10th November 2005, 8:50 AM
It just started repeating itself for me, on that solitair game.
Yeah I can see that sort of thing, it's like a good animutation.
On the other hand, a painting of a single line means absolutely nothing. It has to be explained to have any meaning to anyone, in which case the only artistic merit is in the actual description. I'm all for abstract stuff, like the disintegration of time painted soon after Einstein... disintegrated our idea of constant time. That can actually be related to and understood. Feces smeared on a wall in a completely random pattern? No meaning there because the viewer can only invent meaning rather than intuit it.
As you can tell, I'm not of the opinion that ANYTHING can be called art. The reason is simple. If art can be defined as anything, then the definition of "art" is now exactly the same as the definition of "anything". There's just no getting around that. Art has to have some identity of it's own that seperates it from "anything" if it is to actually serve a purpose other than the word "anything" does. I'm pretty sure all emotion that isn't chemically induced (and in those cases that emotion is felt regardless of thoughts currently being... thunk) has to be a result of some logical process, so I'm pretty sure art has to have a definition that makes some logical sense. "Anything is art" makes no logical sense if one is trying to convey what art does that seperates it from something else. I don't know... perhaps a more accurate definition would be "anything can be used FOR art, or can have an artistic characteristic", but that only gives a characteristic to the anythings, not art specically. That still must be defined.
Oh yeah, I like corn but not on the cob.
Yeah I can see that sort of thing, it's like a good animutation.
On the other hand, a painting of a single line means absolutely nothing. It has to be explained to have any meaning to anyone, in which case the only artistic merit is in the actual description. I'm all for abstract stuff, like the disintegration of time painted soon after Einstein... disintegrated our idea of constant time. That can actually be related to and understood. Feces smeared on a wall in a completely random pattern? No meaning there because the viewer can only invent meaning rather than intuit it.
As you can tell, I'm not of the opinion that ANYTHING can be called art. The reason is simple. If art can be defined as anything, then the definition of "art" is now exactly the same as the definition of "anything". There's just no getting around that. Art has to have some identity of it's own that seperates it from "anything" if it is to actually serve a purpose other than the word "anything" does. I'm pretty sure all emotion that isn't chemically induced (and in those cases that emotion is felt regardless of thoughts currently being... thunk) has to be a result of some logical process, so I'm pretty sure art has to have a definition that makes some logical sense. "Anything is art" makes no logical sense if one is trying to convey what art does that seperates it from something else. I don't know... perhaps a more accurate definition would be "anything can be used FOR art, or can have an artistic characteristic", but that only gives a characteristic to the anythings, not art specically. That still must be defined.
Oh yeah, I like corn but not on the cob.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)