Shameless plug I suppose after the Void coming up but another game by Ice-Pick Lodge that I suppose I would also consider "art" to be Pathologic. Yes it is flawed what with being mired with a shoddy translation (oddly enough, the poor translation sometimes adds to the completely surreal nature of the game, once you figure out what you're supposed to be doing). It's very different from the Void but is still an absolutely amazing game, minor issues aside. I'd potentially also throw my hat in for the Path. Yes there's not a whole lot of "game" to it but its presentation, atmosphere and metaphoric way of handling the Little Red Riding Hood story sits nicely with me (plus much like both Pathologic and the Void it has an amazing soundtrack).

Interactive exhibits have been common place in art galleries for decades and weren't unheard of prior. If that is considered art, then why not Ultima V? Why not Thief 2?

If you ask me, "art" does not need to be "complex" or "classy" in order to be art; it is art simply by merit of being a tangible form of creative expression. What makes something "art" are the things that draw you to it. Although different from say, movies, a video game can establish and develop worlds and characters as well as any other medium. If that's not art, that's at least worth merit.

fart wrote:

My own first try at defining art would be to say that art is an expression in some medium that is designed by an intelligent being to produce an aesthetic experience in an intelligent being.  I think this definition takes care of the specific problem areas from before: clouds are not designed by an intelligent being, and a mathematical proof is not designed to produce an aesthetic response, so these things aren't art; but Realist portraits and avant-garde urinals evince self-expression by their choice of subject and try to induce, respectively, an aesthetic appreciation of the painting's trueness to life, and an aesthetically provocative form of confusion or rebellion, so these things are art.  This definition would also include cooking as a form of art -- even cooking from a recipe, where the self-expression comes from your choice of recipe.

By that definition, video games certainly are art -- but so is almost everything else, as long as it's made by a human being to emotionally affect human beings, from love letters to advertisements, from shoes to MySpace pages, from action figures to nicely trimmed lawns.  Is all that stuff really art?  So I don't know how well my definition really captures what we mean by art; certainly it doesn't do a very good job distinguishing core arts like painting and music from edge cases like lawns.

Yeah I'm pretty much stealing this.  And all those things mentioned in italics I would consider art, but much like video games, in some circumstances by no means high art.  After all, to say something is art is not to say that it is pretty, or even well crafted.  Shitty pencil drawings on Deviantart of OC Sonic characters are most certainly art, but no one is saying that they are good art.  All (or at least the vast majority) video games fulfill Sat's criteria, but some do it well and others do not, sometimes regardless of effort involved.

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (01-16-2013 03:47:39 PM)

Florence, I admire the effort to come up with a narrower definition of art than mine!  But I don't think I've completely understood the definition you're proposing -- especially what you mean by "outside of normal reality" -- so let me ask a couple questions to clarify!

Florence's definition of art wrote:

Art is something that (1) shows you what is not there (in the present sense and the figurative), (2) takes you outside of normal reality and (3) is created by another person(s).

To begin with, what about those Realist still lifes I mentioned?  It seems to me like they fail (2).  There's nothing about a still life, drawn true to life, that takes you outside of reality, unless you just mean that you're paying attention to the painting instead of the world around you, in which case a pencil can take you outside of reality if you fidget with it instead of paying attention to the lecture.

Cooking's main art is in its presentation. Beans wouldn't make great art (but some hipsters dig that), but a well-prepared dish with fancy leaves and sauce swirls could edge culinary presentation towards art, in the classical sense.

How do fancy leaves and sauce swirls show you what is not there or take you outside of normal reality?    What alternate reality do you see in a salad?

HRM Duchamp did that urinal during his Dadaist period while in New York. New York's Dada was more ironic and lacking message than the European Dada, which focused on disillusionment. Would that not debunk some of their stuff, then?

At the time, Duchamp's urinal was certainly a controversial piece, precisely because it raised the question of what art is.  It's likely that Duchamp submitted it in an ironic or iconoclastic spirit precisely in order to provoke people into asking this kind of question.  But by today it's pretty well accepted that Fountain was not only art, but great art.  It seems to have been very successful at inciting aesthetic outrage, which is enough to satisfy my definition.  Does Fountain satisfy your definition?  Can a urinal take you outside of normal reality?  (Not that you have to agree with the consensus of art historians!)

The problem is that math doesn't have an aspect of self-expression. It's end goal is to realize something about a problem, to define. I think that's where math fails to be art.

But self-expression wasn't part of your definition.  Is there a part 4 of your definition?

The difference? Rhythm, meter, rhyme. Shakey-poo eloquently sewed together words to bring one out of normal reality just ever so slightly. People didn't normally talk in rhymes back then. Would've been fucking awesome if they did, but they didn't. Granted, while this may seem like a small distinction, it kind of matters.

So you don't believe that free verse without rhyme or meter is art?  Or if free verse brings you out of reality, where is the line between that and a love letter?  If a love letter says "I love you more than Captain Picard loves Earl Grey tea," which brings you out of reality into science fiction, does that make the love letter art, or is it just really sweet?  Again, I don't think I really understand what you mean by "outside of normal reality."

Okay, fair is fair -- now I need to talk about my definition, because I don't think you understood me either!

My proposed definition of art wrote:

Art is an expression in some medium that is designed by an intelligent being to produce an aesthetic experience in an intelligent being.

Florence wrote:

By your definition, anything man-made created to affect human beings emotionally is art. That takes out shoes (unless they're frescos or something), action figures (while man-made, don't elicit an emotional appeal at face value), lawns (unless there's a damn good explanation), advertisements [man-made, but don't appeal to emotions 100% (videographer myself, made ads, studied it, and, as a panel, we've found ads do pathos-by-association rather than direct appeal)], MySpace pages (man-made, but don't have that face-value pathos). Love letters are where it gets tricky with yours. By not covering the "escapist" idea and the "product of imagination" bits, it lets these things through.

I think the confusion is coming from the phrase "an aesthetic experience," which I define very broadly because I don't want to let any forms of art slip through the cracks.  Roughly, I mean that your emotions are moved by something you perceive with your senses or apprehend with your judgment.  Seeing a pair of new shoes and anticipating how they will feel when your feet slide into them for the first time is an aesthetic experience.  Seeing a Batman action figure and viscerally wanting to grab it off the shelf because you want to make him do battle with your cat is an aesthetic experience.  Watching an ad for a beauty product and feeling insecure because you don't look like the people in the ad is an aesthetic experience.  The shoes, action figure, and ad were all designed with the intention of making you have these experiences, or similar ones.  That makes them art under my definition (which I've already admitted is a little broader than I'm comfortable with).  I certainly don't want to exclude pathos-by-association from aesthetic experiences, since most art -- including all instrumental music, for instance -- is associative and not a direct appeal!

Now here's the punchline.  I think it's possible that when you say "takes you outside of normal reality," you mean almost exactly the same thing I mean when I say "produces an aesthetic experience."  I can't think of any other reason why you're willing to call a salad art under your definition.  Let me put it to you this way, and if you agree then I think our definitions are almost exactly the same.  Let's say I keep my lawn carefully groomed because, when my neighbors pass by, I want them to look at the lawn and smell the grass clippings and smile and say to themselves "this is a nice neighborhood to live in."  That's an aesthetic experience, so for my definition, that's enough for art.  What does your definition say?  Are my neighbors briefly taken outside of normal reality by my groundskeeping?

Last edited by satyreyes (01-16-2013 06:40:36 PM)

bigbooties wrote:

To begin with, what about those Realist still lifes I mentioned?  It seems to me like they fail (2).  There's nothing about a still life, drawn true to life, that takes you outside of reality, unless you just mean that you're paying attention to the painting instead of the world around you, in which case a pencil can take you outside of reality if you fidget with it instead of paying attention to the lecture.

Still life depicts something that is not there in the present. However, they could only be escapist if they take someone out of the present and into a different mindset, perhaps. Still life might be the hardest to define by my definitions.

SirLancelot wrote:

How do fancy leaves and sauce swirls show you what is not there or take you outside of normal reality?    What alternate reality do you see in a salad?

Problemo Numero Two. The sauce swirls and fancy leaves are just pleasing to the eye, so there's beauty in it. So maybe I was wrong in thinking that cooking is art, by my definitions.

Pasatryization wrote:

At the time, Duchamp's urinal was certainly a controversial piece, precisely because it raised the question of what art is.  It's likely that Duchamp submitted it in an ironic or iconoclastic spirit precisely in order to provoke people into asking this kind of question.  But by today it's pretty well accepted that Fountain was not only art, but great art.  It seems to have been very successful at inciting aesthetic outrage, which is enough to satisfy my definition.  Does Fountain satisfy your definition?  Can a urinal take you outside of normal reality?  (Not that you have to agree with the consensus of art historians!)

Does "Fountain" satisfy my definition? Yes. Made by someone else (technically), escapist in nature (thinking outside the cake), and shows you something that isn't there.

Do I like "Fountain" and the fact that it fits my definition? Hell no. It's degrading to art, in my opinion. He turned a urinal on its back and signed it. Yes, it made people question what art is, but does something that questions the current state of art obtain art status?

Ol'BlueEyes wrote:

But self-expression wasn't part of your definition.  Is there a part 4 of your definition?

There's just a big problem with trying to define art in an artsy way. Being semi-poetic makes things harder to describe logically.

satyreyes wrote:

So you don't believe that free verse without rhyme or meter is art?  Or if free verse brings you out of reality, where is the line between that and a love letter?  If a love letter says "I love you more than Captain Picard loves Earl Grey tea," which brings you out of reality into science fiction, does that make the love letter art, or is it just really sweet?  Again, I don't think I really understand what you mean by "outside of normal reality."

Now I truly think I need to go back and rethink my definition. Logic and passion don't mix too well

MastyrSatyr wrote:

I think the confusion is coming from the phrase "an aesthetic experience," which I define very broadly because I don't want to let any forms of art slip through the cracks.  Roughly, I mean that your emotions are moved by something you perceive with your senses or apprehend with your judgment.  Seeing a pair of new shoes and anticipating how they will feel when your feet slide into them for the first time is an aesthetic experience.  Seeing a Batman action figure and viscerally wanting to grab it off the shelf because you want to make him do battle with your cat is an aesthetic experience.  Watching an ad for a beauty product and feeling insecure because you don't look like the people in the ad is an aesthetic experience.  The shoes, action figure, and ad were all designed with the intention of making you have these experiences, or similar ones.  That makes them art under my definition (which I've already admitted is a little broader than I'm comfortable with).  I certainly don't want to exclude pathos-by-association from aesthetic experiences, since most art -- including all instrumental music, for instance -- is associative and not a direct appeal!

Now here's the punchline.  I think it's possible that when you say "takes you outside of normal reality," you mean almost exactly the same thing I mean when I say "produces an aesthetic experience."  I can't think of any other reason why you're willing to call a salad art under your definition.  Let me put it to you this way, and if you agree then I think our definitions are almost exactly the same.  Let's say I keep my lawn carefully groomed because, when my neighbors pass by, I want them to look at the lawn and smell the grass clippings and smile and say to themselves "this is a nice neighborhood to live in."  That's an aesthetic experience, so for my definition, that's enough for art.  What does your definition say?  Are my neighbors briefly taken outside of normal reality by my groundskeeping?

You know, I think now our definitions are closer than before, now that you describe yours a bit more. That does force me to have to broaden, though. Even though I hate compromising, I do think that what we're thinking is more similar than different.

sǝʎǝɹʎʇɐs wrote:

balls wrote:

And all those things mentioned in italics I would consider art, but much like video games, in some circumstances by no means high art.  After all, to say something is art is not to say that it is pretty, or even well crafted.  Shitty pencil drawings on Deviantart of OC Sonic characters are most certainly art, but no one is saying that they are good art.

Meanwhile, the Duck King is smart as usual: even if something is "art" by some very broad definition like mine, that doesn't mean it's good art.  And I think it's fair to say that most people often use the word "art" to mean "good art."  Architecture is a form of art; a Frank Lloyd Wright house is certainly art; but a Pizza Hut building is... ugh.  If sorely pressed, we might agree that it's technically "art," because the building is designed to evoke an emotion (by way of brand recognition), but we sure aren't thinking of Pizza Hut when we talk about art in architecture.

Dude, you have no idea how much I would love a scale for art status. There is bound to be some way to rate art on a scale, like the Mohs scale for mineral hardness. There is bound to be certain criteria that things should meet before being proclaimed as art for that medium.

Wanna make one?

Kale, neat idea.  It does seem like one desirable property of a definition of art is that we can apply it without trying to read the creator's mind.  Certainly that's how I prefer to analyze art; what matters there is ordinarily what is actually written (or painted, or played, or whatever), not what the author may have intended to communicate.  So I like where you're coming from.  But I'm worried that this change will broaden the definition of art even more; it seems tantamount to saying "art is anything made by a person that makes someone feel something."  That would include, for instance, an elegant mathematical proof, a freshly delivered cardboard box, an elevator ridden by a claustrophobic person, a discarded inner tube in a rainy alley that strikes a passing poet as unbearably tragic, and possibly a cute baby (depending on how broad "made by a person" is).  The definition of art I suggested is already uncomfortably broad to me, and expanding it to include things that were not made with an eye towards affecting others makes it much broader than I myself want to go.

As a sidebar to that, I think "found art" (like the inner tube) can be art, but it only becomes art when a person presents it to others to provoke an aesthetic experience.  Clearly a photograph or painting of the inner tube is art.  I think it's even art if the observer walks away, intentionally not disturbing the scene, in hopes that someone else will stumble on the inner tube and have the same experience.  But I don't think it's art if it's not invested with the human intention to make someone feel something.  Yeah, unfortunately, this insistence has the result that when I stumble on the inner tube and feel sad, I can't know whether the inner tube is art that someone left there (or placed there) on purpose to make me feel sad, or whether it's just an inner tube.  This result is counterintuitive.  But I think it's not as counterintuitive as saying that the inner tube is art before any human interacts with it.

Very briefly, one other problem with getting away from intent and focusing only on how people respond to something is that we get into sticky territory where you say that a Grecian urn in a museum is art because it moves you, and I say that it can't be art because it has no emotional impact on me at all.  (This is true.  Grecian urns leave me completely cold.)  So changing "to produce" to "and produces" just exchanges one kind of subjectivity for another.    I think it is probably inevitable that art will be subjective, but it would be nice if we could agree that the Grecian urn is art because it was designed with an eye towards an aesthetic response, even if it didn't actually achieve one.

Kale, God, you're full of good points!  Forgive me for going paragraph by paragraph -- I know it makes for a long post, but every question you asked is interesting!

KaleMarsh wrote:

I suppose that's part of my issue.  I would rather include than exclude.  It's more difficult to determine whether or not something was designed with artistic intent than it is to determine whether or not something creates an aesthetic response.  As with the grecian urn, one might even argue that they were designed more to tell a story than to represent some kind of art.  And is that story supposed to be artistic or just a record of history?  Is the grecian urn really art by your definition?

Good question.  This is a place where I have to acknowledge ignorance about the historical context of Grecian urns.  If the potter was just trying to create a functional pot and not a beautiful one, and the painter was really just trying to chronicle history and not induce an aesthetic experience by eir painting or storytelling, then I guess indeed I would say that a Grecian urn is not art any more than an ordinary history textbook is art.  But I doubt this is the case.   Painting a story on the side of an urn seems like the act of someone trying to create an aesthetic object, especially in a culture that already had a written language and oral tradition capable of describing events with more precision than pictures on an urn.  This is a case where I'd have to defer to someone who knows what e's talking about.  And if it turns out that no one knows what the intent of the urn's creators was, then I'm happy to use your definition as a fallback: many people experience it as art, so it's art.

Is the emotional gratification one gets when presented a math proof the same thing as an aesthetic response?  If so, I argue that a mathematician could intend to inspire this response or even feel it during his process.  When it comes to math, you can end up proving a lot of things just because they're cool, not necessarily because they're useful or you can foresee a use for them.  Is that distinction worth noting?

The emotional gratification I feel from Cantor's diagonalization argument is definitely an aesthetic response.  It's a breathtakingly simple proof of a breathtakingly strange result, namely that even an infinitely long list of real numbers is not long enough to contain all real numbers.  But as far as I know or can reasonably infer, Cantor didn't select his subject matter or creative method of proof in order to make me say "that's amazing," but in order to achieve a pragmatic mathematical goal.  The way Kleenex are folded in the box to make the next Kleenex pop up is ingenious and even amazing, but I don't think it's art.  A mathematical proof ordinarily has this same quality of being functional by intent, and aesthetic only by accident.  That said, yes, I'm beginning to see the problem you're trying to highlight with my definition.  If it came to light that Cantor knew five different ways of proving his result but selected this one because he wanted to shock the math world, or for that matter that Kleenex green-lit the new design because it made people go "wow," then I guess my definition would have to acknowledge them as art.  And it's an undesirable feature in a definition that the way you categorize an object can change because of trivia about how it's produced.

The argument of art becomes more about what constitutes an aesthetic response rather than whose response gets to determine what is art.  So if someone receives an aesthetic response from a grecian urn, even if it's not me, then it's art.  By your definition, you only need intent.  So if the grecian urn is intended to evoke an emotional response, and it doesn't--in anyone at all--it's still art (if a tree falls in a forest...).  This is curious for me.  I suppose, however, that it is the one area where your definition is broader than mine.

Yes, absolutely -- this is one part of my definition that I am happy to defend, because I think it would be nice to define art in a way that doesn't begin by separating good art from bad art.  If you tried to move someone with a sculpture and you didn't, then your sculpture might be bad art, or failed art, but it seems intuitive to me that it is still art.  If you write a poem with the intent of creating something beautiful, but you don't like the finished product and you never share it with anyone, then to me it's still art.  I wrote my definition to reflect that.  You don't have to succeed, you just have to try.  Duchamp's Fountain comes to mind again -- what made the urinal art was not anything structural about the urinal, but the fact that Duchamp cheekily submitted it to an art exhibition in order to provoke transmuted it into art.  What he added to the urinal was an artistic intent.

Okay, my turn to ask you questions   You wanted to tweak my definition, but you didn't change the part about "designed by an intelligent being," even though the focus of your definition is now on the art's receiver and not its designer.  So let me ask you this.  Suppose you're sitting in an auditorium.  The curtain on stage is drawn shut, but from behind it you can hear a piano being played.  The notes are an atonal and chaotic jumble without an evident rhythmic or melodic pattern.  The more you try to make sense of it or put it in an artistic framework, the more frustrated you get, and you have the aesthetic response of hating it and wanting to throw tomatoes at whoever's responsible.  Now the lights come up, and the curtain is pulled back, and you see that the mystery pianist is:

A) Marcel Duchamp.
B) A cat.

Since both our definitions require an intelligent being, we should both agree that the piano piece was art if it's (A), but not if it's (B).  I think this also squares with common sense.  But my definition has a principled reason for that distinction: since art requires intent, naturally Marcel Duchamp can produce art and a cat cannot, even if the exact same notes are being played.  In your definition, art just requires that someone else have an aesthetic response.  So why shouldn't a cat be able to produce art?  Isn't that an artificial distinction?

Taking the same theme even further, what if instead of an inner tube in an alley, it was an injured sparrow in a meadow?  Nothing about the scene is manmade except the emotions the observer brings to it.  Is an injured sparrow in a meadow art if I see it and have an overwhelming aesthetic response to it?  I would say no, of course not, no more than a cloud!  But if art only requires an aesthetic reaction, how is the sparrow in the meadow different from the inner tube in the alley?  Surely it doesn't matter that a person made the inner tube!

Most generally: Is there anything that your definition of art would say is definitely not art, without first having to survey everyone who has ever been exposed to it?

Last edited by satyreyes (01-17-2013 04:59:06 PM)

Thank you, Kita!    Let me see if I can digest that a little.  I see you coming at the definition of art from two angles: first, art as a filtered or refined or reinterpreted version of reality ("an inaccurate representation of something"); and second, art as a prompt for "reflexive thought."

I've heard the first of those angles before, and it's appealing.  It does seem to do a good job describing the difference between a poem about a wheelbarrow (art) and a neutral description of a wheelbarrow (not generally art).  But of course there is plenty of art that is nonrepresentational.  Instrumental music, very abstract painting, and noninterpretive dance are three generally recognized genres of art that can't transform reality in any way I can think of, because they don't refer to reality in any way I can think of.  I guess you could say that a jazz piece that riffs on "I Got Music" is transforming reality, where the reality is the preexisting musical piece.  By extension, maybe you could even say that music reinterprets the reality of tones and timbre, and abstract painting reinterprets the reality of oil and canvas... but that's a stretch.  You could just as easily say that an inner tube reinterprets the reality of rubber and petroleum.  I think it might be a mistake to say that instrumental music is art because it reinterprets reality.  Maybe nonrepresentational art is fundamentally different from representational art, or maybe there is a better way to unify art genres.

The "reflexive thought" idea is new to me.  What do you mean by that phrase?  You follow up by clarifying, "That is, it makes you think about things."  So is any thought reflexive thought?  I think this does a good job distinguishing an ordinary urinal (does not make you think, and is not art) from "Fountain" (makes you think, and is art).  But what do you do about a biology textbook, which makes you think but is not art?  Does a biology textbook provoke the wrong kind of thinking -- "nonreflexive" thinking?  And if so, what do you mean by reflexive?

In response to Kita's definition, you always have to ask the question of whether or not it's possible to create something that isn't a representation of something you already know.  "There's no such thing as an original thought."  From that lens, all art is representational.

In terms of the intelligent design question of art, I do think that's an essential component of my definition.  It's entirely practical for the purpose of categorizing (but that's what a definition is, I guess, anyway).  Creation is a human impulse, just like classifying it is.  The larger scope of what you're talking about (involving nature and cats playing the piano) is a Kantian sublime.  So I guess you could say art is the sublime as it is made by man based on individual human experience.

But you raise an interesting idea with the dead sparrow in an alley argument.  I do think the human aesthetic response has a creative element to it.  Consider a photographer.  If a photographer is moved by a dead sparrow in an alley and takes a picture of it (with the intent of evoking an aesthetic response in someone else), then I think we both agree that the photograph is art.  But let's say he doesn't have a photographer's mind, and wasn't really thinking about adding to the composition by taking the photo.  He just wanted to capture the experience as closely as possible.  What is the difference?  Can we say that someone who happens upon a dead sparrow in an alley and has an aesthetic response is creating private art?

I guess this conveys why I think the creative design aspect is important.  The sparrow in the alley by itself isn't art if a person doesn't see it.  If a person does and experiences an aesthetic response, it's in relation to a creative impulse that receives the image in a different way.  If there is art in this experience, it is made in the viewer's head.  If someone else just sees a dead sparrow in an alley as trash he has to clean up, he isn't having this same interaction.  Art isn't made.

I get the feeling that this is really convoluted, which is why it took me a while to respond.  I think there is a creative element involved in appreciating art.  If this creative element exists in the consumer, it removes the necessity of placing it in the author.  A piece of nature not made by man isn't art, but it can be made into transitory art by a person; the image in his head is art.  I can go further and say that art isn't in the physical world at all, but that might be too much and entirely unproductive.

But back to the original thread title, thanks to MoMA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAs4Dy-lh8E

EDIT: And their take on why video games are art.  What I find particularly interesting is that they include "elegance of code" in their criteria.

Last edited by KaleMarsh (01-24-2013 11:11:37 AM)