. Unless we reach certain level, we can realize and appreciate the existence of the level of knowledge and understand them.

Next "Senses in the Recognition of Our World" will be discussed. When we were born and enter the world from the body of mothers, we start to know about the world with some senses.

(More explanation later)

C.F.Lau  6 May 2006

Senses in the Recognition of Our World

It is fantastic that we have so much ability that we know quite a lot of things around us. As a baby comes to this world from his or her mother's body, what is the first thing he or she know, or perhaps should know something before coming to this world? I have very little knowledge about it. But firstly I think the baby can feel about the world using his or her skin to detect the change of temperature between the differences in the body of mother and the outer environment. Later I think the feeling of motion during the coming to the world should be the earlier thing that the baby should get.

We have many powerful organs that can be used to detect or enjoy ourselves. Different parts of our body have different usages, skins can feel the heat energy - hot and cold senses, nose to smell, eyes to see, ears to listen, tongue to taste. The senses from all the organs connect to our brains, through complex organization we know something. We believe that most of new knowledge is from the senses coming from our eyes or ears. However, I also believe that quite a lot of knowledge coming from the senses of motion, particularly for the senses of artists.

(More later explanation)

20 May 2006

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We firstly go to another topic and then come back to discuss the senses of motions. In fact they are quite interrelated.

Limitation in the recognition of the things around us

All we know that the objects around us are in three dimension (3D) although some things are very thin and then we may consider that they are in two dimension. However they must have thickness even we cannot notify them and they really exist in three dimension. How can we describe their curvature of the objects or really to say how their structures can be formed in our mind? Our mind in fact is very powerful since we can detect quite a lot number of difference faces of different people and recognize who are who. However how many painters or sculptors have the ability to immediately paint someone or make sculpture for the one without looking the person during their wok and finish his work easily and get satisfactory result? It seems that forming a 3 dimensional complicated shaped object is difficult. I believe that for an artist he or she should have more powerful mind in this aspect compared with those people who has no such training in arts.

Famous artist sculptor Henry Moore is one of the most powerful one in this direction I believe. His consideration in sculpturing was in three dimension, use spatial shape to represent the "Love between mother and son/ daughter". His work was considering the beauty in spatial sense. That is if people look at his sculpture in any direction, his work is still fantastic and beautiful. The meaning for his work is to describe what is the natural love between mother and son/daughter, not for any thing but for natural love. More than twenty years ago there was a great exhibition of Henry Moore's work in Hong Kong. At that time I thought most people appreciated his work. However later I found very few people appreciate the work and told that his work was too abstract to understand. However what I think "Love" is an abstract things. How we can use words to describe it or use some love stories to describe it seems not an easy job to do. In fact although very few portion of people appreciate his work, no one hates his work I believe. That is the success of his powerful work. His work is so natural just like grasses or trees around us. Very few people appreciate the beauty of the existence of trees or grasses around us but no one should hate their existence unless they think they could cut off them in order to obtain more benefits for people themselves such as to earn more money in another ways. Very few artists can produce the things like it such as Henry Moore's work so his work should be everlasting for some people to appreciate. He told us what is the natural love but very few people understand it or get the sense of it.

One dimensional thinking in our mind

In our mind we can easily build up one directional thinking or we tend to build it. We say a GOOD boy; a BAD boy. In this way we have our mind a reference level "NORMAL". If we think "NORMAL" as "0" level, then to the right of "o" is "GOOD" and to the left of "o" is "BAD". Or in another direction: upper is "GOOD" and lower is "BAD". Horizontal is "NORMAL". The state "NORMAL" is hidden or just understandable without to describe it in a common sense. A child can easily recognize the differences between "GOOD" and "BAD". The slightly more complicated is to think of "Worst", "Worse", "Normal", "Better", "Best". It is still in one direction but in five levels. We tend to think of the the "worst" occupying the most left portion and then goes towards in the right direction to get "worse" and so on up to the right most "best" in horizontal line thinking. Similar thinking can happen in vertical direction such as the "best" comes to the top and the bottom is the "worst". We tend to think the size of positions they occupy is nearly the same. That is "Good", "Normal", and "Bad" have more or less the same size of positions in our mind but the actual situations may be very different being adjusted according to our experience. I think most of all people have one dimensional mind thinking in this way. If a child tells his parent that he got 62 marks in mathematics test, then what the position in the mind of his parent?

Next we consider two dimensional thinking (Later explanation)

C.F.Lau, 17 Jul 2006

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Continue....

Before we discuss the two dimensional thinking, we try to answer the question for what the feelings of the boy's parent likely. I think it depends on many factors. Perhaps the most likely it depends on the previous result of the boy he got. If the boy had the previous result 90 marks, his parent in this case might be very angry or very sad wanting to know what the reason why his son got so low of the mark. However, if the boy previously got only 30 marks, his parent would be very happy to invite his son to have a great dinner because his son had got a significant improvement in the result of the test perhaps. On the other hand, if the boy got 61 marks before in previous test, his parent might behave as normal without any great effect in her feeling.

Here we note the feeling depends on the "interval" of results by comparing with the past results. Great favorable interval of results leads us happy. Great unfavorable interval of results leads us unhappy, sad or angry. Small interval does not affect our feelings much. The effect of our feelings not only depends on the absolute result, it also depends on the "interval" with the comparison of previous results.

In music, the change of small volume to large volume of sound leads us with different feeling, from large to smaller volume of sound have another feeling. The change of high tone to low tone and the low tone to high tone are with different feelings. The most difficult or perhaps impossible to analyze is the effect for the change of volume, tone with time simultaneously. It leads to melody and rhythm.

In paintings, the change of color from black to white or from white to red with our eyes movement, we could get different feelings. The change from black to grey or from black to white, we also have different kinds of feelings. The change of color from black to white has larger "interval" compared with the change from black to grey. The "interval" affects our feelings.

We can see that the "interval" both in music or in paintings affect our feelings. In fact it is not only the cases. The structures or shapes around us affect our feelings. That is the "Design" becomes the subject which should include the "Beauty" component in the consideration of designing objects.

Here we try to break down the "interval" into one dimensional sense to analyze. In fact the "interval" can exist in 3-dimensional sense. But it is much difficult subject to analyze. We will try later.

We go back to two dimensional thinking.

Two dimensional thinking in our mind

In one dimensional thinking, we consider one straight line directional thinking. I think most or all people have this sense. For two dimensional thinking, we build up a thinking in two dimensional sense. One simple example is to tell a boy to go straight forward 100 meters and then turn left going straight forward 20 meters to reach a destination. While in the telling, the boy's mind perhaps is building up a map for how to reach the destination. Then in this case I call he is in 2-dimensional thinking. (Note that the boy can still be able to reach the destination without this type of thinking by following the words like "100 meters straight forward" and then "turning left 20 meters"- here is one-dimensional thinking: one by one). Perhaps the more comparable difficult 2-dimenaional thinking is try to think of how a square is changing to a circle of a whole picture in our mind. I note that trigonometry (mathematics subject) is a difficult subject for some students (perhaps about half proportion of all students), I think in this subject 2-dimensional thinking is sometimes needed in order to understand well about it. That perhaps is one reason for why they cannot understand well about this mathematics subject.

I believe that 2-dimansional thinking can be trained. I remember that one TV recorded program told that the brains of taxi drivers in London are not the same as the taxi drivers in New York. It is because the roads and streets in London are complicated connected compared with New York. So the taxi drivers in London try to remember and then form a map in their brains. Forming a map in our brain is a training of 2-dimensional thinking. Through the thinking, I believe that we can have higher power in the recognition of the objects around us although it is not still complete because objects around us are in 3-dimansional shapes. 

Next we will try to discuss 3-dimensional thinking.

C.F.Lau, 16 Sept 2006

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Before we go to discuss the 3-dimensional thinking, we look at the 2-dimensional structure of English words. See  English word structure in 2-dimensions sense.

C.F. Lau 20 Nov 2006

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3-dimensional thinking.

We come back to the question of " As a baby comes to this world from his or her mother's body, what is the first thing he or she know, or perhaps should know something before coming to this world?". Here what I believe is the feeling of sliding down out from her mother's body. While some part of our body is getting motion, we can get some feeling of it and it then transforms to our new knowledge in the new construction of our mind. I notice that a young baby likes to touch objects around their surroundings with new things. From the curiosity of knowing new things, through the sense of touching they could construct more or less 3-dimensional structures of the touching objects in their minds. Our eyes can detect the change of intensity of lights to determine the 3-dimensional structure but I believe that it does not provide insufficient [sufficient] information for us to construct a 3-dimensional structure. A baby using their eyes can recognize the change of light only but in the same time with touching in feeling of motions he or she can build a more or less 3-dimensional structure in his or her mind. In fact I believe that the true real structures around us are impossible for us to detect fully. That is no one has complete knowledge of structures around us in natural things. It is because I think the natural things are of very complicated structures that no one can build them. As artists they should know more about the natural things because they spend more time in the training of natural motions compared with other people.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 22 Jan 2007

[.......] for the materials edited on 29 Mar 07

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Moreover, since the natural objects are in changing direction in 3-D, that is they are developing in 3 dimensional changing direction, and our mind normally does not have this sense (one normal sense in our mind is linear direction), things happen in a linear way, like the prediction of the share price rising or decreasing in a linear way. In fact the natural things are developing in a changing direction but within a certain balancing pattern. People normally have rough patterns of objects in their mind, and I believe they are not detailed 3-D patterns for objects.

From Point to Movement to Spatial melody

One roughly 3-D training for objects is to sculpture a natural thing, like a human body. Our hands are moving in a 3-D direction but in a natural pattern. When our hands are moving in such a pattern, from time to time, with a long time, we can get a sense of 3-D natural pattern. In fact this pattern generates a rhythm or melody and possibly we can recognize the existence of it.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 29 Mar 2007

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Sculpturing a human body is not only a way. In fact sculpturing any other natural objects can produce same effect in training our mind like trees, flowers, leafs, mountains, flowing water. In traditional Chinese paintings, landscape (mountain and water) plays the most important part in painting field. This is not going to discuss here. In other way, painting can be treated as some way related to sculpturing. It also helps us train our mind in 3-D feeling.

The other common motion is dancing. Dancing is a more direct way to help us in training our mind. The motion of our hands, legs, even whole body to make us feeling in certain natural pattern, like ballet dancing is a well series training process to help us feeling of natural motions.

Chinese Kung-fu is also a well training series process for our mind.

The other like music seems difficult to be classified into this type. In fact it is also important type of training process in our 3-D motion. When a pianist  use his/her hands moving leftwards and rightwards simultaneously pressing keys with different forces with time can be think of as a kind of natural motion. This type of complex motion produces a certain type of pattern and so produce a stream of sound (music). Music itself belongs to 3-D pattern (Later explanation since it is difficult to present here).

Not any motions can increase our 3D feeling. Our motions normally come from our own experience without a series of natural patterns training. Arts to me can be thought of as a kind of training process. Into this process if our mind becomes quite calm and quiet entering into a certain point, 3D feeling will smoothly or suddenly increase into our feeling. If a dancer after a long series training and reach this level, he/she normally becomes a famous dancer. It is because his/her motion becomes attractive, beautiful, having a sense to represent some idea from point level. From point level can jump to 3D level. Our mind guiding our motion is normally working in one-dimension or two dimension. Through a well pattern (natural pattern) training, we can get benefit from it.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 10 June 2007

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Harmony in Arts.

One object can move with a certain natural pattern. More than one object can altogether move with certain patterns, but they have to be in a harmonic system. Our world system consists of this harmonic system. Through this system, the natural things around us get great varieties. The most application of harmony to our people's world is music. Like the period in J.S.Bach, musician developed very well in harmonic system. How several musical instruments played together can get the musical sound beautiful and has special senses to certain people when they listen to the music. Not all people like the music because it is difficult to have the sense on it - most people think Bach's music is very boring?  What I believe is that since the structure of the music is so complicated that most people have not yet built up a sense to appreciate it. The major development of harmony in music I think is not very long. That is up to the development of symphony till the period of Beethoven. In Western paintings, Van Gogh I believe is the most successful painter in the application of Harmony in this stream.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 12 Jan 2008

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Non-perfect is perfect

Idealism is our target so we can have a certain path to pursuit. However, if we keep on this path, there will be not easy to have a change. If we don't follow the target, we will be frustrated because we will become failed and cannot meet our target and so we are frightened that the final result cannot match our expectation. In this case, so many models and samples have been developed. If something is new and does not belong to this model or sample, opposite views or actions will fight against them. Therefore, from our personal experience, it is normally not easy to have a changed mind willing to accept new things. Idealism is an idea of perfect. Keeping two sides balance, do not allow one side heavier than the other side. If this happen, two sides will stop to move and there is no development of a system. A system can becomes active forever if one side is slightly heavier than the other. Then the other side moves to balance it and becomes slightly heavier than the other in the opposite direction and so on continue the process. Then the whole system becomes active. It is just like the case while we are walking along a road, moving from one side to the other side. Here allowing a non-perfect system to run is our perfect system. Otherwise, it seems that we cannot have a change in a system and so a new development cannot  happen. Working for developing things in art or in other field we face the same problem. Non-perfect idea leads us to have a trial and error method. Allowing an error to happen but we have to think of how to change it to make it good or beautiful.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 13 May 2009 (Edited)

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Language in Arts.

It is surprised that our communication method has great varieties related to arts, particular in speaking language. I have very few knowledge about it. Firstly we can see that we have consonant and vowel sound in speaking. In English we have a,e,i,o,u for vowel sound letters. Other letters in total English 26 letters are consonants sound letters. The consonant sounds are in fact more than 21 (total 26 letters minus 5 vowel sounds), such as sounds can be constructed by "sh" "ch", "th" and etc in English words forming. For vowel sounds, the forming with other vowel letters together can have a great varieties such as "ea", "io", "ia" and etc. The forming with consonant and vowel letters can be more than  normally expected figure such that they can be formed by " ern", on", "un", and etc. Using our different levels of force corresponding to time with the change of shape of our tongue, throat and mouth to speak, we can communicate with other people producing sound to indicate our meaning. It seems that the consonant and vowel sounds are basic components to produce sounds in human being's speaking language. Chinese speaking language in Mandarin (or "Putonghua"), we can see that  "Putonghua" indicates the sound when speaking Chinese in Putonghua's sound. The writing in Chinese is "普通話". The writing symbol in different places of China are almost the same (In fact the most commonly used are simplified and traditional types), However, the sound to speak the symbols can be different in different places of China. The same case happens in other countries. In Chinese speaking sound, there is no such "pr" sound which requires two consonants sound speaking almost together at the same time. The differences may be a lot for the two types of language. Someone may like to investigate them. We can also note that other countries' language can also be pronounced with 26 letters to indicate the sound of speaking. However it is found that they mostly can not be used to indicate them exactly and need to get help with some other symbols. In "Putonghua", we can note that there is "zh" and  "Ts" in Cantonese pronunciation. It normally does not happen in the sound of English language speaking. 

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 8 Oct 2009

For art leaning, it is not easy to learn that we have learn it from our baby period. That is the period when we start to learn speaking using our mouth. We want to communicate what we want to talk to other people, the mechanism of how to do it is complicate such as using suitable breathing, the move of our tongue and mouth to control the sound. We learned it very fast during our baby period. According to each person's unique structure in producing sounds, each person has his/her own justification of beauty inside to make sounds. In the later baby period, we can sing a song to contain more beauty inside in the communication way or just for a fun ourselves.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 15 Sept 2012

We learnt the way to produce sound in communication purpose and do not mind whether it is beautiful or not. It is in fact very natural. That is we have innate power to do that. We learnt them very quickly and just about in the six years age or much earlier than this we can almost speak fluently for what we want to talk. In fact we can think of like that we learnt art in speaking very fast to obtain the required technique in speaking. The inside of it contains natural beauty and we normally do not care about it. The way to speak is a kind of transformation with our breathing, motion of mouth or involving other parts of our body, but the most important is our mind which is the operation of our brain. We have obtained quite a lot skill in communication during our childish period. The kind of motions can be applied to other fields of arts such as in painting, dancing, writing, instrumental music, singing songs and etc.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 13 Dec 2012

In painting, we have to use the motions of our hand to control the brushing. What force, speed, direction and the way of changes are involved. For an object in front of us and we need to sketch it, it seems that we just copy it. However, how to place the 3D object on to the 2D paper is not easy. Some other techniques may be involved, but the main portion of it is the motion of our hands to control. If we can apply the motion from speaking, something similar to the motion of our mouth or tongue, we can have more powerful means to get better result. While painting from our mind, it becomes more difficult. However, if we can apply the way such as in speaking, we can transform what we think to our painting.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 12 Mar 2013

Sometimes we can think what is different between the situations in speaking and singing a song. Speaking is easy. Nearly all people have such ability. Most people speak very well and very fluently according to their minds for the meaning they want to express unless the language does not belong to his /her mother tongue. However, singing a new song is not easy and a special title for those who can create new songs are called composers. A song seems to have some special energy to attract people to listen and make people like to listen it. It contains some beauty inside to attract people and rhythm, melody are mostly the common elements it should contain.  

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 3 Aug 2014

Singing a song in fact is not difficult and can sing very well in an original undeveloped place. To sing a song is not practical and even just waste time because singing a song usually take a longer time in expressing meaningful sentence. In modern society, efficiency is considered, people like to speak and communicate with other people in an efficient way. At the same time, learning to speak is a must and parents will help their baby to speak as early as possible intending to communicate with their children. On the other hand, a baby or an adult unable to sing does not affect their living in this society in general. Then from this it seems that singing is much difficult than speaking because people lack of time in the practice of singing. From my feeling, normally each person can speak very well and can adjust their voice level, tone, speed and so the rhythm or even with some melody in a natural way. If people want to learn singing, they normally intend to imitate other famous singers' style and will lose their own natural control voice way. Then the sound becomes not natural and usually not enjoyable to listen.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 10 Jan 2015

Speaking normally changes our tongue, mouth open and close faster than singing. The mechanism in controlling our output of voice is quite complicated. From the baby period of our quick learning, we could normally adapt the pattern in controlling our voice in speaking learned from parents and friends around us. However, singing can increase our emotional expressing, putting our feeling to the voice with enhancing the effect in expressing such as "love song" in expressing the "love" feeling. Songs can come with repeated pattern which emphasize the meaning in a song. Beautiful rhythm and melody in voice control are highly considered. Beautiful rhythm and melody are difficult to analyze. It depends on our feeling. One factor is related to our force used. Variation in the level of force with time and different keys pressed in playing piano can produce beautiful rhythm and melody. Other instruments with different constructions can produce other beautiful sounds.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 19 Apr 2015

We normally consider art is related to human beings only. However, is it completely true? How about the other animals? One time from video recording of animal life, some female birds could dance well to attract male birds and even tried to select beautiful materials during building their nest. To make something beautiful is related to art and also related to the power of appreciation. In stone age people made stone tools also considered how to make the tools beautiful, not just for the purpose of the practical use such as to use them to cut other things. Quite a long time ago, when I watched chimpanzees in a zoo, they could sing songs one after one other in harmonized forms. I think they have an ability to produce good music. The self adjustment and correction, making movement better from experience in order to have a better result, not only human beings have this ability, all other animals can also have this ability. It remains that whether other animals also have appreciation power to make things beautiful, not just to consider practical usage only.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 24 Jan 2016

Fine Art

For a piece of work such as a piece of painting, we describe it as a fine art. From the meaning of fine, it means high quality, not a rough work. It requires a detailed structure and need a long time to do it.

Our world in fact is so complicated that we cannot understand it well. For a tree, how to describe it in a complete way. It should be no way. For a tree, it has so many leafs and each leaf has its own shape and locate in different spatial position. What a painter may do is to paint it in a rough way to show the approximate shape and its property. The property is important and in traditional Chinese painting is to study it such as for the painting of a bamboo, a young bamboo is different from an elder bamboo. The difference between them should be shown on a painting. More properties can be shown and the unique will be the one. Each person has their own face structure and that belongs to individual property. However, it seems it is impossible to show it all as spatial shape is so complicated. What a painter can do is to use their way to show what they know on the painting. Someone may think cameras can do by taking photos. Photos show the images under light. It does not mean the person who takes photo know the property. Moreover, images can only show the surface under light. If some surface hidden by light, no details about the surface can be shown although we can know it from our experience or knowledge leaned before.

More: Later explanation

C.F. Lau 12 Jun 2017

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