the world is still CHOZZ v3.0

[Bug]

Sometime I understand why liberals appear to be such douches:

http://art-design.umich.edu/projects/pcap


Tapping creativity in prisons
The Prison Creative Arts Project collaborates with incarcerated adults, incarcerated youth, urban youth and the formerly incarcerated to strengthen our community through creative expression. Based in the Department of English Language and Literature and the School of Art and Design, project participants facilitate arts workshops in prisons or juvenile facilities, as well as Detroit high schools.

[Lox]

Bad art isn't that good. By definition.

[Lox]

I'd rather look at nothing personally, but you're correct in that artistic expression is better than no artistic expression... if such a thing could be looked at in 1s and 0s.

[toivo]

digitize everything, imaginations included. maybe then if there were no distinction between technology and nature our art would be better. not that we would be able to tell any longer. or alternatively, then there would be no need for art, because we would do everything well.

http://vimeo.com/6676567

[Lox]

While that is plausible, it is not possible. Much like the cessation of all artisitic expression. I suppose pontification of the impossible is necessary, but at some point you have to deal with the fact that there IS a distinction between art and nature.

[VTP]

fuck i got nothing.

[toivo]

While that is plausible, it is not possible. Much like the cessation of all artisitic expression. I suppose pontification of the impossible is necessary, but at some point you have to deal with the fact that there IS a distinction between art and nature.

if this isn't pontification on a massive scale, then i don't know what is. maybe some information gets exchanged, but mostly this is just tickling neurons.

some kind of identity of art and nature is both plausible and possible. there are examples of it. i had in mind the south sea islander that mcluhan quotes, (i don't recall the text straightaway) 'we have no need for art; we do everything well.' art is a fulfillment of the gap between nature and expectation. if we could wish an entirely natural set of desires for ourselves, then there is the possibility of fulfilling art and of being how we want to be, without making a disaster out of the planet in some drive to get what one wants immediately. i wouldn't call the latter desire. it would be more like an auto-projection of some mechanical self.

so we have art because we desire. the distinction between art and nature is that nature makes up for the art's mistakes.

[Bug]

T, I have no idea what you are talking about.

What you need to know is this: on this board since 2000 the discussion around capitol "A" Art means the discussion of Fine Arts. The discussion about creativity and human expression in general is delegated to the specific diciplines of the creative or expressive actvity. So, creativity in music is discussed as a topic about music, Expression in photography in a topic about photography, &c. There is no discussion around a complete singular definition of art, what defines it, or how it occurs, or whatever its consequences are.

We discuss concepts like creativity and expression only in the presence of specific works of art, that is, the actual products of the artist's motivations. We do not study the motivations per se. We do not question or analyse the artist's impulse, but react with openess and sincereity to the outcomes of artistic feelings.

Anything else is simply the death of spirit.

[toivo]

i wasn't talking capital "A" art. just art as such.

[Bug]

i wasn't talking capital "A" art. just art as such.

".. as such",

such as what?! Just stop it, youre going to make me crazy. There's no "art as such", only specific works of art, examples of art.

Anything else is only intention, whats the point of talking about it?

[Lox]

Bug... "We discuss concepts like creativity and expression only in the presence of specific works of art" ????

Actually, this is not true, as Toivo and I were discussing the digitization of all human creativity, including imagination. Obviously this cannot be limited to one form of art, or even one specific piece of art. There is no "death of the spirit" in talking about art as a narrative or art as a necessary component of humanity or emergent trends in the increasingly common blending of human creativity and technology. It may be intention, but there is a point in discussing these sorts of things. And even if you don't see the value in that, why enter in the discussion just to make sweeping declarations of what we talk about or how we should talk about stuff (like art) ???

This discussion may be killing your spirit, but perhaps Toivo and I are simply pressed from a more robust model...

[Bug]

Oh, talk away, I'll shut up. You both know what my point is.

If you go have one of those meta-art discussions, please try to use concrete examples from actual artworks sometimes, for instance, "digitzed imagination". Then, I'll listen.

[Lox]

I, too, am quite curious how you go about digitizing thought processes.

[skav]

how did you get the cigarette to stay lit?

[toivo]

i wasn't talking capital "A" art. just art as such.

".. as such",

such as what?! Just stop it, youre going to make me crazy. There's no "art as such", only specific works of art, examples of art.

Anything else is only intention, whats the point of talking about it?

this is an interesting suggestion - that there is no art beyond specific instantiations of art, as in <art such as this or that specific work> . i wonder how it would be recognizable. how do we even know the word and get some sense of meaning from it? though this inference from particular to universal assumes that there is meaning to the word beyond an incidental signifier.

it is possible that there is no meaning to this word, or indeed any. if all meaning is a matter of intention, and if our intentions do not reach out to something beyond ourselves, then we are apparently caught in a solipsistic loop of projected desire. but again, it would hardly be desire then, if it didn't have some object. desire needs absence, and therefore some intimation of what presence would be. also, in this kind of model where there are no categories, no meaning behind words, just raw intention projected as outward behaviours, there is an assumption that one knows what one intends. just to unsettle that idea, why would you then assume the substance of intention as such? maybe the self is not such a hard shelled thing.

i would not begin with a psychology of art, because this would assume a solid understanding of the psyche. it's simpler to focus on art as such. a good working definition would be some being that requires an agent outside of itself to come into being. so i mean art as artificial. any aesthetic questions of relative value would be bracketed within this basic definition. art is what you make.

in terms of technology, art is an expression of the need for representation- i.e. there is no immediate undisclosed essence of the self. the soul of a person- that is their sense of depth -is a mask that depends upon the capacity to simultaneously reveal and conceal. so something is shown, and because it is not revealed in eternity, but in time, that self-showing hides something else, even if that something else is not yet present. the soul substance of a person is the ultimate artifact.

how would the soul stand up to digitization? better than bums on a photocopier. souls don't need a third dimension.

[Lox]

art is what you make.

I disagree.

Love is what you make. Art is the result.

And regarding digitization of the soul. If we suppose for a moment that such a thing could even be possible, the issue of why you would want to still exists. It sounds like a horrible thing to do to someone's soul, trap it in the digital medium. What I think is better is technology that allows for more human expression, not less... like the cutting edge prosthetic shit. The human soul can work through the digital medium to achieve true human expression.

[toivo]

everything is framed. even love is a kind of art, and is enframed.

lox - i agree. you disagree. the essence of soul is its expression. there really is nothing behind the person.

the world is different matter though. that could have something behind it.

[Lox]

If the essence of soul is expression, then why do I keep the raunchiest and best jokes to myself?

[toivo]

love is what you make it too. that';s funny that you feel shame. love is fragile that way; it is held out towards what is danger to it.

[blimp]

actual headline on cnn.com