LECTURE: The 'Deep Structure' of the Arts

Abstract:

Linguists describe the 'deep structure' of language, referring to innate rules that speakers of all languages follow, even though they may not realize they are doing so. Similarly, music theorists describe the underlying structure of music-the way certain tones or chords or rhythmic patterns imply and affect others. Although artists generally feel as if they are freely and individually creating as they work, I suggest that there are underlying principles in our nature as humans that influence the making of our own art work and our responses to the works of others. These principles emerge from our past-both our prehistoric past when all humans lived as hunter-gatherers and faced common existential problems, and our past as individuals who all begin life as helpless infants.

Biographical note:

Ellen Dissanayake is a scholar, lecturer, and author of three books, What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus (1992), and Art and Intimacy (2000), all published by the University of Washington Press. Combining her interests in the arts and evolutionary biology, and using insights drawn from fifteen years of living and working in nonwestern countries (Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, India, and Nigeria), she has developed a unique perspective that considers art to be a normal, natural, and necessary component of our evolved nature as humans. She has held Distinguished Visiting Professorships at Ball State University in Indiana and the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Additionally, she has taught at the National Arts School in Papua New Guinea, the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, Sarah Lawrence College, and the New School for Social Research in New York City. Currently a Visiting Scholar at the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington in Seattle, she is in Australia this month as Professor-at-Large at the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA in Perth.

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