When I was at school my parents wanted me to study science subjects. My artistic passions were reserved for ‘a hobby’.

I wasn’t very good at Maths but I liked Physics and I emerged with a clutch of mixed art, humanities and science A-levels. Clearly I had usurped my parents dreams of making a pure scientist.

Architecture beckoned as a mix of art and science, and so was to be my career for twenty years.

But I wasn’t to gain an understanding of buildings until I worked an Australian Chinese architect. He explained to me that ‘all buildings should tell a story.’

This planted a seed on fertile soil for Professor Bob Maxwell had helped me explore how buildings carry meaning in signs and symbols.

To explain my point more abstractly, there are two components of any art, whether it is music, literature, painting, architecture etc. These are content and technique. It’s as simple as that. Any creative person must have both a message and the means to express it. The message can therefore be awarded fifty points and the skill of the technique another fifty points. In this way, a ‘perfect’ created entity will score one hundred.

That’s the theory and here’s how it is applied.

Let us consider the Mona Lisa by Leonardo de Vinci. We know that Leonardo concealed many stories in his paintings, so the landscape in the background, the choice of sitter, the smile, the geometry – all tell a tale that has engaged critics for centuries.

Then there is the technique, of which Leonardo was a master. No brush stroke out of place which is perhaps why he carried the painting with him where ever he went.

Now let us apply this same critical method to a poorly written and badly executed popular song; what is generically known as ‘Pop music’.

The lyrics may be without any meaning at all or perhaps allude to a well worn subject.

They may be shouted or mumbled so poorly that no listener can determine what they are. Score 5 for content and 2 for technique.

A popular song must also be measured for it’s musical content. This one has just the two chords and follows the well worn verse / chorus format. It contains repetition of phrases that becomes monotonous, and the tune is easy to anticipate. Score 5 for content and 3 for technique. This song therefore scores in total 10 for content and 5 for technique. It’s a flop because the public are not fooled.

When the Beatles came along with their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club record, it was a revolution. Mainly an about turn from the type of song in the example above. Suddenly there were stories being told with. Original stories with subjects that were well known but not normally the subject of songs. And the production was just as novel, George Martin experimenting with all the effects at his disposal in the recording studio, unlimited by imagination.

Score for Sgt. Pepper; content 45, technique 45 making this a smash hit with 90 out of a 100.

This method or criticism and creativity can be applied to any area of creativity. It is an invaluable tool for critics and artists. Artists who produce a single colour on a canvas with not even a name for the piece, can be score 0, 0 without reservation. Art critics do not need to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to appreciation. They can quickly see that a work is without content and technique and dismiss it as offering little to the human story.

A shark in a tank? 1 for content (what does it mean?) and 10 for technique ( nature has done most of the work here ).

It should be obvious that this process, which is engaged either consciously or not, is a unification of head with the heart. The heart contains the message and the head delivers it.

We live in an age where the messages are confused and blurred but the head is certain of how clever it is. For this reason people can no longer reason whether God exists or how to write a poem.

We have become a world of science, looking vainly for reason. The only escape from ‘this mess’ (Laurel and Hardy) is to teach our young people the importance of being adept at both heart (art) and science (head).