In the wake of the recent discovery of a worldwide invariant and its consequences in the poetical arts of the writers who went down in history, the co-operative site «The Art Phenomenon or the Life Effect ? » appeals to all researchers willing to bring their documents and arguments referring to the three following questions :

1. Yes or no, is the Art phenomenon a specific aspect of the human phenomenon ? In other words does it need a human science essentially based on this specificity ?

2. Yes or no, is the Art phenomenon to be considered for the arts as a whole, like it is in literature, as an artefact's capacity of creating a life effect in the receiver's psyche through the forms' and materials' coherent play ?

3. Is the idea of «life-effect» the true definition of a work of art's value ? that is the true definition of its beauty ?

It seems that these three questions rule and include the entire arts' set of problems.

To begin with, let us think about the method chosen to study art. As the only reasoning and experimentation are not that efficient in human sciences, we recommend the invariants' method. It postulates that the bringing to light of a consensus among the most competent people of a human field – this field being impossible to mix with any other, constitutes the strongest foundation possible for a human science. As soon as by comparison we can show that some statements, may they be said or experimented, recur from civilisation to civilisation and from one period of time to another, we can be sure to be faced with ideas with objective and general scientific value. They can then be added to the «human nature» definition – if only we'd not forget that this «human nature» combines stability and mutation and is totally interactive with its arisen cultures.

As it is easy to show that in art the most competent people are the artists themselves who went down in history and as it also seems that all writers meet about the “life effect” idea, the right scientific method would be that, as a base of work, it also gathers all the artists of the different disciplines.

Here we come to the interesting question about human sciences' positions today concerning homo sapiens's unidiversity. Our planet's human groups have been living according to distinctive cultures, evolving both by themselves and by their interaction. Anthropology and sociology standpoints, but also those of psychology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, semiology, mythography and theology, all have lots to teach us, particularly because the works of art represent all the aspects of the human condition.

We think that the huge diversity of cultures cannot be reduced to the «human nature» concept by finding some common denominator, but only by discovering a natural skill for creating diversified cultures from bio-physio-neurological fundamentals which are precisely the mark of mankind and its adaptability.

So the life effect's globalizing notion states positively that a successful work of art is one able to create an “effect of life” in the receiver's psyche. And the successful life effect is the one which generates an intensity of life and an effervescence such as to understand and organize all the mind's facets. It is an inner system of echoes, a soul's effervescence triggered by a stimulus which is only an artefact, but an artefact as powerful as life itself when it reaches all the facets of the spirit-brain.

The “life effect” theory therefore defines a work of art's quality, that is its beauty. Searching for it in harmony, balance, the golden number, mimesis, imagination or elsewhere is not sufficient anymore... Its quality is in the fullness of a receptive mind according to the creator's plans.

So the life effect is an invariant, but in literature it goes with invariant corollaries which depend on it and clarify its working process. The life effect needs concrete material, pleasant, malleable and prompting the creator as well as the receiver to create by playing some forms that cannot leave us indifferent, forms which suggest more than their own shape. Deeper in analysing the art functions, we discover multivalence : it is a set of acoustic, plastic, dynamic and literary techniques such as comparisons and metaphors, whose mission is to spray signification in all the intellectual faculties. Now the opening is a sort of reverse technique, motivating the receiver's mind sufficiently for him to get involved in the work with his own inner life and his own culture. Finally we need coherence to co-ordinate all the invariant consequences between themselves as well as with the chosen style and the subject.

There are no invariant corollaries concerning literature's aim because the “life-effect” in itself is the true purpose of art. However, as arts are intimately connected to everything concerning Man, the main creators are sometimes inclined to add to art a precise function such as glorifying God or a nation. That is why I decided to add supernumerarilly to our invariants' list : the function of art.

As a result, as each civilisation uses its own ways of interpreting the world, the very words which apprehend reality are not immediately easy to translate from one language to another. The important multilingual vocabulary imprint will have the task of exploring the correspondences between the arts' lexicons, and to do so in as many languages as possible. Unlike in our Western culture, all civilisations do not refer to «music», «dance» or «painting» in the same way, but we want to believe that, if art exists as a specificity of the human phenomenon, the different divisions of the art continuum are not incompatible. There is the place for a fascinating work to be done regarding relationships between words and things.

The “life effect” theory is not aesthetics, but aesthetics of aesthetics ! Consequently there has to be a dialectical singular of Art and plural of Beauty in each historic category of aesthetics. That part will try to show where and how the dialectics rise to the surface, often hidden by the artists in their poetical arts.

There is no anthropological nature of the art genres. They are only inventions of forms or of shapes and themes, with a certain historical stability. On the other hand, the creation of the types is worldwide because any work of art has to make precise choices among its own possibilities' continuum. It is therefore interesting to have a genres column to consider them in the limits of the life effect.

A lot of artists do not wish to put their experiences into theory as if they feared that too acute a lucidity towards their skills would diminish their inspiration. However, some famous artists like Goethe, Rodin, Kandinsky, Yen Yù, Ibn Qotaïba, Zeami have tried to understand arts and their applications. We shall there offer room for the creators' point of view.

In 1994, Jean-Pierre Changeux published his book «Raison et Plaisir» to show that art defines itself by the superimposition of pleasure and reason, which is a very close idea to that of the life effect. He came to that result owing to his eminent knowledge of the brain and its functioning. But as he didn't have any global knowledge of art, except through some paintings whose study was linked to his own personal taste, he probably didn't go far enough. We must therefore create a special place for neurosciences' contribution.

Besides, this Site wishes to enable researchers, as long it fits in the life effect's framework, to publish their personal pages on their experiences and emotions triggered by aesthetics as well as some essays on books concerning arts.

All contributions, may they be debates or documents, will be subject to the Site's reading committee. All the articles will be published in their original version with an abstract in French or in English. A bibliography is acting as an inventory of the present works of the young “Life-Effect” School. Finally, all the quotations from the Site will have to have their complete references.

Let us end by referring to the highest level of scientific researches. The most original feature of the “life effect” theory is probably to integrate into its quest the individual subjectivity of beauty, which is in completely opposition with today’s researches dominated by the model of «objective» exact sciences. On the contrary, it appears to us that it is completely «un-scientific» to exclude from the art phenomenon the idea of aesthetic emotion, with its subjectivity and individual value which makes up, from the artists’ point of view, the very heart of their creation ! On the other hand, today’s critics have no problem in considering that an entire human science may depend on a one and only man like Freud or Lévi-Strauss. On the contrary and according to the invariants methodology, we think that aesthetics need everybody to collaborate. That is the main reason for which I decided to create this Site, based on working together.

M.-M. Münch,
Paris, June 9th 2009