General Discussion : Art vs. Craft

I think that if a song moves you, that it is art.

I remember.

Is every joke which has ever made someone laugh "art?"

What about negative responses? Is a song which everyone hates "art?"

Is any song about which no one has any strong feelings whatsoever not "art?"

What about some cave paintings? Were they "art" for a while, but then weren't "art" for roughly 10,000 years, but then became "art" again once someone found them?

I can't buy it. I get the vibrations-vs-sound idea: it's just a matter of definition. So is everything. First principles may be questioned unless disallowed by the structure of the debate.

Fair enough. In the old post you called the 2-out-of-3 "another definition I've fallen back onto." I wasn't sure the two worked together, but I suppose they could. The answer to my first question could be, "It would depend on the joke," for instance.

I am curious about the cave paintings, though. Did they cease to be art whilst undiscovered? Or does the potential for them to be 2-of-the-3 allow their "vibrations" to resonate until someone finds them?

First, (and without making a big deal out of it,) I'm glad we're on civil standing.

Me too.

Second, (but out of order,) the art-as-a-verb definition was mostly a lark.

Ah, that's a shame. I rather like the possibilities it presents. Certainly it sounds silly to say something like, "I spent all weekend arting and boy are my arms tired..." (How tired are they? ... um... I'll think of a punchline later...) but I think as a conceptual shift it is certainly interesting and true in important senses, though obviously false in others.

Third, I'd like to make something explicit which I may have been just suggesting or hinting at here and there: I'm considering "art" to be the creative work and its result(s) which need not be the item as a whole.

And if we agreed that art was a verb (or at least could be one) we could say this very easily: The artist arts his art. Which I don't disagree with even if it does sound weird to say.

Yet at the same time, I'm not sure this agrees with other statements you've made, and maybe this is a confusion on my part about the terms: Does "creative work" here mean the process of creating? Whether mental or physical, does this not just refer to the "craft"? Also, does this mean that the creative work (separate from its results or items produced) on its own can be considered art, or is this statement necessarily conjoined: "art" must be both the work and the results (though not necessarily the results as a whole.) Also is the "results" limited to the physical object or display created through the creative work?

Fourth, I think when I said the bit about my assumed definition excluding "mindless" stuff, I should have been less broad. I didn't mean to say that all intentionally popular, simple, easily-digested creative work is totally artless. I meant something more along the lines of: works crafted with market factors and the proven success of other works as the guidelines on how to create salable work are in danger of not displaying true art because a work which amounts to nothing more than a cynical derivative of already extant work is not truly creative.

Sounds good, I'm all for more precise statements. But this is certainly much less definitive; "in danger of not displaying true art"... which is fine... I think I'd prefer precision over definitiveness in this case. (I'm not sure I didn't just make that word up: Is there a word that means "the state of being definitive"?)

On the whole now, I think I'm getting a much clearer picture of your argument. (and I am not quoting the rest of your response, because I agree with almost all of it and I think this underlying point is more relevant at the moment.)

Much of the disagreement in this thread, I think, has been about the "weight" of the word art. It seems to me that you are using your definition as a base-line qualification, a simple fact. The carvings in the chair are for their own sake and not a function; therefore they are art. Now, once we have established the simple fact that this is true (and only then) can we begin to discuss its value as art: Whether it is good, or bad.

And to me this seems to be the source of much of the disagreement, because we in general want to place a particular value to the word "art". We want to say "art is 'something'" by its simply qualifying as "art". And though logically we are aware that this is not necessarily true, that is still an underlying assumption about the word when we start trying to apply it to things. We assume that the saying of "this is art" has a different meaning than the saying of "this is a chair". But, both of those statements have the same "weight", they can both be true or false, and they can be modified for qualitative purposes: "this is good art" or "this is a good chair", but we can only begin to have those subjective discussions (good versus bad) if we can agree on the basic art-hood or chair-hood objectively.

And since this is an objective qualification, someone can be wrong about it and it doesn't change the objective art-hood.

So instead of your definition being used to "describe" something about what we call "art" it is simply a tool to objectively divide art things from non art things, so that we can then start to have discussions about what actually "describes" something as a piece of art. And asking if something "is" art is a simple, and basically useless, question in comparison to the questions about its quality as art, but still a necessary step for the sake of objectivity.

Now before we continue, do you agree?

@BH - though not laying as much boring on you as I'd hoped, I can think of at least one thing that exists for a single purpose, and that purpose is its own existence: the universe. And depending on how we define "exists" and "purpose" I could probably come up with an infinitude more. Now certainly believers in intelligent design or divine creation may disagree, but this being an artistic debate and not a cosmological one, I think the example stands. (though I suppose it does still depend somewhat on how we define "exists" and "purpose"...)

wtf are you nerds on about. Go get a drink for christ's sake.

we can only begin to have those subjective discussions (good versus bad) if we can agree on the basic art-hood or chair-hood objectively.

if we do agree on your definition of art, then we can use it in more meaningful ways beside the usual colloquial use of "art is something good/that I like".

Yes to both. I've been alive for a while and people have talked about art and things they consider to be art, and it's not like I've been sweating the definition the whole time, but I saw that someone else had started the thread so I chipped in and it sort of snowballed.

The problem with an objective view of the "art" itself is, of course, that it is limited by our knowledge of that object. If someone finds an ancient artifact and we don't know what it's for, we don't know what part of it is functional and what isn't, we can't call it art with absolute certainty. An expert could make a guess, and so long as his guess was presented as such, there would be nothing wrong with that. But for contemporary art and art from well-documented time periods, we can pretty well establish what qualifies as art provided we do not disallow the artist and the nature of the work to be considered as factors. The good and bad is another question, as you say, because art is not automatically more or less good than anything.

____

So far as "creative work" goes: I'm sure I've used it to mean both the action and the result. "Work" can be action or result; whether it is creative, well --- I've used "create" and "make" and probably "produce," and I've referred to things as "creative" and "truly creative" as though there were degrees of creativity.

If I may use examples:

1. a man who carves a block of wood into his own stylized image of an elephant has not created the matter (the wood, and therefore we could say the statue is not absolutely original [using "original" in the most literal sense]) but he has created the manifest design (which would be art;) he made a carving with a design of his own creation.
2. A man who follows someone else's needle-point pattern and produces a decoration on a store-bought pillowcase has not created anything, but he made a picture appear on his pillowcase.

if there are no ears around (regardless of what they are attached to--human or nonhuman) connected to brains--there is no sound

Does that mean vibrations are not sound unless they are strong enough to register to the ear? So one particular instance of something vibrating is a sound to someone with good hearing but not to someone who is hard of hearing? If we have a microphone attached to an amplifier which is itself attached to a speaker, do vibrations become sounds?

Scientific definitions of "sound" account for the fact that people have limited hearing range (meaning not every vibration will register.)

The fact is there are ears and so long as people exist there will be; definitions of "sound" assume the existence of ears, which is not an illogical stretch given the fact they exist.

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.  ---  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound

The absolute threshold of hearing (ATH) is the minimum sound level of a pure tone that an average ear with normal hearing can hear with no other sound present.  ---  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_hearing

I wasn't making any statements about how sound related or doesn't relate to art. I was saying that sound is defined by being heard, otherwise it is simply a vibration. So any time any one talks about the "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it" question, they are forgetting that sound only exists as a thing when it is heard.

So if no one is around to hear it, there is no sound. It is that simple. Now, chances are there are wild animals with ears, but if literally no one, including animals were around, there would be no sound. Much like electricity won't light a room without a lightbulb, vibrations cannot make sounds without an ear to convert it.

I am kind of baffled by your post.

Vibrations must be converted to be sound. Just like electricity must be converted to be light.

I'm not talking about art...at all. As I clearly stated in the above post. I am saying the "tree falling in the woods" riddle is silly.

But, if you must...you can continue arguing it.

Do you dispute the definition I'm quoting for the third time now --

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.

-- or are you just trying to get me goat?

Vibrations must be converted to be sound. Just like electricity must be converted to be light.

I don't think that works. Light occurs even without electricity (eg fire) and an electrical storm produces lightning even without a lightbulb. Sound waves travel through stuff; if they happen to travel through our eardrums, we experience the sensation we call "sound." Does "light" only happen when concentrations of photons (or whatever) enter an eyeball?

(And I know you're not actively arguing about art, but I was forming my replies with the greater context in mind.)

While your arguments about light are correct, I don't think they apply to sound. That was my mistake and I'll own it.

Sound is produced when vibrations interact with the cilia in the ear drum. Before that happens, there is only vibrations. 

From here: http://www.sc.edu/ehs/Training/Noise/hearing.htm

SOUND WAVES enter the ear canal and cause the eardrum to vibrate.
VIBRATIONS pass through 3 connected bones in the middle ear
This motion SETS FLUID MOVING in the inner ear.
Moving fluid bends thousands of delicate hair-like cells which convert the vibrations into NERVE IMPULSES.
Nerve impulses are CARRIED to the brain by the auditory nerve
In the brain, these impulses are CONVERTED into what we "hear" as sound.

FWIW, just in case you don't click the link, the emphasis is theirs, not mine. I don't want to come across as pounding certain words in.

So I suppose you could argue that sound exists as soundwaves before they are converted, but I think that's a simplification. Without the conversion, soundwaves are simply disturbances and vibrations.

I miss arguing.

Oh no you don't Mister J.Y. 

Use your verbiage to write a story, battle someone if you want to fight. 

The toll it took on people's personal lives

hahahahaha

But I disagree that it went nowhere.

I don't expect a response on this point.

(I can't really be offended, because I accused someone else of "jacking it off" in this very thread.)

Spare time? Don't we all, if we're here? I actually like (trying) to argue about stuff like this; ideas are interesting to me. Potshots from people who don't care are to be expected.

That statement of mine which you bring up (out of context) was mostly frivolous. And I've been operating on the assumption you don't actually expect me to try and record such an exchange just because you said so.

I like the heart on the ass of the bear, that should be your next tattoo Howie 

It may have started as a discussion. At some point, it became less about exchanging ideas and more about "being right."  It became, as you said, an argument.  

You threw down more than a few thousand words in this thing, and then you bumped it inciting how much you "miss arguing."

So is this possibly not so much about art and maybe a little more about giving yourself something to do?

"Do you feel like my activity in this thread is somehow detrimental to the community here?"

No, but it might be a waste of your time...time that could be spent on the novel or whatever it is that you're working on. I guess it's a matter of do you want 10,000 words of forum posts or 10,000 words of writing? When does a simple discussion transition into time wasted?

This is why LitReactor has so many members that actually don't post. They'd rather write than argue/discuss/bullshit about art.

But hey, the forum is here for you to post on.  If that's what you want to do then that's on you.  It's by no means a detriment to the community, however, if you have some kind of a goal or project that you're looking to finish, it might be a detriment to yourself.

Some of the best advice I've gotten was: don't waste your own time.

That could mean a video game, a movie, and yes, posting super lengthy things about art on a writers' forum.

"Are you merely concerned that I (J. Y.) am wasting my life?"

Yes. You should get out more.

"Is one more short story really of more value than rhetoric?"

Depends on the quality of the story and the value of the rhetoric. I'd have an easier time publishing the story over a series of forum posts though.

Again, it's your time. You may look back on these threads and consider them to be some of the most insightful and thought-provoking words you ever put down. You may also look back and say, "God, I spent a lot of time posting in forums when I could have been writing and trying to further my career."

"It's my general impression this place is geared towards advice and instruction from a careerist point of view."

Exactly. Many of us, myself included, want to do this for a living and are taking the necessary steps to get there. Perhaps that's just not your bag.