On top of that, this entire thing is something only Muslims are prohibited from doing.
Believe it or not, and Christians often have trouble doing so because they've never really had this situation, Islamic law actually has the specific possibility of operating over non-Muslims.
There are specific parts of the law everyone has to follow, and specific parts that only Muslims have to follow, according to the Qu'ran.
Not depicting Mohammad is restriction for Muslims. It is not a restriction for anyone else, even other people under 'Muslim' law.
Or, to think about it the other way around, there are Islamic courts that enforce religious laws on Muslims...and secular courts that enforce law on everyone. Whereas the Western world just has the later, and when we had the former we applied it to everyone (Aka, killing Jews in the Inquisition.), so we don't quite understand that Muslim religious courts are just that...for Muslims.
If you are, for example, a Jew living in Saudi Arabia, it is entirely legal under the law to depict Mohammad. (Erm, in theory, at least.)
And, as you pointed out, it's only a restriction under some versions of Islam anyway!
Yeah, they don't seem to grasp the concept that laws can prohibit any and all actions that lead to specific results.
<sarcasm>Because we all know it's not really 'murder' that's illegal, it's every single action that can result in someone else's death that's illegal. If you invent a new way of killing someone, that's legal until they plug up that loophole.</sarcasm>
Gaining access to voice mail you're not supposed to have access to is illegal no matter how you do it, on top of any crimes you might have committed.
What you're actually trying to argue is that the meaning of art is subjective, and hence people can find that meaning,or not find that meaning, thus it is art, or not, to them.
But I have to totally disagree with that.
Art is the message put into something when created. Period.
Some people may not see it, some people may see some other message, some people might see messages in things created with no message at all. That's all well and good, but the actual message intended by the creator of the art is what makes it art.
If someone misunderstand a message, it does not change the message. If someone fails to hear a message that someone else said, there was still a message. If someone sees a message where there was none, it does not magically make it a message.
Art is exactly analogous to communications in general. It is not subjective in existence. It is an attempt at communication. Either an attempt was made, or it was not.
I said that, and then I proceeded to 'back off' a bit from that, in saying 'Although that's true, if essentially no one else can actually receive said message, it's really illogical to call it art.'
By 'technical drawing', I assumed you meant the output of drafters. Diagrams and lines and standardize symbols.
Drafting has almost no leeway in what they can and can't do, and hence the level of art is almost non-existent. Essentially, all they can do is place things on the page, and sometimes figure out what direction they're drawing from.
I would call an exploded view a technical illustration, which certainly is art.
You're talking about this, I'm talking about this. the first is art, the second is just a diagram.
Of course, designing that was art. Just not rendering the design as a standard floor plan.
- Art is anything (whether found or created) presented with the intention of evoking some reaction from an audience (which may be just the artist himself).
That's actually the definition I use, I just explain it using 'levels', because then people get confused about what 'reaction' means.
Someone saying 'Your grandmother just died' or 'Holy crap, someone's shooting at us' gets an emotional reaction, but is not art. This is because it's the 'first level' getting the reaction.
So I just try to explain that there's the normal level of communications, and then there's art, which is another level on top of that, a deliberate 'subchannel' of emotions.
However, I have to disagree a little with '(which may be just the artist himself)'. Art is communication. Communication not using the actual symbols we use to communicate (Which is, duh, just called 'communication), but communication still.
If someone wants to stand there and talk to themselves, fine, whatever, I'm not the art police.
But unless some amount of viewers can grasp some intended artistic message in something, it is not 'art' in any meaningful sense, in the same way that someone talking to themselves in a made-up language is not 'communicating' in any meaningful sense.
You can use maps as art. Just like you can use a WWII-era gas masks as art, or tree branches as art.
It's called 'interior decorating'.
It's when you have things in a room that are used beyond their purpose. With that form of art, the first level isn't really 'symbols', despite what I said above. It's 'purpose'.
And the second level is the 'feel' of the room, which is done by picking purposeful things with an eye to how they look, and even putting some things up that serve no purpose. (I doubt, for example, that you've use that Middle Earth map regularly.)
Likewise, maps can be art. Or at least, be a medium in which art is present. And at some point it stops being a 'map' and starts being 'a drawing of the land'.
However, if want to argue that all things talking about fictional stuff is art, that argument can be made, but I think it's wrong. There are two levels to art, and it's entirely possible to talk about the first level, aka, what 'actually happened', without any 'art' at all.
Did the 'view the past' tech have incredibly strong warrant requirements? And did the story end when he killed another person, who had figured it out, in the heat of the moment?
Which would be okay for him, that actually was a crime of passion, except that he realizes when the police check that incident, they'll also get his confession to the first murder? (Whereas, ironically, even if they'd suspected he premeditated the first murder, even if the murder victim had come forward with his suspicions, the police could no longer review his past for that, as he'd been cleared.)
I think you misread 'a technically good drawing' as 'a good technical drawing'.
What I meant was something like a map or a drawing describing input jacks on the back of a DVD player in the instruction manual.
A technical drawing is something like a photograph, in which there is some art in selecting considerations (like the exact angle, and how far apart things are pulled), but in general it's not very 'art-ish'.
There's not a huge amount of leeway in the first place, and hence not that many artistic decisions that can be made. Although certainly some level can be.
The point in all this is that art itself is indeed subjective.
No, the point in your examples is that some people are not able to communicate.
The inability to make a secondary meaning that others can see does not mean art is subjective.
The people in your examples are trying to create art, but what they create has failed the basic premise of art, namely, it must convey a second-level meaning.
It's like people building a car that does not actually move. Not because it is broken (That would be 'bad art'.), but because the person does not even slightly understand how cars work, and thus it has no wheels or engine.
Whether you want to call that 'failed art' or 'not art' is a semantic debate, but it doesn't make 'art' subjective. It just means people can (apparently) aim for art, and yet not understand the basic concept of what that is.
And forget those 3D stereographic images! So much work.
But I know what you mean. A video game is not 'art', it is a medium for having art in it.
But a movie, in the same way, isn't art. A movie, and a video game, are the first level of symbols...the actual literal story of what you, or someone else, did. The art is the level past that.
And there's an argument that having interactivity can make it very hard to see the art, because you have to concentrate a lot harder on the first level, and there's some truth to that.
But it's mainly true for people who aren't used to video games, and that's been true for all new art.
Go ask someone who's just learning to read about the complexities of a novel. They'll be lucky to just tell you the plot.
Likewise, people who didn't grow up with television and movies had a much harder time understanding what was going on the screen, which is why a lot of early movies contain almost no secondary meaning, and what they do have is absurdly blatant. (Almost like early video games, where you'd get a trumpet blast and confetti when you won.)
People reached the point, about a decade ago, where now-adults had grown up with the medium of video games, and were comfortable enough with it to experience another level beyond the story.
Chess and checkers are not. They do not require any physical abilities to win. They require physical abilities to play, but that's not what you win or lose on.
Pretty much every novel ever written is art, by definition. (Although there's a book-in-a-book that Arthur Dent reads at one point in HHGTTG that is hilariously not art. It's just a story of how someone lives, and then they die, with absolutely no purpose at all. Ironically, if you were to actually write that book in the real world, it would be art, as presumably you'd be trying to get some reaction from people, like bafflement or anger or laughter at the metajoke. But that's not how the aliens in the story thought.)
according to your definition, nature cannot produce art.
Nature cannot produce art, because it has no intent. Nature can't even communicate at the first level, unless it's started making symbolic representations I am unaware of.
However, someone can easily find part of nature that invokes a feeling in them, capture it symbolically (as a photograph), hopefully still invoking the feeling, and that's art.
So for those people who *are able* to grasp the second meaning, it is art, and for those who can't, it is not ? You just justified Ebert's opinion (for him, it ain't art) and nullified your position (art has an objective definition). We're back again to whatever a person calls art, is art.
No, I didn't say it wasn't art. I wasn't trying to imply that the 'art test' decided what was art. Anything that's created with the intent of multiple meanings, or 'found' and displayed with that intent is art.
Just like any collection of sounds that people make to try to convey a meaning is speech, and any collection of plant and animals prepared with the intent that people eat them is food.
Anything people can't generally figure out the secondary meaning, however, is not worth treating as art. It is speech in a secret language only you can understand, it is food that is it not possible to ingest.
Art without any communication is art that is an utter failure. It is 'art', in the same way that someone speaking nonsense is creating 'speech', or someone who made a 'tree bark salad' is creating 'food', and that should be about the level of attention we pay those artists.
Don't confuse that with bad art, which is art that does not get its intended meaning across well. Even with incredibly bad art, you can figure out what the creator was trying to say, even if they have failed. I.e., it's someone who mumbles and you miss a few words, or it's someone who burned the food...you can figure it out what was supposed to be going on, but they were not up to the task.
What you're talking about is the fact that no one can disprove something is art.
To be art, the creator of said art has to intend a secondary level in it beyond the literal.
As we can't actually tell if they really did that, or are just screwing with people, we tend to go along with whatever they say.
At least, that's what some people think. I'm with the other group, and I say "If at least 20% of viewers can't figure out your secondary meaning, it might be intended as art, but it has failed. Art must have meaning to other people, or it's just masturbation. Feel free to keep doing it, I'm not the art police, but it doesn't belong in anyone else's consideration of 'art'."
Art is communication. Second-level indirect communication, but communication. If you do not actually communicate at that level, if you are speaking nonsense that no one can parse, it's not art.
All wordplay is art. It's saying one thing literally but managing to make some sort of reference to something else.
Even stuff like deliberate alliteration and rhyming is art. The secondary thing isn't really a 'meaning', but it's meant to be enjoyed at that level, while hopefully still making sense at the first level. (It's like music often doesn't have a second 'meaning'...but there's the literal words being sung, plus the musical level with a beat and harmony and whatnot.)
However, speech to other people in general isn't stored, so people usually don't run around saying 'Hey, you just did some art which no one will ever experience again'.
Generally, when you make art, you start in a stored form, which might get 'played' or 'performed' or 'exhibited' later. If you do art 'on the fly', you're rather limiting your audience, and you better hope they're paying enough attention to even notice there's a second level.
It's like vehicles were owned by large companies, and charged you to ride them.
Some companies operated illegal vehicles for less money, but authorities often cracked down on them. (Commerical pirating operations)
Also, there were sometimes free busses, if you were going where they went. (Radio, TV.)
A lot of people could illegally walk to nearby friends, but that was very tiring, and you couldn't carry as much stuff, and you had to know someone who lived nearby. Tech advanced, bicycles were invented, whatever, but it was still a hassle. (Analog copying.)
Eventually, someone invented a near-perfect user-owned vehicle and that looked bad for the business paradigm, but companies managed to get the parts taxed, and luckily it was hard to figure out how to drive, the industry barely managed to hold things together. (The CD.)
And then...someone invented a teleporter pad. Built out of a sofa cushion and a light bulb. Costs 1/50th of a penny to send someone to another teleporter.(The internet.)
Um...holy shit. You could go anywhere in the world, instantly, with all the stuff you wanted, as long as they had a teleporter pad set up at the other end. And people who lived near important places would set up those pads on their front lawn and let people use them for free.
The road companies, of course, also set up their pads, and tried to run them for pretty cheap, sometimes. Also, they'd drive around and try to find outdoor teleporter pads, so a lot of people would hide them inside and only let their friends use them.
But, in general, the entire toll road system was dead.
This, by analogy, is what happened with sex. I mean what happened with copyright law.
By your argument, any possessions are pretty much pointless, because it is relatively easy to steal from someone if you really want to. It is a combination of ethics and the threat of punishment if caught that prevents most people from doing it and allows the legal system to work on those who still do so.
No, people want laws about theft because they don't want to be stolen from. Even thieves want laws about theft...they just don't want to get caught.
But people really have no opinion of copyright stuff, because they hold no copyrights.
Essentially, I think we agree, except you think that a) the laws can be fixed, and b) people can be educated to not violate it.
I have no idea about the latter. I think you're wrong, and copyright law was never intended to stop personal copying (the laws of physics did that) and thus can't really be intelligently used in that manner. But it's totally moot anyway.
Why? Because copyright-holding conglomerates are so stupid on this issue, and feel so entitled (Retroactive copyright extensions? Really?) that I don't foresee the former ever happening, I don't foresee the law ever becoming sane, and someday the revolt will happen and those copyright holders will be buried in the graves they, themselves, dug.
This is not a good outcome, but it's what happens when people own the law...they will manipulate it to get every dime out of it, with absolutely no long-term thought as to how it's eventually going to blow up in their face when people say 'Fuck this, we don't need these laws at all.'
It's exceptionally stupid driving-off-a-cliff mentality when it's a law that 99.999% sees no obvious result to except for them paying for things.
Actually, art is something that serves no purpose other than being itself.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
You're trying to argue that a painting 'being viewed' is somehow 'being itself', whereas a video game 'being played' is somehow serving some other purpose.
All art has the purpose of being experienced in some manner.
And art is symbols that present some meaning beyond the literal meanings of the symbols. A baby is not any form of symbol at all, it is an actual thing, and hence cannot be art.
Well, to be fair, I think people try to exclude motorsport because, they think, it doesn't take any physical activity.
They're wrong, of course, which is why it is a sport. A very equipment-dependent sport, but a sport. (A sport I personally find rather stupid, but whatever.)
I have no idea under what logic people would exclude golf. It's pretty close, logistics-wise, to half of baseball. Perhaps because it has no defense in it? But that excludes things like running. Although, for all I know, they exclude that anyway.
A sport, in my universe, is when people, using physical skill, compete using a set of rules, with an objective physical measurement of their score, like getting a ball in a hole or being the first over a line. (And, yes, motorsports requires a hell of a lot of physical skills.)
Yes, I exclude things like figure skating from 'sports'. That doesn't mean I have any sort of problem with it...it's just not a sport. It's competitive performance art.
Humans use symbols and representations of things. Normal, straight usage, such as saying 'I'm going to the store', or a map, or a whatever, is not art.
Art is when, in addition to the actual standard representation, the creator is attempting to convey another meaning. For example, 'beauty'. Or 'excitement'. Or whatever.
Art is simply what we call symbols and representations that are 'two deep'...the normal literal one, and one on top of that.
Anything else, any quibbling beyond that, is not trying to define 'art'...it's trying to define good art.
Now, there's an argument to be made that art has to be able to convey some primary meaning or some secondary meaning to least some of the viewers, and hence some non-representational art (What you called abstract, although that just means 'deliberately incorrect'...Picasso paintings are abstract.) actually fails the 'art test', as it's often not possible for people to grasp the second meaning without being told it, and there isn't any 'first meaning' beyond 'blobs of stuff'.
But that's a very very very small subset of things that are 'art', and have an amount of attention paid to them that is way out of proportion with their actual experience.
Likewise, a technically good drawing that doesn't (try to) convey anything beyond the drawing, is not in fact art, in much the same way a security camera recording is not art.
Art has a pretty clear definition, in that it's symbols of things that bring to mind other things, often emotions, but they don't have to be.
I.e., anything where you're supposed to experience it and get something beyond the actual symbols is 'art'. Be it cave drawings trying to show a good outcome and thus bring one about, or a photograph that makes you feel sorry for the person, or a video game where you're feeling excitement, or a French farce where people are running in and out of bedrooms making you laugh.
Good art is subjective. Art itself is not. Art is anything humans make that isn't diagrams and maps and C-SPAN, anything trying get across something besides a flat 'Here is what happened'.
Slashdot Mirror
On top of that, this entire thing is something only Muslims are prohibited from doing.
Believe it or not, and Christians often have trouble doing so because they've never really had this situation, Islamic law actually has the specific possibility of operating over non-Muslims.
There are specific parts of the law everyone has to follow, and specific parts that only Muslims have to follow, according to the Qu'ran.
Not depicting Mohammad is restriction for Muslims. It is not a restriction for anyone else, even other people under 'Muslim' law.
Or, to think about it the other way around, there are Islamic courts that enforce religious laws on Muslims...and secular courts that enforce law on everyone. Whereas the Western world just has the later, and when we had the former we applied it to everyone (Aka, killing Jews in the Inquisition.), so we don't quite understand that Muslim religious courts are just that...for Muslims.
If you are, for example, a Jew living in Saudi Arabia, it is entirely legal under the law to depict Mohammad. (Erm, in theory, at least.)
And, as you pointed out, it's only a restriction under some versions of Islam anyway!
Yeah, they don't seem to grasp the concept that laws can prohibit any and all actions that lead to specific results.
<sarcasm>Because we all know it's not really 'murder' that's illegal, it's every single action that can result in someone else's death that's illegal. If you invent a new way of killing someone, that's legal until they plug up that loophole.</sarcasm>
Gaining access to voice mail you're not supposed to have access to is illegal no matter how you do it, on top of any crimes you might have committed.
What you're actually trying to argue is that the meaning of art is subjective, and hence people can find that meaning,or not find that meaning, thus it is art, or not, to them.
But I have to totally disagree with that.
Art is the message put into something when created. Period.
Some people may not see it, some people may see some other message, some people might see messages in things created with no message at all. That's all well and good, but the actual message intended by the creator of the art is what makes it art.
If someone misunderstand a message, it does not change the message. If someone fails to hear a message that someone else said, there was still a message. If someone sees a message where there was none, it does not magically make it a message.
Art is exactly analogous to communications in general. It is not subjective in existence. It is an attempt at communication. Either an attempt was made, or it was not.
I said that, and then I proceeded to 'back off' a bit from that, in saying 'Although that's true, if essentially no one else can actually receive said message, it's really illogical to call it art.'
By 'technical drawing', I assumed you meant the output of drafters. Diagrams and lines and standardize symbols.
Drafting has almost no leeway in what they can and can't do, and hence the level of art is almost non-existent. Essentially, all they can do is place things on the page, and sometimes figure out what direction they're drawing from.
I would call an exploded view a technical illustration, which certainly is art.
You're talking about this, I'm talking about this. the first is art, the second is just a diagram.
Of course, designing that was art. Just not rendering the design as a standard floor plan.
Mountain climbing is a sport?
I mean, the 'competitive climbing of mountains' obviously would be a sport, I was just not aware such a thing existed at all.
Or did he mean that wall climbing thing, which I thought was called 'rock climbing'?
- Art is anything (whether found or created) presented with the intention of evoking some reaction from an audience (which may be just the artist himself).
That's actually the definition I use, I just explain it using 'levels', because then people get confused about what 'reaction' means.
Someone saying 'Your grandmother just died' or 'Holy crap, someone's shooting at us' gets an emotional reaction, but is not art. This is because it's the 'first level' getting the reaction.
So I just try to explain that there's the normal level of communications, and then there's art, which is another level on top of that, a deliberate 'subchannel' of emotions.
However, I have to disagree a little with '(which may be just the artist himself)'. Art is communication. Communication not using the actual symbols we use to communicate (Which is, duh, just called 'communication), but communication still.
If someone wants to stand there and talk to themselves, fine, whatever, I'm not the art police.
But unless some amount of viewers can grasp some intended artistic message in something, it is not 'art' in any meaningful sense, in the same way that someone talking to themselves in a made-up language is not 'communicating' in any meaningful sense.
You can use maps as art. Just like you can use a WWII-era gas masks as art, or tree branches as art.
It's called 'interior decorating'.
It's when you have things in a room that are used beyond their purpose. With that form of art, the first level isn't really 'symbols', despite what I said above. It's 'purpose'.
And the second level is the 'feel' of the room, which is done by picking purposeful things with an eye to how they look, and even putting some things up that serve no purpose. (I doubt, for example, that you've use that Middle Earth map regularly.)
Likewise, maps can be art. Or at least, be a medium in which art is present. And at some point it stops being a 'map' and starts being 'a drawing of the land'.
However, if want to argue that all things talking about fictional stuff is art, that argument can be made, but I think it's wrong. There are two levels to art, and it's entirely possible to talk about the first level, aka, what 'actually happened', without any 'art' at all.
Cave drawings are presumably saying 'Here is how the hunt should go', giving people hope it would go that way.
It is, of course, very primitive art, but still art.
Indeed.
Of course, there'll be push-back on that..just look at the fight against filming interrogations.
Did the 'view the past' tech have incredibly strong warrant requirements? And did the story end when he killed another person, who had figured it out, in the heat of the moment?
Which would be okay for him, that actually was a crime of passion, except that he realizes when the police check that incident, they'll also get his confession to the first murder? (Whereas, ironically, even if they'd suspected he premeditated the first murder, even if the murder victim had come forward with his suspicions, the police could no longer review his past for that, as he'd been cleared.)
I think you misread 'a technically good drawing' as 'a good technical drawing'.
What I meant was something like a map or a drawing describing input jacks on the back of a DVD player in the instruction manual.
A technical drawing is something like a photograph, in which there is some art in selecting considerations (like the exact angle, and how far apart things are pulled), but in general it's not very 'art-ish'.
There's not a huge amount of leeway in the first place, and hence not that many artistic decisions that can be made. Although certainly some level can be.
The point in all this is that art itself is indeed subjective.
No, the point in your examples is that some people are not able to communicate.
The inability to make a secondary meaning that others can see does not mean art is subjective.
The people in your examples are trying to create art, but what they create has failed the basic premise of art, namely, it must convey a second-level meaning.
It's like people building a car that does not actually move. Not because it is broken (That would be 'bad art'.), but because the person does not even slightly understand how cars work, and thus it has no wheels or engine.
Whether you want to call that 'failed art' or 'not art' is a semantic debate, but it doesn't make 'art' subjective. It just means people can (apparently) aim for art, and yet not understand the basic concept of what that is.
By that logical, subtitles make a film not art.
And forget those 3D stereographic images! So much work.
But I know what you mean. A video game is not 'art', it is a medium for having art in it.
But a movie, in the same way, isn't art. A movie, and a video game, are the first level of symbols...the actual literal story of what you, or someone else, did. The art is the level past that.
And there's an argument that having interactivity can make it very hard to see the art, because you have to concentrate a lot harder on the first level, and there's some truth to that.
But it's mainly true for people who aren't used to video games, and that's been true for all new art.
Go ask someone who's just learning to read about the complexities of a novel. They'll be lucky to just tell you the plot.
Likewise, people who didn't grow up with television and movies had a much harder time understanding what was going on the screen, which is why a lot of early movies contain almost no secondary meaning, and what they do have is absurdly blatant. (Almost like early video games, where you'd get a trumpet blast and confetti when you won.)
People reached the point, about a decade ago, where now-adults had grown up with the medium of video games, and were comfortable enough with it to experience another level beyond the story.
Yes, snooker and other pool games are a sport.
Chess and checkers are not. They do not require any physical abilities to win. They require physical abilities to play, but that's not what you win or lose on.
a two-penny romance novel would then be art
Pretty much every novel ever written is art, by definition. (Although there's a book-in-a-book that Arthur Dent reads at one point in HHGTTG that is hilariously not art. It's just a story of how someone lives, and then they die, with absolutely no purpose at all. Ironically, if you were to actually write that book in the real world, it would be art, as presumably you'd be trying to get some reaction from people, like bafflement or anger or laughter at the metajoke. But that's not how the aliens in the story thought.)
according to your definition, nature cannot produce art.
Nature cannot produce art, because it has no intent. Nature can't even communicate at the first level, unless it's started making symbolic representations I am unaware of.
However, someone can easily find part of nature that invokes a feeling in them, capture it symbolically (as a photograph), hopefully still invoking the feeling, and that's art.
So for those people who *are able* to grasp the second meaning, it is art, and for those who can't, it is not ? You just justified Ebert's opinion (for him, it ain't art) and nullified your position (art has an objective definition). We're back again to whatever a person calls art, is art.
No, I didn't say it wasn't art. I wasn't trying to imply that the 'art test' decided what was art. Anything that's created with the intent of multiple meanings, or 'found' and displayed with that intent is art.
Just like any collection of sounds that people make to try to convey a meaning is speech, and any collection of plant and animals prepared with the intent that people eat them is food.
Anything people can't generally figure out the secondary meaning, however, is not worth treating as art. It is speech in a secret language only you can understand, it is food that is it not possible to ingest.
Art without any communication is art that is an utter failure. It is 'art', in the same way that someone speaking nonsense is creating 'speech', or someone who made a 'tree bark salad' is creating 'food', and that should be about the level of attention we pay those artists.
Don't confuse that with bad art, which is art that does not get its intended meaning across well. Even with incredibly bad art, you can figure out what the creator was trying to say, even if they have failed. I.e., it's someone who mumbles and you miss a few words, or it's someone who burned the food...you can figure it out what was supposed to be going on, but they were not up to the task.
I'm pretty certain the law doesn't run on 'excuses'.
No.
What you're talking about is the fact that no one can disprove something is art.
To be art, the creator of said art has to intend a secondary level in it beyond the literal.
As we can't actually tell if they really did that, or are just screwing with people, we tend to go along with whatever they say.
At least, that's what some people think. I'm with the other group, and I say "If at least 20% of viewers can't figure out your secondary meaning, it might be intended as art, but it has failed. Art must have meaning to other people, or it's just masturbation. Feel free to keep doing it, I'm not the art police, but it doesn't belong in anyone else's consideration of 'art'."
Art is communication. Second-level indirect communication, but communication. If you do not actually communicate at that level, if you are speaking nonsense that no one can parse, it's not art.
Yes. Sexual innuendo is art. As are puns.
All wordplay is art. It's saying one thing literally but managing to make some sort of reference to something else.
Even stuff like deliberate alliteration and rhyming is art. The secondary thing isn't really a 'meaning', but it's meant to be enjoyed at that level, while hopefully still making sense at the first level. (It's like music often doesn't have a second 'meaning'...but there's the literal words being sung, plus the musical level with a beat and harmony and whatnot.)
However, speech to other people in general isn't stored, so people usually don't run around saying 'Hey, you just did some art which no one will ever experience again'.
Generally, when you make art, you start in a stored form, which might get 'played' or 'performed' or 'exhibited' later. If you do art 'on the fly', you're rather limiting your audience, and you better hope they're paying enough attention to even notice there's a second level.
Okay:
It's like vehicles were owned by large companies, and charged you to ride them.
Some companies operated illegal vehicles for less money, but authorities often cracked down on them. (Commerical pirating operations)
Also, there were sometimes free busses, if you were going where they went. (Radio, TV.)
A lot of people could illegally walk to nearby friends, but that was very tiring, and you couldn't carry as much stuff, and you had to know someone who lived nearby. Tech advanced, bicycles were invented, whatever, but it was still a hassle. (Analog copying.)
Eventually, someone invented a near-perfect user-owned vehicle and that looked bad for the business paradigm, but companies managed to get the parts taxed, and luckily it was hard to figure out how to drive, the industry barely managed to hold things together. (The CD.)
And then...someone invented a teleporter pad. Built out of a sofa cushion and a light bulb. Costs 1/50th of a penny to send someone to another teleporter.(The internet.)
Um...holy shit. You could go anywhere in the world, instantly, with all the stuff you wanted, as long as they had a teleporter pad set up at the other end. And people who lived near important places would set up those pads on their front lawn and let people use them for free.
The road companies, of course, also set up their pads, and tried to run them for pretty cheap, sometimes. Also, they'd drive around and try to find outdoor teleporter pads, so a lot of people would hide them inside and only let their friends use them.
But, in general, the entire toll road system was dead.
This, by analogy, is what happened with sex. I mean what happened with copyright law.
By your argument, any possessions are pretty much pointless, because it is relatively easy to steal from someone if you really want to. It is a combination of ethics and the threat of punishment if caught that prevents most people from doing it and allows the legal system to work on those who still do so.
No, people want laws about theft because they don't want to be stolen from. Even thieves want laws about theft...they just don't want to get caught.
But people really have no opinion of copyright stuff, because they hold no copyrights.
Essentially, I think we agree, except you think that a) the laws can be fixed, and b) people can be educated to not violate it.
I have no idea about the latter. I think you're wrong, and copyright law was never intended to stop personal copying (the laws of physics did that) and thus can't really be intelligently used in that manner. But it's totally moot anyway.
Why? Because copyright-holding conglomerates are so stupid on this issue, and feel so entitled (Retroactive copyright extensions? Really?) that I don't foresee the former ever happening, I don't foresee the law ever becoming sane, and someday the revolt will happen and those copyright holders will be buried in the graves they, themselves, dug.
This is not a good outcome, but it's what happens when people own the law...they will manipulate it to get every dime out of it, with absolutely no long-term thought as to how it's eventually going to blow up in their face when people say 'Fuck this, we don't need these laws at all.'
It's exceptionally stupid driving-off-a-cliff mentality when it's a law that 99.999% sees no obvious result to except for them paying for things.
Actually, art is something that serves no purpose other than being itself.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
You're trying to argue that a painting 'being viewed' is somehow 'being itself', whereas a video game 'being played' is somehow serving some other purpose.
All art has the purpose of being experienced in some manner.
And art is symbols that present some meaning beyond the literal meanings of the symbols. A baby is not any form of symbol at all, it is an actual thing, and hence cannot be art.
Well, to be fair, I think people try to exclude motorsport because, they think, it doesn't take any physical activity.
They're wrong, of course, which is why it is a sport. A very equipment-dependent sport, but a sport. (A sport I personally find rather stupid, but whatever.)
I have no idea under what logic people would exclude golf. It's pretty close, logistics-wise, to half of baseball. Perhaps because it has no defense in it? But that excludes things like running. Although, for all I know, they exclude that anyway.
A sport, in my universe, is when people, using physical skill, compete using a set of rules, with an objective physical measurement of their score, like getting a ball in a hole or being the first over a line. (And, yes, motorsports requires a hell of a lot of physical skills.)
Yes, I exclude things like figure skating from 'sports'. That doesn't mean I have any sort of problem with it...it's just not a sport. It's competitive performance art.
No. He's managed to trick you.
Art has a perfectly good objective definition.
Humans use symbols and representations of things. Normal, straight usage, such as saying 'I'm going to the store', or a map, or a whatever, is not art.
Art is when, in addition to the actual standard representation, the creator is attempting to convey another meaning. For example, 'beauty'. Or 'excitement'. Or whatever.
Art is simply what we call symbols and representations that are 'two deep'...the normal literal one, and one on top of that.
Anything else, any quibbling beyond that, is not trying to define 'art'...it's trying to define good art.
Now, there's an argument to be made that art has to be able to convey some primary meaning or some secondary meaning to least some of the viewers, and hence some non-representational art (What you called abstract, although that just means 'deliberately incorrect'...Picasso paintings are abstract.) actually fails the 'art test', as it's often not possible for people to grasp the second meaning without being told it, and there isn't any 'first meaning' beyond 'blobs of stuff'.
But that's a very very very small subset of things that are 'art', and have an amount of attention paid to them that is way out of proportion with their actual experience.
Likewise, a technically good drawing that doesn't (try to) convey anything beyond the drawing, is not in fact art, in much the same way a security camera recording is not art.
Correct.
Art has a pretty clear definition, in that it's symbols of things that bring to mind other things, often emotions, but they don't have to be.
I.e., anything where you're supposed to experience it and get something beyond the actual symbols is 'art'. Be it cave drawings trying to show a good outcome and thus bring one about, or a photograph that makes you feel sorry for the person, or a video game where you're feeling excitement, or a French farce where people are running in and out of bedrooms making you laugh.
Good art is subjective. Art itself is not. Art is anything humans make that isn't diagrams and maps and C-SPAN, anything trying get across something besides a flat 'Here is what happened'.