Is this art or abuse?

[Covenant]

Because I have no truck with the sort of moralism which wants everything to conform to some middle-class image of erudite sociability. What he did is utterly deplorable, and precisely for this reason was, in a sense, absolutely necessary. I do not condemn cruelty - even excessive cruelty - out of hand. This is no more immoral than the monk who lights himself on fire in protest of war.

Mengsk, I've got to disagree with you on an arts basis here. While you may be fresh off of playing BioShock from the sound of your Ryan-like morality speech, how is this necessary? It isn't. He could have put himself in a cage, you know, as performance art. That would have DEFINATELY drawn attention, while also allowing him to literally suffer for his art. And not in a sick sense, but in the sense that it would draw a starker paralell. You could have even had him, and a dog, locked in cages--and say that the dog will be fed, but he will not, or something. Until we know what his intended message was, all we know is that his media is death.

Whatever thought or emotion he was intending to elict here is a cheap trick. It's like me making a piece of art called "Modern Art" which is just a bowl of my own feces and an icecream scooper with a sign "Please Touch, You're On Display." Am I making a statement? Yes. But... honestly, is this the best you can do? If you want to make a piece that speaks to the trauma of war, do I fill a concert hall with corpses, or make something that can reach people? Mugging someone to prove a point is not performance art.

As for courage? He ran the risk of some stand-up passerby happening upon his show and, deciding that he'd make himself look the upright citizen in front of his peers, choosing to do him bodily harm for it. The law does not apply itself retroactively; he'd still have suffered pain and defied that possibility. Had this been a private event I'd not hold it in such esteem.

It's not only not art, but it's also a sad commentary.

It is possible to commit an action which is both brave and evil, however much our learned society, in the aftermath of the World Wars, might like to delude itself otherwise. Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' is an insipid generalization: I admire what is courageous, good or evil.

How is this brave? Because he could be opening himself up for this kind of backlash? There's no courage here. He chained an animal to a wall and called it art. Not only is it artistically lazy, but it's also morally lazy. Know what was a more clever piece on this?

There was an installation piece where you could sit down and push a button, and if you were at the exact right moment, a gun inside would shoot you in the head. The gun was loaded, and functional. The button worked. But the chances of it working are amazingly slim--but it is there. What was his statement? "Look at me, the Great Artist, and ponder my work of murder?"

So, you would consider it brave to tempt the bull and then bask in your martyrdom? I'd call that being arrogant and self-absorbed. Why not a child then? Or a woman? A baby? Why not threaten to kill a man or woman each night? When does the line between the deranged mind, and art, become a wall?

This isn't courage, it's stupidity and vanity in the vein of some kind of homocidal DuChamp. Making a monument to your own courage out of the body of a suffering animal turns you into a petty, dangerous individual. If this is art, so is NEDM.

[Superman]

This guy needs a fucking psychiatrist, not a museum. Animal cruelty is not something that emotionally healthy people do, and I don't care that he found a somewhat acceptable way to express his mental disorder; he's a sick fuck.

[ArcturusMengsk]

Mengsk, I've got to disagree with you on an arts basis here. While you may be fresh off of playing BioShock from the sound of your Ryan-like morality speech, how is this necessary?

The difference between Ryan from BioShock and myself is that he is as utterly moralistic, through and through, as those he despised. I am a philosophic immoralist; I resolutely reject the concepts of agency, dualism, and so forth. I am not ascribing a moral value to cruelty; I am deny its moral valuelessness.

Furthermore, it was necessary in the same way that all art, all action, is necessary: to express a particular feeling or sentiment which arises within the individual. It was necessary to him: thus I can affirm it.

It isn't. He could have put himself in a cage, you know, as performance art.

And, had he resolute courage, I could not only praise him but quite rightly endorse him. But because he did not, because he lacked the psychological wherewithall to subject himself to it, I can only hold him and his action in high regard.

Whatever thought or emotion he was intending to elict here is a cheap trick. It's like me making a piece of art called "Modern Art" which is just a bowl of my own feces and an icecream scooper with a sign "Please Touch, You're On Display." Am I making a statement? Yes. But... honestly, is this the best you can do? If you want to make a piece that speaks to the trauma of war, do I fill a concert hall with corpses, or make something that can reach people? Mugging someone to prove a point is not performance art.

The purpose of art absolutely is not to 'make a statement'; such message-laden works are mere propaganda and nothing more. As per Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy:

... It is the same work Schopenhauer has depicted for us the tremendous terror which seizes man when he is suddenly dumbfounded by the cognitive form of phenomena because the principle of sufficient reason, in some one of its manifestations, seems to suffer an exception. If we add to this terror the blissful ecstasy that wells from the innermost depths of man, indeed of nature, at this collapse of the principium individuationis, we steal a glimpse into the nature of the Dionysian, which is brought home to us most intimately by the analogy of intoxication.

This fellow's mistake, if he made one, was in not being a musician: for all good music creates within the subject that divine state which the Greeks knew as enthousiasmos, from whence we derive the term 'enthusiasm' but which means most literally possession. The plastic arts, even the performance arts, cannot in any sense induce within the observer this state of utter self-annihilation in the service of the passions (consider as a rough analogy here the image of water rushing into a crevice which has recently been blasted), but I admire his effort to do so.

It's not only not art, but it's also a sad commentary.

It is very much art. Art ought rightly to be terrifying, nauseating, and absolutely disgusting - it should be morally repugnant, hideously antisocial, brilliantly disquieting and beautifully edifying all at once. It is utterly unfortunate that we have codified within medical law a definition such as psychopathy, an 'absence of the moral conscience', when a better - and less value-laden - definition would be the 'presence of music'.

*snip*

My opinion on this matter ought to have been expressed in full henceforth.

[Superman]

Furthermore, it was necessary in the same way that all art, all action, is necessary: to express a particular feeling or sentiment which arises within the individual. It was necessary to him: thus I can affirm it.

Overly pedantic bullshit aside, I'm curious as to how far someone can go in order to express his or her feelings. In this case, it's at the expense of a living creature; not only a living creature, a

suffering

animal at that. Most people won't tolerate this kind of behavior, and modern medicine has shown us that people who have this capacity have it because of neurological defects. This is usually where society comes in and puts an end to this cruel behavior.

[Superman]

Ooops... Can someone fix that?

[ArcturusMengsk]

In this case, it's at the expense of a living creature; not only a living creature, a

suffering

animal at that.

And? Do you attribute to life a particular essence - a metaphysical 'soul', mute and unchangeable - which is sacrosanct and transcendental in relation to existence qua existence?

To put it another way: is life (all life, including man, animal, plant, etc., without distinction) inviolable on spiritualistic grounds??

Most people won't tolerate this kind of behavior,

Not today.

and modern medicine has shown us that people who have this capacity have it because of neurological defects.

Indeed. The same medical establishment which once ruled, in accordance with fashionable moral prejudices of the time, that homosexuality was a 'disease' and assigned to it a moral-psychological value. Funny how wizened, robed men all seem to have the same agenda.

[Covenant]

The difference between Ryan from BioShock and myself is that he is as utterly moralistic, through and through, as those he despised. I am a philosophic immoralist; I resolutely reject the concepts of agency, dualism, and so forth. I am not ascribing a moral value to cruelty; I am deny its moral valuelessness.

Furthermore, it was necessary in the same way that all art, all action, is necessary: to express a particular feeling or sentiment which arises within the individual. It was necessary to him: thus I can affirm it.

That's just utter insanity, and has nothing to do with art. Art, or a lack of art, exists independant of your affirmation. If you want to validate it, you can go ahead and do so, but calling it art requires a seperate definition of art. I assume that's the Neechee quote down there.

And, had he resolute courage, I could not only praise him but quite rightly endorse him. But because he did not, because he lacked the psychological wherewithall to subject himself to it, I can only hold him and his action in high regard.

You can't hold it in high regard unless you justify this as a courageous act. Until you do so, you're just praising an idiot displaying the careworn signs of a future sociopath. I don't care if you feel no need to justify it, if you want to talk about it and not be called a lunatic, you better back that up. How is this courage, and not just the last resort of the failure-savant?

The purpose of art absolutely is not to 'make a statement'; such message-laden works are mere propaganda and nothing more. As per Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy:

... It is the same work Schopenhauer has depicted for us the tremendous terror which seizes man when he is suddenly dumbfounded by the cognitive form of phenomena because the principle of sufficient reason, in some one of its manifestations, seems to suffer an exception. If we add to this terror the blissful ecstasy that wells from the innermost depths of man, indeed of nature, at this collapse of the principium individuationis, we steal a glimpse into the nature of the Dionysian, which is brought home to us most intimately by the analogy of intoxication.

I don't drink, and it's an appeal to authority to claim Nietzche as any flat justification of art. If art carries no message, then it is not art, it is simply act. An act is not art. Your philosophy is not awared full authority to dicatate the destruction of a term by redefining it into meaninglessness. Justify this statement by applying it to reality, to artistic experience, or dismiss it as your opinion and nothing more. And not in some warped antimoralist way either--I won't debate art with someone who wants to use a term to mean something it never resembled in the past. Art is art. Make a new term for your form of catharsis.

This fellow's mistake, if he made one, was in not being a musician: for all good music creates within the subject that divine state which the Greeks knew as enthousiasmos, from whence we derive the term 'enthusiasm' but which means most literally possession. The plastic arts, even the performance arts, cannot in any sense induce within the observer this state of utter self-annihilation in the service of the passions (consider as a rough analogy here the image of water rushing into a crevice which has recently been blasted), but I admire his effort to do so.

For for crap's sake, more with the Greeks? Your philosophy has nothing to do with anything. Sense of self-annihiliation? That's the most inane and narrow form of artistic experience I've yet heard of. The Greeks also believed in what I stated earlier, catharsis, as a form of purging yourself of ills by weeping them out or expressing them. Sadly, studies show it doesn't work that way. Like Aristotle's perfect forms, you're pinning yourself to an imaginary, and irrational, idea that was wrong back then as well as now. You're also just spewing some sort of half-formed philosophy without any attempt to parse it.

It is very much art. Art ought rightly to be terrifying, nauseating, and absolutely disgusting - it should be morally repugnant, hideously antisocial, brilliantly disquieting and beautifully edifying all at once. It is utterly unfortunate that we have codified within medical law a definition such as psychopathy, an 'absence of the moral conscience', when a better - and less value-laden - definition would be the 'presence of music'.

*snip*

My opinion on this matter ought to have been expressed in full henceforth.

That last part is just more non-sequitors. Outside of your strange re-definition of art, I don't see how there's any reason for art to be uniquely disquieting. Honestly, how long until this guy starts going RayCav on us and posting articles about artistic murder of people? Did you rip this shit from the escape scene of Silence of the Lambs?

[SilverWingedSeraph]

If this can, in any fucking way, be considered art, then someone grabbing this guy, dragging him into a dark alley, beating him half to death and leaving him lying in a bloody, broken mess on the ground, can be considered a follow up piece, eh?

[ArcturusMengsk]

That's just utter insanity, and has nothing to do with art. Art, or a lack of art, exists independant of your affirmation. If you want to validate it, you can go ahead and do so, but calling it art requires a seperate definition of art. I assume that's the Neechee quote down there.

Art is not independent of value.

You can't hold it in high regard unless you justify this as a courageous act. Until you do so, you're just praising an idiot displaying the careworn signs of a future sociopath. I don't care if you feel no need to justify it, if you want to talk about it and not be called a lunatic, you better back that up. How is this courage, and not just the last resort of the failure-savant?

Because he did it, in full view of the public, without retreating into privacy. It's a communalistic act of self-negation, a flat denial of Kantian moral agency. How could a think be immoral which denies the very foundations of morality itself?

I don't drink, and it's an appeal to authority to claim Nietzche as any flat justification of art.

Hardly. I'm quite obviously appealing to Schopenhauerian Pessimism (to be distinguished from 'little-p' pessimism) which holds the world to be nothing more than Will, and individual objects within the world which are distinguished from one another to be the product of the human mind, in accordance with the psychological principle of individuation. Music, because of its enthousiasmic qualities, permits for a direct experience of the unified world where the plastic arts fail. Violence itself allows for this same experience because it entails a sort of 'letting-go-of-oneself', and, accordingly, a denial of the principium individuationis.

If art carries no message, then it is not art, it is simply act.

You've demanded this of me, and I'll do likewise: justify it.

An act is not art.

Justify it.

Your philosophy is not awared full authority to dicatate the destruction of a term by redefining it into meaninglessness. Justify this statement by applying it to reality, to artistic experience, or dismiss it as your opinion and nothing more. And not in some warped antimoralist way either--I won't debate art with someone who wants to use a term to mean something it never resembled in the past. Art is art. Make a new term for your form of catharsis.

And once more - justify this identity which you've ascribed art on either ontological or epistemological grounds.

For for crap's sake, more with the Greeks? Your philosophy has nothing to do with anything. Sense of self-annihiliation? That's the most inane and narrow form of artistic experience I've yet heard of. The Greeks also believed in what I stated earlier, catharsis, as a form of purging yourself of ills by weeping them out or expressing them.

And Socrates was a decadent who introduced into Greece the calamitous essentialism which would eventually morph into Christianity and Kantianism through his creation of the character 'Plato'.

And yet there was another world within Greece which withstood the dialectic: that of the Bacchanale.

Sadly, studies show it doesn't work that way. Like Aristotle's perfect forms, you're pinning yourself to an imaginary, and irrational, idea that was wrong back then as well as now. You're also just spewing some sort of half-formed philosophy without any attempt to parse it.

It's quite fully formed, I believe you'll find. It has a fully developed ontology (the world as Will), a fully developed epistemology (the world as Idea), a concrete sense of ethics (which must not in any sense taken to be identical with morality: one is transcendental and grounded in essence, the other is a volitionist act of self-willing) and a highly refined aesthetic core to compliment the rest.

[Superman]

And? Do you attribute to life a particular essence - a metaphysical 'soul', mute and unchangeable - which is sacrosanct and transcendental in relation to existence qua existence?

To put it another way: is life (all life, including man, animal, plant, etc., without distinction) inviolable on spiritualistic grounds??

That's quite the tangential thought process you have there. Ask a relevant question and I might give you a relevant answer.

Indeed. The same medical establishment which once ruled, in accordance with fashionable moral prejudices of the time, that homosexuality was a 'disease' and assigned to it a moral-psychological value. Funny how wizened, robed men all seem to have the same agenda.

You're right about that. The American Psychiatric Association categorized it as a mental disorder until the early 70's. The difference here is that fMRI and PET scans have shown clear uniform neurological abnormalities in people who have overly sadistic and aggressive behaviors, who feel no guilt, who take pleasure in hurting other creatures, etc., and people diagnosed with these types of personality disorders usually come from some pretty abusive situations themselves. I think the fact that society tends to stop these assholes is a good enough example of natural selection in itself.

[Covenant]

[Art is not independent of value.

That’s the first rational thing you’ve said so far. Art is not independent of value, I agree. However, his work is devoid of value, since it has achieved nothing and has no inherent value. Even if you ascribe value to everything, you've essentially redefined the zero, and he applies for whatever lowest and least functional definition of value of any ethical system. It didn’t need to be done—it served no purpose and has not enlightened anyone. A slaughter conducted inside of a gallery is no more art than it was outside, and outside it was not art at all either.

[Because he did it, in full view of the public, without retreating into privacy. It's a communalistic act of self-negation, a flat denial of Kantian moral agency. How could a think be immoral which denies the very foundations of morality itself?

There’s no inherent courage in being an idiot. The difference between stupidity and courage is that stupidity doesn’t understand the ramifications of an action, while courage does, and is making a value judgement. If you have some evidence this guy follows your political stripe and did this to openly challenge the idea of morality whatsoever, then why did he stop people from feeding the dog?

Why should he be anti-moral? Is it not taking a stand, a moral stand, to stop someone from doing something they wish to do? Come on now. He blocked people from feeding the dog. That’s hardly a morality-neutral action. He’s not denying morality. He was physically acting counter to a morality he recognized, and understood enough to take precautions against.

Hardly. I'm quite obviously appealing to Schopenhauerian Pessimism (to be distinguished from 'little-p' pessimism) which holds the world to be nothing more than Will, and individual objects within the world which are distinguished from one another to be the product of the human mind, in accordance with the psychological principle of individuation. Music, because of its enthousiasmic qualities, permits for a direct experience of the unified world where the plastic arts fail. Violence itself allows for this same experience because it entails a sort of 'letting-go-of-oneself', and, accordingly, a denial of the principium individuationis.

I’m not even going to bother with this, I thought we finished beating the shit out of this idea a long time ago? Don’t we have a sticky on this sort of post-modern tripe?

You've demanded this of me, and I'll do likewise: justify it.

Mengsk, that’s not the way it works. When someone makes an evidentiary demand, you need to quantify it then. However, since you seem to be going off the deep end, and I have an explination, I’ll throw it back at you.

Art is abstraction. The act is not the art. The forest is not the art—a photograph is art because you’ve put a frame around it, given it meaning by excluding the rest, by putting something in front and saying “Look at this here. You don’t need the rest, this is what I want you to see.” If or if not it’s good art is tied to other factors—but art is, at it’s heart, the expressing of some idea through the abstraction of that idea. The farther and farther you move from the abstraction towards the actual act of it the less artful it becomes.

An act is not art because it is the act it represents. Killing a dog is not abstracted art unless it’s meant to mean something else. If killing the dog is merely meant to be an act of moral defiance then all it symbolizes is killing a dog to get people pissed at you. That’s not art. That’s just killing a dog.

Killing a dog to symbolize something else would be artful, but still lame and shock art. Eventually the shock wears off. Once it’s done that, and I stop feeling any variety of self-annhiliation, then the art has ceased to be art, hasn’t it? Worthless definition you have.

Now, before you critique a single goddamn thing I’ve said here, by the rules of debate you are bound to answer my question. And since I’m going to answer your other questions too, you better fucking not respond a single word to my posts without coughing up whatever bile you have left in that philosophy book.

And Socrates was a decadent who introduced into Greece the calamitous essentialism which would eventually morph into Christianity and Kantianism through his creation of the character 'Plato'.

And yet there was another world within Greece which withstood the dialectic: that of the Bacchanale.

That doesn’t mean anything. Sure, there were crazies back then too. So? You’re a crazy nowadays. What’s that mean? Does the dialectic state the immortal struggle between madness and sanity? Honestly, I bet it does. Disregard that. I’m not sure what that was supposed to be a response to, but referencing the Bacchanale doesn’t mean they were right, cogent, or sane.

It's quite fully formed, I believe you'll find. It has a fully developed ontology (the world as Will), a fully developed epistemology (the world as Idea), a concrete sense of ethics (which must not in any sense taken to be identical with morality: one is transcendental and grounded in essence, the other is a volitionist act of self-willing) and a highly refined aesthetic core to compliment the rest.

Your alternate reality has no basis in this one. I suppose it’s fitting—you disbelieve several of the core elements that have forwarded our current understanding of things. But just because you’ve assigned some fictional structure to it doesn’t make it so. If world is nothing but Will, then your definition wouldn’t even be any more correct than the one the rest of us do, since you’ve certainly got no more will than I do. That and you better satisfy the demand for evidence I gave or you’re a no-will lying hatfucker.

[Nephtys]

ArcturusMengsk, get to the point. You've got an extremely well developed talent to say as little as possible while stringing together as many meaningless lines to try and play off of known philisophical doctrines in some way which is both ambiguous and largely pointless to interperet.

Translation: Try actually getting to the point. Kantian moral agency? communistic self-negation? For Goddess's sake, that's the biggest load of excrement I've ever read. Can't you just say 'He's trying to go against the social grain' instead of some meaningless bullshit, which largely exists to cover up the vapidness of your points?

[Edi]

The short summary of this thread seems to be that ArcturusMengsk is full of shit and a fucking asshole who sees nothing wrong with this sort of cruelty since he appears so eager to defend it.

Arcturus, here's a short primer on why it is wrong:

• Objective harm and suffering are generally detrimental to the well-being of living creatures
• Because they are detrimental, they are bad
• Therefore, aside from necessity (such as a predator killing and eating its prey), actions that cause objective harm and suffering are bad
• Conversely, actions that alleviate objective harm and suffering are beneficial and thus desirable and can be determined good.
• In this case, there is no objective benefit whatsoever from the actions of that piece of shit and clearly obvious objective harm and suffering caused by them
• Therefore his actions have no value whatsoever, unless that value is considered negative

Only a sadistic fuck would do something like starving a dog to death for entertainment and only other sadistic fucks would see any merit in such an action. Now, what if he had chained up a chimpanzee to starve to death? Or a child or an adult human? What's the difference?

Do you have a short and to the point answer to that, or should I just lump you in with all the other lowlife pond scum who would generally improve if they had a head on collision with a trailer truck?

Actually, you don't need to answer that question, since I'm going to classify you in that category anyway, you shitlicking whoreson pigfucker offspring of a son of a bitch.

[Rye]

I don't agree with this claim that it's artistically brave to starve a dog, it is cruel and cowardly because he picked on a defenceless animal, and cruelty isn't made okay by being done creatively with animals any more than it is with serial killers carving up college students. It is monumentally easy to be cruel to animals, it takes no talent, and merely confounding social convention isn't made brave by this any more than kicking pregnant women and children then taking photos of the results, or going on shooting sprees in primary schools. Confounding social convention is not a respectable act through wanton cruelty, nor is it respectable art merely because it gets a reaction.

Well, it may be respectable to people like Arcturus, but if his notion of respect is not affected by anything other than the cowardly and vapid nature of abhorrence and celebrity, then I guess this is symptomatic of his outlook. I can't find anything to respect there any more than I can with school shootings.

[Zixinus]

Art or not, this is animal abuse and should be punished by law as such.

[Molyneux]

The definition of art is completely or nearly completely objective, from everything I've seen. Any definition of art which includes this monster's actions is no definition for me.

Let justice be done; he tortured a dog to death. That's almost as low as you can get, street dog or no.

[rhoenix]

ArcturusMengsk, quite simply, all your points are complete bullshit.

Arguing that this is art because he needed to be "brave" to pull this off is completely irrelevant. I'm sure it took bravery for some no-name Nazi officer in the death camps to follow orders and flip a switch, sending groups of people to their horrible & certain deaths, but that certainly doesn't make it "art."

Your philosophical justifications for this point only make it more nauseatingly wrong. Covenant covered all the point-by-point rebuttals just as well or better than I can, so I won't bother repeating them. However, all of your arguments are made irrelevant in the face of the fact that another living being was harmed on purpose, in a cruel fashion, and then both you and this self-proclaimed "artist" having the temerity to turn around and squeal "but it's art!"

Courage has absolutely nothing to do with this, and neither does a discussion of will.

[Johonebesus]

Pseudo-philosophers like this Mengsk is one of the things I hated most about college. Luckily most of them grow out of it.

[Setesh]

Pseudo-philosophers like this Mengsk is one of the things I hated most about college. Luckily most of them grow out of it.

And the rest destroyed the modern art movement. Arcturus (who seems to be just as inane if more long winded than the Maggot Show guest of his namesake) is using the same 'art philosophy' they used in the late 80's earl 90's to justify some of the utterly idiotic trash the modern art scene produced in that period. Such as the 15'X15' canvas with 3 magic marker lines down one side sold for $25000. Or the ever infamous 'blue' (a 4"X4" canvas painted a single shade of blue)

It boils down to 'art is actually meaningless, the viewer places meaning in it regardless of the artists intention so you can put anything up as art and get praised as long as the critics agree. Once a critic speaks about the value, or lack thereof, to your 'art' the mindless droves will parrot them to not look stupid and uncultured.'

The worst part is its not even original, there's a horror short story I remember where a photographer does this with a cat. (Later was made part of a horror anthology movie where they altered the script so he strangled the cat instead.)

[salm]

It boils down to 'art is actually meaningless, the viewer places meaning in it regardless of the artists intention so you can put anything up as art and get praised as long as the critics agree. Once a critic speaks about the value, or lack thereof, to your 'art' the mindless droves will parrot them to not look stupid and uncultured.'

I don´t really regard this as a bad thing. I mean, art is meaningless in any objective way. It´s just like any other typed of entertainment. It´s good/bad, fun/boring, nice/ugly etc only because certain people say so, so why care if art is considered meaningless?

[Covenant]

It boils down to 'art is actually meaningless, the viewer places meaning in it regardless of the artists intention so you can put anything up as art and get praised as long as the critics agree. Once a critic speaks about the value, or lack thereof, to your 'art' the mindless droves will parrot them to not look stupid and uncultured.'

I don´t really regard this as a bad thing. I mean, art is meaningless in any objective way. It´s just like any other typed of entertainment. It´s good/bad, fun/boring, nice/ugly etc only because certain people say so, so why care if art is considered meaningless?

Art isn't meaningless though, even if it is non-functional. Art is an aspect of a lot of other things, like building facades, roadways, airplanes, weapon design, and so on. Functional objects are influenced by art, and sometimes positively. Engineering principles are examined and new technologies discovered in the quest to make grander and less reasonable works of art, like the Pyramids, or newer and simpler forms like Photography.

Plus, anytime you do something for a reason and put that on display, you've given it meaning. The problem with the Starving Dog is that the meaning is either confused in the medium, in the reaction, or so secondary to the doing of the act that you can't find it--these are examples of bad art, since they don't beg you to question OR experience, just to go "Meh" or "Awful!" and walk onwards. It's less artful than a living dog, to be sure. A living dog certainly causes people to stop and think more.

I agree with Setesh that a lot of this comes from the movement to dismantle the idea of art. Art is not some froofy thing that is just a 'free expression, everybody wins' scenario. Art is a subjective experience with an objective purpose, a process, and a creator. Even 'found art' is 'art' in the loosest sense, in that you've picked it up, put it where you want it, and let it be. The farther from that, again, the less art it is. As soon as people start doing random things, or things that are not artful (like selling an ALL WHITE CANVAS for fuck's sake) then it's not art anymore.

I'm not sure why that's offensive. Can't these people content themselves with selling their non-art pieces of whimsey for 25,000 bucks? Or is it that the only reason any fucker would buy the damn scribblecanvas is because some idiot in a beret said "This is art, you should like it to be elite," and they buy into it? Just as we should oppose letting homeopathy be called 'medicine' or creationism be called a 'science', this stuff is not 'art'. It may be philosophy, or a social experiment, or something we don't have a proper word for, but it's not art.

[Starglider]

Pseudo-philosophers like this Mengsk is one of the things I hated most about college. Luckily most of them grow out of it.

Genuinely worthwhile modern philosophers such as Daniel Dennet write in normal English (with reasonable usage of technical terms), as opposed to streams of obfuscated philosobabble, which actually saying a great deal more than posers such as Acrturus. I'm talking about all the memorable posts I've seen from him, not just what he's written here. An ability to create esoterically labeled conceptual quagmires does not imply (and in fact suggests a lack of) an ability to say useful, meaningful things about logic, morality and existence in general.

[salm]

Art isn't meaningless though, even if it is non-functional. Art is an aspect of a lot of other things, like building facades, roadways, airplanes, weapon design, and so on. Functional objects are influenced by art, and sometimes positively. Engineering principles are examined and new technologies discovered in the quest to make grander and less reasonable works of art, like the Pyramids, or newer and simpler forms like Photography.

Well, i agree here, but this still doesn´t change anything about my statement. Like Setesh said, people place meaning in it but there´s no real, objective meaning in it.
Some facades are built in a certain way because they look cool and then the engineering principals need to be discovered in order to build them. However, this is only necessary because someone placed the meaning in it. In this case the meaning would be that the facade looks cool if built in a certain way.

Plus, anytime you do something for a reason and put that on display, you've given it meaning.

Yeah, but again, it´s just someone giving it a meaning, in this case the artist. This is not really different from some random person giving it a meaning.

The problem with the Starving Dog is that the meaning is either confused in the medium, in the reaction, or so secondary to the doing of the act that you can't find it--these are examples of bad art, since they don't beg you to question OR experience, just to go "Meh" or "Awful!" and walk onwards. It's less artful than a living dog, to be sure. A living dog certainly causes people to stop and think more.

Well, that´s your definition of good art. Other people will say that art doesn´t require to beg you to question. And i don´t really know a way to find out who´s right.

I agree with Setesh that a lot of this comes from the movement to dismantle the idea of art. Art is not some froofy thing that is just a 'free expression, everybody wins' scenario. Art is a subjective experience with an objective purpose, a process, and a creator. Even 'found art' is 'art' in the loosest sense, in that you've picked it up, put it where you want it, and let it be. The farther from that, again, the less art it is. As soon as people start doing random things, or things that are not artful (like selling an ALL WHITE CANVAS for fuck's sake) then it's not art anymore.

I think it´s really hard to define something like art because it can mean anything to anybody and there´s no way to measure it or tell how a definition of art is right or wrong. This, in the end, leads to the conclusion that the term is meaningless and that there´s not much that can be done about it.

I'm not sure why that's offensive. Can't these people content themselves with selling their non-art pieces of whimsey for 25,000 bucks? Or is it that the only reason any fucker would buy the damn scribblecanvas is because some idiot in a beret said "This is art, you should like it to be elite," and they buy into it?

Offensive? I don´t think that´s offensive. But calling something art and convincing people that it is art is probably the closest you will get to what defines art. Perhaps art only needs acceptance among a sufficient number of people or authorities to be art. Or at least to be recognized art.

Just as we should oppose letting homeopathy be called 'medicine' or creationism be called a 'science', this stuff is not 'art'. It may be philosophy, or a social experiment, or something we don't have a proper word for, but it's not art.

Well, the difference here is that we can actually objectively tell that homeopathy is not medicine and creationism is not science but there´s no way to tell if this is art or not.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Because I have no truck with the sort of moralism which wants everything to conform to some middle-class image of erudite sociability. What he did is utterly deplorable, and precisely for this reason was, in a sense, absolutely necessary. I do not condemn cruelty - even excessive cruelty - out of hand. This is no more immoral than the monk who lights himself on fire in protest of war.

How was it absolutely necessary? Also, the monk who lights himself on fire is making his own choice, and not making a choice for another creature. The difference is apparent to anyone who isn't an idiot, and trying desperately to justify something that they know deep down that they cannot.

As for courage? He ran the risk of some stand-up passerby happening upon his show and, deciding that he'd make himself look the upright citizen in front of his peers, choosing to do him bodily harm for it. The law does not apply itself retroactively; he'd still have suffered pain and defied that possibility. Had this been a private event I'd not hold it in such esteem.

No, he cheated. It's obvious that he's a coward or he would have choose an animal with a bit more worth. Something that people would be very likely to take action over.

It is possible to commit an action which is both brave and evil, however much our learned society, in the aftermath of the World Wars, might like to delude itself otherwise. Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' is an insipid generalization: I admire what is courageous, good or evil.

It is possible. This was not one of those possibilities for the simple fact that he preyed on an animal that was inferior to him in every way.

[General Zod]

The problem with the Starving Dog is that the meaning is either confused in the medium, in the reaction, or so secondary to the doing of the act that you can't find it--these are examples of bad art, since they don't beg you to question OR experience, just to go "Meh" or "Awful!" and walk onwards. It's less artful than a living dog, to be sure. A living dog certainly causes people to stop and think more.

Well, that´s your definition of good art. Other people will say that art doesn´t require to beg you to question. And i don´t really know a way to find out who´s right.

Good art should require talent (Ie - something most people can't do or have a hard time doing) to make. Any retard can starve a dog and put it on display.