In my own terms, the proper purposes of art are to help foster the rejection of self pity, to sponsor and model persistence, and to cultivate perception, particularly the ever present possibility of joy and trascendance. The materials that interest me personally most are light, color, and movement, particularly the movement of water.
Many different visions came to me this morning. For example, you could have a clear walled building situated in an advantageous position relative to the sun, filled with glass tubes, through which water is running. What makes water interesting when it moves is not smooth motion, but interrupted motion. This creates all sorts of interesting patterns and shadows, which could be emphasized with the proper type of floor, and perhaps strategically placed walls. You could introduce, in an elaborate cascade of sequenced pipes, different colors. Suddenly the water could turn purple, in a wave; later, yellow; then 5 colors could be introduced in different parts of the room, perhaps coupled with lights at the bottom or tops of the tubes.
I like days when the weather is “moody”, when the clouds are on the move, and the sun is popping in and out. To this arrangement you could add, in addition to natural wind–I see this being open to the elements–bursts of artificial wind, perhaps filled with alternating, interesting odors, like vanilla. In the spirit of Harry Potter, perhaps every so often you could have an unpleasant smell, like cow manure, which would disappear soon enough. Learning to accept the occasional unpleasantness is an essential element in living well. After warning people, you could make the floor purposely uneven, so that some care must be paid to your footing.
I also saw a pyramid of bottles, with water being sprayed on them from above, in which various rainbows would appear often. Perhaps you could have hoses for attendees, so they could spray one another. You could have bright full spectrum lights shining from the floor, so they could create their own rainbows. People could purchase colored waters, and you could have smaller fountains, with narrow tops, on an angle, so they run downhill at say 45 degrees, with many interruptions, and you could pour the colored water on it, and watch it flow. You could make the fountain surface clear, with light underneath, to enhance the effect. Again, the water could have an odor. Every so often it could simply rain, so that everyone got soaked. You would of course warn them of this first.
Mild risk and mild invasions of “abnormality” into your space are cathartic. Consider the act of Gallagher, who would always smash a bunch of watermelons in his act, such that the first few rows got wet. Or the Blue Man group, which as I understand it, has the audience pull a fabric over their heads.
We see often in museums the self destructive rage of the “epater la bourgeoisie”–the desire to “shock the middle class”–that acts out of nothing more creative than self loathing, which leads to resentment of others who are content, anger at them, and ultimately hatred. This is counterproductive. This sort of thing is NOT generative of anything but decline, even if the decline often cloaks itself in the mantle of outwardly progressive rhetoric. The real intent of Communists, always, is to destroy what exists, in favor of something they cannot create. This makes it a nihilistic doctrine, from which no beauty can be expected.
Yet, I do see value in disrupting complacency. In fact, no complacent person can be fully Good, in my own terms. If they are not engaging creatively with life, then they are decaying. The value of art is in supporting this intelligently, and purposefully.