Obviously if you transform a piece of art, by, say, adding eyes, museum security are going to be called. But there's a sense, I think, in which each person's experience with a piece of art folds back into the wider social conception of that work, and it's in this wider conception where the meaning of the work is contained (it is certainly not in the work itself). This artwork, or even something so mundane as the directions to the museum, is an example of the what Andy Clark and David Chalmers "called the 'extended mind' in which the world plays an 'active role' in cognitive processes." According to this article, "Clark and Chalmers argued that, for something to become part of the 'extended mind', it should play a role equivalent to neural processes." All of the posts in today's newsletter, in one way or another, explore this idea, at least as I am reading them. (p.s. it's better with eyes. Just saying.)
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