4 ms·

> But a lot of art is original, and speaking of someone's originality is usually one of the highest artistic compliments one can pay. Um, this is exactly true

by nmrm 12y ago

> But a lot of art is original, and speaking of someone's originality is usually one of the highest artistic compliments one can pay. Um, this is exactly true in science. But scientists are generally required to make clear and explicit the influences for their work.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> Um, this is exactly true in science. But scientists are generally required to make clear and explicit the influences for their work. I think a lot of artists miss the trade-off. If others feel invited to improve on your work then they'll be more likely to credit you, because in the alternative where derivatives are not allowed, anyone inspired by your work will be afraid to credit you for fear of it being seen as an admission of wrongdoing.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I didn't express that very well. To me the difference is that in science you need to make good on your claim - it's no good announcing my intuition that the universe is has the interior of a foofaraw without defining exactly what I mean by that and how it might be tested, in terms that make sense to other people. In art it only matters that you engage the viewer (or listener or...) who need not necessarily have any critical understanding of a work in order to derive an aesthetic experience from it. That's not much more helpful, sorry. It might give more context if I mention that I have an extreme antipathy towards postmodernism and critical theory in general, which colors my opinions on related topics.
- nmrm 12y ago
  Hm. I understand your individual points, but don't understand the argument you're trying to make. Why does this difference between art and science justify art's comparatively hostile attitude toward "derivative" works? Also, I don't agree that there is such a stark contrast. I think you over-state the role of testability in science (esp. the task of articulating theories) and under-state the importance of the social process in science. Oh, it's worth noting that sometimes scientific communities do frown on "derivative" works. E.g. scooping other group's low-hanging fruit. But the general sentiment regarding these cases doesn't even come close to even contemplating something like litigation. (edit: oh, I guess there's some patenting in the natural sciences esp. in near-to-market research. But patents != copyright. And CS comes a lot closer to the nature of art, and AFAIK it's unheard of for a researcher to sue another researcher over derivative works.)
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Why does this difference between art and science justify art's comparatively hostile attitude toward "derivative" works? Because science is engaged in a search for truth, new actionable information. Art is expressive, so copying someone else's work (for display rather than to develop one's technique,of course) is a sort of freeloading. It's also worth considering the economic incentives for science and art are also pretty different. For good or ill, there are few scientists who labor unrewarded out of compulsion, not least because there isn't a whole lot of science you can do without a budget, although I can think of a few mathematicians who fit that bill, eg Grigori Perelman. However, by mentioning the economic side of things I wouldn't want to give the impression that I support existing copyright regimes, which I think are actually economically destructive to individual artists in many respects - it's just that I don't support the opposite position either, of nothing being truly original and therefore nothing being deserving of copyright protection. I do think testability, or rather falsifiability, is important in science insofar as it makes the differences between conjecture and theorem. But I see where you're coming from; there can be a lot of value in an elegant theory even if it turns out to be superficially wrong, because it can open up new vistas of intellectual inquiry - Riemannian geometry springs to mind, where the failure of [many previous mathematicians] to prove Euclid's parallel postulate by reductio ad absurdum opened up a whole class of non-Euclidean geometrical perspectives even though such geometries were 'wrong' in the Cartesian context. But to get back to the main point, with science your aiming for results of some sort, whose value lies in their explanatory power (even if that opens up a host of new questions, like some empirical observation that points out a natural phenomenon does not behave as we thought it did, without offering any theory as to why that should be the case). Art, by contrast, is inherently subjective, and might as easily be constructed to alienate or frustrate analysis, or be indifferent to the possibility thereof. I think there's a tendency today to see art as an accretion of communicatory techniques, but I'm deeply at odds with this view, and feel that it reduces artistic endeavor to the level of marketing. (This is a very personal perspective, obviously.) If you're working creatively you're often asked/advised 'tell a story' or 'articulate what you want to say' or 'identify your point of view'. In a postmodern world, art is treated as a lens through which to view the artist, and there's a great emphasis on context and explanation, such that 'artist's statements' are considered essential to the presentation of art. To my mind this is an awful state of affairs, reducing art from the trancendental to the transactional. Self-consciously derivative and combinatorial art exacerbates this.

by nmrm 12y ago

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> Um, this is exactly true in science. But scientists are generally required to make clear and explicit the influences for their work. I think a lot of artists miss the trade-off. If others feel invited to improve on your work then they'll be more likely to credit you, because in the alternative where derivatives are not allowed, anyone inspired by your work will be afraid to credit you for fear of it being seen as an admission of wrongdoing.

anigbrowl 12y ago

I didn't express that very well. To me the difference is that in science you need to make good on your claim - it's no good announcing my intuition that the universe is has the interior of a foofaraw without defining exactly what I mean by that and how it might be tested, in terms that make sense to other people. In art it only matters that you engage the viewer (or listener or...) who need not necessarily have any critical understanding of a work in order to derive an aesthetic experience from it. That's not much more helpful, sorry. It might give more context if I mention that I have an extreme antipathy towards postmodernism and critical theory in general, which colors my opinions on related topics.

nmrm 12y ago
Hm. I understand your individual points, but don't understand the argument you're trying to make. Why does this difference between art and science justify art's comparatively hostile attitude toward "derivative" works? Also, I don't agree that there is such a stark contrast. I think you over-state the role of testability in science (esp. the task of articulating theories) and under-state the importance of the social process in science. Oh, it's worth noting that sometimes scientific communities do frown on "derivative" works. E.g. scooping other group's low-hanging fruit. But the general sentiment regarding these cases doesn't even come close to even contemplating something like litigation. (edit: oh, I guess there's some patenting in the natural sciences esp. in near-to-market research. But patents != copyright. And CS comes a lot closer to the nature of art, and AFAIK it's unheard of for a researcher to sue another researcher over derivative works.)
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Why does this difference between art and science justify art's comparatively hostile attitude toward "derivative" works? Because science is engaged in a search for truth, new actionable information. Art is expressive, so copying someone else's work (for display rather than to develop one's technique,of course) is a sort of freeloading. It's also worth considering the economic incentives for science and art are also pretty different. For good or ill, there are few scientists who labor unrewarded out of compulsion, not least because there isn't a whole lot of science you can do without a budget, although I can think of a few mathematicians who fit that bill, eg Grigori Perelman. However, by mentioning the economic side of things I wouldn't want to give the impression that I support existing copyright regimes, which I think are actually economically destructive to individual artists in many respects - it's just that I don't support the opposite position either, of nothing being truly original and therefore nothing being deserving of copyright protection. I do think testability, or rather falsifiability, is important in science insofar as it makes the differences between conjecture and theorem. But I see where you're coming from; there can be a lot of value in an elegant theory even if it turns out to be superficially wrong, because it can open up new vistas of intellectual inquiry - Riemannian geometry springs to mind, where the failure of [many previous mathematicians] to prove Euclid's parallel postulate by reductio ad absurdum opened up a whole class of non-Euclidean geometrical perspectives even though such geometries were 'wrong' in the Cartesian context. But to get back to the main point, with science your aiming for results of some sort, whose value lies in their explanatory power (even if that opens up a host of new questions, like some empirical observation that points out a natural phenomenon does not behave as we thought it did, without offering any theory as to why that should be the case). Art, by contrast, is inherently subjective, and might as easily be constructed to alienate or frustrate analysis, or be indifferent to the possibility thereof. I think there's a tendency today to see art as an accretion of communicatory techniques, but I'm deeply at odds with this view, and feel that it reduces artistic endeavor to the level of marketing. (This is a very personal perspective, obviously.) If you're working creatively you're often asked/advised 'tell a story' or 'articulate what you want to say' or 'identify your point of view'. In a postmodern world, art is treated as a lens through which to view the artist, and there's a great emphasis on context and explanation, such that 'artist's statements' are considered essential to the presentation of art. To my mind this is an awful state of affairs, reducing art from the trancendental to the transactional. Self-consciously derivative and combinatorial art exacerbates this.