Emptiness is Form

Snibbe | Artwork | Emptiness Is Form

Emptiness is Form
Scott Snibbe, 2000

Emptiness is Form refers to a Buddhist text called the Heart Sutra, which is the distillation of all teachings on Emptiness. Emptiness in Buddhism refers not to nothingness, but to the inherent lack of independent existence of all phenomena - both mental and physical. In the case of physical phenomena, the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh explains, "You are only made of non-you elements". That is, your body is composed entirely of non-body elements - dirt, plants, decomposed bodies, stardust, etc. Thinking about the human body in this way one may come to understand that independent existence is a mental construction, unverified by physical interrogation.

In a similar way, one can explore the boundaries between physical objects. For example, the specific line between your body and the rest of the world is unidentifiable and indefinable. Your body dissolves into the world around it, both losing microscopic particles and absorbing particles of the "outside world" through your skin, orifices and senses. Furthermore, as many philosophers and scientists note, if you remove parts of your body, you do not become any less "you" - e.g. when you get a haircut, or, much worse, lose a limb. Finally, your mind is composed of thoughts, ideas and perceptions which are understood through the language you learned, the culture you were raised in and the people you encountered. Thus, the notion that any part of you, or "you" itself, exists independent of the world, even your thoughts, is purely a mental construction.

This piece was commissioned for REFRESH: The Art of the Screensaver which is featured at ArtMuseum.net.

High quality images [1 2 3]

Screen Savers as Artists' Medium, Matthew Mirapaul, New York Times, November 23, 2000