Everyone is involved in the process of inner imaging and then, as a response, outer imaging or expressing something about the inner imaging experience. However, this process becomes very different if one acquires training in the process of making outer images—because outer imaging requires the acquisition of skills in the linguistics and technics of image making. Practice enables one as an outer imager to develop a repertoire and improve one’s chances of success. Inner imaging also is greatly improved if one gains ‘reading’ skill through practice. The difference between the roles that focus on Outer Imaging (artist, researcher, teacher, critic) and those that focus on Inner Imaging (beholder, research subject, student, reader) resides in their different relation to the outer images that exist between them.

Those who focus on Outer Imaging (artists, researchers, teachers and critics) are invariably also skilled Inner Imagers, but their forte comes in the follow-up Outer Imaging process; they thrive on the process of using technics and language to make Outer Images for others to Inner Image or for their own inner imaging enjoyment. Those who focus on Inner Imaging (beholders, research subjects, students, readers), on the other hand, tend not to become as directly engaged in the Outer Imaging of visual images because they do not usually posses the technic/linguistic skills to manifest them; instead they Outer Image in other ways—typically in verbal and/or pre-verbal forms in relation to the content material of their specialized interest, which may well be life events that support physical survival rather than art events that support psychical survival.

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Artists make art, researchers make data probabilities; teachers make pedagogical events; critics make theoretical evaluations; beholders make interpretations; research subjects make routine events; students make project assignments; readers contextualize themselves by making personal connections with socio-cultural assessments. Other participants in other domains of knowledge fulfill parallel roles; and in these other domains, each of the eight roles has its own history. (In other domains, the ‘artist’ role can also be described as the ‘innovator’ or ‘inventor’. The other seven terms are interchangeable.)

If those who focus on Inner Imaging receive feedback, then those who focus on Outer Imaging offer feed-forward. Inside a meta-modern world-view, individuals are expected to be able to fluently engage in any of these roles as the occasion demands—even if they probably always return to the role that is their home zone because that is where they have a repertoire that gives them a sense of confidence and authority. While those engaged in inner-imaging-based roles typically initiate a dialogue as speaking subjects (submitting outer images for their Other to behold or inner image), those engaged in outer-image based roles typically start off as spoken subjects.

If there is to be a dialogue, then there must be built into the pedagogical process an expectation that the inner imager will be invited to respond in their own voice—that is, that they will be expected to take their turn as a speaking subject (either inside the art world or outside of it), and the outer imager will temporarily become a listener, a spoken subject. Dialogue assumes that the speaking/spoken positions will alternate so that both are learning and both are teaching; that is, that both are inner imaging and outer imaging utterances (outer images) in exchange with each other.

The eight iiae roles are each typically situated in a prototypical site, respectively: the studio/gallery, the laboratory/field, the classroom/workshop, and the museum/library. Artists work in studios; beholders gain access to art in gallery settings. Researchers set up social experiments in what they regard as their ‘labs’; their subjects (or objects) are participants in their home-fields of ongoing events. Teachers work in their classrooms; their students attempt to make art (or related projects) as if their classrooms were workshop areas. Critics assess cultural objects and texts in the museums; their readers read critiques in the magazines and books in the libraries. Everyone can move in and out of these various roles as the occasion demands—even though one will likely be the main long term ground/focus, subject to the likelihood that it will wax and/or wane in relative importance in the short term as shifting events push and/or pull participants into different time periods that call up different expectations.

Inner imaging may be a process of engaging with psychical extensions (art, pretend, play) or with physical extensions (life, survival, work)—the former of which offers participants an escape from the functionality of everyday life-events that are so central to the continuity of the body/mind. All dialogue between speaking- and spoken-subjects takes place through the intermediary of the Outer Image—here defined as including any and all forms of extensions in any medium that is available to the senses. Reality therefore exists in the intermediary world between the inner image of each individual and the outer image that they either express or read from each other.

Accordingly, there is no direct route that bypasses this dialogue between subjects. Transitional art (Winnicott) plays on the illusion that the outer image is really the other (speaking) subject—that is, that the two (artist and beholder or speaking- and spoken-) subjects are in direct, immediate, intimate contact. Autonomous art (Greenberg), on the other hand survives on the illusion of the separation of the object from its maker (the speaking subject) —that is, that the artwork has embodied in it all that is needed for it to act as a speaking subject in its own right and in the absence of its (real speaking subject) author/artist. Transitional art is theoretically content-time-space specific; autonomous art is theoretically universally positioned.

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The inner-outer loop between the ONE and the OTHER roles in the Arts (psychological survival) and in Life (physical survival)

 

 

Outer Imaging oriented roles (artist, researcher, teacher, critic) in dialogue* with Inner Imaging oriented roles (beholder, research subject, student, reader)

*The presence of dialogue assumes that there is an OBJECT between the One and the Other and that there is an alternation between inner-and outer-imaging roles, so that a speaking subject takes turns at being a spoken subject by inviting role reversal. Speaking alternates with listening (being spoken).