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OK, I'll bite: yes, "Mathematics can be true, beautiful, compelling, creative, unique, etc", but those qualities are generally only discernable by other mathema

by mrec 10y ago

OK, I'll bite: yes, "Mathematics can be true, beautiful, compelling, creative, unique, etc", but those qualities are generally only discernable by other mathematicians working at a roughly comparable level. Same for code; I've talked to promising-but-junior programmers who couldn't understand at all what people meant when they talked about code being "ugly". "Art" in its various forms, on the other hand, is widely appreciated by people who are not artists, or art critics, or art dealers, or art students. (I'd exclude an awful lot of modern art from this, but that's probably a flamewar for another day.)

setr 10y ago
>"Art" in its various forms, on the other hand, is widely appreciated by people who are not artists, or art critics, or art dealers, or art students. Warning: I don't know shit about the arts That's not really true. Much of the high arts is intended to be appreciated by those with sufficient background to do so. For example, when a piece makes a joke on another artist's trademarks. In Chicago, the IIT campus is mostly done by Mies; A more recent building on the campus (MTCC) was designed by Rem Koolhaas, and features Mies's iconic I-Beams. But for no real purpose as far as I can tell. I'm quite positive he did it in jest (he also placed extremely ugly victorian-style furniture made of excess metal from the construction, also I think, for humor). Of course, anyone unaware of Mies's work would entirely miss this. The building is obviously still useful even if you do not appreciate this facet, but its easy to imagine a work the ceases to be appreciable without any background. Interestingly, Russian abstract art was originally intended to avoid this; they attempted to remove reference from everything in the real world, to be purely emotional and evocative, and could thus be appreciated by even the most uninformed of persons. It was then rejected by the proletariat, interpreted as only being appreciable by those with a background they did not have; pretentious, masturbatory works only for those educated, useless artists. I imagine you're thinking more of like the realist styles, which often feature technical skill immediately appreciable; but it's not hard to see The Birth of Venus is depicting a scene, with particular emotions and characters that can only be appreciated to a lackluster degree if one has no knowledge of the mythos behind it (as I do). In the same way, near-anyone can appreciate the immediate benefit of a computer; but without sufficient background, appreciate ends at the screen. The deeper you understand the machine, the better you can appreciate the complexity underlying it.
ouid 10y ago
To be fair, I'm not arguing that mathematics is art. I'm arguing that this article is a meaningless pile of shit, even though I find the question of whether things are art or not to be generally meaningful. The author has succumbed to the scotsman fallacy. The criteria by which he judges whether or not a thing is art is kept hidden, and there is no way for the reader to verify that they even exist.

by mrec 10y ago

setr 10y ago

>"Art" in its various forms, on the other hand, is widely appreciated by people who are not artists, or art critics, or art dealers, or art students. Warning: I don't know shit about the arts That's not really true. Much of the high arts is intended to be appreciated by those with sufficient background to do so. For example, when a piece makes a joke on another artist's trademarks. In Chicago, the IIT campus is mostly done by Mies; A more recent building on the campus (MTCC) was designed by Rem Koolhaas, and features Mies's iconic I-Beams. But for no real purpose as far as I can tell. I'm quite positive he did it in jest (he also placed extremely ugly victorian-style furniture made of excess metal from the construction, also I think, for humor). Of course, anyone unaware of Mies's work would entirely miss this. The building is obviously still useful even if you do not appreciate this facet, but its easy to imagine a work the ceases to be appreciable without any background. Interestingly, Russian abstract art was originally intended to avoid this; they attempted to remove reference from everything in the real world, to be purely emotional and evocative, and could thus be appreciated by even the most uninformed of persons. It was then rejected by the proletariat, interpreted as only being appreciable by those with a background they did not have; pretentious, masturbatory works only for those educated, useless artists. I imagine you're thinking more of like the realist styles, which often feature technical skill immediately appreciable; but it's not hard to see The Birth of Venus is depicting a scene, with particular emotions and characters that can only be appreciated to a lackluster degree if one has no knowledge of the mythos behind it (as I do). In the same way, near-anyone can appreciate the immediate benefit of a computer; but without sufficient background, appreciate ends at the screen. The deeper you understand the machine, the better you can appreciate the complexity underlying it.

ouid 10y ago

To be fair, I'm not arguing that mathematics is art. I'm arguing that this article is a meaningless pile of shit, even though I find the question of whether things are art or not to be generally meaningful. The author has succumbed to the scotsman fallacy. The criteria by which he judges whether or not a thing is art is kept hidden, and there is no way for the reader to verify that they even exist.