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 Rose leaves are out of date, Cinnamon's the thing now.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 known fact that the human mind takes many shortcuts in order to make sense of an apparently limitless amount of incoming information which needs to be processed. One of these shortcuts is to categorize and define. The category becomes an alias for everything that it stands for, thus shortening processing time. When you say that definitions are provided solely for purposes of exclusion you appear to be walking around the TRUE nature of human decision making and thought process. As if to say "definitions are logical", instead of "definitions are crutches used by humans to accomodate the finite nature of our minds." You would have us settle for today's definition today and tomorrow's tomorrow. If art is DEFINED today, what will that definition mean to the future? If the past is any indicator, it will mean little. They will, as you have, define art within the context of their own experience. If the day comes when technology allows us to record thought or view mental images...where will your EXCLUDING definition be then? It will be obsolete like so many definitions that have come before it. The lokel down the street thinks that "Dogs Playing Poker" is fine art and that Picasso is crap. His definition of ART: If I can tell what it is and I like it. No Danny, YOU do a disservice to the artist when you say that his child is any less his child simply because it has yet to be born. Is the misscarriage any less a child to it's mother simply because it was never born? I thought your comment about woolly-minded liberals was accurate enough, and I thought it was incredibly clever of you to imply without actually accusing. Excellent work. For the record: If believing strongly in individual self-reliance, personal/parental responsibility and protection of individual rights for all individuals makes me a woolly-minded liberal then henceforth me llamo WOOLLY. It's funny Danny how in your frantic bid to make your definition THE definition, you've chosen to ignore my words and THEIR implications. You're usually more perceptive. I hope that you're not getting sloppy in yer old age are ya Dan? See man, you accuse me of reducing the definition of art to "all human experience", but in fact I did not. Take ANY artist's conception and say that it is NOT art because it is in his mind and not on paper and YOU are the woolly-minded one. They just might tell you so too. Is ALL human experience art? THAT is subjective. Certainly to say that "art imitates life" is to say that art is the copy and life the original. I personally would not consider a trip to Burger King to be art, but then again no sooner could I voice my opinion, than someone would prove my notion blatantly incorrect by creating art that is a trip to Burger King. Why is it that a poem about a dream is real and art to you, but the dream itself is not? How foolish is that? The poem itself was simply an attempt to capture the idea or sensation. By YOUR logic, a song written in my head is not art until it is written or sung. But it IS being sung...by me...in my head. Danny let's take your logic even further. You would deny that creative thought be categorized as art simply because noone but the artist can experience it. Your definition now stands at: 2 or more people must witness a piece for it to be considered art by DannyH. (Insert More Sarcasm Here) Well Dan..I think you're right, but only 2?! Hey man, to TRULY be art I think you should have at LEAST 20 people experience it. That's right Danny, unless 20 people have recontextualized this piece, it ain't art. What do you think of THEM apples? The point being that you would have us exclude something from the definition of art for something as petty as lack of physical manifestation and a low headcount of "recontextualizers"? Oh your definition certainly DOES exist for the soul purpose of exclusion, huh Danny? Now who is reducing the term art down to something base and shallow? Strangely enough, not only have you defined art(not a half bad definition) you've defined recontextualize as well. Go ahead Dan, give us an alternative definition for recontextualize...we'll understand. It's crucial to your argument that you DO, isn't it Dan? Recontextualize...look it up. To put into a different context. (Notice how it DOESN'T have to be put into that context by SOMEONE ELSE.) As for the tension between "the generic world around us" and "our impression of an abstraction of it", I'm not certain that there is such a tension, unless somehow through our own desire to escape our mortality we see our creations as vehicles through which we survive beyond our experiences, perhaps making the generic world the enemy in our minds ultimately. Is that what it is Danny? Do you honestly reserve the word art for those things that can be left behind by humans? That don't die with the artist? Is it that unless it's the leftovers of some human's creative activity(that is capable of being experienced by SOMEONE else), it is NOT art. (Is that correct?) I don't think I've misunderstood your logic Danny(although I don't mind paraphrasing since you've set the precedent), in fact you would like very much to put my words in a box marked "Woolly-minded Liberal claptrap", wouldn't you, sir? A classic tactic of social politics (and sign of a weak argument or weak participant) is to find an appropriately derogatory label and attempt to apply it to an opponent in order to discredit them. It's akin to a similar tactic that most of us see everyday and that some folx actually USE everyday: laughing at what someone else says in a brute force attempt at discrediting them without resorting to logic or facts. The beauty of it is, they can always deny that their INTENTION was to discredit. Some examples: "you really ARE a romantic deep down Dafremen aren't you?" (Due to the nature of this discussion, the subconscious implication here is: Dafremen is a dreamy, starry-eyed, emotional individual. Who's LOGIC to trust? His or mine?) "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." (Due to the nature of this discussion,the subconscious implication here is: My opponent wishes to avoid a proper debate, like most woolly-minded liberals, so he has done what many of his kind do, he has made a proper debate impossible. Would that I could continue, but if I don't, now you know why.) (In addition, 'woolly-minded liberal' serves to reinforce the notion that my points are less valid than yours, because I am not mentally inclined to intelligent, logical thought. This theme is recurrent Danny. Perhaps it is just coincidence, I certainly hope so. Let's see.) "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." (Ohhh now THIS is chock full o' goodies huh Danny? Let's see here: You reinforce the idea that I am trying to weasel my way out of this debate or that I am "copping out" by stating my opinion. Then you follow it up by "translating" my words for the art community and artists in general, saying that I am insulting them AND their work and that I am implying that MY doing NOTHING is as valid as THEIR doing SOMETHING. Boy oh boy Danny, and WHO else wouldja want on your side in this debate but the artists? Isn't it FUNNY Danny, I mean isn't it REALLY funny how manipulative we can be without knowing it? Isn't it silly the way we rely on cheap propagandists' gimmicks to do our work for us in order to lessen the amount of reasoning we must do? Well, isn't it? (See how easy it is to do Danny? I'm pretty good at it too, huh? You're still the master though man.)) "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." (This one is another CLEVER one Dan, kudos. So subtle in it's delivery, yet the subconscious can't help but see: 'you are rendering art meaningless'. You included "the term", but every publicists knows that we pick up on impact words and use them to form an overall impression of the statement. You then go on to the old empirical standby:"That could apply to anything." which proves nothing and means nothing about the validity of my statement. Could it apply to art? Yes. But the overall impression once again is that I'm resorting to vagueries to avoid discussion. It implies that what I'm suggesting is either illogical, undesirable or both. Repetition in order to sway opinion is the propagandists' tool Danny...why are YOU resorting to it? Oh but NOOO...that wasn't your intention WAS it?) "Following your logic I would have no way of distinguishing this sensation from an actual idea." (This one is almost benign. It uses the phrase "YOUR LOGIC" (referring to mine) and then goes on to imply that your not being able to distinguish between sensations and ideas somehow makes my point invalid. It does not. By the way Danny, know it or not, your dream IS art. I need only point to your description of the recurring dream and relate to you that I saw through your words what you felt. You took ME there. With your words. Your mind took YOU there, with your dream.) I would be dismayed Danny, but I don't really place high expectations on people that I don't know very well. More often than not, they WILL disappoint you. P.S. Next time, if you weary of the discussion, just say so please. Thanks. 010910 ... kx21 It's just a set of Strings or Knots around / in The_Memory_of_the_Universe... What is its Givens? 010910 ... kx21 It's just a set of Strings or Knots which twist & turn the_Temperature_of_Emotion... 010910 ... red crested birdmad god_writes_a_poem 010910 ... daking Dafremen, I thought they beat that bit of a romatic out of you a long time ago. Watch out, I just saw the angry mob with torches and pitchforks - I'll try and stall them for ya. Maybe I want some of what your smoking, too. Might get my heart started again. _ferchrissakes 010910 ... Dafremen "Art is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." -Zanfir master of the pan pipe, more popular than Elvis..OR the Beatles! quote delivered c/o Dafremen 010923 ... kx21 Given Art or Science? Chicken: Politicains & Religious Leaders Robot : High Tech Weapons Worm : Victims (Dead Terrorists included) Chicken & Robot rule the Earth... 010923 ... PHIl If plants and cows and pigs and horses and fishes and a cokcatoo, or any sort of non-living substance doesn't like it, I wouldn't consider it art. Birds have no taste. 020213 ... ilovepatsajak it's gotta say something and even when it doesn't say anything it still says something. 020214 ... unhinged this page reeks of daffy :-) i can't believe he lectured on this for two days. what a dogmatic son of a bitch of an old man. he still knows his shit though. i let him keep his 70 year old philosophies. art is the expression of human emotion 020214 ... pralines&cream i read somewhere that "art is rape" 020215 ... Dafremen You'll see do0d! You yunguns just have no respect these days. What you need is a good leeching followed up with cod liver therapy and a mustard plaster. 020215 ... phil today we use the electric paper the audience and artist are much the same in contrast graffiti has a very different audience than the artist. It is more influential. I think that following the laws of the language can make a piece practically write itself. Writing randomly dissipates that law. the words are a tribute to a system of language The result is a spiritless snapshot. Just as the wall is meaningless compared with the earth with which it was made. The typing is the death of freedom, the destruction of possibility until one is left to represent the loss. The boundless possiblities of an unused paintbrush is what an artist sees. During that moment, when the paintbrush, dabbed in color, touches the canvas. art is only the surface of a toybox. 021013 ... phil Art is a contest see also: blather_isn't_a_contest 021013 ... Dafremen Your statements only serve to illustrate my point. The real art is that which cannot be shared as it is originally appreciated, only as it is finally communicated. A lightbulb playing the part of the sun. 021014 ... Rhin art is... ...what my mind and hands create, when i can't put into words what i am feeling. i could care less if my art does not make sense to you, because it does to me, and that's all that really matters. ...another window into my soul. when nothing else makes sense to me, art does. ...an extension of myself, like a diary. it's a piece of me immortalized forever. it frightens me when someone looks at my work and knows what it was that i was feeling when i created it. i never know what to say. i honestly feel violated. i despise it when my work is so damn revealing. ...absolutely priceless, but there are so many who hang a price tag on it. how can you sell your soul? how do you determine the value of your own mind, your very existence, your very soul...all of the silence and every ounce of scream? 021014 ... phil $20 and daf, in truth I am not much of a "reader" 021014 ... roxy art is attraction 030210 ... jane something an artist makes so the real question is: what is an artist? 030211 ... Tyr An artist utilizes the mechanism in the Treasure in the Chalice that was built and accululated through past strivings, discipline, or through meditation training in this or another life. All creative persons are meditators. Art that lasts for centuries has relevance on more than just the physical plane. 030211 ... cube I am an artist - though you're not likely to ever see my handywork. It's finely crafted software that powers the brains of industrial machines. The style of my artwork, honed by years of practice in_the_trenches, has a rather small audience however. Only another programmer could appreciate it's subtle nuances - the elegance of algorithms and the economy of resources. I'm making a point, of course. While what I do is not generally defined as art, I treat it so. The programs must and do hold within them a fair degree of intelligence - dare I say, on occasion a spark of brilliance. I suggest that whatever you are creating, try to find that spark which allows the observer to clearly see your intent, if even for an instant. Perhaps you will have created art where none was expected... ³ 030211 ... roxy Art is a lie that lets us know the truth. 030409 ... minnesota_chris I think my definition is twofold, art is created, and art is appreciated. Something created which no one appreciates is crap, something appreciated but not created is beauty. So god/paste's blathers went from "crap" to "art" when I heard people appreciate them. So nice makeup is an art, not beauty? 030409 ... p2 jigga wha? art does not depend on others appreciation conversely just because some people like it does not make it art 030409 ... User24 art is art blather_is_blather art occurs whenever an emotion is felt, and that emotion is the one intended by the artist, whether, beauty, skill, confusion, pain, horror, or anything else. IMHO. 030409 ... minnesota_chris so, um, what is art? Or, what is not art? Brutality is not art. And I think if I were to paint a house really really well, it is still not art, although perhaps it could be if I was creative with my use of color. Growing grass? Can be an art, I think... 030410 ... p2 art is creativity and skill combined to create or express (imho) 030410 ... god art is a fart 030410 ... god a black dodge dart 030410 ... User24 art is that which is concieved as such. 030414 ... User24 sorry blather_spell_check, I tried to correct it, but was, alas, too late. 030414 ... minnesota_chris I like p2's the best. I'll only consider another one, if it is written artfully. 030414 ... Kevin Art is working on something untill it's good and then stopping there. 030414 ... SuicidalAngel Art is something that moves you or is intended to. 030414 ... ferret art is what is felt in the heart put into words, pictures, etc. it's emotions that are seen or heard instead of just being felt. Art is something you can relate to 030415 ... minnesota_chris according to the last three defn's, Hitler was doing art in the Holocaust. Which he wasn't. 030415 ... Dafremen A-hem Chris... (No I better not say it. Some things are better left unsaid.) Nevermind. 030415 ... SuicidalAngel Art isn't always possitive 030416 ... Dafremen Thanks SA. That sums it up nicely. 030416 ... shutter-bug keats wrote "...Beauty is truth, truth beauty..." what is beauty? waht is real? what is truth? what is false? what are you? As a friend of man I’ll tell you all is art, art all. It's all I know and all you need to know. 031122 ... Billy Harmon & the band mystic flatulence not a fart! 031122 ... Deomis "they blended religion and art and science, because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle that we can never fully explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle." -The Martian Chronicles 040509 ... JdAwG Art is your soul, painted across a canvas, written in words, or strummed through chords, all lovingly placed there, with every intention of letting you innermost feelings be seen to the world. Or maybe not. Some art should not be seen. Maybe art is the singing of a song in the shower, or the doodles of a child in a school notebook. Sometimes the best art is unintentional, and sometimes it takes years. 040510 ... ethereal I could define my life under categories of music, writing, acting or the like... but art. She speaks so fluently through me. Into the pages of books, into the notes of my voice or instrument, into my fingers that flow onto blank pages ready for paint... I am art. She exists within me. And I am but nothing if it were not for her... Art is everything. Everything I do is art. 040510 ... z see: art advertising formalism aesthete beautiful_universe interstices ephemera 040510 ... Graffiteh Art is.. A man sucking off a horse. A canvas with the words "MAY CONTAIN SMALL PARTS" printed on it in 48 Point Bold Italic Tahoma. improperly Capitalised, sbelt and punctuated! sentences. A fern in a wine bottle. A child's screams as he is forced to go to the dentist. A malteser dipped in brake fluid. A small, disc shaped cloud on a monday morning. The satisfaction you get after taking a huge crap. A 2GHz computer running Windows 3.x Pain and suffering Your 27th Birthday Or maybe not.. What is art? Fucked if I know. 050408 ... Pope Religion 050409 ... EINSTEIN Science is a M_spcies of Art... 050409 ... * M_species * 050409 ... Blather ...Man_'Talk', Woman_'Nag'... 050409 ... Bush Pepsi_Folklore 050409 ... Blair Coke_Politics 050409 ... B.Liar WMD: Weapon_of_mass_deception around_and_across M16, CIA, FBI... 050409 ... IED across_the_Universe of Iraq 050409 ... the cheer-up kid The artist is at his most inspired when he really needs a shit. After some period of delay he produces an object. The artist has subtracted all the nutrition he needs from all he has taken in and you are left with the artist’s shit. It is your job to try and work out what he had for dinner. 050418 ... *Amy* "Art is when something is so superlative well made, that we forget to ask what is it, because we admire so much the way it was made", E. Gombrich 050418 ... milo not what is art but rather why? 050418 ... z milo: yes. why is art is (for me) a very complex question. i have thought about this a lot. to quote myself: i believe that most art comes from the awareness that there is a plastic topology to this boundary between self and other or self and universe. we stain it with aesthetic dye to study its form, function and dynamic nature. 040312 consensual_reality and we make the aesthetic dye in our internal factory life. dreams and fears and joy and beauty and hatred and the detritus of our sensorium both guide our hands and form the materials of our choosing. we construct artifices which vibrate to the hum of dissonance and change. we spray on the raw sounds of our own cognition; the puddles of our truths begin to roll down the gradient of desire and the will to live. we make ourselves everyday, from bits of yesterdays and lives not lived, from truth and lies, and from misery. and we do it for ourselves. in making we find release. in making we find the future; the past is past. the past is open also; there for the taking. we take. 050418 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Well, this is somewhat of a controversial topic, I see. Like any other relatively abstract concept, the definition of art is open to interpretation. I was impressed with many of the ideas I came across on this page (yeah, I did read Daf and DannyH's debate!) To put it concisely, I think art is the expression of creativity through an outside medium. Let's assume that makes sense. By the way, the play/movie "The Shape of Things" has a lot to say about what art isn't, or at least it throws more ideas out there. 050807 ... z what about the expression of angst, boredom, hatred, disdain, disgust, empathy, disinterest, randomness, political ideation, or any other human concern. what is creativity? 050808 ... pink! hmm, in google's define: art - the three relevant definition I saw all involved creativity (just interesting) art is creation? as an outlet for "angst, boredom, hatred, disdain, disgust, empathy, disinterest, randomness, political ideation" but that's not sufficient either 050808 ... zeke juxtaposition relevancy analysis semiotics formal issues design context concept dissemination non-deictic discursive 050808 ... REAListic optimIST art_is_a_verb art_as_commodity 050808 ... - - 080401 ... stork daddy a drowning man noticing a new blue at the horizon. 080401 ... hsg art is... medium. rare. a rarity is good art that communicates clearly the timeless. but alas, all things do. so what is beauty but a point_of_you? -hsg 080402 what's it to you? who go blather from