PS
just in case I am challenged on bird relevance in previous message here are
a couple of extracts from "All in the Mind" today ...
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-marco-polo-of-neuroscience-vs-ramachandran/3440754
"....................
That's correct. So the argument is this is what if seagulls had an art
gallery they would han(d)g this long stick with the three red stripes on
the wall, they would worship it, call it a Picasso, pay millions of dollars
for it but not understand why. Because it doesn't resemble anything, why am
I mesmerised?"
"Then I came across the Australian bower birds and then I said "my God, they
are creating these amazingly beautiful bowers". The male bower bird is a
drab little fellow but as a sort of Freudian compensation he creates these
amazing bachelor pads which have got archways, lawns and he decorates them
with little berries, certain coloured berries grouped into the red berries
in one group, blue berries in another group - there is symmetry, there is
'grouping', there is colour contrast - all the aesthetic principles which we
deploy in our art, here's a bird brain deploying the same principles. So not
only are there aesthetic principles across cultures maybe even across
phylogenetic lines, across species. That's what I tell some of the art
historians whose start arguing with me about, 'how can there be artistic
universals?'"
wendy
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