Slashdot Mirror
Understanding Art for Geeks
HeadMounted found a great little flickr collection of art for geeks where helpful designers have provided you with useful hints to help you better comprehend the confusing art world. Or not. Some of them are very clever.
Unless looking at breasts is ok where you work, that is.
I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, I got a few chuckles out of it.
But I was hoping for more of something like "This work is important because it was the first use of x" where x is a technique that is then explained in mathematical detail. Or "this looks good because of the use of negative space which happens to be expressable as the function y".
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I think that the creator of this series has done an *excellent* job, in a very funny and original way, of explaining why these particular works are regarded so highly in the art community (not by everyone, of course, but in general).
Kudos to the author of the series!
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
More like art for people who waste enough time on the internet to know the current memes and cliches.
xkcd is true art for geeks. And yes, comics are an art. There's drawing involved.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
Another strand of the study revolves about the construction of a social canon (the 'great' works of genius and orginality) and how it reflects the social shifts in power. One way of understanding this is the common complaint amongst film afficiandos that the academy awards are a popularity contest and that, over and above the wonderful movies, Speilberg has been a brand and is a socio-economic construction.
In short, the appreciation of art is much more than aesthetics and more than meets the eye. In fact, it engages the intellect and a deep appreciation involves a broad understanding of the social historical context.
...in many cases at least. These seem to me to valid art - or at least as valid as Duchamp or Warhol. Certainly, they are considerably more entertaining, exhibit more social commentary, and are more thought provoking than many of the originals do today -- although they were once thought provoking themselves.
The wikipedia one is masterful. It's occurred to me for a few years that Gallileo is the perfect example of why wikipedia is flawed. (among many other potential examples of free individual thought)
Yes, it's "something" you're missing, not a plugin.
Fan: So do you like draw this or something?
Banky: I ink it and I'm also the colorist. The guy next to me draws it, but we both came up with the characters. Next...
Fan: (snidely) What does that mean, you ink it?
Banky: Well, it means that Holden draws the pictures in pencil, and he gives it to me to go over in ink. Next...
Fan: So basically you just trace.
Banky: It's eh...it's not tracing, alright? I add depth and shading to give the image more definition. Only then does the drawing truely take shape.
Fan: No-no-no-no, you go over what he draws with a pen. That's tracing.
Banky: Not really. Next...
Fan: (To next guy in the line) Hey man, let me ask you something. If somebody draws something, and you draw the exact same thing like, right on top of it, without going outside the original designated art, what do you call it?
Other Fan: I dunno man, tracing?
Fan: (Laughing, to Banky) See?!
Banky: (Losing patience, to Other Fan) You want your book signed or what?
Fan: Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey, don't get all testy with him just because you got a problem with your station in life!
Banky: Oh, I'm secure with what I do.
Fan: Then just say it...you're a tracer!
Banky: (To Other Fan) How should I sign this?
Other Fan: I don't want you to sign it man, I want the guy who draws Bluntman & Chronic to sign it. You're just a tracer.
Fan: Tell him, little shaver.Collector: You're mucking with a G, you fuckin' tracer.
Banky: I'll trace a chalk line around your dead fucking body, you fuck!
Holden: [to Security Guards] Will you get him out of here!
Collector: [as he's being dragged away by Security Guard] Hey wait a second! He jumped me, you fucking tracer!
Banky: YOUR MOTHER'S A TRACER!
You're missing something, personally, I'm afraid. The picture was a painting on wood that had been damaged by the passage of time, with large patches of paint having completely flaked off. The joke was that the flaked-off patches had all been enclosed in "broken image" frames.
"Art is not simply something that someone made that you like to look at/listen to/read/etc."
Yeah, actually it is. That is exactly why so many people that are into "Art" sound like such pompous asses. It is also why people have such a hard time defining what is "Art". They are obsessed with trying to make it more than it is. They want the stuff THEY like to look at to be art, and the stuff that they don't like to look at to not be art.
They only thing I would add to your definition is that it is something that someone intentionally made.
Here are some of my favorite artists, with works that other slashdotters might enjoy:
1. Brian Dettmer : Dettmer reshapes and reforms older media like old textbooks, technical manuals, cassette tapes, and dictionaries, to make really fascinating derivative works. My favorites are his carved books, many of which are viewable here.
2. Jason Salavon : Salavon uses software to make art out of preexisting information, with some diverse and surprising work. His work is all displayed on his website.
3. Ai Kijima : Kijima recycles original bed sheets, table cloths, kimonos, and other fabrics to make colorful quilted collages, many of which use pop culture icons. Her work is viewable on her website.
Enjoy.
No, actually it isn't. And never has been.
No, so many people that are into "Art" sound like pompous asses because of the increasingly divide between Art and the general public. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the biggest is a the loss of widely shared culture and iconography over the last century-and-some.
No, they are having such a hard time - because they were raised without a solid definition and understanding, see "loss of widely shared culture and iconography".
You must be that guy I met last week at the Geek conference. All I did was try to ask him where the restrooms were, and he starts ranting about some grammatical error I made. Then he tells me the differences between bathroom, restrooms, lavoraties and water closets. Then he sees that I'm wearing a FreeBSD shirt, and starts droning on an on about how FreeBSD really isn't free because it isn't GPL, and how he wanted to use it but it needed a primary partition, and he didn't want to delete his ReactOS install to try it out, and why they really need to port the base system to ports. Eventually I had to pee on his shoes.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!