Creative Culture and Telephone Sheep

A few months ago, over at greenUPGRADER Doug was promoting discussion around the function of art and creativity in relation to the 'green' movement and perhaps questioning how important art and design are in our current culture. The wonderful example of Jean Luc Cornec’s Telephone Sheep (pictured left) exhibited at Frankfurt's Museum für Kommunikation, 2006 was used to examine the issues.

Of course, in our view, art, design & creativity are vital components of green and eco movements both current, past and undoubtedly in the future. An appreciation of art, particularly in nature, inspires the desire to protect and support one's environment whether that environment is viewed as immediate, nationally or global. The ability to design and create also emanates from this need to protect and support as well as incorporating the desire to improve one's surroundings or situation, to solve problems and, as in all the most pertinent art, to achieve an ideal.

Even art and design which may seem superfluous or purely aesthetic on many levels rather than coming from a positive functional or progressive angle; if it captures a sense of beauty, inspires an idea, or simply makes us think about bigger questions than what we will eat for dinner, it is serving an important and necessary purpose. It almost goes without saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that 'good' art is not defined by being framed ornately and hung in a large white room; 'good' design is not only that which is proudly displayed in a museum or shop window. Positive art, design and creativity is all around and within us all the time. We only need to open our eyes.

I heartily agree with Doug's assertion in his post: "Work like the Telephone Sheep force us to see new uses and value to otherwise expired products. The importance of art can stretch far beyond entertaining some web surfers or museum patrons. It can spawn in any of us the ability to think with a more malleable mind. Perhaps in even a simple way on a daily basis we can look at common refuse and see further life, another form, continuing function…less waste."

By placing the objects in a totally new environment, what once were out of date communication devices, deemed unusable and deficient, are in this exhibition cleverly revived by the artist. This act or reusing, replacing and re-seeing gives the subjects an entirely new life for us, the viewer, as our view of them shifts entirely.

"The ability to see materials outside of their traditional roles is key to reducing the mass of products our society currently consumes and reusing that which surrounds us everyday to its maximum potential."

Further info:
greenUPGRADER article / Museum für Kommunikation
Photograph source: Hanneorla via Flickr