I'm a geek who has in recent years dabbled with visual art, film, and a little performance art. I have a close relative who's an artist. I've built artworks wit

I'm a geek who has in recent years dabbled with visual art, film, and a little performance art. I have a close relative who's an artist. I've built artworks with artists over the last few years, one of which is currently on 'tour' overseas, and I've built my own artwork that has been shown alongside work I've built with others. Hence I have first-hand experience of the contemporary art world, but very little formal training as an artist, and hence an outsider's view of the state of things. I've always been into art and primarily I love modern art, that is 1890s-1970s art. To avoid confusion, it makes more sense to use "contemporary art" to refer to art made today, which a lot of posters seem to be referring to as "modern art". The art I've made with artists has been very political, and I've been very happy about that. One of the films I made this year was also very political. As part of my work, I've been privileged to spend time in artists' studios and go to a lot of contemporary exhibition openings. Coming away from this, my conclusions have been that (a) the artists I've been working with are exceptional, in that they are engaging with society, but (b) most of the art I see is made for artists, that can't be understood or appreciated fully without a length explanation of how it relates to some previous work, or some theme in art. It rarely says something deeper or philosophical about society or our lives. For example, I may walk into a small exhibition space and find a few wooden blocks displayed on the floor. Or a piece of twine spread around a room. I ask my artist friends to explain it, and there's no clear consensus or understanding. I think describing this as "Art Becoming Irrelevant" is a very kind way of putting it. I would describe it as "art for artists". It's been a bugbear of mine for a while that in a world with so many pressing problems, where democracy is failing us, that artists have a huge responsibility to stand up and do something about it, rather than walking away from the mess and building more abstract installations. One final point is that many posters are describing video games as "art". Whilst I think video games _can_ be art, there is a very big difference between "art" and "something that looks nice" or "something beautiful" or "something enjoyable". Art is defined by intention, amongst other things. There are great podcasts on this by Grayson Perry, which I cannot recommend highly enough: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/episodes/downloads http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/episodes/downloads [edit: typo]