Electronic Music 411 - What is 'Art'

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What is 'Art'

StoreTags: art philosophy

Author: kucharo on February 19 2007

Viewed 6137 times. 18 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.

People who enjoyed reading this: room, stringedthry, 11t1, mrpanda, cbit, Roshi, electrodan, subset, ignatius, Jetsom, reehc, nagrom, j_chot, Logo, yghartsyrt, craque, astroid, monkvolcano

--> Just leave a comment stating what you think 'art' is. That is all. I find this question interesting, but perhaps the question itself is invalid. Is art even a useful word to describe anything? Is even thinking about what art is and is not a useful enterprise? If there is no fixed and generally accepted definition of what art is, can there be a natural talent for it?

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Read kucharo's other blogs.kucharo's Recent Blogs

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Comments

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02/19/07 + ignatius

mlbot said: "a man with no arms and no legs who hangs on a wall"

lollers. that just struck me as hilarious.

art is subjective so i guess it's what electrodan says.

Recent blogs: Facebook = Google, RIP Studs Terkel, F*CK the bible belt

02/19/07 + ignatius

jdg said: "vagina"

didn't FSOL start a label or side project called EBV? the EBV meant electronic brain violence or extremely beautiful vagina.. depending on what day of the week it was.

Recent blogs: Facebook = Google, RIP Studs Terkel, F*CK the bible belt

02/19/07 + tooth

Eat life,
Shit art.

Recent blogs: I just bought a...., Bath Electrical, US vs UK

edited: Feb 19 2007 + cbit

If you talked with an evolutionary biologist, abstract expressionist and a millionaire mogul collector about their instinctive understanding of what art is you'd get three very different answers.

If there is no fixed and generally accepted definition of what art is, can there be a natural talent for it?

You need to qualify what youre talking about of course before you could answer if its possible to be talented in that area (and 'talent' is a can of worms too..)

Recent blogs: Song for Two Mega Sites, Probably no God: buses in london, My Arduinome (monome clone)

02/19/07 + INKEYstrng

art is a division of pain

Recent blogs: Bill

02/19/07 + kucharo

Yes 'talent' is a huge can. Some people equate mastery of certain physical contortions with 'talent', leaving me to wonder what exactly talent is. Example: Steve Vai has tremendous physical skills to operate the guitar in a particular way that some people enjoy. Is he a talented musician or just a great athlete of the fingers? I happen to think he's a fantastic musician but some of his fans seem to think that unless you can physically operate the guitar like Vai then you arent a good guitarist, or worse than that, you're not even a musician.

Great comments so far. I'm learning a lot. Especially enjoy tooth and clearly jdg is right on the mark with 'vagina'. How can you argue with that?

Recent blogs: NPR's Project Song, Index cards+math= very clever, What is 'Art'

02/19/07 + monkvolcano

there's no such thing as art... just people doing stuff.

Recent blogs: sine sweep FAIL, cube lol, Vijo Editing

02/19/07 + cbit

OT: re. 'talent': people misuse it as if it was synonym of skill. But talent talks about somenes skill as an expression of an innate ability. imo the influence + scope of these 'innate abilities' is overestimated in general. In fact its probably more accurate to talk about innate 'leanings' than of innate ability.

No one is a 'born guitarist' in the literal sence, there is no 'Guitar Playing Talent'. There might be any number of proto-guitar-playing traits that manifest themselves as slight leanings that would encourage a child to seek out one kind of stimulus over another (eg. one child might enjoy hearing tonal sounds more than the next child), but these leanings can only exert a very weak influence on the way to what commonly gets called a 'talent'. Much more important are the stimuli a child experences after its birth (eg. parental encouragement, idolization of a 'guitar hero' etc etc).

Recent blogs: Song for Two Mega Sites, Probably no God: buses in london, My Arduinome (monome clone)

02/19/07 + energygiant

fell is rnb

Recent blogs: someone was also born today, You have been restricted from posting temporarily., googleplex-ed

02/19/07 + subset

I'm not sure whether or not I really enjoyed this blog. I'll say yes.
It's frustrating and interesting at the same time, kind of like Art.
I'm not quite in the mood to wrap my head around it right now, but I will say that I think that whether something is Art rests more with the receiver than the giver. But does that mean that someone can accidentally make Art? maybe...
I'll come back to this when I've had less coffee.

I want to hear more about the 'talisman for psychic defence' - not familiar with that one, but I suspect it wouldn't be broad enough?

02/19/07 + astroid

i love that idea of a talisman for psychic defense. look at it like this-you have been indoctrinated into a vast system beyond your possible comprehension since the second you were born. it's a system that cares little about your desires or interests, sees you as a series of numbers and abilities, where those numbers and abilities, and your success in exploiting them becomes your station in life, your comfort, your ability to do the simplest things like put food on your table, a roof over your head, or having kids. the system doesn't care about how clever you are, you are only there to do an incredibly repetetive, boring job, which in turn leads to the creation of the same system, over and over, into perpituity. adherence to the system is almost religious, heretics who drop out are ridiculed or worse.

so, your music is a tribe of your own creation, a virtual space in which you have actual thoughts. it binds you to others who have had similar inspirations and thoughts, and gives you a reason, therefore, to not shoot yourself every day. defense.

Recent blogs: california gay-friendly folk looky here, if tubgirl were immortal, ten year goal reached

02/19/07 + subset

But I love my job...

02/19/07 + subset

Or do you mean the 'job' of staying alive?

02/19/07 + subset

BTW my job is making art!

02/19/07 + astroid

also, the talismanic approach to art binds you to your forgotten past, the past before the renaissance, when art was really turned into a device by which the wealthy benefactor/institution would find the most brilliant artists and pay them to make objects of beauty which would show how wonderful they were.

before that, cave paintings were a way of creating the future as well as recording the past, the image of the hunt or the sculpture of pregnancy was magic in the purest sense.

so, we uneasily straddle the two lines-owning a cd which was created for "us and those like us" can be seen in both lights-either a way of being the petit bourgoise benefactor who asserts ownership of the beautiful object, or the member of the tribe who is bound by the magical talisman. if you create and wear your own art, it has a much stronger talismanic counterpart.

Recent blogs: california gay-friendly folk looky here, if tubgirl were immortal, ten year goal reached

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