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I know you and others would "for sure" argue it's art. That's precisely my point. I'm not convinced art is in the intent. Personally, it feels like Marcel Ducha

I know you and others would "for sure" argue it's art. That's precisely my point. I'm not convinced art is in the intent. Personally, it feels like Marcel Duchamp and others have conned everyone into believing that, though again I'm sure you'd disagree. But it's definitely not "for sure" anything, as in it's not obviously, axiomatically, intrinsically, self-evidently the case. Even if the art scene today has collectively agreed on that view for the most part. I subscribe to a more formalist or conservative view of art, particularly Roger Scruton's. Art is based on its intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits. Meaning the artwork’s formal or aesthetic aspects are central. It's those things that make it art and give it value, rather than whatever the artist intended to say or do. If you subscribe to this view—which to me is what the average person would subscribe to, or the "common sense" view—then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value and elicit no contemplative experience. At best, they promote discussion about state surveillance, which is a political but not an artistic endeavor. It's not just "bad art", but rather "conflating political statements with art", as I said at the top.

gen220 2y ago
I understand the semantic argument you're trying to make. I think you have more to gain from loosening your grip on the boundaries of the word "art", for purely selfish reasons. It makes the world more nuanced and interesting. For similar reasons, I'd recommending widening your lens of what is considered political. All art is political, even if it's not the artist's "intention" or within their awareness. Because it's the production of a political context. There's no such thing as an apolitical life or human act. You can argue against it for semantic reasons, but again I'd challenge what value you gain from leaning on those semantics, beyond sorting a gloriously continuous and analog universe into artificially-exclusive categories.
- airstrike 2y ago
  I should first note that I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful reply and how honestly you've engaged in this conversation. It's why I love coming to HN, so thank you. I used to have very loose grips on the boundaries of the word "art". I've been there and done that. Then I realized that humanity has more to gain from holding art to higher standards than it does from the "anything goes" approach. I did note that art can be political. By all means it should be political in those situations where the artist has a certain objective in mind and believe art can be a meaningful way to make politics. I have nothing against that and I appreciate the historical and current relevance of art as as means of being and acting political. If you're keen to understand my position as explained by someone much more knowledgeable than me and much more studied in art and philosophy, I encourage you to watch this remarkably interesting video essay by Roger Scruton: https://vimeo.com/groups/832551/videos/549715999 https://vimeo.com/groups/832551/videos/549715999
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it's definitely not "for sure" anything, as in it's not obviously, axiomatically, intrinsically, self-evidently the case It’s self evidently art if someone goes three comments deep to argue it isn’t.
- airstrike 2y ago
  No, it's self-evidently agreed upon, but not self-evidently true. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw Also your comment feels like a shallow dismissal... HN tries to be better than that, so I encourage you to review the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > your comment feels like a shallow dismissal It’s not. Nobody debates whether most things are art because most things aren’t noticed. The fact that someone got you to give a shit enough to protest it’s not art is self-evidence of its influence over, at the very least, you.
    - airstrike 2y ago
      I didn't say most things are art. I say people conflate political expressions with artistic ones. As someone who loves art, I find that somewhat disheartening, so I thought I'd debate it. It doesn't magically make the non-art from TFA into art, though. Certainly not if you start from the premise that art must have aesthetic merit.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > not if you start from the premise that art must have aesthetic merit This is a semantic punt. "Aesthetic merit" is no less subjective than "art." If there are grounds to debate whether something is art, it's almost always art. It may not be fine art. (Or art to your taste.) But there's a reason those are qualifications. Functionally, I think arguing about what is and isn’t art broadly diminishes support for the things you probably consider “real” art. It makes it unnecessarily pretentious and gate kept.
superb_dev 2y ago
Your sense of aesthetics is not objective, so I refuse to base any definition of art on it. The piece that this article is covering (not the individual photos, but the whole project) is clearly making people in this comment section contemplate the role of these cameras and the policy surrounding. It’s also made you pretty contemplative on what qualifies as art. What makes this contemplation political and not artistic?
- airstrike 2y ago
  > Your sense of aesthetics is not objective, so I refuse to base any definition of art on it. Do you find this artwork aesthetically interesting? Pleasing? Intriguing? Which aesthetic properties does it have that make it worthwhile? I'm not arguing you should define "art" on my specific aesthetic sense, but rather on anyone's (everyone's?) collective sense. I think you'd be hard pressed to find even one person saying this specific artwork is aesthetically interesting. The bar shouldn't be that everyone must find it interesting. We can debate what the threshold for "aesthetically interesting" or how prevalent that view must be among receivers of the art, but clearly my 3 year old's drawings and Vermeer's body of work are in different categories, so the distinction does exist somewhere. > What makes this contemplation political and not artistic? For starters, the fact that the contemplation is about "the role of these cameras and the policy surrounding" and not about the artwork. And what made me contemplative on what qualifies as art is the general insistence on labeling any type of creation as an artistic one these days, which is something that I have thought about frequently in the last 2 years or so.
  - pests 2y ago
    Why limit art to only aesthetics?
    - airstrike 2y ago
      I'd flip that around and say why not include aesthetics in the definition of art? Doing away with it entirely makes for a less beautiful world and our brain is wired to appreciate beauty.
krisoft 2y ago
> Art is based on its intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits. Would that mean that you don’t recognise the existence of bad art? Because that seems to be the consequence of what you are saying. > or the "common sense" view Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you are the resident common sense expert this week. Next time i will make sure to ask you what i should think before i think. > then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value What you seems to be missing is that the photos here are not the art. This is not photography. The whole package together is what is art here. The story behind the photos, what they did and how they did it. This is a sort of performance art. The photos are just an aspect of this performance art. Imagine that you would hear the sound recording of a dance performance. Shuffling feet, occasional stomping. Would it have an aesthetic value? It might or might not. But that doesn’t mean the dance wasn’t artistic. Similarly to this case the audio recording is not the art piece, just an imprint of it. Part of the whole package, but not the package itself. > and elicit no contemplative experience Lol. You are just wrong on that. I’m here contemplating the whole thing since half an hour at least. But you sure seems to like to just declare things.
- airstrike 2y ago
  > > Art is based on its intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits. > Would that mean that you don’t recognise the existence of bad art? Because that seems to be the consequence of what you are saying. To be honest, I can't think of anything that would constitute "bad art" in accordance with this view of art. It's an interesting question, and maybe it does exist, but right now I just can't think of anything that qualifies as such. To me, there's "art" and "not art", though I admit the line dividing the two is fuzzy. "Bad" would require some form of ranking, but it's hard to imagine an adequate criteria even before factoring in different art forms. >> > or the "common sense" view > Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you are the resident common sense expert this week. Next time i will make sure to ask you what i should think before i think. I went out of my way to say that it doesn't matter what I personally think, but rather the aesthetic properties of the artwork and the contemplative experiences it evokes on the receivers of the art in general. And the choice of the words "contemplative" and "experience" are not accidental. This feels like a bad faith rather than a charitable interpretation of my position. My use of "common sense" (in quotes) was perhaps a poor attempt at saying that, if within a given social and cultural context there exists some moderately agreed upon view of what is and isn't "aesthetically interesting and a contemplative experience", then this may also be applied to a broad enough social and cultural group to arrive at a "common" view of what has artistic merit. Ask a million people if Vermeer is art. I can't imagine a significant number of them will say it isn't. > > then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value > What you seems to be missing is that the photos here are not the art. This is not photography. The whole package together is what is art here. The story behind the photos, what they did and how they did it. This is a sort of performance art. I'm saying it has very little artistic value even if it might have meaningfully political value. It can be a political performance. A form of protest, even. It's just not art, performance or otherwise, according to the model of artistic reality which I espouse. > The photos are just an aspect of this performance art. Imagine that you would hear the sound recording of a dance performance. Shuffling feet, occasional stomping. Would it have an aesthetic value? It might or might not. But that doesn’t mean the dance wasn’t artistic. Similarly to this case the audio recording is not the art piece, just an imprint of it. Part of the whole package, but not the package itself. That's a strawman. My argument goes way beyond claiming this isn't art because the photos aren't artistic enough. Even with the performance, the project, the bringing the people together, posting, getting reactions from people, it's all just a cool project with a political bent. It still doesn't qualify as aesthetically interesting. > Lol. You are just wrong on that. I’m here contemplating the whole thing since half an hour at least. But you sure seems to like to just declare things. It's quite remarkable how visceral of a reaction this causes on people. This whole response just reads like cognitive dissonance, but particularly this final bit. My arguments have generally been about art and aesthetics. I rarely used the words "you" or "your", except to point out what I perceived as less-than-adequate debate manners for the most part. It would be nice if others would extend me the same courtesy.

gen220 2y ago

I understand the semantic argument you're trying to make. I think you have more to gain from loosening your grip on the boundaries of the word "art", for purely selfish reasons. It makes the world more nuanced and interesting. For similar reasons, I'd recommending widening your lens of what is considered political. All art is political, even if it's not the artist's "intention" or within their awareness. Because it's the production of a political context. There's no such thing as an apolitical life or human act. You can argue against it for semantic reasons, but again I'd challenge what value you gain from leaning on those semantics, beyond sorting a gloriously continuous and analog universe into artificially-exclusive categories.

airstrike 2y ago
I should first note that I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful reply and how honestly you've engaged in this conversation. It's why I love coming to HN, so thank you. I used to have very loose grips on the boundaries of the word "art". I've been there and done that. Then I realized that humanity has more to gain from holding art to higher standards than it does from the "anything goes" approach. I did note that art can be political. By all means it should be political in those situations where the artist has a certain objective in mind and believe art can be a meaningful way to make politics. I have nothing against that and I appreciate the historical and current relevance of art as as means of being and acting political. If you're keen to understand my position as explained by someone much more knowledgeable than me and much more studied in art and philosophy, I encourage you to watch this remarkably interesting video essay by Roger Scruton: https://vimeo.com/groups/832551/videos/549715999 https://vimeo.com/groups/832551/videos/549715999

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> it's definitely not "for sure" anything, as in it's not obviously, axiomatically, intrinsically, self-evidently the case It’s self evidently art if someone goes three comments deep to argue it isn’t.

airstrike 2y ago
No, it's self-evidently agreed upon, but not self-evidently true. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw Also your comment feels like a shallow dismissal... HN tries to be better than that, so I encourage you to review the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > your comment feels like a shallow dismissal It’s not. Nobody debates whether most things are art because most things aren’t noticed. The fact that someone got you to give a shit enough to protest it’s not art is self-evidence of its influence over, at the very least, you.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    I didn't say most things are art. I say people conflate political expressions with artistic ones. As someone who loves art, I find that somewhat disheartening, so I thought I'd debate it. It doesn't magically make the non-art from TFA into art, though. Certainly not if you start from the premise that art must have aesthetic merit.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > not if you start from the premise that art must have aesthetic merit This is a semantic punt. "Aesthetic merit" is no less subjective than "art." If there are grounds to debate whether something is art, it's almost always art. It may not be fine art. (Or art to your taste.) But there's a reason those are qualifications. Functionally, I think arguing about what is and isn’t art broadly diminishes support for the things you probably consider “real” art. It makes it unnecessarily pretentious and gate kept.

superb_dev 2y ago

Your sense of aesthetics is not objective, so I refuse to base any definition of art on it. The piece that this article is covering (not the individual photos, but the whole project) is clearly making people in this comment section contemplate the role of these cameras and the policy surrounding. It’s also made you pretty contemplative on what qualifies as art. What makes this contemplation political and not artistic?

airstrike 2y ago
> Your sense of aesthetics is not objective, so I refuse to base any definition of art on it. Do you find this artwork aesthetically interesting? Pleasing? Intriguing? Which aesthetic properties does it have that make it worthwhile? I'm not arguing you should define "art" on my specific aesthetic sense, but rather on anyone's (everyone's?) collective sense. I think you'd be hard pressed to find even one person saying this specific artwork is aesthetically interesting. The bar shouldn't be that everyone must find it interesting. We can debate what the threshold for "aesthetically interesting" or how prevalent that view must be among receivers of the art, but clearly my 3 year old's drawings and Vermeer's body of work are in different categories, so the distinction does exist somewhere. > What makes this contemplation political and not artistic? For starters, the fact that the contemplation is about "the role of these cameras and the policy surrounding" and not about the artwork. And what made me contemplative on what qualifies as art is the general insistence on labeling any type of creation as an artistic one these days, which is something that I have thought about frequently in the last 2 years or so.
- pests 2y ago
  Why limit art to only aesthetics?
  - airstrike 2y ago
    I'd flip that around and say why not include aesthetics in the definition of art? Doing away with it entirely makes for a less beautiful world and our brain is wired to appreciate beauty.

krisoft 2y ago

> Art is based on its intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits. Would that mean that you don’t recognise the existence of bad art? Because that seems to be the consequence of what you are saying. > or the "common sense" view Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you are the resident common sense expert this week. Next time i will make sure to ask you what i should think before i think. > then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value What you seems to be missing is that the photos here are not the art. This is not photography. The whole package together is what is art here. The story behind the photos, what they did and how they did it. This is a sort of performance art. The photos are just an aspect of this performance art. Imagine that you would hear the sound recording of a dance performance. Shuffling feet, occasional stomping. Would it have an aesthetic value? It might or might not. But that doesn’t mean the dance wasn’t artistic. Similarly to this case the audio recording is not the art piece, just an imprint of it. Part of the whole package, but not the package itself. > and elicit no contemplative experience Lol. You are just wrong on that. I’m here contemplating the whole thing since half an hour at least. But you sure seems to like to just declare things.

airstrike 2y ago
> > Art is based on its intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits. > Would that mean that you don’t recognise the existence of bad art? Because that seems to be the consequence of what you are saying. To be honest, I can't think of anything that would constitute "bad art" in accordance with this view of art. It's an interesting question, and maybe it does exist, but right now I just can't think of anything that qualifies as such. To me, there's "art" and "not art", though I admit the line dividing the two is fuzzy. "Bad" would require some form of ranking, but it's hard to imagine an adequate criteria even before factoring in different art forms. >> > or the "common sense" view > Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you are the resident common sense expert this week. Next time i will make sure to ask you what i should think before i think. I went out of my way to say that it doesn't matter what I personally think, but rather the aesthetic properties of the artwork and the contemplative experiences it evokes on the receivers of the art in general. And the choice of the words "contemplative" and "experience" are not accidental. This feels like a bad faith rather than a charitable interpretation of my position. My use of "common sense" (in quotes) was perhaps a poor attempt at saying that, if within a given social and cultural context there exists some moderately agreed upon view of what is and isn't "aesthetically interesting and a contemplative experience", then this may also be applied to a broad enough social and cultural group to arrive at a "common" view of what has artistic merit. Ask a million people if Vermeer is art. I can't imagine a significant number of them will say it isn't. > > then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value > What you seems to be missing is that the photos here are not the art. This is not photography. The whole package together is what is art here. The story behind the photos, what they did and how they did it. This is a sort of performance art. I'm saying it has very little artistic value even if it might have meaningfully political value. It can be a political performance. A form of protest, even. It's just not art, performance or otherwise, according to the model of artistic reality which I espouse. > The photos are just an aspect of this performance art. Imagine that you would hear the sound recording of a dance performance. Shuffling feet, occasional stomping. Would it have an aesthetic value? It might or might not. But that doesn’t mean the dance wasn’t artistic. Similarly to this case the audio recording is not the art piece, just an imprint of it. Part of the whole package, but not the package itself. That's a strawman. My argument goes way beyond claiming this isn't art because the photos aren't artistic enough. Even with the performance, the project, the bringing the people together, posting, getting reactions from people, it's all just a cool project with a political bent. It still doesn't qualify as aesthetically interesting. > Lol. You are just wrong on that. I’m here contemplating the whole thing since half an hour at least. But you sure seems to like to just declare things. It's quite remarkable how visceral of a reaction this causes on people. This whole response just reads like cognitive dissonance, but particularly this final bit. My arguments have generally been about art and aesthetics. I rarely used the words "you" or "your", except to point out what I perceived as less-than-adequate debate manners for the most part. It would be nice if others would extend me the same courtesy.