Mnemesthetics: Art as the Revivification of Significant Consciousness Events

Art is discussed as the way valuable moments of human consciousness are captured in media so that we can relive these moments as vividly as if they were happening now. Our first exposure to a work of art begins to establish a general memory of our consciousness of it. The next time we experience that work of art we compare our immediate consciousness of it with our residual memory of it. The two conditions that set art apart from other experiences in our consciousness are, first, its vividness, which is a function of the success of the artist using a given medium; and, second, its importance to us, which results from the power of the artist to establish valuable, creative insights into the human condition.