Objective quality in purely subjective things

[Birdjaguar]

Time to define "art".

 

[Gori the Grey]

Good luck with that.

Hygro's more focused initial question will probably lead to more interesting results overall.

But threads go where they do.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, you are. In the art of photography, you are. What you have created is that framing.

That is what that art gives you the power to create: a framing of otherwise visible material.

You have to stop thinking so much about the items captured in the photograph and the fact that they are visible independently of the photograph.

Yes, you are the creator of the framing. Now ask yourself if what is viewed is the framing or what was framed; typically it's the latter.
I think that you mistook my post for claiming that the person doing the framing has no artistic merit, but I didn't say that at all; I gave examples of how framing is artistic yet still distinct from creation, after all you can easily see how the creator of something can also frame it, while it's not always true the other way around=> that implies a hierarchy.

 

[Angst]

This is my art now, then:

View attachment 690785

not sure whether it's yours, but - yes, it's art now. why not?

wanted to touch on something quickly, have a lot of thoughts (esp as we're getting into ambient theory and i might need to dust off some old books if i can find them), but on the frame

the frame is two things and you and gori may be talking past each other, and you know the theory i believe, but i'm still going to run through the position i'm coming from. there's the actual physicality of the frame, and putting something in a frame, and then there's naturally framing in itself, which can be applied well past photography. both are related but the framing does not have to be a frame. the scene photographer indeed draws a frame about something of sorts and makes a material that draws this frame around something they may or may not have created. such a frame then predisposes an observer to experience the scene through a mode of aesthetic experience. this happens because we have built the "language" of experiencing "art" through such a lens. simply, because it's framed intentionally, the viewer will treat it as art and engage with it as such. whether it then is succesful depends on a number of factors (that i admittedly know very little about in its material formal structures, my background is more one of music and literature).

john cage, i think it was, had an interesting position here (when talking about what the hell was happening with 4'33" - to people that don't know, 4'33" is a piece of outright silence for that duration - 4'33" may not be good, but it's important because it centers the frame). he liked to - and suggested others to - take a walk on the street and just take in the sounds of the world as active, engaged listening. in a sense, he liked to make the frame at will. the photographer in a sense is a middle man of creating the frame, and almost all art uses one such middle man yes - but the art then happens after the frame has been chosen. cage just noticed you can skip the middle man and activate the mode of engagement on your own. and important thing here is that while we don't know what art is, we all know what it feels like to feel that we're looking at art during "art mode". it just feels a certain way.

(if it wasn't cage, it was one of the other ambient guys or the minimalists)

 

[Birdjaguar]

Good luck with that.

Hygro's more focused initial question will probably lead to more interesting results overall.

But threads go where they do.

Yes, that is why I did not offer one. But your conversation above is removed from @Hygro 's objectivity and into the specifics of whether a random picture of other peoples words is art. Raising the question of whether just "framing" stuff is sufficient to be art.

 

[Angst]

@Gori the Grey

oh, i may have misread. so: we're pinning creators of pieces? like who creates the art when making a frame of something?

all my position is there is that it only matters who created the art when it comes to genre framing. some genres do not really involve the creators at all (beyond that some people may be skilled in choosing the right frames).

in any case, what's shown in the frame is a different question from what the frame is, which is a different question from who did the framing, in both material nature and importance to the piece. in some genres, that these things overlap (which they can still do) is essential to that particular engagement's experience.

 

[Kyriakos]

not sure whether it's yours, but - yes, it's art now. why not?

wanted to touch on something quickly, have a lot of thoughts (esp as we're getting into ambient theory and i might need to dust off some old books if i can find them), but on the frame

the frame is two things and you and gori may be talking past each other, and you know the theory i believe, but i'm still going to run through the position i'm coming from. there's the actual physicality of the frame, and putting something in a frame, and then there's naturally framing in itself, which can be applied well past photography. both are related but the framing does not have to be a frame. the scene photographer indeed draws a frame about something of sorts and makes a material that draws this frame around something they may or may not have created. such a frame then predisposes an observer to experience the scene through a mode of aesthetic experience. this happens because we have built the "language" of experiencing "art" through such a lens. simply, because it's framed intentionally, the viewer will treat it as art and engage with it as such. whether it then is succesful depends on a number of factors (that i admittedly know very little about in its material formal structures, my background is more one of music and literature).

john cage, i think it was, had an interesting position here (when talking about what the hell was happening with 4'33" - to people that don't know, 4'33" is a piece of outright silence for that duration - 4'33" may not be good, but it's important because it centers the frame). he liked to - and suggested others to - take a walk on the street and just take in the sounds of the world as active, engaged listening. in a sense, he liked to make the frame at will. the photographer in a sense is a middle man of creating the frame, and almost all art uses one such middle man yes - but the art then happens after the frame has been chosen. cage just noticed you can skip the middle man and activate the mode of engagement on your own. and important thing here is that while we don't know what art is, we all know what it feels like to feel that we're looking at art during "art mode". it just feels a certain way.

(if it wasn't cage, it was one of the other ambient guys or the minimalists)

There's photography in film-making, as a distinct form. The person in charge of photography will select both the framing and the lighting/color of scenes for maximum effect, cohesiveness or juxtaposition. Now if the movie director did all that, it would be a good example of the person not just framing, but creating what is to be framed and then optimizing it
But I am not sure we are ready to move to that part, given we have a discussion about a much more important/overall distinction. In film, of course, part of your scene is also not practically created by you (eg the actors), but you still directed their posture/clothing etc. Can't do that with taking a photo of an execution - and then one can compare that to the famous painting by Goya.

 

[Angst]

Good luck with that.

Hygro's more focused initial question will probably lead to more interesting results overall.

But threads go where they do.

for me, i think the issue's also that objective criteria for art analysis are hard to generalize the way art works; it's easier to make a case study and then go over what's going on there, and then discuss the formal structures that have predictive power for when similar things are succesful within similar genres. incidentally, the rap battle makes sense as something to talk about when figuring out what encompasses succesful rap battles.

it's just that, personally, i know little about rap, but still have stuff to say in the thread, so i'm expecting myself to constantly derailing it while not doing so at the same time imho. x)

 

[Angst]

There's photography in film-making, as a distinct form. The person in charge of photography will select both the framing and the lighting/color of scenes for maximum effect, cohesiveness or juxtaposition. Now if the movie director did all that, it would be a good example of the person not just framing, but creating what is to be framed and then optimizing it
But I am not sure we are ready to move to that part, given we have a discussion about a much more important/overall distinction. In film, of course, part of your scene is also not practically created by you (eg the actors), but you still directed their posture/clothing etc. Can't do that with taking a photo of an execution - and then one can compare that to the famous painting by Goya.

yea i think i misread what i can gather is a discussion about ownership/personhood behind art as a question of what framing is. my bad.

 

[Hygro]

Must art not be the opposite of social entropy? A sort of emotional or experiential synchronization? If we really pare it down. I like to think of it in terms of a resonance, the more I think about it.

What are we defining as social entropy?

I'm struggling with if something can be unintentional art. Snowflakes are beautiful. Mountain ranges, too. But a mountain range isn't art except in the divine sense, whereas a particular framing photograph of the mountain might be, despite being ultimately a pale recreation. What's behind the lens seems to be the thing at point there, moreso than the viewer.

So yeah, the mountain isn't art. But it's divinely beautiful in the way that informs us of this concept of "objective beauty." that is subjectively experienced. These natural scenes inspire and demonstrate what art does as well, but are different. Sort of "the source".

It can do what art does for a person, and can do it better. It's not art, but not only art has that beauty. Maybe anything could, and some things really do.

 

[Kyriakos]

The mountain can have an effect similar to art. I don't recall whose theory it is (and imo it's not very likely, but... artistic itself ) but there was the claim that Sparta did not create imposing buildings (like Athens or others) partly because they had mount Taygetos towering over their city.
Related is the idea that a chasm isn't a symbol of power, but a rise (eg a skyscraper) is. Most ancient cities were built amphitheatrically, yet Sparta had the mountain next to it.

 

[Angst]

with the mountain, imo we return to the discrepancy of language; noone made the mountain art (in that no human arranged the material as an art piece; then it's not "making" art), but we can definitely experience the mountain through the lens of art, as art (appreciating it as an aesthetic experience, then it's "making" art). there's art as the material and art as the engagement.

 

[Hygro]

That's really interesting and I see what @kyr they're getting at.

But also, excuses excuses the Spartans lacked the social structure for great works.

But also, why didn't they need them? (Mountain?)

 

[Kyriakos]

This isn't a pipe, nor mount Taygetos:

with the mountain, imo we return to the discrepancy of language; noone made the mountain art (in that no human arranged the material as an art piece; then it's not "making" art), but we can definitely experience the mountain through the lens of art, as art (appreciating it as an aesthetic experience, then it's "making" art). there's art as the material and art as the engagement.

The mind will treat a photo of a mountain in many ways (usually not in all) the same as it would with the mountain view irl. I can easily imagine that most people, even if they were moving about, hiking in that spot, would retain an image cored on the actual top far away, despite the mountain encompassing massive areas.

 

[Hygro]

But also, why didn't they need them? (Mountain?)

Civilization is largely the failure to live wild.

 

[Kyriakos]

Civilization is largely the failure to live wild.

Sparta did start as a cultural center - one of the "Seven Sages" of ancient Greece, in a list compiled in the 7th century BC, was Chilon of Sparta. It then deviated and became ultra militaristic, with a myth that it had to dominate all others because otherwise it would be destroyed by them.
In a famous epigram by Simonides, commemorating Sparta's victory against Athens (sinking of the athenian fleet), there is a reference to "Sparta [] of the high choruses".

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm having a hard time going upstream of entropy to define it. So entropy is systemic decay, the opposite of synchrony, right? We then tend to think of entropy in terms of either unity or vacuum, either one being an expression of stasis. So social entropy would be the breakdown of the social interaction towards the point(s) where there is no meaningful synchrony, the parties are unmoved by each other?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Now ask yourself if what is viewed is the framing or what was framed

People who appreciate photography as an art view the framing. That is precisely what they look at in order to determine whether the photograph has artistic merit. They are aware that they could go stand in a particular spot and see the same object that is depicted in the photo. They ask themselves whether that object is framed interestingly in the shot.

after all you can easily see how the creator of something can also frame it

I cannot, in fact, easily see this.

oh, i may have misread

You and I aren't talking. I wish we were. I'm just swatting Kyr for stupid things he's saying about the art of photography. Framing, as I'm using the term in that context, is a technical term from the art of photography, not a theoretical term from aesthetics.

it's just that, personally, i know little about rap

Don't worry. I'm dropping the rap. I thought it would make for a good case study, given the tread's OP.

But your conversation above is removed from @Hygro 's objectivity and into the specifics of whether a random picture of other peoples words is art.

That's because the thread has drifted away from Hygro's interesting initial question.

 

[Kyriakos]

People who appreciate photography as an art view the framing. That is precisely what they look at in order to determine whether the photograph has artistic merit. They are aware that they could go stand in a particular spot and see the same object that is depicted in the photo. They ask themselves whether that object is framed interestingly in the shot.

Is this different than claiming "people who appreciate (eg) writing view x and not y"? Art can have an effect due to many different reasons and/or their interconnections. You also inevitably mentally frame it yourself. It'd be relatively rare to have the art be defined by the specific external framing particularities (you can find people discussing the effect of framing material, angle, size etc, but it can't realistically be argued that a photo you personally liked would become nothing with just any framing changes; the changes would need to be severe).

 

[Angst]

I'm having a hard time going upstream of entropy to define it. So entropy is systemic decay, the opposite of synchrony, right? We then tend to think of entropy in terms of either unity or vacuum, either one being an expression of stasis. So social entropy would be the breakdown of the social interaction towards the point(s) where there is no meaningful synchrony, the parties are unmoved by each other?

there's a bunch of side discussions in this thread, so i haven't quite followed this. let's try.

what do you mean by entropy exactly? is it like the same space as dilution or decay or other notions like that around changes in taste? because to aesthetics, the problem is not loss of value, but change in tastes. i think the notion of entropy is unhelpful. the change is just that, change.

in a sense, there is a loss of one set of value (in that a framing becomes less emphasized, and as such there's less "valuing" of material criteria that framing highlights; when you stop looking at something within art, it's something you stop looking at, and in a sense, it then disappears), but it's not like people stop making & liking art. like, ever.

the thing is, this function always exists, and because we have grown up with & into certain genre framings, it is always felt as value loss. there are also times where this happens at different paces, which would mean yes, sometimes this "entropy" is faster.

but... that's not really relevant either. art doesn't have a core point of countering such entropy. thinking that is externalizing the effect of (many) genres that have that core appeal. we're talking objectivity/universality for this thread, which means we have to look at general principles about what art is and does rather than what we want it to do. and the point of art is to engage the observer - whether the force of the engagement is destructive or absurd isn't important, then. so when looking into the art, we look at why it works for one such observer. that is the core principle. after that, we can make statements and judgments about the healthiness of engaging with the art - but that's kind of leaving the discipline of aesthetics and getting into other territory. kind of. like ---

valka's incidental cigarette example is a good one to bring up again. the aesthetician can detail what happens during the mode of engagement, and i can discuss it in detail during a paper, but i will never, EVER, suggest that anyone smokes. then we get into the field of medicine and in extension economy and such.

and those other fields of knowledge can also be integral to a piece! a drawing of a cigarette calls on other fields of knowledge to substantiate the experience. the experience of smoking a cigarette can also use such structures. but it's not inherent to the mode of art, as in capital A Art.