Art and Humans: The Never-Ending Evolution

The video-animated graffiti displayed by Blu and David Ellis represents our constantly evolving culture. The overall feel of the piece is by all means art, but not in the traditional sense with paint brushes and cloth canvasses. When I witnessed this breathtaking transformation of a desolate, soul-less building into a flowing, constantly changing majestic piece of work, I was truly awed. To look at this evolution at just an art level completely denies the scope that I feel when viewing this video. I see the beginning, when wood cinder and other scraps were being compiled to form a chomping mouth as the start of life on earth. Earth was once a molten congregation of elements, waiting and brewing for potential life-inducing combinations. This initial mouth takes an endless journey through the adjacent empty lot and soot covered floors, representing how single-cell organisms braved their way through insurmountable odds to ultimately survive. As the graffiti art evolves, it gets more intricate and gradual connection's and resulting layered figures represent the evolution of our earth and its inhabitants. I also noticed that a brain with human-like features appears in the graffiti, representing the beginning of the modern, thinking man. When contemplating the correlation between art and evolution, Brian Boyd of the John Hopkin's University has many theories stemming from the decades he has spent as a biologist. Boyd argues, "Art could be what evolutionary biologists call a byproduct, a mere side-effect of our bigger brains or of culture." Boyd argues that art is a natural tendency that all cognitively able humans get involved with in some size, shape or form. The piece we just witnessed is the culmination of such a byproduct, and is a means for the human brain to act creatively.

I also noticed that as the video progressed, the graffiti got more human features, ending in a rotund man evolving from several feet, sitting with hands to his side. The sad truth to this video however is that all life must end at some point in time; whether it be from an other-worldly force or a rare occurrence from the cosmos. Our earth has endured massive extinction many times since our initial existence over 7.3 billion years ago, yet I sit hear today typing on a computer. The climax of the video shows that as earth evolves, it eventually takes a major hit, only to start the unbelievable journey of life all over again.