what_is_art sleepless Go on. Ask yourself . . . You wouldn't understand 'art' unless it came up to you, whacked you round the head with a particularly large book of poetry, and presented you with a large canvas sprayed with the words 'THIS IS ART'. And, as people are tempted to say at times like this, "Get your fucking machinery off my lawn!!!" (No, me neither) 000907 ... fickle lady to be an artist is to be in agony me? i am dying slowly 000907 ... sarpedon art is within 000907 ... splinken art doesn't have to hurt. 000907 ... sleepless Very true, splinken. However, it can be mightily painful if you repeatedly jab a paintbrush into your left eye. I believe that's called suffering for your art. 000907 ... thinks 93.) "There are no attractions in anything legal; our wayward and obstinate hearts prefer to go outside the law. Pheasants snared in Colchis, in Afrca game-birds, These are the rarities that have to be chased; White goose and duckling, Gaudy in their gay plumes, Are left to the populace, not to our taste. Parrot-wrasse from far shores, haul from Syrtes, Bought at the price of some great shipwreck, These are for the table- Mullet's indigestive- Don't ask the cost: you can pay by cheque. 'Wives are out of fashion. Better get a girl friend- A little more expensive but really very nice. Rose leaves are out of date, Cinnamon's the thing now. Anything hard to get is well worth the price." Is this how you keep your promise, i said, "not to produce any verse today? As a favour, at least let us off- we never threw stones at you. Because if anyone drinking in the house we're in smells the suggestion of a poet, he'll rouse the whole neighborhood and finish us all off for the same reason. Have some thought for us and remember the art-gallery or the public baths. Giton, being a very gentle boy, remonstrated with me for this way of speaking, and said it wasn't right for me to abuse someone older than myself, while forgetting my obligations and leting my inslults spoil the meal I had provided in all kindness. And there was a lot of other moderate and courteous things he said, which came very well from his pretty lips. The Satyricon by Petronius (toay's stychomancy...and oddly enough i had run into my friend Cinammon that morning who i've known for ten years.) spooky... 000907 ... CHOCOLATE BOOTAY Art is everything man & his mind could ever create within the world God has placed him in. -crystal the artist 010902 ... the gentle Gollum Art is, or there is an art to, anything you do (or havedone) that you can take pride in. 010902 ... kx21 The Space / Science of Bullshit? The Space / Science of Emotion:- An ocean which could be used to vary the_Temperature_of_Emotion... 010902 ... sabbie art is imagination taking form in the world around you. 010903 ... Dafremen Art is that sabbie, and it is also imagination taking form in the world within you as well. For me art is just that. It is the proof to the question, "How do I know that you exist." Because, I created this, and you (loved, laughed, cried, hated, burned, framed)_____ it. 010903 ... Moses "I desire...I desire... ... Macaroni pictures." 010904 ... Inanna Art is what artists make/create. Art often predicts the future. If you don't think that a piece of art is actually art, you probably don't understand it. Artists are sensitive to the universal mind, and their work is often one of the many signatures of the soul. I LOVE Art, and I am an artist. Why do you think the Egyptians chose hieroglyph images to represent letters? An artist is an instrument through which the universe reveals itself. 010904 ... Aimee I've been avoiding this topic for a few days.. but damnit... here goes.. Art is a fucking prick. that's right. he is. He's played me, he's played one of my best friends and I honestly would like to see him castrated. I know that sounds harsh, cause the hilarious thing is.. that I don't hate him. I just hate his overactive teenaged virgin male hormone system that tells him to go after anything with a hole between the legs and a chest. And I'm not talking about the wooden kind.... in fact... i think a wooden chest is quite impossible. I could be wrong. don't quote me. But yes. Art is a prick. 010905 ... DannyH Anything recontextualised is art. it is the vibration given off by something being taken out of one state of existence into another. These vibrations allow us to better detect the position of the original context, the new one and the space between them. In short, if it says its art and invites someone to look at it as art then it is. The common fallacy is to say something is not art when it does not conform to their standards of artistic excellence. When people say "that is not art" they usually mean "that is shit art" The question of value in art is much more interesting and difficult to deal with than the question of definition which people always seem to get hung up on. 010907 ... Dafremen Here, here Danny. I couldn't have said it better myself. (cept for that vibrations part...ahh well, mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater I suppose.) 010907 ... Photophobe Damn straight. All forms of recognised art fall into that catgory, and it opens up for many other forms of art. One problem: what if somebody's art is not recontexualising? What if somebody pus themselves into not letting their art draw attention to itself? Would you deny them their art. Whould you say that theirs is not art then? Maybe. Maybe then its not really art. Hrmm. Maybe such an art is impossble. 010907 ... blue-dyed gel product Arty is a music production and engineering guy 010908 ... DannyH Photophobe the question you ask is a bit like that one about whether a tree falling over in a forest makes a sound if no-one is there to hear it. I don't have a definitive answer to either question except to say it is possible that the artist becomes a viewer himself and therefore produces the third point of the triangle of text, context and viewer necessary to fulfil my definition of art. 010908 ... Dafremen Heheh..gentlemen..gentlemen: I think you've BOTH missed the point. The artist has ALREADY recontextualized it in the process of creating it. The piece began in the artist's mind or soul, not on canvas, paper or in bronze. The first manifested piece is in itself the very first recontextualization and in fact the first INTERPRETATION of the original which exists in the artist's being exclusively...perhaps only for a fleeting moment, but now rendered..captured if you will...that feeling... that thought... that idea... that idealogy... that story... that fact... those moves... that stanza... All "photos" of something which we can never know except through the artists' interpretation of it. 010908 ... DannyH You know Daffy, I can usually follow what you're getting at even when you're twisting the point sideways but this time you're either gonna have to mail me EXACTLY what you're smoking so we can spin off together or sober up and try again. 010908 ... Dafremen Danny, I just got done writing a poem. It's pretty good, but in my head...it was BEAUTIFUL. I mean I was able to get SOME of that down in words, but most of it was just a vague impression, something that I could see in my mind's eye only. I took it out of that native context and attempted to present it in a different context. One that lies OUTSIDE my mind's eye...here in the physical world. Perhaps my WRITTEN poem can evoke SOME of that feeling...that "impression" of the something beautiful that I created(or was inspired to create) in my mind, but outside of the context of my own mind, it will never be what it was...only what it is now...in this NEW context, the one that anyone else will see it in. YES, you probably WOULD like some of what I am smoking, but it's mine and I'm not sharing... 010909 ... DannyH I'm intrigued. are you saying the poem you did create is one artwork and the poem you might have created had you been able to fully realise your idea is another, like a kind of platonic idealised form of your poem. Or are you suggesting that the idea itself, unformed and unrealised is the work of art and your realisation of it is just an imperfect reflection of it? I think you may be confusing artworks with the process of creating them which is another, and much more interesting, subject. Concepts are not artworks until someone turns them into conceptual artworks. Part of the process of recontextualisation is necessarily the creation of a discrete and defined area. To say that everything you might have conceived an artwork to possibly be is part of the finished artwork is psuedo-spritualist claptrap. I am concerned in my definition with finished realised pieces only. 010909 ... Dafremen Ahh then you CHOOSE to discard 90% of the art in the universe, my friend. Close your eyes DannyH. Take yourself on a trip to anywhere, go ahead. THAT is art. Like it or not. It ISN'T the final physical piece that makes the art...it ISN'T the manifestation of that REFLECTION in the physical WORLD that makes art Danny old bean, no sir. It was that song in my heart when I first saw that poem in my mind's eye. By moving me, or affecting me or even causing me to PAUSE for a moment, this piece has changed the universe (by way of changing ME) ever so slightly...it HAS manifested itself in a very subtle way Danny, and it cannot and SHOULD not be denied it's right to be called ART, for THAT is exactly what it is. Even from within my mind's eye. And yes, if a tree falls in the forest and noone hears it...it DOES make a sound. The laws of physics do not disappear if there is noone to witness them in action. 010910 ... kx21 An Art can be either a wonderful star, a holy shit or an inconceivable Hole over time ...which is somehow dependent on the frame of reference or more precisely state of Mind of its beholder... 010910 ... DannyH You really are an old romantic deep down aren't you Daffy? We provide definitions solely for the purpose of exclusion. We define the limits of a set of things so as to be able to differentiate them from everything else. It is a classic tactic of the woolly-minded liberal to expand definitions to the point where it is impossible to have a proper debate on anything. By defining almost all human experience as art, as you appear to be doing, you are rendering the term "art" meaningless and indistinguishable from a set of other terms which could just as easily be applied to what you describe. The reason I used the admittedly rather awkward word vibrations in my first blathe was to indicate that art creates a tension between the generic world around us and our impression of an abstraction of it. I do not believe the same kind of tension is created within our own minds until we express it in some way. I think the difficulties you encountered in realising the poem you perceived was possible in your mind's eye are what art is all about and part of what makes it so fascinating. I think it is a reductive get-out clause and an insult to the work that artists do to claim that the non-existent poem in your head matters as much as the one that exists in the world. As a postscript to this I have a recurring dream in which I spend what feels like hours grappling for and almost reaching some glorious perfect idea. I have an exhilirating sense of enlightenment. At times I feel I fully understand and then the idea slips away. In the morning I am aware that there was no beautiful perfect idea, only the sensation of one, created by my subconscious. Following your logic I would have no way of distinguishing this sensation from an actual idea. 010910 ... Dafremen Actually YES...I do have a bit of a romantic streak that surfaces occasionally. Of course, that in and of itself does NOT make me a bleeding heart. Let's keep that in mind as we proceed shall we? No Danny WE do not provide definitions solely for the purpose of exclusion. You may, WE do not. We provide definitions for other purposes as well: Inclusion and clarification are two. More importantly though, we provide definitions for the sake of sanity. It is a well