1. INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE by Dr Christian Eley
2. TIME PLUS VISUAL ART - THE ATTACK by Gerald Shepherd
3. SCIENCE/ART PLUS PERFORMANCE ART -THE MIME SHOW by Gerald Shepherd
4. THE MAD SCIENTIST AND THE TORTURED ARTIST: A FIGMENT OF WHOSE IMAGINATION? by Dr Christian Eley

1. A PLAIN MAN'S VIEW OF BEING - MORE EXTRACTS by Brian Halpern
2. TOWARDS A NEO-SYMBOLIST ART by C. Y. Chibnall
3. SOME RESPONSES TO THE ARTICLE "CREATIVITY IN ENGINEERING DESIGN" BY DR. C. RICHARD CHAPLIN by Christine Lock

Here he goes again, banging away on the same drum, beating out the same tattoo. Art and science are functionally the same thing, systems for understanding the universe around us.

On the other hand, forget about the theory for a bit and think about why you are reading this magazine, think about why you got involved with the IAG in the first place. Let me relate my own experiences. It should not be a problem crossing "the great divide" between art and science since it only exists in people's heads. It should not be a source of anxiety that the people at the research centre where I work find out that I am a poet in my spare time. And yet it is (which is why I am rattling this out on my word processor first thing in the morning before anyone else has arrived ). Some societies find it easier to reconcile these perceived differences, usually by ignoring them or by realizing that they are imaginary. Ours is not one of these. Some years ago I got an incredulous reaction to a poetry reading. "How can you be a poet when you are a chemist?", and you wonder why I am so touchy. I wouldn't have minded if he had said, "How can you be a poet when your poems are so dreadful," but I fail to see what being a scientist has got to do with my ability to try and write poetry.

But enough of this ranting, this recounting of personal trauma. Isn't it about time the artists and the scientists got together since both groups seem to be heading down the road to becoming an endangered species. Cuts in funding are eroding both the creation of art and scientific research to the extent of threatening their very existence. See, we do have something in common after all. Both artists and scientists are victims of misunderstandings, of serious and damaging preconceived ideas of what they are, what they do and the value of what they do. The stereotypical scientist is seen as being a driven, anti-social, mentally unstable man beavering away in his brightly lit, white tiled laboratory (Einstein and the boffins) until 3 a.m. when someone in a white coat yells from behind a bubbling reflux condenser, "Gee Professor, I think we've got it," like any good sci-fi B movie. Meanwhile artists are seen as feverish, emaciated, garret-dwellers waiting for the big breakthrough or death by starvation. I realize that this is a gross generalization but with P.R. like that is it any wonder that art and science are perceived as both detached from "the real world' of "normal existence, and as incompatible opposites, the rational and the irrational. Is it any wonder that anyone daring to do both at the same time is viewed very suspiciously indeed?

In the end, whether or not you agree with my initial assertion that art and science are merely different representational systems for advancing our understanding of our existence, it is important for both artists and scientists to work together. If we fail to understand our differences and areas of mutual interest, we cannot expect anyone else to do it for us. We should not be fighting each other when there are much bigger threats out there. The JAG is a starting point, a much needed forum for debate, but we need to widen this debate still further. Isn't it about time that you sat down and wrote
something for the next issue of the Ion Exchange. If you an artist go and talk to a scientist and if you are a scientist go and talk to an artist. I am sure that it will be an interesting and thought provoking experience. You might learn something and you might help save an endangered species.

A series of images along wall in darkened gallery. The images are lit by spot lights (possibly of various colours) in sequence.

Images on free standing clear acrylic (etc.) panel which is illuminated by constantly changing patterns of coloured lights.

Images on inner wall of tunnel (or large box) through which (or into which) spectators must move. Light shines from outside through slits in box.

Small sculptures/assemblages or collections of objects in glass cases, lit in varying sequences and accompanied by different sounds.

Paintings on gallery wall mimic window arrangements, posters, road signs etc. The gallery is laid out to represent a street or similar.

Images on a revolving drum, arrangement of wheels (cogs etc.), multi-sided moving shape or canvas loop.

Construction in metal and machine parts that mimics/represents a fight using the motion of it parts.

Construction or machine which continually moves images, or parts of images, into spectators view.

Imagery on "case" which fits over mobile machine — the machines can crash into one another. If the "case' is made of canvas instead of wood or metal the mechanism would continually distort the canvas and thus the imagery.

A painting continues across debris and rubbish laid out along the base of the gallery walls (or across another panel covered with broken bottles etc.)

Abstract diorama in long glass tubes or spheres.

Repeated image (representing the human figure) on canvas stretched over various (everyday) objects.

Paintings on wall represent the pages of a comic. Or free standing giant comic with images on clear plastic pages.

Comic images on translucent material draped over abstract objects. Or structures in repeated wooden alcoves mimic comic pages.

Repeated representation of human being with different words scrawled over each repeat.

Cartoon strip on clear plastic with each square superimposed rather than running consecutively.

Imagery on series of hanging fabric strips occupying a space which can be violated by pushing through them.

Imagery on plates that move by hidden magnets, colliding with each other and continually making different combinations.

A series of video screens packed tightly together. Each screen represents a comic strip square which shows a sequence of alternative action elements so that the story continually changes.

Imagery on small panels which are moved to form various playing card hands. A tarot card version.

Gallery divided into strips which also cut across paintings.

Sequential painting along surgical bandage wound round vaguely human shaped iron framework.

Painted images behind plastic membrane through which coloured liquids seep.

Image series hidden by sequence of doors or film clappers which have to be opened in turn.

Images on arrangement of cubes which can be mechanically moved to continuously alter sequence.

Imagery repeated within human silhouettes in sequence of unconscious poses.

Repeated Mona Lisa reproductions. Each repeat is mutilated in different ways.

Sculpture designed to be hit by sledge hammer in a recorded sequence. Sculpture designed to be cut into sections with saw.

Imagery over sequence of plaster casts of dangerous objects. The gallery is lit by a strobe light.

GERALD SHEPHERD

Performers behind a large screen which represents computer v.d.u.. Performers hold coloured rope which becomes oscilloscope or computer screen imagery.

Performers illuminated by a series of spotlights. Scientific designs are painted on the spotlight lenses.

Performers stand on panels which are mechanically moved.

Performance observed by a series of different devices - infrared, ultra-sound, radar, TV camera etc. V.d.u. screens form part of the performance.

Performance viewed through different types of transparent/translucent material. Materials can be arranged vertically on perimeter of revolving stage.

Performers as some of the components in giant machine -perhaps man-powered computer.

Performers interact with holographic representations of themselves.

Lasers extend the lines of structure in performance space. Performers interact with structure and light beams.

Moving system of mirrors and/or lenses which continually fragment or change apparent position of performers.

Performers between structures which change colour or shape in response to performers movements.

Performance within neon light framework. Or performers wear neon light designs on their costumes.

Stage and scenery change via a computer in response to performers movements.

Performers carry video cameras and perform to an audience of video screens.

Performers move within giant clockwork machine.

Performers wear costumes which interact with props in basic ways - static electricity for example.

Performers move within a web of information gathering wires etc.

Performance reflected in shapes made from different types of steel.

Performers interact with computer generated images.

GERALD SHEPHERD

STEREOTYPES:

It is always easier to pigeon hole things, to look for stereotypes to avoid the difficult task of real understanding. Most groups experience this phenomenon, scientists and artists are no exception. It is a way that one group can assimilate the concept of the other group in their own vocabulary, on their own terms. Those of us who tread the grey areas in between art and science are in real trouble, either doubly stereotyped, or just simply to':' weird for classification.

THE MAD SCIENTIST:

Einstein's hairdresser has got a lot to answer for! Our first stereotype steps out of a science-fiction B-movie set (especially those of the 1950s and early 1960s which we laugh at on late night television). The hair is always in disarray, sticking up as if under the influence of a Van der Graaf generator. He is absent minded, so wrapped up in his experiments that he ironed the cat and put out a saucer of milk for his shirt. He talks with a Germanic/Middle European accent (or at least the Hollywood version of one). The boffins are stuck in their laboratories completely detached from the real world outside.

THE TORTURED ARTIST:

It is not so easy to find someone to blame for the stereotypes used to describe artists because there are several culprits. You could blame Vincent Van Gogh for lopping off part of his ear. You could blame Dostoevsky for the fevered, hungry and then guilt ridden Raskolnikov. You could blame the rock star who threw the TV out of his hotel window then drove his Rolls Royce into the pool. All the stereotypes are unworldly, distant from everyday experience. Do all poets really live in garrets writing by candlelight

CREATIVITY:

Both the artist and the scientist are seeking to do something that we consider to be creative. Both art and science progress by going beyond perceived limits. In that sense both are journeys into the unknown, stepping beyond bounds. While that might seem quite exciting and natural to the person doing it, it could be considered quite scary and threatening for other people. There is a distinct danger of a number of cosy worlds being upset. You have to be a little strange to go against so much peer group pressure to conform, to be heretic. However, in addition to this non-conformity, this pioneering spirit, there is something more mundane; a great deal of commitment is required for the creative endeavour, a lot of grind and sheer hard work. The quantum leap of understanding may well come in an instant but that moment of inspiration is built on the foundation of a long hard slog. Dostoevsky didn' t write "Crime and Punishment" over a weekend. Watson and Crick didn't unravel the structure of DNA overnight.

ECCENTRICITY:

This is a tag that I would be willing to accept either as an artist or a scientist. There is a certain degree of single mindedness required to pursue a creative endeavour, particularly if it is going in a radical new direction. Consider the outrage that greeted Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" or Charlie Parker bringing bebop to the West Coast of the USA. Nobody initially believed Galileo when he said that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The establishment responded to his scientific insight by throwing him into jail. The need to think yourself beyond the constraints of what is perceived as normality is inherently going to be considered abnormal. Sometimes the search for truth or understanding can be pursued irrespective of the cost to oneself or others. There are times when that is necessary, essential.

THE DISSIDENT ARTIST:

There are occasions when art and science are subjugated to the cause of authority, used by the dominant ideology. Dissident artists are silenced by imprisonment, torture and even death. The examples are sadly manifold. Away from the more brutal tactics of overtly authoritarian regimes, there is another, more subtle way to deal with dissent. Dissidents, those who do not agree with the accepted truths of the dominant system and through their work criticize it, are marginalized and ignored. Alternatively, art can be assimilated within the dominant ideology, either willingly or by coercion, and hence be used to validate and glorify it. The most obvious example is the excessive tedium of boy meets girl meets tractor with a consequent increase in farm output that is characteristic of Socialist Realism. However, the sickly, sweet consumer morality of Disneyland might be considered, in its turn, a form of capitalist realism, every bit as tedious as its Soviet counterpart.

THE CORPORATE SCIENTIST:

The response of the scientist and his work to an authoritarian regime or to an "unethical" use of the end result of his labours is much more limited, It is possible to walk away and stop doing it but, in practice, this is often very difficult to do. The practice of science within a large organisation that is detrimental to the aims of the organisation is virtually impossible and outside these large structures the resources are just not available. In this way there is effectively no such thing as science independent of the large organizations and hence the agenda is shaped by the goals of these organizations while the people involved carry out a kind of self-regulation to rein in their creativity in the context of corporate aims. The fear of being intellectually ostracized for daring to challenge preconceived ideas and the fear of being excluded from the "club" and thus denied access to the necessary resources for work are sufficient to keep all but the most driven of researchers under control. I sometimes wonder whether people working on projects that led to great destruction or loss of life (eg the atomic bomb) actually had any idea of the implications of what they were doing. In general, one has to conclude that these people were acting in "good faith" believing that what they were doing was morally justified. It is this response to such ethical dilemmas that helps to perpetuate the myth of scientists as detached from reality, from the wider context of the work. Although it is possible to stop doing science in the service of an organisation acting in an unethical or immoral manner (albeit sometimes at great personal cost), it is far more difficult to use science against the actions of the organisation. The dissident scientist is then reduced to protesting outside the context of his work, taking of his scientist's hat and putting on the dissident's one. On the other hand the artist has a great advantage in any project of defiance because he can use his work as a weapon.

MADNESS:

There is madness in the clinical sense and then there is the label of "madness" in response to behaviour considered to outside of social norms. Does the madness change the perception to allow a person to get a different view of things, to open new doors, or does it just scramble things up into total incoherence? There is a view that madness is the inevitable consequence of going beyond, the price to be paid for looking into the void. This is the cost of opening Pandora's box, for challenging the laws of nature. I find that very hard to believe. It sounds like the response of those who seek to preserve the status quo by setting up

DEATH:

The deathwish has been a muse for a number of artists but very few scientists seem to have the same flirtation with it. There are those that embraced it; Sylvia Plath gassed in her London flat, Ian Curtiss on the eve of Joy Division's first US tour, Alfred Koestler in search of the afterlife. There are those that death finds; Albert Camus thrown out of the back window of a car, Jimi Hendrix overdosed in Bayswater, Lorca murdered by Franco's Falangists. Artists seem to have had a more intimate relationship with death and it is a recurring subject in a wide body of work. On the other hand, some scientists are engaged in a daily struggle with death, seeking a cure for cancer, building bigger and more efficient killing machines. In that sense the scientific involvement with death is on a more practical level while art explores death on a more metaphysical level.

REALITY:

Very few of my scientific colleagues come close to fitting the bill of the stereotypical scientist although some of them could do with a decent haircut and some do tend to be a bit forgetful. Similarly, I haven't met a lot of garret— dwellers at poetry readings (although I have to admit that I am living in a garret at the moment), and I haven't read of many young men battering to death widowed money lenders in some great existential crisis recently. I do not find writing poetry in the evening incompatible with investigating the corrosion properties of titanium during the day. In fact I think the two actually help each other. If we consider the nominal rational/irrational division between science, the rational, and art, the irrational, it is clear that a bit of irrationality can go a long way towards solving some problems in science or at least getting a different perspective by using a bit of lateral thinking for example. Similarly the artist requires the rational in terms of technology for production of artwork and in terms of structures in which to -place the emotional content of his work. I don't think that I fit either of the stereotypes described above although I am sure that my artistic tendencies are viewed with suspicion by my scientific colleagues and my scientific ones are viewed with suspicion by my artistic colleagues. Neither artists nor scientists have any distinguishing marks for ease of recognition. Next time you are in the laboratory just remember that the person running the gas chromatograph could be a painter or a poet or a musician too. Next time you are a poetry reading just remember that the reader could be an electrochemist or a biologist. There might be the odd tortured artist or the odd mad scientist out there but for the most part we look act quite normally and may even be (god forbid, you say) functionally interchangeable. The comfort of stereotypes might be an easy way out but at the end of the day it is very likely to lead you up completely the wrong garden path.

Sometime ago I found myself caught up in a discussion mainly centred around Man's raison d'etre. As usual, the conservation was interesting but subjective. As ever we employed devices supported by religious and political standards, these in turn shaped by social or economic status and embroidered by egotistical preferences. Still, it did allow us to air beliefs but other than a cathartic value, there was little movement away from the idea fixe.

Now I should say at this point I do not support the arrogant belief in M an being the reason for and sum total of Creation. Also I cannot accept the premise of the Cosmos being a playground for the gods. As a consequence my contribution to these exchanges tends to be negative and not at all constructive. This particular evening was no different.

It wasn't until a remark supporting a fundamentally creationist opinion did I feel obliged to comment. Well, I am always mindful that to criticise established religions is at least disrespectful, at best little more than offensive and overall achieves absolutely nothing. Notwithstanding, I suggested any religious lobby pursuing a political course is dangerous and that it was wrong to deprive society of knowledge by seeking reductions in research and educational budgets. As for promoting creationist views into the scientific curriculum, well, the idea is totally ludicrous. When the fabric of your belief cannot bear the weight of truth, I added, it may be time to re-examine the doctrine. There then followed a short chat regarding the meaning of truth, noticeable the doctrine was not mentioned. Though hopelessly outnumbered, I expressed the opinion that truth was an arbitrary evaluation and that the real pillars of wisdom did not rest on the sandy foundations of religious dogma or political ideology. There is, I said, a truth that lives within Man's comprehension and is above the corruption of self interest and nationalism,

That particular evening set me thinking and these years later my attitude has not changed. I still see the leaders of men little more than self-interested, egotistical megalomaniacs. Religious fervour has done little to unify it's own house, let alone the world and that by any name, it has wrought nothing but trouble. Goodness knows the rivers run red with blood of those who believed too much. Or too little. Given that most of us inherit our beliefs, it's hard for me to understand the justification and zealous nature of unyielding conviction. Frankly, were it not for the misery inflicted on literally millions, the practice would be little more than a bad joke. Still, fear of death demands the convention and our frailty justifies the need.

Politically we haven't fared much better. Us minions don't really have much to say about the way we live. I don't mean at a parochial level, I mean in the way that we might plan a world for our children, aim at making their future less than a lottery as it were. Ordinarily life can, at times, be difficult and the capricious, mercurial finger of Fate can be uncommonly cruel. To have in addition our "daily bread" used as a political football is quite unnecessary and totally unacceptable
I know as one gets older there may be a tendency to direct scepticism towards the establishment. Perhaps this may be excusable, it is after all, their status quo we sought to maintain. We administer to the common cause and in so doing it's surprising the amount of garbage we quite readily accept in the name of togetherness. Anything goes as long as we do it together. If we apply ourselves to this convention, we can kill together. Call that war. The place, well how about the theatre of war. In order to legalise this slaughter let us formulate another convention. Geneva sounds nice. No, I'm not going over the top, I'm simply expressing my disappointment at the path we tread

In 1910 - the year in which Edward VII died - Captain Anthony Ludovici gave a series of lectures at University College, London, on the subject of Nietzsche and Art. In one of them, he said the following: "The realistic artistic... who goes direct to beauty or ugliness and, having worked upon either, leaves it just as it was before, shows no proof of power at all, and is very much below the hierophantic artist who transforms and transfigures. All realists, therefore, from Apelles in the 4th DC to the modern impressionists, portrait painters and landscapists, must step down. Like the scientists, they merely ascertain facts and, in so doing, leave things precisely as they are. Photography is rapidly outstripping them and will outstrip them altogether once it has mastered the problems of colour".

Since then, we not only have developed colour photography, but we have moving pictures with sound and computer graphics as well. On the face of it, the painter today who wants to paint in a way that is meaningful, faces an uphill struggle. On the one hand, to copy reality realistically is now completely pointless, because a camera can always do it better. If he does not represent reality, but goes to the other extreme of complete abstraction, he will alienate the public, who cannot understand it. If he is lucky, he may be promoted by agents and critics who are paid by the monied to understand it for them.

So he may decide to go for the centre ground, that of popular cli It u r e.

But here he is in danger of being overwhelmed. With magazines, television, advertising, computer graphics, pop videos and so on, the world is very, very far from being starved of images. Every evening on every channel, television presents a whirling phantasmagoria of disparate images from all over the world, a bewildering, rapidly changing kaleidoscope that makes you, after a while, feel your mind is being turned to cornflakes. So what is the point, now, of the artist coming along with his brushes and watercolour box and laboriously creating one more brand to add to this fire?

That is the position of the painter today, and the position which in which I found myself a few years ago when I first
started to take painting seriously. Not only did I want to paint in a meaningful way, but also in a way that reflected and promoted my own philosophy -, of Nietzschean existentialism and the Northern mysteries. How do you translate philosophy into visual art and communicate it to the viewer?

The short answer to this is that art has traditionally represented philosophical and religious concepts by embodying them in myths and symbols. This immediately takes one into the realms of Jungian depth-psychology and occultism. But again this is a fairly well trodden track and for an artist to develop a style in this realm, a degree of abstraction is needed.

But can abstract art really communicate? Ordinary people tend not to like and do not understand abstract art. It does not reflect external reality and is therefore is meaningless to anyone but the artist himself, they think. However, a simple little exercise suggests otherwise. The exercise consists of asking a roomful of people to produce entirely abstract drawings, using only line, to express a range of feelings, for example Human Power, Peacefulness, Anger and Joy. Although their drawings will all be different, they will show familial similarities. For Human Power, they will tend to use strong, bold, straight lines, often radiating from a centre. For Peacefulness, they tend to use soft, curved lines, often tending to the horizontal. For Anger, once again they use vigorous lines, often very heavy, with abrupt changes of direction, sharp angles and zigzags. For Joy, they will often use curved lines again, but showing more activity, often with a "bubbling upwards" movement.
 

These similar patterns represent, in startlingly tangible form, archetypal structures common to the human psyche, and demonstrate that abstract art can communicate something. But the trouble is that if you presented such drawings as works of art, most people would say these were just childish squiggles. "A child of four could do them', we might hear. How would they look against a Velasquez, a Vermeer or a Rembrandt?

As Giles Auty has written, "How can anyone in their right minds.., look at Velasquez and then at Up, Pop, Abstract Expressionist, Hard-Edge, Minimal, Conceptual or any other more-or-less contemporary work and not wish to break down there and then and weep hysterically? If the thought that flashes to your mind is 'we must all be mad', you too are not very wide of the truth. For madness can be a mass, if temporary affliction affecting whole cultures and nations as well as individuals, Virtually the whole modern movement is sick at its very foundations..

Speaking personally, I think that both extremes - the one of photo-realism and the other of extreme abstraction — are equally uninteresting. At one extreme, mere copying of external reality has little artistic meaning because it contains little selection. At the other, extremely abstract art has little obvious meaning because its ties to reality have been cut and it is only art. Modern art tends to be at its worst and most pretentious when it is trying to comment on
the nature of art itself. It is what comes between these two extremes that is interesting.

The aesthetic opinions of Ayn Rand are, to' say the least, highly debatable, but she has given us a very useful definition of art. Art, she says, is "a selective re-creation of reality according to the artist's metaphysical value-judgements". For the artist, "reality" can include his own sub-conscious, the collective sub-conscious of the culture in which he lives, and even of Mankind. To a neo-pagan, the subconscious is a part of Nature as much as plants and animals.

So, how can one express philosophic ideas through symbolism, not only through subject matter, but through style, through form and colour? When I was starting to form my ideas about this, there was great, supreme artist I admired. He was not a painter, but a composer of music. He was Richard Wagner. Not being a musician, but a painter, I wanted somehow to apply to painting a method similar to used by Wagner in music. Some people are made to feel by Wagner's music that they are in touch with the depths of their own personalities. How did Wagner achieve this? He wrote: "In the instruments (ie the orchestra), the primal organs of creation and nature are represented. What they articulate can never be clearly determined.., because they render primal feeling itself, emergent from the chaos of the first creation. . . The particular genius of the human voice is quite different from this. It represents the human heart and all its delimitable, individual emotion. Because of this, it is circumscribed in character, but also specific and clear. The thing to do now is to bring the two elements together - to make them one. Set the clear, specific emotions of the human heart, represented by the voice, against the wild primal feelings and channel their cross-currents into a single, definite course. Meanwhile, the human heart itself, in so far as it absorbs the primal feelings, will be infinitely enlarged and strengthened and become capable of experiencing with godlike awareness what previously had been a mere inkling of higher things."

In Neo-Symbolist art, form, line and shape are made the equivalent of the singers, with their clear and specific voices, and colour the equivalent of the orchestra, with its capacity to express raw emotion. The idea is not entirely new. The mystical Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, took musical chromaticism so far that he actually constructed a scale of musical notes with colour correspondences, together with what they symbolized.

Take it or leave it, Scriabin was a man ahead of his time. In pre-revolutionary Russia, he proposed what he called a "colour-organ", which would flash swirling patterns of appropriately-coloured light around the auditorium whilst the orchestra played. Few people at this time took him seriously and the organ was never built, but he seems to have anticipated the "light show" by about eighty years!

One great colour theorist of the past was Goethe. If one looks through a glass prism, one will see fringes of coloured light at the boundaries between light and dark areas, which will either be cool colours (violet, blue, turquoise) or of
warm colours (red, orange and yellow). Goethe proposed that cool colours represented "darkness lightened" (think of black space, obscured during the day by the sunlit atmosphere and appearing blue) and that warm colours represented "lightness darkened" (think of the sun setting, turning from white through yellow to red as it is seen through a progressively thickening layer of dust laden atmosphere).

A parallel may be drawn with the fire-and-ice cosmogony of the Odinic creation-myth. Imagine a journey from Niefelheimr, the Realm of Ice, through Midgarth our Earth, the Realm of Light --into Muspelheimr, the Realm of Fire. We begin our journey in darkness. As we leave Niefelheimr, our way is increasingly lit by the white light of the sun and the darkness is lightened. We see cool colours, from blue-violet through to turquoise: eventually, all is white light. As we walk into Muspelheimr, this lightness is darkened and we start to see warm colours, from yellow through to fiery red. Eventually, we end up in darkness again. In occult symbolic terms, these two realms of darkness are actually both aspects of the dark unconscious mind. Above them shines the white light of consciousness and reason. In between darkness and light lies the world of consciousness and colour. Colour expresses emotions, which have their roots in the unconscious (There is a whole system of personality testing - called the Luscher Colour Test - based on this). I suggest that this may be the meaning of Bifrost - the Rainbow Bridge of Norse Mythology, which stretched from this world to the next. It is interesting to note that there is a rune - Algiz — associated with Bifrost, with three tines at the top meeting in a single stem at the bottom. One possible meaning of this could be the three primary colours combining to form white light.

Pictorial composition is another important aspect of Neo-Symbolist painting. It shares a general aesthetic outlook with the symbolist movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The big difference between "fine art" painting and the commercial images discussed earlier is that painting is (a) static and (b) permanent. It is designed to be seen on a wall for long periods of time, whereas the commercial artist's work is thrown away with a magazine, plastered over with another poster, or is on the television screen for just a few seconds. A painting style for today will exploit this difference to the full. A Neo-Symbolist painting will invite the eye to gaze at it for long periods of time, mandala-like, and will be capable of different interpretations, forever, like a Rorschach ink blot. The Rorschach test was invented by the Swiss psychologist, Hermann Rorschach, as a personality test. The randomly-produced (except in being bisymmetrical) ink blot involves the viewer in an active work of interpretation. The Symbolists of the turn of the century such as Moreau or Delville had a number of compositional devices that invited active interpretation. The unfamiliar appearance of Symbolist paintings resulted from (a) their subject matter and (b) their enigmatic manner of execution, using "visual Resistance" and ambiguity.

Their paintings tend to combine major figures with a lot of other visually significant features, which become more and more difficult to distinguish, the more one looks at the
painting. At the same time, it is obvious that something significant is going on, although what it actually is difficult to put into words, and we are left having to make conjectures. The technique first retards, and then expands the process of observation. As with Symbolist painting, Neo-Symbolist painting is open-ended, though not without meaning, and it involves the viewer in an active response. He has to work on the painting, to derive meaning from it. As he does so, he will find more and more meaning packed into it -meaning that has in fact been locked into his own, neglected, subconscious. Even if the viewer does not consciously recognize what the artist is driving at, the work may act on his subconscious mind, along the lines of subliminal advertising. With this in mind, it may be possible to develop an entire compositional system based on the runes.

1) Despite being peppered with the usual list of references, most were pre 1970 and also excluded one of the seminal works on creativity and design at that time written by Victor Paparek — "Design for the Real World".
2) Many of these ideas we were encouraged to read and discuss at college (initially teacher training) way back in 1974. A quality of preparation and teacher training now being dumped and dismissed in favour of "on the jobness". Does that bode well for the 21st Century?!
3) Following on from this — going into teaching I was soon committed to the 3 C's, i.e. cross-curricular creativity. Somewhat of a weirdo at the time; when I piloted an "A" level C>D>Tr course with a sympathetic colleague, the rest of the department (then known as Heavy Craft) threatened to resign. Something with me being an Art Teacher and a woman maybe! Needless to say the students loved doing both Art and C>D>T> arid benefited immensely. Despite burning candles at both ends to cover a new syllabus and new material, I soon came to realize that the Algers and Hays model - a) preparation b) incubation c) illumination d) verification —were not isolated or indeed linear in the way described. They were not exclusive but could be better described as cyclical and interdependent. Each requiring the other at every stage. Good design generally is passionate and involving, requiring intimacy and distance, sometimes both at the same time. Simply to put across the references and example of a linear system does neither creativity or the design process justice.
4) As ever this article read like the scientific colonization of that little something called art. Something I hope that the Ion Exchange isn't truly about. With a nod in the direction of creativity or "emotional sensibility" it only goes as far as such things can be safely contained. So we are left on a note that wouldn't have been out of place in the 16th Century where "the creative thinking involved moves to a higher, less emotional, level of consciousness". Indeed!
5) And finally, on behalf of 50% of the population, the rather sexist overtones of the whole article (based no doubt on
objectivity). Not a she anywhere, with research concerning itself mainly with the boys. Why only yesterday, a lecturer of engineering sat opposite, bemoaning the drop in recruitment for his subject and the lack of interest shown by women. Without going into the fact that these days the "business studies"" courses are forever swelling with both sexes Dr Chaplin's article encourages the female lack of will. I should imagine that "timidity" or rather a total lack of self confidence, indeed invisibility, would rate high in that "creativity inhibition" factor according to Osborn. yet the remaining sounds uncomfortably female!
 

The piece by Dr Chaplin in the Iota Ion Exchange was extracts from his book "Creativity in Engineering Design - The Educational Function. The material was selected by myself     ED