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Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. According to him, there is nothing special about folks creating podcasts, but there i

Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. According to him, there is nothing special about folks creating podcasts, but there is something special about a singer-songwriter. He does not say why. Take https://www.patreon.com/sonicether https://www.patreon.com/sonicether who earns $50k a month creating shaders for Minecraft. That sounds mundane until you realise that he's probably enabling tens of thousands of people to create transcendent art from the comfort of their homes. He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists. Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years. If you want to appreciate your fine classical works in a museum while listening to an orchestra and sipping your Pinot Noir, that's fine. But I think it's incorrect to presume to know what "real" culture is and labeling everything else "ordinary".

phoe-krk 7y ago
> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent? This article is weird and full of stereotypes; it's written from the point as if art was easily and objectively classifiable. No, art is not classifiable like that, and something that one man calls everyday trash can be eye-opening and mind-blowing to another. This fact alone disproves the main assumption that this article is based on, and breaks the point of the whole article for me.
- justanothersys 7y ago
  Art’s subjectivity has been debated since forever. It’s not a fact. That being said, I also didn’t enjoy the point of view in the article very much and I mostly agree with your sentiment.
- scrdhrt 7y ago
  Art is whatever you get away with.
  - chmod775 7y ago
    Or rather, at times the work of art isn't your creation, but the fact that you managed to get away with, say, a blank canvas.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent? Because else you're in an endless loop, where you define what you like by what you like. It is (or, perhaps, it has been) generally understood, that being schooled into things, learning about them, their history, aesthetic rivalries and ideas abotu them, and appreciating the cultured opinions of people who have studied them more, helps one appreciate finer things and cultivate their preferences. The alternative, "because I like it", sounds like a regression to childhood.
  - phoe-krk 7y ago
    You misunderstood my question. I asked, "Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent?", with a stress on the "I". I find it worthwhile to listen to people who describe what touches them and what they are indifferent to. However, the tone of the article describes the "mundane" and the "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I personally find silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective experience.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >However, the tone of the article describes the "mundane" and the "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I personally find silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective experience. I don't think that's settled. For that matter, I don't think that's true.
    - ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
      It’s not inherently subjective. There’s good and shit. Like how there’s good code and shit code.
- Fricken 7y ago
  Those who are aspirational in their appreciation of art do tend to gravitate towards the same shit. The first time you're exposed to a cliche it could very well be mind blowing, but after getting through a wide enough body of work you start recognize the common patterns and eventually get sick of the cliches and you appreciate the stuff out there that actually broke ground, and moved the needle a bit. I've only heard the 'art is subjective' defense from people with uncultivated tastes. Myself, I don't know much about chemistry, and something I don't do is wander into conversations with chemists and expect my unfounded opinion to be anything other than a nuisance to them. When it comes to art, for some reason, people who haven't done their homework nonetheless expect their opinion to matter.
interfixus 7y ago
It is my honest, non-facetious opinion that Randall Munroe ought to be in the very serious running for the Nobel Literature Prize. His oeuvre is wide-ranching, deep, consistent, informative, relevant, thought-provoking, stylistically groundbreaking, and extensively quoted by all sorts of highly influential people the world over.
- GuiA 7y ago
  Ah, but that’s not what the Nobel prize aims to reward :)
- qazpot 7y ago
  Although I don't agree with Randall Munroe being in Nobel Prize for Literature league, even if he was he would win it in his sixties.
  - rubidium 7y ago
    To finish off why this is the case.... Because you need to wait for the generation who enjoyed his work during collage to be the political / social elite.
    - qazpot 7y ago
      That looks like overly simplistic explanation. Literature Nobel Prize are usually given when someone's body of work stands the test of time although Lit. Nobel Prize has more than it's share of controversies.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
This article is textbook bourgeois virtue signalling - also known as "snobbery." The kind of art he supports already gets plenty of funding. No one seriously expects MOMA or the Met Opera to go bust any time soon. Patreon is a successful alternative for relatively small-scale public-supported art. Of course it reflects public tastes. That's what it's for.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >This article is textbook bourgeois virtue signalling - also known as "snobbery." Or what once was known as "refinement". It's not like high/low culture is some kind of settled issue, and everybody agrees that it's "all the same"... >The kind of art he supports already gets plenty of funding. No one seriously expects MOMA or the Met Opera to go bust any time soon. Isn't that part of the author's point? In that the MOMA or Met Opera's funding are quite distinct from what the masses fund (and from what the masses consume). Not to mention that museums shouldn't be where the culture is consumed, that's where already established culture goes to die.
GuiA 7y ago
It’s good to keep in mind that the same classes of people who praise “transcendent art” today and criticize “ordinary art” would have done the exact same thing if they had been contemporaries of the transcendent artists they now adulate so much. Very few people found any interest in the works of Van Gogh or Monet while they were making them. 100 years from now, this guy’s socio-economical equivalents will criticize whatever is popular then while revering the lost transcendent beauty of Minecraft shaders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just let people enjoy things. I’ve also found that making things yourself is much more rewarding than telling people that they shouldn’t enjoy what they enjoy.
Vinnl 7y ago
I think they define it to some extent: > It is between those who believe in aspiring to something greater and those who do not. (...) something greater and grander than everyday life. So "transcendent" would mean "concerning things that are not common encounters in daily life". What they do not properly motivate, in my opinion, is why that would be better ("high") than focusing on ordinary life. I wonder if they're also turned off by Impressionism?
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent I didn’t find the author criticism the artists as much as their subject matter. Talking about Elon Musk or nuclear technology or philosophy is transcendent. Talking about the everyday life of a Charleston crab fisher is ordinary. I like both! But I agree that pop culture fetishises the latter while looking down on the former. (It reminds of of revolutionary France, dialled down orders of magnitude.) I also agree that a healthy culture embraces both. Virtue signalling in popular culture increasingly looks down on transcendent subjects as out of touch. It’s an interesting recapitulation of classical virtue signalling, e.g. eschewing rock for the opera.
- mcv 7y ago
  Rather than rock or opera, give me a rock opera. The most interesting art comes from mixing things up. In that sense, Youtube is a massive driver of art today, with its many mash-ups and other crazy ideas that would never have been allowed by more traditional art gatekeepers. Of course it's mixed in with lots of pulp, but there's plenty of art on Youtube that's far more transcendental than yet another ballet.
chippy 7y ago
> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent I think the author gives us a hint about what is ordinary: "They tend not to be representations of noble ambition, or of a classical or romantic vision of how human beings might achieve greatness." As an aside and don't take this personally - perhaps your question was actually "I am sure what they mean but I'm trying to disagree" ? Or perhaps it's "I wouldn't be able to make the decision if I had to do it"? I never know about this use of language. It's like asking "I don't understand why someone would vote for X" when the question is really about them actually understanding and wanting to state ones opposition to it? That type of question is not asking the reader "help me understand", right? It's confusing to me.
- nindalf 7y ago
  No it was genuine curiousity driven by ignorance. > a classical or romantic vision of how human beings might achieve greatness How does a singer-songwriter provide this but not the minecraft shader guy? Is there something I'm missing?
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    I don't think there is a very serious theory behind this text, it feels more like someone complaining that what they find on patreon wouldn't belong in their museum of art.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Perhaps because minecraft shaders belong more in the realm of some guy making stools and chairs at his garden shed, and not in the realm of deep aspirational art?
hos234 7y ago
This kind of confusion is constantly created when the underlying unstated assumption is we all share the same needs. We don't. We spend huge amounts of energy and time trying to convince each other that our needs are whats best for everyone else. In reality, people and their needs are on as wide a spectrum, as the needs of a cactus and a banyan tree. And it doesn't end there, those needs change with time and context.
Gatsky 7y ago
I think you have this the wrong way around. The article is undoubtedly correct to my mind. The most popular content creators are basically doing nothing. Looking at the truly huge Youtubers, people on Patreon, Instagrammers, streamers etc it is clear that mundanity with high production values is what people want. This is non-art served up with the orchestra and vino that you are criticising as bourgeois. Reality TV gets it wrong with exotic locales, tattooed narcissists and manufactured drama, that's too much actually. People seemingly just want a nicer, sanitised version of their own lives served up to them. They will swallow this all day every day. The saving grace I think are podcasts. There is some authentic intellectual stuff going on there, it's a renaissance medium that humanises debate and invites nuance and complexity.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y ago
  I agree with some of your points. Podcasts have come a long way and if one takes a bit of time and is open to dialling down the filters there is lot of interesting conversations happening.
- mcv 7y ago
  > "Looking at the truly huge Youtubers, people on Patreon, Instagrammers, streamers etc it is clear that mundanity with high production values is what people want." How about just looking at Hollywood box office numbers? A Michael Bay explosion spectacle makes way more money than some insightful art house movie dealing with complex issues.
coldtea 7y ago
>He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists. Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years. This information could also help make the author's point -- depending on the quality of said "cultural zeitgeist".

phoe-krk 7y ago

> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent? This article is weird and full of stereotypes; it's written from the point as if art was easily and objectively classifiable. No, art is not classifiable like that, and something that one man calls everyday trash can be eye-opening and mind-blowing to another. This fact alone disproves the main assumption that this article is based on, and breaks the point of the whole article for me.

justanothersys 7y ago
Art’s subjectivity has been debated since forever. It’s not a fact. That being said, I also didn’t enjoy the point of view in the article very much and I mostly agree with your sentiment.
scrdhrt 7y ago
Art is whatever you get away with.
- chmod775 7y ago
  Or rather, at times the work of art isn't your creation, but the fact that you managed to get away with, say, a blank canvas.
coldtea 7y ago
>This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent? Because else you're in an endless loop, where you define what you like by what you like. It is (or, perhaps, it has been) generally understood, that being schooled into things, learning about them, their history, aesthetic rivalries and ideas abotu them, and appreciating the cultured opinions of people who have studied them more, helps one appreciate finer things and cultivate their preferences. The alternative, "because I like it", sounds like a regression to childhood.
- phoe-krk 7y ago
  You misunderstood my question. I asked, "Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent?", with a stress on the "I". I find it worthwhile to listen to people who describe what touches them and what they are indifferent to. However, the tone of the article describes the "mundane" and the "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I personally find silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective experience.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >However, the tone of the article describes the "mundane" and the "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I personally find silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective experience. I don't think that's settled. For that matter, I don't think that's true.
  - ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
    It’s not inherently subjective. There’s good and shit. Like how there’s good code and shit code.
Fricken 7y ago
Those who are aspirational in their appreciation of art do tend to gravitate towards the same shit. The first time you're exposed to a cliche it could very well be mind blowing, but after getting through a wide enough body of work you start recognize the common patterns and eventually get sick of the cliches and you appreciate the stuff out there that actually broke ground, and moved the needle a bit. I've only heard the 'art is subjective' defense from people with uncultivated tastes. Myself, I don't know much about chemistry, and something I don't do is wander into conversations with chemists and expect my unfounded opinion to be anything other than a nuisance to them. When it comes to art, for some reason, people who haven't done their homework nonetheless expect their opinion to matter.

interfixus 7y ago

It is my honest, non-facetious opinion that Randall Munroe ought to be in the very serious running for the Nobel Literature Prize. His oeuvre is wide-ranching, deep, consistent, informative, relevant, thought-provoking, stylistically groundbreaking, and extensively quoted by all sorts of highly influential people the world over.

GuiA 7y ago
Ah, but that’s not what the Nobel prize aims to reward :)
qazpot 7y ago
Although I don't agree with Randall Munroe being in Nobel Prize for Literature league, even if he was he would win it in his sixties.
- rubidium 7y ago
  To finish off why this is the case.... Because you need to wait for the generation who enjoyed his work during collage to be the political / social elite.
  - qazpot 7y ago
    That looks like overly simplistic explanation. Literature Nobel Prize are usually given when someone's body of work stands the test of time although Lit. Nobel Prize has more than it's share of controversies.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

This article is textbook bourgeois virtue signalling - also known as "snobbery." The kind of art he supports already gets plenty of funding. No one seriously expects MOMA or the Met Opera to go bust any time soon. Patreon is a successful alternative for relatively small-scale public-supported art. Of course it reflects public tastes. That's what it's for.

coldtea 7y ago
>This article is textbook bourgeois virtue signalling - also known as "snobbery." Or what once was known as "refinement". It's not like high/low culture is some kind of settled issue, and everybody agrees that it's "all the same"... >The kind of art he supports already gets plenty of funding. No one seriously expects MOMA or the Met Opera to go bust any time soon. Isn't that part of the author's point? In that the MOMA or Met Opera's funding are quite distinct from what the masses fund (and from what the masses consume). Not to mention that museums shouldn't be where the culture is consumed, that's where already established culture goes to die.

GuiA 7y ago

It’s good to keep in mind that the same classes of people who praise “transcendent art” today and criticize “ordinary art” would have done the exact same thing if they had been contemporaries of the transcendent artists they now adulate so much. Very few people found any interest in the works of Van Gogh or Monet while they were making them. 100 years from now, this guy’s socio-economical equivalents will criticize whatever is popular then while revering the lost transcendent beauty of Minecraft shaders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just let people enjoy things. I’ve also found that making things yourself is much more rewarding than telling people that they shouldn’t enjoy what they enjoy.

Vinnl 7y ago

I think they define it to some extent: > It is between those who believe in aspiring to something greater and those who do not. (...) something greater and grander than everyday life. So "transcendent" would mean "concerning things that are not common encounters in daily life". What they do not properly motivate, in my opinion, is why that would be better ("high") than focusing on ordinary life. I wonder if they're also turned off by Impressionism?

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent I didn’t find the author criticism the artists as much as their subject matter. Talking about Elon Musk or nuclear technology or philosophy is transcendent. Talking about the everyday life of a Charleston crab fisher is ordinary. I like both! But I agree that pop culture fetishises the latter while looking down on the former. (It reminds of of revolutionary France, dialled down orders of magnitude.) I also agree that a healthy culture embraces both. Virtue signalling in popular culture increasingly looks down on transcendent subjects as out of touch. It’s an interesting recapitulation of classical virtue signalling, e.g. eschewing rock for the opera.

mcv 7y ago
Rather than rock or opera, give me a rock opera. The most interesting art comes from mixing things up. In that sense, Youtube is a massive driver of art today, with its many mash-ups and other crazy ideas that would never have been allowed by more traditional art gatekeepers. Of course it's mixed in with lots of pulp, but there's plenty of art on Youtube that's far more transcendental than yet another ballet.

chippy 7y ago

> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent I think the author gives us a hint about what is ordinary: "They tend not to be representations of noble ambition, or of a classical or romantic vision of how human beings might achieve greatness." As an aside and don't take this personally - perhaps your question was actually "I am sure what they mean but I'm trying to disagree" ? Or perhaps it's "I wouldn't be able to make the decision if I had to do it"? I never know about this use of language. It's like asking "I don't understand why someone would vote for X" when the question is really about them actually understanding and wanting to state ones opposition to it? That type of question is not asking the reader "help me understand", right? It's confusing to me.

nindalf 7y ago
No it was genuine curiousity driven by ignorance. > a classical or romantic vision of how human beings might achieve greatness How does a singer-songwriter provide this but not the minecraft shader guy? Is there something I'm missing?
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  I don't think there is a very serious theory behind this text, it feels more like someone complaining that what they find on patreon wouldn't belong in their museum of art.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Perhaps because minecraft shaders belong more in the realm of some guy making stools and chairs at his garden shed, and not in the realm of deep aspirational art?

hos234 7y ago

This kind of confusion is constantly created when the underlying unstated assumption is we all share the same needs. We don't. We spend huge amounts of energy and time trying to convince each other that our needs are whats best for everyone else. In reality, people and their needs are on as wide a spectrum, as the needs of a cactus and a banyan tree. And it doesn't end there, those needs change with time and context.

Gatsky 7y ago

I think you have this the wrong way around. The article is undoubtedly correct to my mind. The most popular content creators are basically doing nothing. Looking at the truly huge Youtubers, people on Patreon, Instagrammers, streamers etc it is clear that mundanity with high production values is what people want. This is non-art served up with the orchestra and vino that you are criticising as bourgeois. Reality TV gets it wrong with exotic locales, tattooed narcissists and manufactured drama, that's too much actually. People seemingly just want a nicer, sanitised version of their own lives served up to them. They will swallow this all day every day. The saving grace I think are podcasts. There is some authentic intellectual stuff going on there, it's a renaissance medium that humanises debate and invites nuance and complexity.

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y ago
I agree with some of your points. Podcasts have come a long way and if one takes a bit of time and is open to dialling down the filters there is lot of interesting conversations happening.
mcv 7y ago
> "Looking at the truly huge Youtubers, people on Patreon, Instagrammers, streamers etc it is clear that mundanity with high production values is what people want." How about just looking at Hollywood box office numbers? A Michael Bay explosion spectacle makes way more money than some insightful art house movie dealing with complex issues.

coldtea 7y ago

>He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists. Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years. This information could also help make the author's point -- depending on the quality of said "cultural zeitgeist".