The reception of Earth's art by other civilizations.

[The Romulan Republic]

This is a rather oddball topic that occurred to me recently. I was thinking about Thrawn, Star Trek vs Star Wars and the traditional hopelessness of the odds there, Dylan Thomas's poem "Do not gentle into that good night" (if you've seen Interstellar you're familiar with it, for which I am very grateful to the Nolan brothers), and how very Klingon-like some of its sentiments seemed. I started wondering how different Earth works of art might be viewed by aliens in science fiction. I think this topic might have come up before, but I don't recall a dedicated thread on it.

I've already given one example- I think "Do not go gentle into that good night" might strike a cord with Klingons, though it would clash with some aspects of their culture, which includes ritual suicide and death being seen as better than dishonour. Are there any other examples that others wish to discuss?

Link to the poem I referenced above: www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

[Gandalf]

I once wrote a story which was about an alien civilisation watching Star Trek, and being puzzled at the idea of races with ideas like hierarchy and family. It was so alien to them that the whole message of exploration and unity was missed and it was instead a terrifying dystopia.

On another note, this issue was awesomely explored in DS9's Our man Bashir, wherein Garak is puzzled by a 1960s James Bond style story.

"I work for one of the nation-states of this era, Great Britain, which is battling various other nations in what is called the Cold War. This apartment, my clothes, weapons, even my valet were provided to me by my government"
"I think I joined the wrong intelligence service."

[tezunegari]

On another note, this issue was awesomely explored in DS9's Our man Bashir, wherein Garak is puzzled by a 1960s James Bond style story.

"I work for one of the nation-states of this era, Great Britain, which is battling various other nations in what is called the Cold War. This apartment, my clothes, weapons, even my valet were provided to me by my government"
"I think I joined the wrong intelligence service."

I believe that is not necessarily a fitting example.
Garak was more shocked about the romanticizing / rose-tinted viewing of spy-work. Not because he was cardassian but because he was a real spy / agent.

[GuppyShark]

You've just reminded me of the scene in B5 when all the aliens are clapping and bopping along to a gospel song.

So, thanks for that.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Galaxy Quest jokes aside, would aliens even recognize it as art? Assuming they can see in the visible spectrum, what meaning would the Mona Lisa even have? "These humans appear to have thrown pigments together on a carbon backing for no apparent purpose other than to stare at it. What bizarre creatures." Then again, an intelligent creature would likely recognize the inherent patterns of the Mona Lisa - it isn't a random collection of pigments, after all, and intentional observation and replication of patterns suggests intelligence. So while I think it unlikely that an alien would even begin to understand much less appreciate a piece of human art, if the aliens are intelligent enough to look at our art they will if nothing else recognize some kind of kindred intelligence. Of course, said aliens might not even value intelligence even if they possess it themselves, but that's a whole different topic...

If you're talking about existing popular sci-fi species, then the connections with human art are almost inevitable. Humans created them after all, as an expression of art in and of itself. Cardassians, Mon Calamari, Space Orks, Goa'uld - all are ultimately derived from human experience for the sole purpose of enriching the human experience. Goa'uld get even more meta about it, reversing the equation once more because they themselves emulate human art as cultural parasites. So Goa'uld are a human artistic expression about deriving ancient human artistic expression, derived from human artistic expression.

[Elheru Aran]

Without getting into recursiveness...

Humans create art as a form of expression. I believe this would be common to any intelligent species. What form that art would take, however, would be quite another story. It's a highly subjective medium, and no doubt it would be just as subjective when created by an alien species. For example, a race of aliens might enjoy arias in the sonic ranges which are inaudible to humans. Or paintings which appear featureless to us (and are actually renderered by sonic tools upon a yielding medium rather than pigments) but are visible in the infrared or ultraviolet spectrum.

They might not recognize what we create as art until we explain it to them, but at the very least, they could recognize the ability to *create.*

[Adam Reynolds]

On Earth dogs have a problem viewing television. If the frame rate is too low they fail to see it as a film and instead see it as a series of flashing images without continuity. There is also the fact that dogs only have two cones in their eyes while humans have three. This results in dogs seeing red as yellow or white.

If an alien race saw the world in a fashion at least as different, and this is two fairly closely related species that evolved on the same world, they would actually have no way of perceiving human art.

[Elheru Aran]

Certainly they may not be able to perceive it the same way we do. That doesn't mean that it's going to be completely meaningless. To use your dog example, while they may not see television the same way we do (a continuous stream of imagery), if they're intelligent enough to understand the concept of television they can understand that this is a visual depiction of events in our culture. Albeit one that is in a form they would not necessarily themselves use because of its limited utility to their visual abilities. Colour-blindness also does not impair ordinary humans much; it wouldn't necessarily impair aliens who would simply adapt to it in the course of their evolution. All that would happen is they would think we pick some weird colours in our lives.

I don't believe it's impossible for them to perceive our art, they could certainly conceptualize it in the visual and aural spectra. Whether they would *understand* it or care about it is another matter. A blind and deaf species (which, incidentally, would be highly unlikely to develop advanced technology and evolve to a level that corresponds with ours without alternative senses and methods of communication) could use a variety of scents for art, for example, which is something that we just don't really do apart from experiments like Smell-o-Vision.

[Patroklos]

This topic brings to mind the trophy room exhibition from Fururama after Zap Branagan conquers the spider planet :p

What normally bothers me about how art is depicted in SciFi (and societies for that matter) is that for any given species it is generally portrayed as the same throughout. Klingons have a single aesthetic, and it is near uniform on all their ships/worlds. This is odd to me because in our own experience human art is tremendously diverse. So I guess what I am really saying is that we should expect the same from any species we encounter, and I expect that within the entirety of each species artistic expression some common element can be found that both understand and appreciate. It very well may be the first building block to communication as it serves as a common reference point.

[Borgholio]

While the actual meaning of the art may not be immediately understood, I think that the art itself would be recognized as art. Take a statue for instance. Ignoring any ultraviolet paint or anything like that, carved stone is carved stone and that much should be fairly obvious.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

As far as Planets of Hats go, Borges had an interesting idea on this- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n, ... is_Tertius- while it suffers form his usual playfulness, he does and quite rightly hit the point that the number of being- hours involved in creating a diverse, self- referential, parallel, plural, realistically turbulent and self- contradictory mental world of another species, even another country with it's own characteristic ways of thought, is vast, enormous.

At most one individual can hope to inspire fanfiction, others joining in and fleshing out their creation- see also, the likes of Tekumel, Glorantha- there is simply too much to be done to do it all. Although with a lot of universes there is a lot more that could be done to provide at least the illusion of complexity.

The argument of how alien are aliens going to be, until the evidence is in nobody knows, and there are theses and countertheses- Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen's What does a Martian Look Like? is fun- but there are good chemical reasons to suppose that alien life will be carbon based, that simple organisms up to and including fungus are widespread, but large intelligent creatures will emerge only in ideal or almost ideal conditions for them, which probably does mean liquid water medium.

Which still doesn't mean that they're going to look anything like us, or think anything like us, or have evolved on a path remotely comparable to ours. This carbon and water combination is the most probable precisely because there are so enormously many possibilities. It does mean they'll likely suit environments like ours, and be in the same broad basket of wavelengths and things. Which could mean a million different possibilities in the details, but-

In the mind, though- art is more than a form of expression; in fact it's hard to grasp what isn't a form of expression. A brick is a form of expression. (It expresses that there is someone who wants to be warm and dry and out of the weather.) Art is communication, art is movement in the world of ideas, art is acts of the mind. Most art has teleology; it comes form a particular mental place, and is vastly more often than not heading towards one.

Any species which can tell itself stories can develop a theory of information; as soon as there are critics, there can be logicians- but I would argue not before. Art is the intersection between creativity and logic- and any intelligent species is going to need both, and there should be no better way of forcing the growth of both than having them fight it out in the arena of art.

How many different ways there are of doing this, well. Just have to get out there and see, won't we?

[biostem]

A lot of what we value in art, (be it visual, auditory, or otherwise), is dependent upon our senses and common traits we, as a species, share. For instance, if some alien species didn't see, or didn't see in the same spectrum as us, then they may not share our appreciation of the world. Heck, if substances in our environment are toxic to them, that aren't for us, they may find our appreciation of some things downright abhorrent. I mean, if an alien race originated from an herbivorous lineage, they may find the smell of meat disgusting. Their entire opinion of what is attractive could be very very different from ours. If these aliens weren't mammalian, they may find our obsession with breasts and secondary sexual characteristics to just be weird.

The same can be said for portrayals of landscapes and/or the design of our structures. I'd imagine that an organism with a different physiology may find our homes and furniture interesting, but ultimately not appreciate them for the utility they provide to us.

In short - the less similar said aliens are to us, the less of a common appreciation for our art they are likely to posses.

[Zeropoint]

If these aliens weren't mammalian, they may find our obsession with breasts and secondary sexual characteristics to just be weird.

Given the deep-seated and primitive nature of reproductive drives (species that don't particularly care about reproducing are likely to die out . . . lookin' at you, pandas), I would expect any species that uses sexual reproduction to understand sex appeal at least intellectually. They might think we're strange for caring about bumps and curves and body proportions instead of properly mottled carapaces and slender pedipalps, but they'd get the concept of "sexy", I'd think. Unless maybe they reproduce sexually but passively, like with spores or something.

[Elheru Aran]

In short - the less similar said aliens are to us, the less of a common appreciation for our art they are likely to posses.

This is essentially what it comes down to. If they're eight-dimensional insectiods from the 26th plane of existence who perceive the universe as a series of equations and communicate via high-level mathematically sound harmonics, their 'art' would be pretty far removed from ours, if they have any to start with.

Is it a safe assumption that to reach a certain level of technology capable of interstellar travel, the intelligence required would also imply a certain level of creativity and thus the capacity to create art?

[Zixinus]

Even if they don't have the concept of "art" that is comparable to human concept, they'd likely realize that art-objects are significant to us and have some sort of value. Why else would you waste perfectly good skill and expertise in stone-cutting just to make something that has no other function but resemble a human being? Mix oils and colors on textiles to show a human face? Why else make buildings and media dedicated to them, where they are kept in a way where they are in full view as opposed to just boxing them up and putting them atop each other?
If they are at that point they'd likely think that the details of the work as significant too and contain more information than is apparent. It would take them good imagination and a little something that is humbleness to us to realize that they may not get what information that may be or even understand it if it was given to them.

It is actually likely that they'd classify a large number of objects as art, even objects we didn't know. Such as anatomy pictures or user manuals. Or stuff like fire hydrants. The logical opposite might also be the case where they'd assign practical value to artworks that aren't intended to have any, like thinking statues were meant to give directions or something.

But assuming that they have a concept of art, they'd be likely puzzled or perplexed by most human art. Humans are too when they aren't familiar with the context of the artwork or even the kind of artwork. I'm not just talking about knowledge of what the artist likely was trying to do, but things like perspective (it doesn't work for humans who aren't brought up with it) or ability to differentiate and identify music notes. Humans who aren't raised up to them would have a very different experience of them than us. For stuff that effectively produces emotions or reactions for humans would fall flat or cause different reactions for aliens. Images that appear to be perfectly in perspective will appear as distorted. Music will sound like an unpleasant mess no matter how melodic or harmonious or gentle it is to us. Films will be like watching a dream or nightmare trough its end.

Consider portraits: to us they are paintings/drawings that capture the experience of what the artist sees at a particular moment of a person. To us a portrait like the Mona Lisa has information because humans are hardwired to recognize and analyze faces, body posture, gestures and many nuances of the human form. They are adaptions to aid us at being social animals.

Thus their interpretation will be very different. What causes fear or tension to any human may be comedic or romantic to an alien. Aliens will likely not experience art as a human would even if they know what is going on.

That does not mean that they can't enjoy it. I can imagine alien hipsters with nocturnal ambush predator evolutionary background munching on adrenaline-analog-filled jerky, drinking mildly poisonous blood while watching human serial-killer movies and co-enjoying the hunt of the predator. Or socially very sensitive placid species doing the equivalents of youtube videos of themselves as they manage to stomach the horrific experience of being Mr.Bean.

[LadyTevar]

I look around my living room, and I have to wonder how an alien would see it. Would they look at the arrangement of funiture as symbolic? religious? as it all faces the TV in it's special alcove.

The pictures ... some show what may be inhabitants, dressed in what might be ritual finery (wedding pics). Others, elders?, with some visual resemblance to one of the figures in the ritual finery. Several images of multi-limbed beings, possibly winged. These are created with a different medium, less realistic than the inhabitants. Totems? Religious Iconigraphy? The owners had multiple, different images of these winged beings (dragons, I collect them).

I could go on with the two bookshelves, the collection of miniuture unicorn carvings, the landscapes I own... but you can see the point.

[puskas78]

On Earth dogs have a problem viewing television. If the frame rate is too low they fail to see it as a film and instead see it as a series of flashing images without continuity. There is also the fact that dogs only have two cones in their eyes while humans have three. This results in dogs seeing red as yellow or white.

If an alien race saw the world in a fashion at least as different, and this is two fairly closely related species that evolved on the same world, they would actually have no way of perceiving human art.

New video standards that make stuff viewable for several species would be made fast, possibly before any artwork would be made for a "mixed audience"

[puskas78]

Humans find the very "alien" affairs of animals interesting
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765725/?ref_=nv_sr_2
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/S ... erkatManor
I think intelligent beings from any species could find human art interesting. Even a murder story. "Who killed that seeder with a motor vehicle? The spawner who wanted a copulate with it and didn't like refusal? The other seeder who was interested in the same spawner? That seeder who bought a nest from it and didn't want to deliver the required tokens? Or the other spawner who was unable to properly control the motor vehicle after taking too much of that stuff and altering its mental state too much?"

If these aliens weren't mammalian, they may find our obsession with breasts and secondary sexual characteristics to just be weird.

Given the deep-seated and primitive nature of reproductive drives (species that don't particularly care about reproducing are likely to die out . . . lookin' at you, pandas), I would expect any species that uses sexual reproduction to understand sex appeal at least intellectually. They might think we're strange for caring about bumps and curves and body proportions instead of properly mottled carapaces and slender pedipalps, but they'd get the concept of "sexy", I'd think. Unless maybe they reproduce sexually but passively, like with spores or something.

Some aliens could find it interesting how easy it is for humans to end a sexual relationship, and how some humans try so much to prevent that...

[Bedlam]

I look around my living room, and I have to wonder how an alien would see it. Would they look at the arrangement of funiture as symbolic? religious? as it all faces the TV in it's special alcove.

The pictures ... some show what may be inhabitants, dressed in what might be ritual finery (wedding pics). Others, elders?, with some visual resemblance to one of the figures in the ritual finery. Several images of multi-limbed beings, possibly winged. These are created with a different medium, less realistic than the inhabitants. Totems? Religious Iconigraphy? The owners had multiple, different images of these winged beings (dragons, I collect them).

I could go on with the two bookshelves, the collection of miniuture unicorn carvings, the landscapes I own... but you can see the point.

I think there's a joke amongst archaeologists that declaring something has ritual significance is the same as saying I have no idea what this thing is.

[Borgholio]

I think there's a joke amongst archaeologists that declaring something has ritual significance is the same as saying I have no idea what this thing is.

Sounds about right actually. Because in all honesty, having "ritual significance" doesn't automatically mean religious in nature. A toilet has ritual significance, since it's significant and we have specific rituals associated with it.

[Patroklos]

Obviously its the intellectual hub of our civilization. Why else would they find so much literary material stored nearby thousands of years later?

In all honesty, when Earth's successor race begins digging though our ruins in earnest at the same tech level we started doing the same they will have no idea what these plastic boxes filled with intricate wires and tablets studded with metal bits are. They will wonder why they can find no preserved written literature after our three thousandth year of complex civilization when we produced it in abundance before, but will recognize the phallic symbols ritualistically entombed upon the faces of our waste disposal facilities after this time for many centuries after and obviously identify it as the pinnacle of our development.

[The Romulan Republic]

Humans find the very "alien" affairs of animals interesting
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765725/?ref_=nv_sr_2
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/S ... erkatManor
I think intelligent beings from any species could find human art interesting. Even a murder story. "Who killed that seeder with a motor vehicle? The spawner who wanted a copulate with it and didn't like refusal? The other seeder who was interested in the same spawner? That seeder who bought a nest from it and didn't want to deliver the required tokens? Or the other spawner who was unable to properly control the motor vehicle after taking too much of that stuff and altering its mental state too much?"

If these aliens weren't mammalian, they may find our obsession with breasts and secondary sexual characteristics to just be weird.

Given the deep-seated and primitive nature of reproductive drives (species that don't particularly care about reproducing are likely to die out . . . lookin' at you, pandas), I would expect any species that uses sexual reproduction to understand sex appeal at least intellectually. They might think we're strange for caring about bumps and curves and body proportions instead of properly mottled carapaces and slender pedipalps, but they'd get the concept of "sexy", I'd think. Unless maybe they reproduce sexually but passively, like with spores or something.

Some aliens could find it interesting how easy it is for humans to end a sexual relationship, and how some humans try so much to prevent that...

Actually, this makes me wonder if mysteries would translate particularly well. The idea of a story based on logic, on putting together clues to reach a result, should be comprehensible on some level to any thinking species capable of reason.

[Zixinus]

A mystery could transfer badly unless the author writes out the logic very clearly. Logic in crime mystery-solving often relies on understanding the setting and thoughts of the characters. Authors are likely to give details but rarely explicitly (due to "show, don't tell", but your mileage may vary of course) so they make sense to an alien. Crime novels are not always as logical as their author would like to think they are (after all it is logical trough their eyes). Especially TV shows have many illogical or unrealistic steps (*cough* time needed for DNA tests *cough) to keep the pace.

That does not mean that an alien couldn't figure it out and even enjoy it. It just means that they'd need grounding in human culture (particularly the ones featured in the stories themselves) to even have a chance at coming at the right (that is, the one that the author intended) conclusion. Which would be true for any piece of literature and art in general.

[Zeropoint]

I hear that in Cardassian mystery stories all the suspects are always guilty . . . the question is which ones are guilty of what crimes.

[jwl]

Obviously its the intellectual hub of our civilization. Why else would they find so much literary material stored nearby thousands of years later?

In all honesty, when Earth's successor race begins digging though our ruins in earnest at the same tech level we started doing the same they will have no idea what these plastic boxes filled with intricate wires and tablets studded with metal bits are. They will wonder why they can find no preserved written literature after our three thousandth year of complex civilization when we produced it in abundance before, but will recognize the phallic symbols ritualistically entombed upon the faces of our waste disposal facilities after this time for many centuries after and obviously identify it as the pinnacle of our development.

Is the amount of written literature really decreasing though? Newspapers may be disappearing but it seems to me that if anything the amount of printed books produced is increasing.