Is this art or abuse?

[Molyneux]

Don't bother arguing with this shithead. Whenever he involves himself in any ethical debate, he reveals that his entire concept of ethics is to simply challenge the supporting premises behind everyone else's concept of ethics, without providing any competing ethical philosophy of his own or rationale for judging the validity or effectiveness of any ethical system.

In other words, his argument lives in the gaps; it is the ethicist's equivalent of Intelligent Design bullshit.

Don't forget that he named himself after a fictional psychopath, too. In retrospect, maybe that should've been a warning of trollishness...

[Junghalli]

I don't care how you classify me. At least I've not bought into the objective validity of my own 'warm feelings'.

You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that humanists believe utilitarian ethics to be true in the same way Christians believe the Ten Commandments to be true. Most of us don't.

I recognize that utilitarian ethics is a totally artificial system based on a subjective principle (that human happiness is good and human suffering bad) that has no more "objective reality" than my believe that Star Trek TOS is better than Star Trek Voyager. The reason I support it is that I'd prefer to live in a society based on the idea that human happiness and freedom are good and suffering is bad than one based on any alternate atheistic postulate I can think of. Such a society seems the most likely to offer a pleasant environment for the largest number of its members, I'd rather like to have a pleasant environment myself, and I imagine most other people would as well.

[Covenant]

I decided to take this to PMs so not to catch any friendly fire from the people shooting at Mengsk.

I know what you mean but mean and think it´s right but it´s not a rational statement. We simply state that this is what we think is art and then operate from there. We still have to acknolage that the basic definition of art is highly subjective and people can argue just anything to be art. I guess this is really one of the best cases where the old saying works "I know if it´s art when i see it".

Actually, that was the definition of pornography. ;D Art may not always be "when I see it" sorts of things. And I am making a rational arguement, if you'd like to test it. Try applying definitions to things and see if they fit. I can't convince anyone it's rational if they refuse to test it. Yes this is what I think, but I think it because it is the broadest way to define an artistic experience. And that things without an artistic experience are not art.

That's a basis I work upon. If nobody ever feels anything from something how can it be art? Maybe it's too complex, or too old, or something else, and people are just not impressed or in awe anymore, but that's just the language getting out of date. A good book wouldn't cease to be good just because I can't read it. It is NOT subjective. But provoking an emotion in people is important.

Literature is, again, a good example. A good book can captivate people and make them feel things and they really love it. That's not an appeal to popularity, since I'm not saying it is popular. Just that people, when exposed to it, would get a reaction. A book can't be all that grand if nobody gives a shit about it. That's NOT an appeal to popularity. When the OBJECTIVE is to make someone feel something, then you are required to do that in order for it to be a success, that's all.

OK, something having to go through a process by an artist or maybe even only an idea is required for something to be art. That sounds good.

I´d say that the meaning is not necessarily required though as there is art out there where the process itself is considered the art.

Yes, performance art, and other such things. There's still a kind of result, and you get a reaction, and I think that's the important part. Dance, for example, doesn't give you anything to take home afterwards. But good dance can make people flopping around on stage actually MEAN something. That's an art.

Well i´ve been thinking this through for a while (not just since yesterday) and have pretty much come to the conclusion that there is no rational way to say that art can´t be defined as anything. And this is exactly what i mean. You are basically saying "I don´t think this" and "I don´t believe this" when you´re stating that the rainforest is no piece of art in itself.

Calling a forest 'art' is removing any meaning from the term, and that's stupid. People do not experience a forest the same way they experience art. The emotional reaction is not the same. Plus, a forest is a forest. All forests are forests. But not all forests would be art. So art is still an important and more specific term.

Someone can re-define art only because they are ignoring the very most basic way we experience it. Art is a wide catagory because it encompasses dance, music, painting, sculpture, and so on and so on. It needs to be a broad definition. But to say art isn't related, specifically, to it's ability to provoke a reaction is silly. If anyone can find a form of 'art' that provokes no meaning, thought, or emotion from the viewer but is still art, I'd love to hear it. If you can't, then we've found the borders of what art is. You may not believe there CAN be a definition, but that's nonsense. It's a word, and either we need to invent NEW terms to describe and catagorize these systems, or assign meaning to the one we use.

The whole bolded part seems to contradice the two paragraphs before. If it requires people to go "Hey" to be art then it is an appeal to popularity.

The arrengement of stones to get the most attention is pretty much a text book example for an appeal to popularity. I mean according to that if no one goes "hey" then it´s not art, so in order to aquire the quality "artfulness" it requires someone to notice it. How is this not an appeal to popularity?

I would say that the idea of a Dog is not an appeal to popularity either. The only difference is that everyone agrees (more or less) on what a dog is based in scientific grounds, but people have not yet admitted there is an objective reaction to art that is nearly universal. Certain people might like different stuff, but they all experience it in similar ways, and for similar reasons. That is an objective reality at work.

Here's an example of our Five Stones. Tell me which of these is a sentence that conveys meaning:

1) bb ee n oooo r t
2) to be, or not to be
3) beto, nor ottobe
4) ** **, ** *** ** **

Unless you are TRYING to disagree with me, you're going to see the point. The way a thing is made up has something to do with the amount of meaning it is conveyed. Which of these phrases is the most artful, the most emotion-inducing? Which--if it had been written in a world without Hamlet--would be the closest to an artful phrase? It's gotta be 2. Beto nor Ottobe does't mean anything. A bunch of starts doesn't mean anything--not by itself. An alphabetized clump of letters has zero meaning whatsoever, it is just organized. At best it is a code, but it would only be a code for something if it was a code for something else, which would give it meaning. But I said this is in a world without Hamlet, so the only 'sentence' is 2, and the only one with meaning is 2.

What's this mean?

I'm trying to say there is a language and grammar to art. Five stones in a construction site's gravel pit has no meaning whatsoever. If I arrange them seperately, it can represent something. It can make people think or feel something. You've taken something that has zilch to it and made it interesting art. But, how is this not an appeal to popularity?

Because sentence structure and literature are not appeals to authority. English isn't an appeal to authority. The rules about how to make a sentence are not an appeal to authority. They are the basic rules for human comprehension.

5) t7o b23e, o*r n7o#t t8o b1e.

This is less readable, but the meaning contained is the same. It's just got garbage in it. Removing this garbage, and making it easier to read, is not Subjective. It is Objetively easier to read without that stuff in it.

The same is true of art. I called it an Appeal to Comprehension. If it is difficult to 'read' the art and understand it, then it may not be very good. If it's hard to read because it's written in terms I don't get (like a newcomer to abstract art doesn't understand the point of the art yet, and is still looking for the picture a woman) then really, I'm just not reading it properly. But if the language is just bad, and it doesn't make any sense, or whatever sense it makes isn't interesting or appealing, then it's not very artful.

6) The sky looks blue.

This sentence is extremely low on meaning. I can't imagine people would look at it and go "Oh my god, it's so deep!" unless someone else was telling them to. It's not an Appeal to Popularity, people individually don't like it, it's not moving. It just isn't. So it's certainly less artful than "To be or not to be" in that sense as well.

Even if you call literature, grammar, all art, and everything else like it as an 'appeal to popularity,' I'd say you're misusing the term. Most people are likely to go "I don't like this, it isn't art" or such, so I definately do not want to appeal to popularity to define it. I just think that you cannot divorce audience reaction from an evaluation of if it is art, or effective art. Reaction is the only thing art does.

[Covenant]

Shit, can someone erase that? I meant to PM it. I wanted to take my art debate to PMs.

[seanrobertson]

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.

I'd like you to justify that statement, please. Maybe I'm suffering from philosophic ring rust, but I'm inclined to call that an extremely weak analogy: Thich Quang Duc (et al.) chose to light himself afire. No animal starves himself of his own volition.

[The Yosemite Bear]

While as a devil's advocate I don't believe in acerbating human suffering, the whole point of this "artist's" work was apparently to protest the strarvation and dehydration of children in Honduras. sure shooting the dog, would have been a more humane way to end the creature's existance. However, the "artist" erred on the side of judging human nature. 'All that is nessearry for evil to suceed is for good men to co nothing', anyone attending that gallery could have fed the dog, freed it or shot it, minor legal consequences be damned, and would have gotten away with it.

however like the fake electrical shock test, the stanford tests, etc. humans will obey precieved authority, and keep themselves feed, at the expense of their "Humanity", sorry we are an awful species.

[Superman]

However, the "artist" erred on the side of judging human nature.

I have to disagree with this point. It takes a certain type of person to deliberately abuse an animal, and putting it on display while watching it suffer is pretty telling. He knew exactly how people would react, and, like the Zodiac Killer demanding media attention, he wanted everyone to see his result (alright, it might not be that bad, but I would argue that it takes the same kind of sadistic mind to get off on the suffering of an animal).

I don't think many of us on this board are capable of doing something like this. Hell, I'm a cat person and I don't really care for dogs, but I sure as hell couldn't make one suffer.

[Junghalli]

I don't think many of us on this board are capable of doing something like this.

I bet a surprising number could do it if ordered to though. Remember those experiments where they get a huge percentage of regular, everyday people to administer what they believed were potentially fatal electric shocks to test subjects because somebody ordered them to? A lot of us are much closer to being able to commit heinous acts than we'd like to believe.

[Superman]

I bet a surprising number could do it if ordered to though. Remember those experiments where they get a huge percentage of regular, everyday people to administer what they believed were potentially fatal electric shocks to test subjects because somebody ordered them to? A lot of us are much closer to being able to commit heinous acts than we'd like to believe.

Yeah, I think you're right.

The difference here is that this asshole took it upon himself to do this. If we were ordered to do such a thing, I don't think we would feel very good about it; some of us might even lose sleep over it.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I think I mentioned that, along with the Prisoner/Prison Guard experiment at standford University

[Alerik the Fortunate]

So the next serial killer like Ed Gein, who would make soup bowls from people craniums, lampshades from skin, etc. was an artiste? Should he have been cleared of all murder charges and given a grant instead?

I'm sick to fucking death of "free thinkers" that want to justify every foible as "art". You may want to delude yourselves into thinking you are on a higher intellectual plane than "the rest of us", but really, you're just fucking idiots.

Hey, how about we have someone squish the heads of baby chickens with a pair of pliers? Let's golf clap at this artist's bravery!

But in the same world administration of punishment to such artists could be in itself construed as art, thus elevating justice to the same superlative plane, and justifying social controls for their own sake! Then art as a term would be meaningless, as everything that happens would be justified as art, and thus art would not be a justification of any particular action, since what actually happened would be based on other things, such as whatever system of justice is in place at the time.

But really, I think that whether or not something actually is art is a separate issue from whether creating it is an immoral or a moral act. The moral question is obviously whether avoidable suffering was engendered in the making of the art, whatever the value or success of the work.

[Starglider]

I'm sick to fucking death of "free thinkers" that want to justify every foible as "art".

But in the same world administration of punishment to such artists could be in itself construed as art, thus elevating justice to the same superlative plane, and justifying social controls for their own sake![/quote]

'Could be construed as art' by idiots only. Frankly no-one else gives a damn what postmodernist muppets consider art, unless they're trying to use it as an excuse to justify horrific and/or criminal actions. Social controls are instituted on the basis of what lawmakers think the effects of various actions and materials on society are - which they often get wrong, but philosobabble doesn't come into it.

[Coyote]

The point of art is to evoke an emotional response. Nowehere is there a guarantee that the emotional response is going to be a warm, happy one.

That said, inflicting cruelty on a living creature to evoke an emotional response in others is unecessarily cruel, and darkly ironic if the intent is to demonstrate how wrong the cruelty of the government is for lingering conditions in a particular country. We also learn a great deal about those who (ahem) 'get off' on this particular type of art.

There are many alternative ways to portray the needed message without resorting to abject cruelty. I'd wager the type of mind that relishes this as "art" would try to make a similar argument about child porn movies as "art".

[Junghalli]

Wasn't there somebody who once described the 9/11 attack as a work of art?

[General Zod]

The point of art is to evoke an emotional response. Nowehere is there a guarantee that the emotional response is going to be a warm, happy one.

According to who? That strikes me as a retarded definition since it means anything from trolling to terrorism can be art.

[Darth Servo]

The point of art is to evoke an emotional response.

But there has to be MORE than that. Looking at Nazi concentration camp photographs evokes a pretty intense emotional response. No one in their right mind would call the holocaust "art"

[Coyote]

All salmon are fish, but not all fish are salmon.

Just because the purpose of art is to evoke an emotional response, that does not mean that everything that provokes an emotional response is therefore to be considered art.

[General Zod]

Just because the purpose of art is to evoke an emotional response, that does not mean that everything that provokes an emotional response is therefore to be considered art.

Again, according to who?

[Darth Servo]

All salmon are fish, but not all fish are salmon.

Just because the purpose of art is to evoke an emotional response, that does not mean that everything that provokes an emotional response is therefore to be considered art.

Like I said, there has to be something MORE than that. Read the first sentence of my post instead of just the last two.

[Terralthra]

As previous posters have said, a key part of the definition of art is intentional creation and framing of meaning. The photographs may have been intentionally created to evoke those emotions, and therefore be art, without the Holocaust itself being art.

[Coyote]

Just because the purpose of art is to evoke an emotional response, that does not mean that everything that provokes an emotional response is therefore to be considered art.

Again, according to who?

Right now, I'm operating off of 'according to me', since art, and people's reactions and opinions to it, are not the same sort of recurring quantifiable things your going to see measured in a lab.

In response to your question, I counter another: does everything that provokes an emotional response considered art in your experience? An agument with your girlfriend; a random near-miss in traffic; seeing someone litter; hearing a cell phone go off while you're trying to watch a movie in a theater? That spreads the definition of art so thin as to cover everything-- ergo, it becomes meaningless.

OTOH, stuff that we normally consider art is considered that... why? What makes a Monet impressionist piece more appealing than the blank wall beneath it? Some may indeed prefer the blank wall, but both the Monet fan and the blank wall fan would be united (perhaps) if the display were neither Monet nor blank wall but rather, a starving dog.

IMO, part of the definition is purpose of exhibition. Cruelty being done with the moment captured on film, can be informative art. So, the picture of the naked girl running from her napalmed village in Vietnam can be considered artistic because the napalming was happening anyway, the girl was going to run, the war was happening, and there was nothing the photographer could do about it except capture the moment on film and display what horrors war brings us.

OTOH, if we find out that the photographer hired some guys to napalm a village not in a war, just for the purpose of getting a picture of a naked, terrified girl running away just so he could jab you emotionally and get a rise out of watching you writhe, then IMO that could only be considered 'art' if you took the most extreme, perverse interpretation.

That, to me, is the difference between taking a picture, or making a short film, about a starving dog, or child, or other creature, and documenting how it wastes away from neglect and you show how throngs of people walk by and do nothing to display the cold cruelty of the world. It is another thing to purposefully isolate the dog (child, creature, etc) and artificially stage-manage its death to hammer your point home. At that stage, the onus is no longer on the cruel neglect of the world, but on the shock-jocking capacities of the artist. Perverse, immoral, and selfish, all rolled into one.

[Terralthra]

The trouble I see with this thread is that it's trying to create a definition of art that works for what we all generally consider to be art and still manages to exclude what this sadistic dog-killer did, and that's proving problematic.

Don't conflate the two issues. Just because something meets the definition of 'art' doesn't mean it's not a cruel, immoral, sadistic thing to have done. What this guy did meets most of the definitions of art presented here, he's just a sick fuck doing sick things.

[Knife]

The trouble I see with this thread is that it's trying to create a definition of art that works for what we all generally consider to be art and still manages to exclude what this sadistic dog-killer did, and that's proving problematic.

Not really, I don't see what the guy did as art any more than the I think a smear of shit on a wall is art. I go back to my first post in the thread; why does high end visual art get such a double standard and a vague definition when other genres don't?

So how about this, if it doesn't make sense or if it doesn't translate a message clearly, it's not art. If someone has to explain the message to you, it's bad art.

Fuck face in the OT didn't have art and his apologists are trying their hardest to explain it which would make it at the very best, bad art if indeed it is art.

[Coyote]

The point of art is to evoke an emotional response.

But there has to be MORE than that. Looking at Nazi concentration camp photographs evokes a pretty intense emotional response. No one in their right mind would call the holocaust "art"

The Holocaust in itself is not "art". But the photographs of what happened can be. They can be merely informative: "this is what happened", or they can be horrifying evidence of just how far humanity has yet to go on the evolutionary ladder.

Looking at pictures of the Holocause does not make the Holocaust into art. The Holocaust happened. Art recorded it. It is possible to recognise the recording as artistic while deploring the act being recorded as barbaric.

From my perspective, the act of making the art cannot interfere with the event, because then it is not about the event but the artist.

To confuse the issue, there is art that is performed, of course: dance, theater, acting, etc. In those cases, yes, the performance is part and parcel of the art and cannot exist without it.

But "Starving Dog" is being displayed ostensibly to display societal neglect of the needy. A worthy cause. But the artist has done it in such an asinine, perverse and morally bankrupt way that his message cannot get across because people get caught up in the disgusting medium.

It's as if I tried to draw for you a picture, but instead of using a piece of paper I use a stylus to inscribe the picture in human feces. It pretty much guarantees that mypicture, no matter how meaningful it may be, will be utterly disregarded by you because (I presume) you'll be so put off by the feces part that the note part will be obscured into meaninglessness.

[General Zod]

Right now, I'm operating off of 'according to me', since art, and people's reactions and opinions to it, are not the same sort of recurring quantifiable things your going to see measured in a lab.

So you're pulling it out of your ass. Gotcha.

In response to your question, I counter another: does everything that provokes an emotional response considered art in your experience? An agument with your girlfriend; a random near-miss in traffic; seeing someone litter; hearing a cell phone go off while you're trying to watch a movie in a theater? That spreads the definition of art so thin as to cover everything-- ergo, it becomes meaningless.

OTOH, stuff that we normally consider art is considered that... why? What makes a Monet impressionist piece more appealing than the blank wall beneath it? Some may indeed prefer the blank wall, but both the Monet fan and the blank wall fan would be united (perhaps) if the display were neither Monet nor blank wall but rather, a starving dog.

Did you even bother reading the entire thread or did you just want to interject here to spew a long winded tirade? There seems to be an awful lot of that going on in here.

IMO, part of the definition is purpose of exhibition. Cruelty being done with the moment captured on film, can be informative art. So, the picture of the naked girl running from her napalmed village in Vietnam can be considered artistic because the napalming was happening anyway, the girl was going to run, the war was happening, and there was nothing the photographer could do about it except capture the moment on film and display what horrors war brings us.

Who gives a shit about purpose? If you can't tell that it's supposed to be art just by looking and have to insert bloated rationalizations then it's already failed as a piece of art.