Some of my favorite artists try to create their own worlds.. or they try to make this one resemble their own. Art shapes our world and how we perceive it but so much of the human experience is visual. If someone asked me to write an essay about something, I could go into nuanced detail about its features, history, anything about it. But with art, you have the ability to show.
The ancient Greeks used poetry to paint with words to pull the listener in. In other words, they used lyrics to convey and music to feel. They would often strum a lyre, which is where the word lyric comes from, and also sing the words. The two were inseparable in creating a sense of time and place for the audience.
In visual art, a feeling can come from the familiarity of a subject. Our minds operate heavily on images. The images we perceive have a huge bearing on our psyche and how we view the world and what we value and fear. The mind can process in one glance over 800 million different objects and their relations to those around them. Those images for the most part are unconsciously stored as a reference. When we walk in daylight we unconsciously process the scene to walk a confident step forward. In the dark, we are unsure. Our visual perceptions are at work, but play a role behind the scenes.
With art, we take in all the relevant data in an instant. There's no need to go into detail as the subconscious crunches the numbers. This is a very unpoetic way of interpreting the value of art as a language and as its value in a society.
If you want to change the world, make benevolent art. It will be a point of reference the mind will unconsciously store so you can take a confident step forward in that direction without having to think about it.
