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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,

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.
    - pests 2y ago
      You can do both! :D Some art maybe only be 90% aesthetics and others could be only %50 or %10. How much non-aesthetics is acceptable to you? Where do you draw the line? Why does it matter? Why did you choose that number?

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.
  - pests 2y ago
    You can do both! :D Some art maybe only be 90% aesthetics and others could be only %50 or %10. How much non-aesthetics is acceptable to you? Where do you draw the line? Why does it matter? Why did you choose that number?