Perfect art
"The ideal artwork shows every viewer what the artist feels they need to experience. Not what the viewer thinks they need to experience, and definitely not what they want to experience."- Anradi of Carnes, 8330
Perfect art is art that exploits the potential of transapient intelligence artistically. By its nature it can only be created by entities at least one toposophic level above the intended viewers. The idea is to create an artwork that can understand the viewer, or rather experiencer, so totally that it can provide exactly the experience needed to convey what the artist had intended. The artwork is itself an intelligent agent (albeit usually limited to understanding other beings and presenting experiences).
The most common form of perfect art is the sensory immersion polyhedron, a standard shape employed by many of the traditionalists of the Carnes school: a plain irregular polyhedron of nanoplastic, traditionally adorned by two name-signs (one denoting the artist, one denoting the artwork). Experiencers climb into it, and the polyhedron assimilates the mind of the experiencer, producing an experience that can last anything from seconds to days. The nature of the experiences is always different for each viewer, and traditionally polyhedra never allow an individual who has already experienced them to re-experience them.
Many variations exist, extending the artform into a myriad directions. In the living perfect artworks created by Hermes Springrain experiencers are literally swallowed whole by the art and excreted afterwards. Free-form art takes place across Jesanu, where the planetary god construes actual events for visitors into perfect art; several other worlds such as Kohl and Bayanty are believed to have similar ambitions but keep them secret. The religious mystery systems in Solarist temples are also often regarded as perfect art.
Due to their nature perfect art is rare and extremely expensive. Among the largest collections are the Perfect Garden on Klarus, the Unerk-Pr!fok at Barboro and the Kakmisyhka Collection of Volatile Enterprise. Access is commonly carefully regulated and surrounded by complex rules and traditions. In some cases the artworks themselves take an active role in selecting experiencers.
Perfect art can of course manipulate minds in nearly arbitrary ways, even when just accessing them through the senses (despite the popular horror stories, relatively few reprogramming artworks exist that actually directly change the being experiencing them). It is infinitely harder to explicate the meaning of perfect art than any same-singularity art, and many art theoreticians have spent their existences collecting descriptions of the experiences experienced within the same artwork, trying to combine them into any statement that could describe what the artwork is about. In a few cases a rough consensus exists, such as about <Wool< by 354789893 (Mayane collection, Isi-IV, NoCoZo) which is agreed to represent the posthuman regret/relaxation of untaken enhancement poesies, but in most cases the artworks are far beyond description.
The most famous perfect artwork is likely the Stele of Adherent Drops on New Mars. Left behind as Winnings-Sheerblue transcended in 5594 (or possibly being the famed AI), it has a reputation as producing some of the most profoundly unsettling and reinvigorating experiences in known space. A cult has developed regarding experiencing it as a holy sacrament, and many believe that it enables a being to understand and change the links of their destiny.
Beside the perfect art created for subsingularity beings, there also exist higher perfect art intended for hyperturing entities. Especially unique are the universals, which allow even subsingularity beings to experience transcendent aesthetics through the use of temporary gnostic overlays. Only a handful of such artworks are widely known: the Ain Soph Aur Universal, the WDN network in Cyberia, the Greater Hemisphere on Jje-34 and the Amacrine Cloud in Zybal Manta. While most do not leave any lasting memories, the changes in personality and possibly even wisdom are notable.
