[_petronius]

Some art-haters in the comments, so to defend this piece of contemporary art for a moment: one thing I love about it is a commitment to the long future of art, creativity, and civilization. What does it take to keep an instrument playing for six hundred years? To commit to that idea -- like the century-long projects of cathedral building in the middle ages, or the idea of planting trees you won't live to see mature -- is (to me) the awesome thing about the Halberstadt performance. All rendered in a medium (church organ) that has existed for an even longer time.

It's a pretty hopeful, optimistic view of the future in a time of high uncertainty, but also represents a positive argument: it's worth doing these things because they are interesting, weird, and fun, and because they represent a continuity with past and future people we will never meet.

Plus, you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it :)

[TheCondor]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but you should invert the question and think about it.

In the case of a cathedral, I think it is relatively easy to commit to the project you won't see through, it has a significance to those people making the commitment. What becomes much more challenging is when future generations don't have the same level of commitment, it's a much bigger ask to stop. Maybe there is a better use of the resources that could impact people immediately; if it's a church, I'm thinking feeding the hungry and clothing the naked sorts of things. It's hard to stop something that "we've just been doing." It's also hard to ask "why are we doing this?"

In 200 years, suppose there is some crisis we cannot predict and the recital is to be interrupted or stopped. There will be an incredible amount of pressure on somebody to make a good choice. Pressure that was created by a distant ancestor, of sorts. That might be part of the beauty of it, that might be part of the bond that ties different people together throughout time and it might be wonderful. What if there is a caretaker that is ready to retire and cannot find the next caretaker? That seems like a horrible position to be in.

Japan is or was doing multi-generational mortgages a while back (I assume they might still be.) as it was the only way a family could afford to buy a property. I can see that being a tremendously loving act for your children or grandchildren in providing a property that they will own, but I could just as well see it being a gigantic burden to them, what if they want to live somewhere else? Them following their bliss effectively changes the living and working future of the parents.

[dpc050505]

There's always an opportunity cost to making art. Taking your argument to it's extreme people should never paint or make music but instead spend all their time growing food and building homes (and distributing those goods because that's a big crux, we could feed everyone on the planet if we got food to the right people).

The cool thing about freedom is that we don't have to be rational monks that are slave to economic utilitarism.

[mikepurvis]

This conundrum comes up sometimes in the context of generational starships, about intermediate generations being born into bondage board, committed by their ancestors to a shitty life in a metal tube, with their only purpose being a preordained duty to keep a few systems operational and produce the next generation of slaves just so that eventually someone can birth the arrival generation.

Alastair Reynolds' book Chasm City touches on a bunch of this, in particular the class warfare angle of some wealthy travelers getting to enjoy the journey in peaceful cryosleep while the poor ones pay for their passage in servitude.

[jstanley]

> being born into bondage board, committed by their ancestors to a shitty life in a metal tube, with their only purpose being a preordained duty to keep a few systems operational and produce the next generation of slaves just so that eventually someone can birth the arrival generation.

This isn't really so different from being born on Earth, except that we take being born on Earth for granted, and the population is really really big.

[guelo]

We're all living in the world created by our ancestors. All their short sighted fuckups (lead poisoning, climate change) or triumphs (tech, art) is ours to bear.

[nostone]

Life is conditioned and unfree get used to it.

[mikepurvis]

Ehhh I see where you're coming from but I don't think it's quite the same. Here on Earth is the default, and while each individual's opportunities are greatly affected by the circumstances of their birth and parentage, with effort and luck there's a fair chance to change one's stars.

Opting into an interstellar voyage is a significant reduction in opportunity for almost anyone.

And yes, the same could be said for a European colonist crossing the Atlantic to the Americas in the 16th century, and many of them did face starvation, exposure, etc, but it's different when you're largely committing yourself and your immediate family to those hardships, under the belief that the timeframe for "a better life" is the next generation. Committing intermediate generations is a different beast.

[XorNot]

You're assuming life after the journey was guaranteed to be better, but not all colonists and immigrants happened to head to the world's future superpower.

Every decision is potentially committing descendants to the consequences of that choice (and to wit: life aboard a generation ship hardly need be a miserable or undesirable one, at the size of say, a large town and surrounding hinterland you have as much or more opportunity as anyone else at most times in history - I think generation ships force us to confront uncomfortable questions about what is the meaning of life on Earth which we try to sweep aside by deciding they're an impossible moral burden).

[parpfish]

I spend too much time thinking about all the stuff that can go wrong on generation ships.

You take off for your destination, but when you get there you find out that humans back on earth made a faster ship 100 years after you left and beat you to the destination.

You spent generations expecting to be bold explorers pushing the frontier and getting to claim nice territory, and you show up to find you’re in second place.

[mikepurvis]

I won't spoil it here, but you might really enjoy Chasm City; I recommend giving it a read. :)

[aaronax]

And that the highly-refined citizens of that future era think that your BO and deodorant are incredibly overpowering.

(as described in Vogt's "Far_Centaurus" short story.

[867-5309]

incessant obsolescence

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12354195

[Nursie]

> You take off for your destination, but when you get there you find out that humans back on earth made a faster ship 100 years after you left and beat you to the destination.

A theme that turns up in Starfield as well...

[ryandrake]

Heinlein also tackled some of these problems with generation ships in Orphans of the Sky[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky

[groby_b]

That's the beauty of a long-term commitment. You are stating so much confidence about the future that you say "yes, we can have a functioning society and set aside these resources".

Sure, you can create scenarios were that fails. You can do that for anything. The power lies in saying "we are willing to remove these paths from consideration because we as a people are committed to not letting them occur".

It's a model that fails if you apply first-order utilitarian calculus. But the intangible value of the hope and commitment in it likely overshadows any immediate gain. This isn't about how to maximize utilization or optionality. It's a bold statement about who we are, and a lodestar to aspire to. (Which is, ultimately, the job art does)

[lmm]

> In 200 years, suppose there is some crisis we cannot predict and the recital is to be interrupted or stopped. There will be an incredible amount of pressure on somebody to make a good choice. Pressure that was created by a distant ancestor, of sorts. That might be part of the beauty of it, that might be part of the bond that ties different people together throughout time and it might be wonderful. What if there is a caretaker that is ready to retire and cannot find the next caretaker? That seems like a horrible position to be in.

We have plenty of examples where this has already happened. Traditions that were maintained at significant cost in the face of difficulties or opposition. Caretakers of something ancient who struggle to find an heir. We tend to view them positively.

> Japan is or was doing multi-generational mortgages a while back (I assume they might still be.) as it was the only way a family could afford to buy a property.

I suspect this has been misreported. Japanese mortgage terms are pretty normal and property prices are much lower than in the west (even the bubble only really affected central Tokyo). There's a practice of an elderly parent being able to get a mortgage that's then "inherited" by a child, in cases where the parent is retired or close to retirement, but it's pretty much a face-saving (and tax-avoidance) measure.

[hinkley]

They couldn’t even quarry the Washington Monument out of a single color of stone. It’s not that visible in pictures but if you go see it on a sunny day it’s hard to ignore that stupid line in the middle.

If you take too long building a cathedral the quarry might exhaust itself in the meantime. So even if you keep to the design it might not look right.

> The outside facing consists, due to the interrupted building process, of three different kinds of white marble.

[marc_abonce]

For some cathedrals that visible mismatch in the materials might be a feature, not a bug.

At least that's the case for the co-cathedral in Zamora, Michoacán which had its construction interrupted for almost a century due to the Mexican Revolution, the Cristero War and its subsequent expropriation by the government. In this context, the mismatching facade remains as a testament of the building's history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocesan_Sanctuary_of_Our_Lady...

[jl6]

Maybe a crisis will occur and maybe our descendants will have to make a tough choice, but that could enrich the story of the performance. If they choose to end the performance for whatever reason, that’s their business. The hopes and desires of one generation can only hold sway over the next for so long.

[jacobgkau]

> If they choose to end the performance for whatever reason, that’s their business.

Well, in this case, "you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it." Selling tickets for an event that far in the future makes it the business of the ticket purchaser and whoever they leave the tickets for.

Is the money collected from the tickets being held in such a way that it can be refunded if/when this project fails before another 600 years have gone by? If not, it seems like a potential scam in that sense.

[dahart]

No need to speculate wildly or cast unsupported aspersions. The funds from the “Final Ticket” sales are explicitly a financial contribution to supporting the project. Nobody buying one is unaware of that fact, there’s no potential for scam.

[jacobgkau]

It's not wild to speculate that a ticket I buy for an event 600 years in the future might not be honored. People get screwed over on pre-orders with timetables far smaller than that.

Again, if they sell something they're calling a ticket to the final part of the performance, then they have a financial duty to keep the project going (or refund the ticket) and it's not "their business" to end the project early like the person I replied to was claiming. At the very best, they could invest the money and use only the interest to support ongoing operations, but they need to keep the original value available to refund or else they need to fulfill what the ticket's for-- if they do neither of those things, they ripped people off, period.

If they're just funding the project's continuation, it's on them for pulling the marketing stunt (and/or false advertising) of calling it a ticket for this event in 600 years instead of just taking donations, selling present-day tickets and/or merch, etc. Fine print saying "actually, this ticket isn't a real ticket, it's just for fun" doesn't make them look better to me, so I don't see how that'd be a defense in your mind.

[kelnos]

> It's not wild to speculate that a ticket I buy for an event 600 years in the future might not be honored. People get screwed over on pre-orders with timetables far smaller than that.

I think you're framing this in the wrong way. Anyone buying a ticket knows there is no guarantee that this finale will occur, or that even if it does, that whatever entity in is in charge of it by then will honor the tickets. They treat this as a donation to something they care about, and the ticket is a cute gift of appreciation. And on top of that, the descendants of the ticket-purchasers may have lost the tickets generations ago, not even know about them, or not even care.

Suggesting that people are getting "screwed over" is unnecessarily dramatic.

[dahart]

Again, the terms of the purchase are explicitly laid out. Maybe go read them? It’s not a marketing stunt, not false advertising, and it is a real ticket. It’s a financial contribution to the project, same as any donation. You can rationalize your speculation and assumptions but the terms of the deal aren’t confusing anyone buying these tickets. Donations with merch attached to them as ‘thank yous’ are absolutely standard practice, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Regardless, I guarantee nobody who buys one will be alive to redeem the ticket. Your best choice, if you were hoping to be there, or if you don’t want to contribute is to not purchase a Final Ticket. Aside from that, there’s really no call for muckraking. Zero people will be duped, they are extremely clear with their intent.

[hbsbsbsndk]

It's not surprising that people who love AI and NFTs are willfully ignorant about what makes art meaningful. It's a sadly transactional view of the world.

[mingus88]

It’s obvious that many people in this industry believe themselves to be supremely intelligent and curious hacker types, yet they obviously never taken a humanities course.

They have a huge blind spot that they aren’t even aware of, or worse just devalue the entire history of human thought and creation that doesn’t involve hard science.

[trbleclef]

Your comment will rattle a few cages here but I honestly think about this all the time, as one of the minority of music educators around HN. The blind spots (or perhaps a STEM vs STEAM upbringing) are unfortunate. We are possibly the only — or one of an incredibly small number of — species that even makes sounds solely for enjoyment and aesthetics. The humanities are what make us us.

[Vegenoid]

We're also the only species that can use abstraction to assign meaning to and relations between symbols in any way we choose. The humanities and the sciences are both extremely important to what makes us human, and saying that only one is 'what makes us us' will alienate those who are different from you.

That you are primarily driven by music and aesthetics, and others are primarily driven by science and technological creation, and most of us are driven by both in varying degrees - that is what makes us human.

[trbleclef]

I'm driven by all four. That's why I'm here! My point is that current culture as a whole allows for a large deficit in individuals' understanding the humanities. Especially around here, you will see comments suggesting that the humanities are not necessary, or are not viable career paths, etc.

It's not that one drive is more important than the other. It is that we as a contemporary society often treat arts that way. Your drive is vital too!

[ddingus]

Indeed!

I am a strong tech person. Always have been.

That said, early in my life I took a chance on music and really enjoyed the performing arts. Through an unfortunate set of circumstances, I ended up doing Music education for my peers.

A beloved teacher had a health issue that left them unable to teach and the substitute did not have the same manner and appreciation for the music and after a few conflicts, they called me out and I (foolishly) accepted!

Now I just had to back it up with actions.

Short story, "my" class was a success. Students reached their goals, we placed well in competition and that teacher and I developed a great friendship.

You are dead on with your comment. And having had the chance to take music education, then turn right around and deliver it seriously was at once crazy and ultra enlightening!

I had the realization my chest thumping got me placed into a position where I had an obligation to educate my peers and rid them of that blind spot you wrote of the same as was done for me.

And that was the H in "hard." Running the class, prepping pieces for performance, debugging the choir all were what I thought was hard.

Nope.

Getting them to internalize the humanity of it, language of emotion and all that, is hard. Respect for the art, whatever it may be, is hard. Cultivating the culture of learning, shared vulnerability (in the case of group performing arts) and the intensely personal nature of it all is hard.

I grew half a decade doing that as a high schooler, who had no clue at all what they said yes to...

In the end, a walk through the humanities is both empowering and enlightening on a level many technical people fail to appreciate.

No fault of theirs. They just did not get what I and many others did or gave as the case may be.

I can put a notch sharper point on all this for passersby (assuming you and I talking is preaching to the choir):

The ones who do not take the trip through the humanities are often told what to do by the ones who did.

Thanks for doing the hard work you do. It is often underappreciated.

[dontlikeyoueith]

Most of them don't value hard science either.

[kristopolous]

barbrook wrote an essay about this 30 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

Still on the nose.

[hbsbsbsndk]

Incredibly prescient. This quote from 2011 really sums it up:

> The original promise of the Californian Ideology, was that the computers would liberate us from all the old forms of political control, and we would become Randian heroes, in control of our own destiny. Instead, today, we feel the opposite—that we are helpless components in a global system—a system that is controlled by a rigid logic that we are powerless to challenge or to change.

[nottorp]

Ok but why would you need a "humanities course" to appreciate art?

[mingus88]

You don’t. It’s a great way to get an introduction to a field outside of your typical realm of expertise though.

It’s one of those things that really lets you know how much you don’t know. Then when you comment about such things on the internet you might be open to learning more, as opposed to what many folk in this thread are doing.

[nottorp]

I don't know, I don't want to become an expert. I just enjoy my books and paintings and sculptures and architecture...

The problems appear when you start assigning a monetary value to everything you do.

[dmoy]

I can appreciate art, and play music at a pretty damn good level myself, but still think that John Cage is totally wack.

I don't dislike all strange music - Satie and Poulenc are some of my favorites. But a lot of John Cage's stuff is... no longer music.

Like I'm sorry, but 4'33" is not music.

I draw a line somewhere, and a lot of John Cage's stuff is wayyyyyyyyy the fuck over the line.

Sure maybe it's some kind of art, but it's not music.

[plastic-enjoyer]

We call this people "Fachidioten" in Germany, people who are really good at their craft but absolute morons in every other field. Unfortunately, these are the people that dominate tech and you can see this in how technology develops.

[egypturnash]

Google Translate renders this in English as "Specialist idiots" and I like that.

[TiredOfLife]

But that word equally describes artists

[eszed]

It can. Qualitatively - having spent the first half of my working life in the arts, and now the second nearly-half in tech - all I can say is that serious artists are every bit as smart and driven and interesting as are the serious people in tech. They just don't make as much money, so they don't get much respect.

[whstl]

Celebrities !== Artists

[AlexandrB]

I don't see how that follows. Avant-garde music of this type is basically an NFT already. All of its value is in the novelty, none is in the aesthetics. The meaning of the piece is completely externalized to the identity of its author and the history of its composition and cannot be derived from observing the piece itself. That describes NFTs to a tee! The only thing missing the layer of cryptography on top.

[whstl]

> Avant-garde music of this type is basically an NFT already. All of its value is in the novelty, none is in the aesthetics.

That's painting things with a broad brush and a wrong one at that.

Ironically, there's plenty of avant-garde art that is 100% about the aesthetics, to the point people complain they were "made without technique".

[lolinder]

This is an incredibly reductive dismissal of a very diverse group of people who don't find Cage's art in particular to be meaningful.

[airstrike]

Why are you making such sweeping assumptions about us? I studied architecture and art history for over a year, I'm the son of a painter, I have an uncle who's a Grammy-winning musician and an aunt who's a musical scholar who literally has a doctorate degree on John f* Cage of all people... which is to say I grew up surrounded by art. I've visited every museum you can name this side of the Berlin Wall's remains, many more than once.

I have a degree in humanities, another in business and another in computer science.... and while I still don't mind Cage that much, I do think most of contemporary art is absolute shit.

I don't have to agree with you for my opinion to have value. You need to learn to name call people less and make your points on the merits of arguments. It's tiring for everyone else to engage otherwise.

[tshaddox]

It's a neat goal to keep an organ playing for hundreds of years. I just don't think that's related to the musical composition itself, which is not impressive to me. The fact that Cage added the phrase "as slow as possible" is not, in my opinion, musically interesting.

It would be analogous to writing a screenplay, adding the note "produce the film using as much money as possible," and then having someone attempt to do that. It's technically impressive to spend $500 million on a film production, sure, but that small note at the end of the screenplay is not cinematically interesting.

[brookst]

Cage created art that transcends music and you are rightfully noting that it is not that impressive when judged solely on musical merit.

It’s like saying a dodecahedron isn’t that impressive when viewed sitting on a 2D plane because it’s just a triangke and there are more interesting 2D shapes. True, but so reductive it’s tautological.

[tshaddox]

In what way does it transcend music? What other form of art, other than music, is he operating in?

[globular-toast]

Yeah, something has been lost in current generations. I'm reminded of Asimov's Foundation books where the protagonist dies at the beginning but leaves behind the foundations of a thousand-year plan to rebuild civilisation after the collapse that he predicts including a time capsule that opens following predicted crises.

I feel like such ideas are of a time, namely the 1950s when things were looking up. Nowadays I feel like everyone is aware that Earth is basically finished but we have no way off of it, so they just try to squeeze as much joy as they can before they die without any thought towards the future at all.

This even comes out in smaller cycles like writing software that works today with no thought about how it will look in a decade. I feel like the stuff they were doing even in 90s was done with the intention of being around for a very long time. Now it's like, yagni, just write any old shit that works.

[grues-dinner]

Some Anathem vibes too!

Regarding the YAGNI stuff, that applies to whole companies. All you have to do is stack the cobbled-together shit high enough to get bought and exit. Even the founders aren't in it for a sustainable long term business. In fact that goal is derisively called a "lifestyle business".

[korkybuchek]

Assume you already know about this given your interests, but just in case: https://longnow.org/

[mcv]

And while it may be contemporary avant garde now, by the time the performance is finished, it will be a timeless classic.

[7bit]

Does the ticket come with a snorkeling set?

[seydor]

Cage died in 1992 , this is not contemporary art

[thih9]

> Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_art