[gnulinux]

Disclaimer: I'm not a writer, but I do write music.

I think there are two types "bad" writing and I think people have a hard time having nuanced discussion about this.

First category is what I would personally describe "uninspired". These are works created by artists who arguably have either (1) too little exposure to prior art, or (2) too inexperienced with core skills of writing. So, in terms of my field, these artists probably (1) didn't expose themselves to enough music, or read enough music, or (2) didn't practice how to construct and write music enough times that they're comfortable. Examples of "uninspired" works include student works (i.e. practice works written by people to gain skills), works whose only purpose is to make money and there is no other consideration (this is probably very debatable), or works created by people who are unreasonably unexposed to the prior art (e.g. someone who has sufficient writing skills who is writing a novel, but really only read 2 novels before.)

Second "bad" category is what I would describe writing that is too stylish where aesthetic choices aren't appealing. This is when creator (1) is sufficiently exposed to prior art and (2) is experienced enough to produce works similar to prior art. Now, this gets very tricky because the problem with these works -- i.e. what separates them from Category 1 -- is that the work itself needs to convince the observer of these qualities, which can oftentimes be very hard. Unfortunately, I cannot give examples from literature, but to give an example from the history of music writing: oftentimes people listen to works of Schoenberg and they complain it sounds horrific, dissonant, random and ugly etc etc... However, if you look at the work closely, you'll find choices that are only consistent with thorough understanding of the prior art and an experimental desire to create something entirely novel. Now, it is "ugly" (for some, of course) but it is well-informed. In other words, it convinces most that the artist was able to create something "prettier" but for whatever reason decided not to.

Unpacking this is important when consuming "bad art" because each category teaches you something else.

When you consume Category 1 "bad art" you need to pick up (1) in what ways this work is unaware of prior art, and (2) in what ways this creator is inexperienced. This can be crucial to understand points where you struggle. E.g. you look at some student works, and you see consistent patterns that diverge from prior art -- consistent patterns are not explained with creativity. This can be a good reminder to work on these skills.

When it comes to Category 2, it's more complicated. This kind of art can be jarring, but can be the most useful kind of art you can consume to perfect your skills. These can show prior experiments, and how various styles work. You don't have to enjoy it, but it will be useful to see. E.g. slow movies may not be your favorite, but if you're filmmaker you likely want to sit through the entire "2001" movie.

Ultimately, it's up to you, and up to your relationship with your art. I personally consume a lot of art I dislike and think it's important to expand my understanding how things work. An artist is not just the work, but also the entire lifetime spent on observing, and critically thinking about other humans' art. So, the answer ultimately lies in you.

[woolion]

Great analysis, that hits a number of very good points!

In particular it's interesting that you call the first category "uninspired" rather than "lacking skills". A lot of people equate this "uninspired" category with "lacking in personal expression". Typically a really skillful artist can generally make something absolutely mechanical _feel_ personal, whereas an unskilled artist cannot make anything sound personal. There are also specific genres that skew the perception in one way or the other, that will change the threshold of skill for something to be considered "personal" or not.

The second category is interesting if you can identify how problems introduced by the rule-breaking elements could be solved. Any "art rule" solves a problem, and determining an alternative solution for it can lead to a breakthrough. Keyword is "can", there's a lot of experiment required. But in many cases it at least helps understanding better why the "rule" is useful.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's a very useful distinction. A lot of pop used to be - maybe still is. It works because its self-expression connects strongly with an audience.

In music, the people with the technical skills often work in support roles as session musicians, producers, and arrangers. They lack individual expression and charisma but have the skills needed to polish someone else's work.

The same applies to books. Dan Brown and Twilight are terrible writing but they give middle-of-the-bell-curve readers experiences that mean something to them. Most art aims higher, but the middle of the bell curve is where the big money is.

True mediocrity comes from having very limited technical skill - probably imitative in a narrow niche - and no ability to connect with an audience.

I think that applies to most academic attempts at serial music. The style is a bit of an oddity because the rules were contrived rather than evolved. And (IMO) that kind of dissonance has a very limited expressive range.

Schoenberg could get away with it, but there was a fad in 50s to 70s where that kind of serialism became academic orthodoxy. The result was hours and hours of music by clever educated people with absolutely no cultural relevance outside of academia.

[gnulinux]

I don't fully disagree with you but my personal opinion is that people give too little credit to contemporary movements within Western art music. Their cultural force is significant, but it's clouded so it's not easy to make an accounting of it.

- First, I need to note that although serialism proper isn't so relevant today, when it comes to film music dominant styles in the last couple decades or so have been minimalism and neo-romanticism. Neo-romanticism is obviously self-explanatory and well-understood, but minimalism [1] is harder to deal with only because it's a contemporary and peculiar style, and it's also rather controversial within Western art music community (especially since the kind of minimalism I hear in film music is closer to the style of Glass and Richter, and not Reich, Adams; or not even Ligeti et al's similar works such as "Selbstportrait mit Reich und Riley" (1976)). We can debate endlessly about the history of Western classical music, and I'm no art historian, but my personal opinion is that minimalism is a direct and clear response to serialism [2] which makes it a cultural heir. In art, we do see that things swing pretty far like a pendulum. What drives an artistic force in one direction can often be a previous force in the opposite. So, when you hear the soundtrack of something like Amelie (2001), in a way you do hear serialism, except in negative.

- Second, although the music of "the Second Viennese School" and later serialists (Boulez, Stockhausen) found no mass appeal, they did find sufficient amount of appeal within the music community. Serialism was practically the dominant style in early 20th century. Neo-romanticist composer David Diamond talks about his frustrations about this in this interview [3]. Given this, it's not true to state serialism has no cultural power, what's true is that most music produced today is one way or another post-serialist, in the sense that it's aware of its failed experiments and its merits. For example, music (film music/art music/whatever) today is not particularly contrapuntal, but composers are regularly, formally taught how to deal with counterpoint and it's considered a core skill for all composers. This makes composers skilled in this regard, but they consciously decide not to apply the full length of the skill. The same way painters are taught to draw like the old masters, but that kind of photographic realism doesn't have the same cultural relevance today in art. This still makes Bach (or old masters) culturally relevant today, albeit rather indirectly.

- You call that the rules were contrived but that is one particular interpretation of serialism, which is fair only because it's similar to how Schoenberg thought of it. However, if you look at other serialists such as Berg, Webern, Boulez and especially Carter, you'll see that the kind of "use each pitch once before using all others" silly rules are not taken any more seriously than you take counterpoint rules seriously while writing music (which was the source of disagreement between Boulez and his teacher Leibowitz [4]). Those rules are for practice. It's debatable, of course, what is "serialistic" about serialism (especially for later figures like Carter), but I think the core of the idea is for musical language to be comprehensive, and have a presentation of all possible forms of a given set of structures. Given this understanding, I don't think your statement "the rules were contrived rather than evolved" holds up. Within the tradition, there was the understanding that the way tonality evolves is that each composer comes and creates their own spin on the diatonic scale, all the way from Froberger to Bach to Chopin to Debussy we keep seeing this pattern again and again. Serialism has a will to go one step further and present all such possibilities in music. Again, I don't shy away from calling this, in many ways, a "failed experiment" but calling it "contrived" is not true.

[1] Example movies are countless, from Amelie (2001), The Shape of Water (2017), Blindness (2008) to Ladybird (2017) etc...

[2] Philip Glass talks about how his music is a response to Boulez scene (who is a late serialist composer) in this interview from 1976: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elAtF6UdefI

[3] https://crisismagazine.com/vault/americas-greatest-living-co...

[4] https://fugueforthought.de/2016/07/13/boulez-piano-sonata-no...

[thunderbong]

I found your comment to be very insightful. I realise that a lot of the developers I see fall in the first category, primarily due to a lack of experience.

The challenge I see in a lot of software in corporate environments is that, unlike music, the code written due to lack of awareness / experience becomes technical debt as the software keeps growing over time.