I was thinking that as I posted.

:P

quote:

Originally posted by kenmeer livermaile:

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
That is the most thought out thing I have seen you write, KL.

Thanks.

You didn't see me write it; you just thought you did.

Yes, but you wrote it. You put words together. What did she do? She filmed herself in the bathtub, yeah?

She juxtaposed a belief in a certain kind of morality with a refutation of the conceit for morality.

But she didn't paint, or make a David Lynch movie, or write a song, or make a sculpture.

At some point, when talent becomes incidental to a piece, I refuse to call it art.

It may be a statement, but if you don't have to employ talent then it isn't art.

It's then merely clever.

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
I was thinking that as I posted.

:P

Thinking about a mind-modeled event that you didn't witness is a shadow of a shadow of a shadow.

If you painted it, it would be art.

If you painted it well that is.

Otherwise it goes on the refrigerator., which, despite what our parents may have told us, does not constitute art.

quote:

This, though, strikes me as profound. My eyes begin to mist up. "Yes, Jack," I say, "climb up on a mountaintop and yell 'Art!' But for the general audience, film is an expendable transitory piece of cheap entertainment that focuses on the moment, and then is destroyed cruelly like drowning a little puppy after you are tired of playing with it. Once people have had the chance to see it, then that is it. Goodbye. How many times have you said 'I've seen that'? Which usually means 'I don't want to see it again.' It might have even been great the first time, but one is not sure that he has the time to burn watching something all over again. Time is precious to people and they try to save it. Whatever saving time means.

Gus Van Sant, "Pink"

quote:

Yes, but you wrote it. You put words together. What did she do? She filmed herself in the bathtub, yeah?

She juxtaposed a belief in a certain kind of morality with a refutation of the conceit for morality.

But she didn't paint, or make a David Lynch movie, or write a song, or make a sculpture.

At some point, when talent becomes incidental to a piece, I refuse to call it art.

It may be a statement, but if you don't have to employ talent then it isn't art.

It's then merely clever.

Distinguishing merely clever from, oh, merely talented is one of those squares awaiting a rounding, so I'll leave that one be.

What would answer this question regarding this particular 'art event' would be a time capsule written by the 'artist', to be disinterred within x time frame (1 month to a year, I suppose). If that manifesto indicated certain types of questions that it wished to incite, and perhaps, from whom or in what context or et ceterated particulars, than the 'art event' could be claimed to be 'thought art' designed to provoke certain modes of art. If those thoughts were produced in people, and made known, it would then be deemed 'successful art'..

If it was very precise in its predictions, it could be called 'representational' to the extent those predictions came true. To the extent its predictions were vague, it would be called 'abstract' to the extent that it raised a broad range of roughly relative questions. (If the questions it raised fit a category much narrower than its stated aims, well, critics enjoy added job security, I suppose.)

Talent is judged by the correspondence between aim and target. If she aimed for targets like the ones we're seeing pop up, then she has talent at doing whatever it is she has done, which may or may not be art, largely depending on whether you like it of itself or are impressed by how it was done.

For awhile, long ago on my uncle's farm, I became pretty good at slaughtering animals in a way that was very quick and *seemed* to catch them mostly unawares. (Perhaps the only recipient fooled by my art was myself; since art is subjective and so is being slaughtered, I'll never know for sure. Dead animals don't offer critiques or holler bravo.)

Was it art? Or 'mere' craftmanship? I do know this: at some point I became aware of a a silent shout visible in the back of my head at the point when the ax struck or club bonked or knife slashed. In my mind, it was some psychic echo of the animal's severed life force. In my mind, I said, which means it was more likely to be my own reaction to killing than some psychic echo of the beings whose lives I ended.

But it was a pretty artistic effect, either way.

I read you, ube, as saying that merely onanistic art is not Art because it has no accurately consensual component, whereas if I managed to write a passage deliberately depicting the effect described above in a way that caused at least an echo of that echo in another's mind, that would be Art?

By this dictum, hoax can only be Art if the artist themselves had a vivid experience of what they are hoaxing themselves. Said experienced need not be derived from actual experience: Gib put a bunch of us in cyberspace or on the Bridge although he has never been to these imaginary places in his physical experience, neither internally in cyberspace nor externally in a Bridge taken over by squatters.

None of us having actually attended this 'art event' (that I'm aware of), none of us have any business saying squat about whether or not it's Art, at least, for us as individuals. (Those last three words give me semantic hives.) This is because none of us know whether or not seeing the 'art event' would provide for us an echo of what she pretended to experience.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kenmeer livermaile,

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Whatever saving time means.

Being dead, I suppose, is the ultimate time bank.

fawk me, I am worried.

I read, and understood all of that, KL.

...and agreed with it.

The rain of frogs, the tidal wave of blood, the confusion of the end times is upon us!!!

Seriously, though, good post.

Nice to see you thinking, boog.

ooooo....zing.
:P

Well, to be quite human about it, I've heard the 'Amazing! I understand/agree w/Kenmeer! riff so many times in my life that I reflexively snap the towel.

I agree entirely KL. None of us have the right to say anything since we haven't seen it. My main issue was focused on the art world that I observed for 1 year, that decided to kick me out on my ass when they realized that I wouldn't conform to their methods/ideologies, this is I guess where I got this blurred perspective of what is art as we were being taught how to produce capitalist garbage. Ultimately creation is exactly what Gibson was doing when writing, he was visually representing the 1980s but applying other styles on top of it as well, as established Cyberspace was inspired by the arcade video games of the 1980s - such artifacts are the only way to really understand his sources for inspiration (I'm pretty sure though that Escape from New York and Blade Runner ultimately effected the end product which today is Cyberpunk)

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For awhile, long ago on my uncle's farm, I became pretty good at slaughtering animals in a way that was very quick and *seemed* to catch them mostly unawares. (Perhaps the only recipient fooled by my art was myself; since art is subjective and so is being slaughtered, I'll never know for sure. Dead animals don't offer critiques or holler bravo.)

Was it art? Or 'mere' craftmanship? I do know this: at some point I became aware of a a silent shout visible in the back of my head at the point when the ax struck or club bonked or knife slashed. In my mind, it was some psychic echo of the animal's severed life force. In my mind, I said, which means it was more likely to be my own reaction to killing than some psychic echo of the beings whose lives I ended.

You said that really well, art is meant to be about reflective thought and showing people visually (just as creative writing). As I established though it pisses me off when artist decide to get all cryptic without explaining their reasons for doing so. It would be like reading a book that suddenly spouts big words that no one can understand just to sound smarter. During my course they constantly taught us about how to distort the meaning of images.. this is pretty much why I left, it just seems wrong to do it because not everyone has the ability to decode art.

Well, my very first slaughter was some kind of performance art and I generated quite the response from its audience:

I chopped a tad too high and the poor hen's larynx remained intact, and it not only danced but cussed me a blue streak until it faded out.

Umm... you went to a *school* for art? A school for technique, I'm all for: painting, graphics, music theory, instrument performance, vocal training... but as soon as someone I'm paying money starts telling me about the meaning or value of art, I'll start distorting *their* friggin image, I tell you.

quote:

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

-- Archibald MacLeish

The brilliant thing about that poem is that it absolutely and completely contradicts itself. It is neither mute nor dumb nor silent nor wordless nor meaningless. Or, as someone said:

'tain't whatchye say but the way thatchye say it

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For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For me, the money quote.

quote:

Originally posted by kenmeer livermaile:
Umm... you went to a *school* for art? A school for technique, I'm all for: painting, graphics, music theory, instrument performance, vocal training... but as soon as someone I'm paying money starts telling me about the meaning or value of art, I'll start distorting *their* friggin image, I tell you.

It was university, and I learned a lot initially but it was when they started forcing their distortion methods on us that it started to really suck, all that effort for nothing. I even told them "you guys said nothing about doing this shit when I signed on for the course" I figured they would just teach me how to draw concept art and make logos and shit but instead they were forcing us to make Gallery bs. I couldn't see the point in all of that, here I was wanting a job as a digital graphic artist, I didn't want to work in some studio apartment beating up clay and spray painting canvas, I wanted to be in front of a computer going crazy in Photoshop.

Aw well.. I'm happy now as a QA Tester in video games away from the bullshit that is the art world..

"...whereas if I managed to write a passage deliberately depicting the effect described above in a way that caused at least an echo of that echo in another's mind, that would be Art?"

Yes, I think Art is there but also may be poetic reportage, too, in this instance, which does not distract from the writing at all, imho. Exposure to another's mind is why I read. I think it depends [to me] on how the language conveys the concepts that either calls forth recognition, delight, knowledge, or some kind of horror at the writing. And all the meh in between.

BUM BOT !!

Totally safe for work, and a real piece of work.

BAD ART.

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Yes, I think Art is there but also may be poetic reportage, too, in this instance, which does not distract from the writing at all, imho.

Isn't poetic reportage writing?

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Last week, Pastor Roger Byrd of Jonesville Church of God put the sign up which reads "Obama Osama Humm Are They Brothers?" Today, the sign was taken down.

Events of the last two day have reconnected me with my sense of my outer idiot: some too-large percentage of my fellow humans.

Time to chug some Pepto...

I think reality is a farce.
Or, at the very least, a satire.

Floridian Performance Art?
more here

and here

Made with the intent of shedding light on the woes of senior citizens in the state with the largest percentage of retirees, I am sure.