What Next? • 27312.3). They are very condensed, and work best if accompanied by direct experience with art
materials, didactic presentation (images, film), and elaboration of their contents. One (A)
is designed for teachers and contains some suggested ways to make art more therapeutic in
their classrooms. The other (B) is designed for therapists, and lists some of the basic materi-
als and approaches to the use of art in therapy.
Art Therapy in the Age of Virtual Reality
Twenty years ago I was invited to speak at an international conference on mental health and
technology in Canada. Even though I was expected to tell the participants everything they
ever wanted to know about art therapy in only 15 minutes, it was not that hard to articulate
the importance of art therapy for an industrialized society.
The ensuing postmodern decades have seen the dominance of the computer chip and the
emergence of new ways to know the world, primarily through the Internet. Kate Collie and
her colleagues in British Columbia even created a way to treat people at great distances from
mental health facilities through a computer art program (Figure 12.7) through cyberspace.^5
And there is now amazing software that can generate sophisticated animation or enable me
to edit and compress video clips for the DVD that is in this book. Yet despite such develop-
ments, they cannot substitute for the physical hands-on aspect of art, as I wrote then:
Although the technological revolution has wrought wondrous extensions of human
perception, enabling us to see the otherwise invisible with instruments like the CAT
scan or the electron microscope, it can never replace direct sensory experience as a
mode of being alive, of coping, and of psychotherapy. Through art, human beings can
make visible the invisible—which cannot be seen by any physical means. Through art,
people can be literally in touch with their environments, in a fashion that is concrete
and real, yet also imaginative and creative.
For those whose inner worlds are confused and chaotic, who are unable to connect
comfortably with life, art can be a vital avenue for finding and knowing themselves, oth-
ers, and the world around them. For those who are out of control, art offers order. ForFigure 12.7 Computer art therapy.