Final Thoughts
15
H
C 2010, the class called“ The Art and Science of Emotions”, is a class where we read about, discuss, and philosophize emotions and how they affect human culture. The students read several online articles about specific feelings. During each class meeting, we discuss them with Professor Beckwith. Among the emotions discussed are happiness, sadness, fear, and hatred. For the final project of the class, the class was split up into groups who would make editorial journals based on one particular emotion. Our group was assigned to happiness, and our project had us describe a painting or drawing portraying that particular emotion.
To create the idea of the image, we first came up with a general concept of what the entire picture would be like. Each of us was assigned a section to write about and conceptualize in more detail. We used a recording of one of the classes to come up with what we were going to construct to represent happiness. From this we came up with an image of two roads, representing the two sides on the spectrum of modern-day happiness: The Natural and the Materialistic.
The title of our final piece is“ The Path to Happiness: Which One to Choose?” The inspiration for this fictional image comes from the everincreasing amount of materialism in American society, where objects are seen as a substitute for true happiness. Each section can be seen as representing either material possessions or nature. The idea of this double-sided reality is that people may have contradicting feelings about anything. The title highlights the split between wanting material well-being or wanting true happiness.
The sections that delve into different aspects of the image that were designated to each contributor are: The base two roads themselves by Hunter. Background material that represented materialism by Jacob B. Background material representing nature by Evan. Pollution by Spencer. Nature Preservation by Theresa. The transition from Fall to Winter by Mason. And finally, the transition from Spring to Summer by Jacob K. Each and every section is written in vivid detail, with everything representing some aspect of happiness. They may represent blissful ignorance of the bad things around them, or happiness in spite of them, but each part of the image serves as a metaphor and artistic interpretation of the emotion.
In conclusion, The Art and Science of Emotions has taught us much about human feeling, and how they can be portrayed in art. Art is important because it is the freest medium in which to express what you truly think. It is meant to be used as a medium for metaphor. You can make an image, song, painting, movie, video game, or drawing that portrays something absurd, but no matter what you see, it can have a deeper meaning. You can learn about the feelings of the poor Spaniards in the early 1900s from Pablo Picasso, for example. The same can be said for many other forms of art. However, deeper meanings may fly over the head of the viewer. It is up to viewers themselves to think deeply and critically about the meaning of a piece of art, and it is up to the educators to teach young learners how to deconstruct and form opinions on the art they view.