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I also know plenty of people who waste their intellect painting canvases, when they could be advancing the species by doing something practical. Shall we shed a

I also know plenty of people who waste their intellect painting canvases, when they could be advancing the species by doing something practical. Shall we shed a tear for their wasted efforts as well? But of course not. Art is its own justification. And this program, my friends? This is art.

gambler 13y ago
Art that only exists for the sake of existing, without intent to express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind - art of that sort is garbage. There are plenty of people who vehemently defend that garbage, but it doesn't make it any less wasteful use of human time and attention. Personally, I will never respect it simply because there was a lot of effort involved.
- epidemian 13y ago
  > without intent to express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind I hope you're just being sarcastic.
- breadbox 13y ago
  "I will never respect it simply because there was a lot of effort involved." Nor will I, or much of anyone else, I imagine. I respect it because it stimulates my mind. My imagination is moved by it in much the same way that it's moved by holding an acorn in my hand while contemplating a fully grown oak tree. Or studying the math that causes z <- z^2 + C to describe a ridiculously intricate shape. Or implementing my own minimal Lisp interpreter from scratch. Or trying to understand the Banach-Tarski paradox. These things stimulate my sense of wonder because they're like a magic trick, but there's no trickery involved. And when I contemplate them, I learn more about the world. Art cannot aspire to much more than that.
  - gambler 13y ago
    Nor will I, or much of anyone else, I imagine. Yet people gladly upvote stories about computers implemented insite Minecraft and life-size spaceships made out of Lego blocks. Are you saying it has nothing to do with the difficulty involved? I doubt this story would be equally well received if there was some easy way to achieve the same result. If you take difficulty of the task out of the equation, what will be left? How much of what's left is genuine creativity and skill, and how much is mere patience?
    - breadbox 13y ago
      "Are you saying it has nothing to do with the difficulty involved?" No, of course not. The "simply" was what I was disagreeing with.
- snsr 13y ago
  That's a pretty caustic take on an inherently subjective matter: the appreciation of beauty. Also, in what way is this exercise not exploratory?
  - romaniv 13y ago
    What does it explore?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      The very nature of self-expression. (If you are looking for other people to explain to you how to appreciate art, you are going to have a bad time.)
- Falling3 13y ago
  I'm am tired of these elitist views of art. You sir, know nothing of art.
- eksith 13y ago
  http://www.lynetteabel.org/L-ABEL-Seminar-Appreciate.htm http://www.lynetteabel.org/L-ABEL-Seminar-Appreciate.htm Eli Siegel explains in his great essay "The Serious Aspect of Snobbery": Snobbery is the unwillingness to like something, unless at the same time it makes one feel more important;... [It] is the inability or lack of desire to appreciate justly.
  - gambler 13y ago
    You using a quote of a quote to launch a personal attack, while explicitly doing the thing that you're accusing me of. That is, you assume that the motivation behind my comment is to feel superior to certain other people by excluding some things from the realm of "good art". Yet your comment explicitly divides people into "snobs" and "not snobs", makes a fairly obvious statement about superiority of one group and hints at the fact that you belong to the other group.
    - eksith 13y ago
      >...art of that sort is garbage. There are plenty of people who vehemently defend that garbage, but it doesn't make it any less wasteful use of human time and attention. ...is your opinion. Opinion that as downvoters have noted, is full of snobbery. Not even mildly vindicated snobbery that's tolerated on this forum like picking your religion (I.E. favorite IDE, programming language etc...) which someone could assert with reasonable confidence with anecdotes of personal experience at least; it was wholly devoid of intellectual merit... and was snobbery. That's not a personal attack. I don't know you personally and nor was it an attack. I felt it was merely an observation. But If you took an observation as an attack, then doesn't that speak to the validity of the quote? I don't appreciate a whole swath of what is considered "modern art" either (though I do like Dada, if anything for it's quirkiness that I find interesting). But never have I called someone else's creation of time and effort "garbage" purely due to my lack of appreciation.
      - gambler 13y ago
        it was wholly devoid of intellectual merit... I think the notion that purpose and intent behind art is far more important than the amount of effort involved in its creation has considerable amount of intellectual merit. Even more so considering how unpopular it is. Whether people choose to read the whole comment, or prefer to see "bla, bla, bla, garbage!" is a different matter.
- msutherl 13y ago
  Unlike the others, I completely agree. Art that does not "express, explore, or otherwise stimulate the human mind"[1] is the definition of boring. I would however claim that the vast majority of art does stimulate the mind, though it may not stimulate yours without some additional effort. Indeed just about anything in the world is capable of stimulating your mind if you look closely enough at it, to paraphrase John Cage. [1] ... or, if we take a 'vibrant matter' / 'object oriented ontology' view of the world, stimulate something.
  - Tobu 13y ago
    John Cage? You were quoting Gustave Flaubert: > Pour qu’une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps. http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/correspondance/conard/outils/1845.htm http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/correspondance/conard/outils/1...
    - msutherl 13y ago
      No, I wasn't quoting anybody, I was paraphrasing John Cage. Here is the quote: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” ― John Cage
- voyou 13y ago
  On the contrary, to the extent something intends to "express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind," it isn't art - it's rhetoric, or science, or entertainment. Obviously lots of works of art were created for some end (renaissance paintings functioned as religious and political propaganda; Shakespeare's plays are entertaining), but they are art to the extent that they step back from that end, and display what Kant calls "purposiveness without particular purpose."
SilasX 13y ago
Still, I reserve the right to be a lot more impressed with this than a painting of a bunch of cans of Campbell's soup.

gambler 13y ago

Art that only exists for the sake of existing, without intent to express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind - art of that sort is garbage. There are plenty of people who vehemently defend that garbage, but it doesn't make it any less wasteful use of human time and attention. Personally, I will never respect it simply because there was a lot of effort involved.

epidemian 13y ago
> without intent to express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind I hope you're just being sarcastic.
breadbox 13y ago
"I will never respect it simply because there was a lot of effort involved." Nor will I, or much of anyone else, I imagine. I respect it because it stimulates my mind. My imagination is moved by it in much the same way that it's moved by holding an acorn in my hand while contemplating a fully grown oak tree. Or studying the math that causes z <- z^2 + C to describe a ridiculously intricate shape. Or implementing my own minimal Lisp interpreter from scratch. Or trying to understand the Banach-Tarski paradox. These things stimulate my sense of wonder because they're like a magic trick, but there's no trickery involved. And when I contemplate them, I learn more about the world. Art cannot aspire to much more than that.
- gambler 13y ago
  Nor will I, or much of anyone else, I imagine. Yet people gladly upvote stories about computers implemented insite Minecraft and life-size spaceships made out of Lego blocks. Are you saying it has nothing to do with the difficulty involved? I doubt this story would be equally well received if there was some easy way to achieve the same result. If you take difficulty of the task out of the equation, what will be left? How much of what's left is genuine creativity and skill, and how much is mere patience?
  - breadbox 13y ago
    "Are you saying it has nothing to do with the difficulty involved?" No, of course not. The "simply" was what I was disagreeing with.
snsr 13y ago
That's a pretty caustic take on an inherently subjective matter: the appreciation of beauty. Also, in what way is this exercise not exploratory?
- romaniv 13y ago
  What does it explore?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    The very nature of self-expression. (If you are looking for other people to explain to you how to appreciate art, you are going to have a bad time.)
Falling3 13y ago
I'm am tired of these elitist views of art. You sir, know nothing of art.
eksith 13y ago
http://www.lynetteabel.org/L-ABEL-Seminar-Appreciate.htm http://www.lynetteabel.org/L-ABEL-Seminar-Appreciate.htm Eli Siegel explains in his great essay "The Serious Aspect of Snobbery": Snobbery is the unwillingness to like something, unless at the same time it makes one feel more important;... [It] is the inability or lack of desire to appreciate justly.
- gambler 13y ago
  You using a quote of a quote to launch a personal attack, while explicitly doing the thing that you're accusing me of. That is, you assume that the motivation behind my comment is to feel superior to certain other people by excluding some things from the realm of "good art". Yet your comment explicitly divides people into "snobs" and "not snobs", makes a fairly obvious statement about superiority of one group and hints at the fact that you belong to the other group.
  - eksith 13y ago
    >...art of that sort is garbage. There are plenty of people who vehemently defend that garbage, but it doesn't make it any less wasteful use of human time and attention. ...is your opinion. Opinion that as downvoters have noted, is full of snobbery. Not even mildly vindicated snobbery that's tolerated on this forum like picking your religion (I.E. favorite IDE, programming language etc...) which someone could assert with reasonable confidence with anecdotes of personal experience at least; it was wholly devoid of intellectual merit... and was snobbery. That's not a personal attack. I don't know you personally and nor was it an attack. I felt it was merely an observation. But If you took an observation as an attack, then doesn't that speak to the validity of the quote? I don't appreciate a whole swath of what is considered "modern art" either (though I do like Dada, if anything for it's quirkiness that I find interesting). But never have I called someone else's creation of time and effort "garbage" purely due to my lack of appreciation.
    - gambler 13y ago
      it was wholly devoid of intellectual merit... I think the notion that purpose and intent behind art is far more important than the amount of effort involved in its creation has considerable amount of intellectual merit. Even more so considering how unpopular it is. Whether people choose to read the whole comment, or prefer to see "bla, bla, bla, garbage!" is a different matter.
msutherl 13y ago
Unlike the others, I completely agree. Art that does not "express, explore, or otherwise stimulate the human mind"[1] is the definition of boring. I would however claim that the vast majority of art does stimulate the mind, though it may not stimulate yours without some additional effort. Indeed just about anything in the world is capable of stimulating your mind if you look closely enough at it, to paraphrase John Cage. [1] ... or, if we take a 'vibrant matter' / 'object oriented ontology' view of the world, stimulate something.
- Tobu 13y ago
  John Cage? You were quoting Gustave Flaubert: > Pour qu’une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps. http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/correspondance/conard/outils/1845.htm http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/correspondance/conard/outils/1...
  - msutherl 13y ago
    No, I wasn't quoting anybody, I was paraphrasing John Cage. Here is the quote: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” ― John Cage
voyou 13y ago
On the contrary, to the extent something intends to "express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind," it isn't art - it's rhetoric, or science, or entertainment. Obviously lots of works of art were created for some end (renaissance paintings functioned as religious and political propaganda; Shakespeare's plays are entertaining), but they are art to the extent that they step back from that end, and display what Kant calls "purposiveness without particular purpose."

SilasX 13y ago

Still, I reserve the right to be a lot more impressed with this than a painting of a bunch of cans of Campbell's soup.