Friday, May 06, 2011

UFOs as performance art

At his UFO Iconoclasts blog, Rich Reynolds has recently been musing about the lack of any art exhibited by the mysterious extraterrestrial creatures who supposedly pilot UFOs from somewhere "out there" to here.

He writes, in part:

No UFO or flying saucer reports have identified music as endemic to the sightings. And no art, aside from those militaristic or corporate-like insignia/symbols, has been registered – none like that which Lemarchand thinks would be intrinsic to an advanced extraterrestrial race.

What does this tell us about UFOs? That whatever they are, or whomever “mans” them, are either not advanced in a way that would include moral imperatives (as Lemarchand articulates) nor are they as advanced in even a small way as that of the Neanderthals or early man was, as indicated by the art in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont d’Arc.

This means, for us, that UFOs are either created by Earthlings or are artifacts without a cultural or living species origination - a physical manifestation of some kind - or UFOs belong to a race or races that are without moral imperatives (ethics) and refinements which would ameliorate contact between us and them as (we hate to note) some abduction accounts seem to warn.
While it is true, so far as I know, that no UFO or its supposed occupants has ever produced an alien Rembrandt or Van Gogh for our inspection, nor have they treated us to any alien version of Bach or the Beatles (although, as I have posted elsewhere, it is possible that they have, but only through interaction with individuals who have the ability to comprehend what the non-human intelligence might be trying to communicate), Rich misses the proverbial forest for the trees, even as he raises an excellent topic for discussion.

So, to Rich I would say - what if the UFOs themselves are a form of non-human "performance art"?

After all, one can find not dissimilar displays of the lights often shown by UFOs in our own culture.

Black light theatre is a wonderful example, and one I've been lucky enough to experience. Here's a sample:



Then, if one were to travel to Nevada for the annual Burning Man festival (something on my "bucket list"), one might see something like this:



Perhaps a non-human intelligence, whether from another solar system, or another dimension, or even another time, is doing something similar for us with UFOs?

After all, our art is capable of as many manifestations as there are human beings with imagination and creativity. Think of  how much more a non-human intelligence with the same desire to create, and a greater capacity to do so, might be capable of achieving.

Paul Kimball

7 comments:

Frank Stalter said...

We see light displays from animals too, especially in the sea. If life is at least somewhat similar on other planets, they have bioluminescent critters too and higher life forms may like and copy.

Paul Kimball said...

Great point, Frank!

Now, if only the aliens would loan the Flyers a goaltender! ;-)

Frank Stalter said...

Hey, that's not nice! Kicking me and my Flyers when we're down. :O(

You might want to take a look at this article I put together over the holidays. Speaks to some of the same issues you and Richie are writing about.

http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/2011/01/humans-aliens-their-conquest-of-flight.html

Kandinsky said...

I'm not sure the presence, or otherwise, of music and art is meaningful in the discussion of UFO phenomena.

Using terrestrial analogies...

An RTA victim wakes up in an ambulance.

Anthropologists engineer a 'first contact' with a previously unknown population of hunter-gatherers.

Police raid a suspected drug dealer.

An elephant is tranquilised,tagged and released.

Somali pirates capture a retired couple and keep them hostage in a cave.

In these scenarios, would music and art be a factor?

Red Pill Junkie said...

I'm with Kandinsky, there are many cases where art is not present in a human environment —a factory, the interior of a submarine, a slaughterhouse —oh... slaughterhouses...kind of hard not to think of abductions @_@

Just because witnesses haven't reported artistic pieces inside a saucer doesn't mean there aren't. We really don't know how much time they spend inside the saucers —we assume it might be months or years but that's just speculation from our part. I don't know about you, but I don't keep a painting inside my automobile ;)

In any case, it's clear to me that UFO manifestations have some purpose other than taking them from point A to point B. They seem to want to attract our attention toward them for some unknown purpose; maybe it's for our own edification, or maybe not.

Or maybe they're just the intergalactic version of Banksy :P

Frank Stalter said...

I thought crop circles performed that function. Actually, I think those circle makers are the farm version of Banksy . . . who has never convinced anyone he's not of this Earth. ;O)

Arvin Hill said...

Bravo. Especially the black light theatre example.

I've seen many extraordinary UFO events - fully conscious (and stone cold sober, which is kind of interesting in itself) - of a nature and frequency that it is impossible for me to discount the performance aspect of this phenomenon. Had it just been one or two occasions and high, or even moderate, degrees of ambiguity, I could entertain various theories in lieu of deliberate, intelligent performance. No two performances were identical, and they often varied considerably.

I know what some of you cynical geezers are thinking, but, much like the rest of life, this kind of thing isn't real until you experience it firsthand.