[AlBugdy]

I've had a hard time appreciating art so far, especially the ones that focus primarily on the concept, like this one. I get that it's novel and interesting, but I can't see myself spending more than a few minutes on it. Therefore, the value for me is negligible even though I can appreciate its novelty.

That's how I feel with most art - "yeah, it's cool, but can I look at something else now?". The time someone spent on creating it seems disproportionate to the time I'd interact with it. Maybe since lots of people will interact with it, it makes sense to do it, but maybe I just don't get art at all.

I see some sculptures that seem really basic, like putting some stones in some metal cage or something equally easy to design or, at least, explain/communicate. And all I'm thinking is "they paid some people to move a few tons of stone and weld some metal rods together... for this?!". My feeling is similar here - the idea is neat(ish) but someone went to all the trouble to actually implement it? The implementation gives us this random music we can play in our browsers but people mention they care more about the concept than the music. So why go to all the trouble to make the final polished version of your idea? Why not just say "imagine if we mapped the trains' locations via gps at specific times to different instruments"?

Yeah, I probably don't get art as others do. I just don't see a difference between "imagine a 100-ton stone handing from a rod" and "look at this actual 100-ton stone hanging from a rod".

[jamilton]

Some people say they care more about the concept than the music, but in practice if someone had just posted "imagine if etc" approximately no one would care, upvote, or comment. In reality people actually do care about the implementation at least existing. It's more novel and interesting than the abstract concept.

I don't think most artists make most art with the expectation that people are going to spend hours obsessing over it, if they did they'd be disappointed. Most art has approximately no one pay any attention or care about it, so the creation of art has to be driven by something else. Maybe the artist just wants the thing to exist for themselves, for example.

[jonnybgood]

> Yeah, I probably don't get art as others do.

There is no consensus on getting an art piece. The great thing I find about art is that it’s different for everyone. Music is art and yet everyone “gets” their preferred genre, instruments, bands, etc.

[ordu]

> maybe I just don't get art at all.

I don't think you don't get art at all. It is just that you don't get art in full. I should note, that no one gets what art really is, if you want to learn how tricky the question is, you should probably ask some trained person about it, like a philosopher of art. They can talk about it for dozens of hours without stopping to breathe.

But there is one property of art that is undeniable: when the art becomes understandable, when you can write rules for distinguishing a good art from a bad one, the art stops being art. It becomes a commodity instead, no one really interested in it anymore.

Lately art is got this rule, so now art is trying to not follow any rules at all. Except the rule of not following rules. It is pretty funny to watch the artists, the lengths they are ready to go just to follow the rule of not following rules.

But there is something else, if you just break rules it doesn't mean that you are creating art. I think there is one more necessary (but not sufficient) property of art: it should stick into memory. Your stones in a metal cage have this property, you remember them, you ask questions about them. It is not sufficient to claim that they are art, but I think it is close enough.

> The implementation gives us this random music we can play in our browsers but people mention they care more about the concept than the music.

Yeah, the music is not very exciting by itself, what is exciting it was created by trains. And HN attracts the people who are not going to be content with this knowledge without knowing exactly how trains could do it.

> So why go to all the trouble to make the final polished version of your idea?

Because the act of creation is fun maybe? And there are people who understands it and can see a piece of art and feel what the artist felt in the act of the creation? It is not so fun to create if you are not going to share your creation with others. I don't know why.

> Yeah, I probably don't get art as others do. I just don't see a difference between "imagine a 100-ton stone handing from a rod" and "look at this actual 100-ton stone hanging from a rod".

Well, there is a difference. To hang 100-ton stone from a rod one needs to overcome a lot of hurdles. They will need money and some bureaucratic approval, because the stone could fall and kill someone. When I imagine a 100-ton stone hanging from a rod I feel nothing. But when I see it, I can't stop laughing. Someone had gone through a lot of troubles to hang the stone, and to do that they managed to convince others that it is very important to hang the stone.

[AlBugdy]

> if you want to learn how tricky the question is, you should probably ask some trained person about it, like a philosopher of art. They can talk about it for dozens of hours without stopping to breathe.

This is tangential to the discussion, but I've always wondered why "philosophy of art" it's not "psychology of art" instead. Philosophy generally deals with things science can't deal with (yet) like ethics, metaphysics, qualia. And art is just about how humans (and probably other intelligent animals) perceive something meant to evoke emotions and thought. It's something science can deal with now, whether it's a "hard" science like neuroscience or a "softer" one like psychology and sociology. From Wikipedia I get:

> Philosophers debate whether aesthetic properties have objective existence or depend on the subjective experiences of observers

So in this case it's actually a type of philosophy, but it seems so useless to talk about something like this. Obviously what's aesthetically pleasing to some will not to aesthetically pleasing to someone else. And anything at all can be aesthetically pleasing. I'm sure many people find a piece of cow shit aesthetically pleasing. Many people dislike flowers and paintings. Things that are aesthetically pleasing to almost everyone are aesthetically pleasing because they share something that can be explained by studying our brains (like whether symmetry is generally perceived as prettier than asymmetry). Do any philosophers really think an aesthetic property, if it somehow has any objective existence, is any different than anything else that we treat as abstract but would have objective existence if we philosophized about it long enough (like mathematical structures or language)?

It's like some was bored enough to create this field when the interesting philosophies were already taken. And it's similar to those "philosophies" that talk about honor or duty and similar things that are so far removed from reality and can't possibly be connected to any ground truth about the world and need to be talked about in sociology circles, instead. Like, we don't have and can't possibly have a "philosophy" of HN comments. We can discuss so many interesting aspects of the comments here, but none of that would be philosophy, it would be closer to science.

> I think there is one more necessary (but not sufficient) property of art: it should stick into memory. Your stones in a metal cage have this property, you remember them, you ask questions about them. It is not sufficient to claim that they are art, but I think it is close enough.

I remember then because they were in a public park and I thought:

> The city and the government subsidizes this useless stuff instead of fixing the sidewalks. The amount of work to make these statues could've gone into something actually useful.

If that art was made by people with their own money and put in a private place and I somehow managed to see them, I'd just think "welp, those people don't know what to do with their money, but who cares". And I'd forget about them pretty quickly. So maybe the point of the useless sculptures was to annoy me that the government spends public money inadequately. I doubt that was the intention of the artists and they somehow tricked the government into letting them put the statues in a public place because the government subsidizes shitty (IMO) artists all the time and most of those artists actually think their art is good.

And just to clarify, the sculptures are really, really shitty. Literally a badly welded wire care with some crushed rocks above a bigger rock that was barely chiseled, if at all. Something a 5 year old could do if they had the strength to move the rocks or were allowed to use welding equipment. You have Michelangelo's David where you can admire the Michelangelo's skills, the time and care he took to sculpt it... and then you have a bunch of rocks in a cage. It's like comparing the Mona Lisa to a piece of paper someone took a shit on (which I'm sure has been put up in galleries at some point).

> When I imagine a 100-ton stone hanging from a rod I feel nothing. But when I see it, I can't stop laughing. Someone had gone through a lot of troubles to hang the stone, and to do that they managed to convince others that it is very important to hang the stone.

Definitely, although I'd be annoyed at the wasted resources, especially if they're public money.

> It is pretty funny to watch the artists, the lengths they are ready to go just to follow the rule of not following rules.

Like some kinds of fashion where you try to be unique and express your individualism but you end up looking the same as everyone else.

[ordu]

> Obviously what's aesthetically pleasing to some will not to aesthetically pleasing to someone else.

Yes, but it doesn't mean that:

> it seems so useless to talk about something like this.

What it means, that things become very complex to the point when sciences still can't take over the discourse and philosophy needs to fill the gap. All people are capable of understanding the idea of art. All people appreciate some kind or art. All societies, not just European or just developed countries, develop the idea of art. Some scientists argue that animals also have it, for example Frans de Waal believed that chimpanzee have some sort of art. It seems like an innate feature of Homo Sapience, but what is it? Why the ability to appreciate art was evolved in a first place? How it makes species more fit to select for their genes?

It just happens so biologists have not much to say about the topic. Anthropologists can describe a lot of kinds of arts from different cultures, but they are also can't answer the question. Psychologists tried to define art, but their answers do not look sufficient for me. To be frank, I've read just one psychological book[1] on the topic, and probably not the most influential, but I like the idea that art is based on the contradiction between form and content (and a kind of a cognitive dissonance triggered by it, though the idea of cognitive dissonance was after Vygotsky). I mean everywhere I look, at any piece of art, I see the contradiction. I'm not sure that it is contradiction between form and content in all cases, but some kind of a mismatch surfaces every single time. I'm not sure that this is a sufficient to have mismatch between form and content to become art.

But in any case, what I'm trying to say, sciences try to answer the question "what is art", it just happens that people are not content with the existing answers, and different scientific approaches to the question do not add up into a theory of art.

> So maybe the point of the useless sculptures was to annoy me that the government spends public money inadequately. I doubt that was the intention of the artists

I doubt it also, but the thing is: the artists did exactly that. Then you spend time thinking about it, and moreover you tell me about rocks in a cage. The sculpture touched you, it triggered your emotions and thoughts. This is the goal of a modern artist. Their goal not to annoy, but to trigger emotions. I laugh at such things, you become angry, we are both influenced by art.

> Like some kinds of fashion where you try to be unique and express your individualism but you end up looking the same as everyone else.

Yeah! When you try to look cool and not like others you are also become an artist, and if you end up looking the same as everyone, you are failed.

You remember the caged rocks, so they are not like the others, the artist succeeded. This argument doesn't feel right for me really, at least when we are talking about your reaction: you are annoyed at how public money are spent, not about some traits of the sculpture. But modern art use this argument, and I think it is not just plain non-sense, I just cant get my finger on the grain on truth there. I cant refine the argument and draw a line around it that will play the role of limits of applicability for the argument.

You see, the art should make people stop and think. You stopped and thought about the rocks. I'd guess... I cannot know obviously, but still I'd dare to guess, that you missed the opportunity to reflect on your feelings triggered by those caged rocks? Why you was annoyed? Maybe because people spend resources inefficiently, as you say, but maybe the inefficiency is just your rationalization hiding the real cause of annoyance? I dug into similar annoyance in myself, and I've found that I was annoyed because people do not share my understanding of art. I had some theories that people are mistaken because they do not try to think what is art and what is just plain crap, they just follow fashion. And for some reason it annoyed me a lot. What is this reason, I'm not sure, I think it has something to do with a social status or something like. Like, society I belong to ignores my opinion and goes into a direction I do not approve. It kinda make me a less important member of the society? I can't explain it clearly, because I do not understand it myself. But it is a very interesting observation, and I guess those rocks might become your opportunity to make this observation or maybe some to learn something else about yourself. Though I may be gravely mistaken of course. I can't just look into your head and explore your feelings and their causes, these things can be done only by you.

> You have Michelangelo's David where you can admire the Michelangelo's skills, the time and care he took to sculpt it...

Well... With Michelangelo I'm an example of what you said about the subjectivity of art. I don't see the point of drawing things on a canvas or shape rocks into a form of a muscular guy. I kinda can see the appeal of paintings before the photography was invented, but now they are useless.

[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%BE...

I don't think that the book was translated from Russian, I can't find no link to English description, and the Russian article in wikipedia I believe is not good, and the firefox's translation of it into English even worse. But I decided to add the link, because it would be strange to talk about an anonymous book.

[AlBugdy]

2/2

> You see, the art should make people stop and think. You stopped and thought about the rocks. I'd guess... I cannot know obviously, but still I'd dare to guess, that you missed the opportunity to reflect on your feelings triggered by those caged rocks? Why you was annoyed? Maybe because people spend resources inefficiently, as you say, but maybe the inefficiency is just your rationalization hiding the real cause of annoyance?

I didn't even stop as there was nothing to look at. If I stopped, it was to see if there was something I've missed, but there wasn't - poorly made metal cage with random stones inside. But apart from being annoyed at how public resources are spent, I got annoyed at other things, too:

* at the priorities people have in general, how they're seemingly blissfully unaware of anything that's not in their field of vision,

* at the fact that some pretentious fuck graduated with this as one of their biggest achievements (compared to people who actually try to advance science (hard or soft) or math or try to become better teachers or movie directors or nurses,

* at how some other pretentious fuck is going to pretend they admire this,

* at all the obvious things missing in the park or around it (yes, the "public resources" annoyance, but more concrete) - the poor state of the sidewalks, the lack of public toilets (or the state the existing ones are in), how poorly parking is handled, how no one helps the homeless people or animals and so on. Even if you live in the best city in the world, I bet there are similar things you get annoyed at. My city is far from the best one.

And so on, and so on. But I get annoyed at these things whenever I see someone sick or poor on the street, whenever I see some idiot that parks their car and takes up the whole sidewalk, whenever I can't even safely walk on the sidewalk even if there are no cars because it's so uneven and hasn't been maintained for decades (imagine an old person or someone with a disibility or someone with a stroller trying to walk there) and because the municipality decides "we'll have a themed fest/gathering/show" that costs a few thousand $currency just to set up the lighting. So the stones in a cage weren't that special in that regard. Maybe I get annoyed too much, but I think most people get annoyed too little. They shrug off most things and sheepishly say "well, things are shitty, but whatchagonnado?". And they vote for the same people who did nothing during their previous term.

> I dug into similar annoyance in myself, and I've found that I was annoyed because people do not share my understanding of art. I had some theories that people are mistaken because they do not try to think what is art and what is just plain crap, they just follow fashion. And for some reason it annoyed me a lot. What is this reason, I'm not sure, I think it has something to do with a social status or something like. Like, society I belong to ignores my opinion and goes into a direction I do not approve. It kinda make me a less important member of the society? I can't explain it clearly, because I do not understand it myself. But it is a very interesting observation, and I guess those rocks might become your opportunity to make this observation or maybe some to learn something else about yourself. Though I may be gravely mistaken of course. I can't just look into your head and explore your feelings and their causes, these things can be done only by you.

I thought a few minutes about whether that could be it for me, but I doubt it. I don't mind people listening to generic radio top 20 pop music. I just feel a bit sorry for them as they've never really explored other genres, but I don't mind their tastes. I don't mind people reading or watching cheesy romantic stuff even though it's the farthest from what I like. I may get annoyed at someone intensely staring at a black square in a gallery but not because they genuinely like it - it's because they got the scarf and the glass of wine and they're trying to pretend to like it. I love it when someone goes to something I don't care about, like a toaster exhibit or a museum of 19th century bottle caps or something. Or if they genuinely like art I don't care for. I have a friend who could talk to you for hours about random painters from the past. Is he pretentious? Maybe a bit. But mostly he likes the styles, he likes reading about them, about the history of that art. I get that, I like it and respect it even though I couldn't care less about Monet or Manet or whatever myself.

> > You have Michelangelo's David where you can admire the Michelangelo's skills, the time and care he took to sculpt it...

> Well... With Michelangelo I'm an example of what you said about the subjectivity of art. I don't see the point of drawing things on a canvas or shape rocks into a form of a muscular guy. I kinda can see the appeal of paintings before the photography was invented, but now they are useless.

Definitely, realism is boring to me, too. I meant to compare the skill, the attention to detail and the time spent making David, not whether we can make better 3D models than David in seconds in whatever software. And even if the stones in a cage were to compare to David wrt skill and time spent, it would still be worse than dealing with infrastructure or poverty or animals or whatever. The counterargument is "we'll never fully deal with these" which is a valid one (it's been used against lots of things I support, such as space exploration or animal welfare) - we can't spend all our time on a few issues and neglect everything else. But art with public money on public property is a giant "FUCK YOU" when we haven't dealt with these things even in the slightest.

But maybe the stones in a cage and the train sonification sparked up this conversation and that's enough; they did what they were supposed to do. Probably not, but who knows.

Edit: That art is forced down on us like poetry and prose was in school. I always thought we could grasp the social issues better by just talking about them or seeing pictures of bad things instead of reading fiction or poetry. Maybe that's part of my dislike towards art I'm forced to interact with? I think Frank from Raymond (I watched it a loong time ago) said something like "Poetry? Get to the point!" which resonated with me.

[AlBugdy]

I got a "That comment was too long" for the first time so I'll split it in 2.

1/2

First I'd like to say I enjoy communicating with you even if it seems like I'd disagreeing or being obtuse or combative. It's much easier to write about what I disagree with than what I agree with, besides "I agree" or "I get it" so the disagreeing portion is naturally longer.

> What it means, that things become very complex to the point when sciences still can't take over the discourse and philosophy needs to fill the gap.

> ...

> But in any case, what I'm trying to say, sciences try to answer the question "what is art", it just happens that people are not content with the existing answers, and different scientific approaches to the question do not add up into a theory of art.

I understand now, thanks. Although it appears we're much, much closer to solving this than ethics (especially meta-ethics), metaphysics and the hard problem of consciousness. It's solvable even if it's not solved. Are the other 3 examples even solvable? Who knows. We may never get a scientific answer for meta-ethics. Even if we "solve" physics, the underlying questions like "but why are these equations the way they are" or "is there anything besides our universe" or "are we in a simulation" may never have a satisfying answer from science. Even if we map the brain and understand it like we understand a Hello World! program, we may never have a satisfactory answer to what qualia are. There are many other examples of topics likely-unsolvable by science that are studied by philosophers. OTOH, there are many things that will likely take decades with or without AI until they get solved - lots of questions in biology (incl. neuroscience and psychology), in physics and in math. But we don't say "philosophy of $unanswered_problem" for many such problems that are almost surely going to be solved this century. Anyway, that was a question I turned into a small rant as I often see "philosophy of $relatively_easy_problem", not just "art" and get very confused about why it's still in the philosophical realm.

> I like the idea that art is based on the contradiction between form and content (and a kind of a cognitive dissonance triggered by it

Maybe "art" isn't 1 thing but many things. Take music as it's one type of "art" I consume the most. Maybe some of it is "entertainment" or "a way to focus", not "art". But I feel very different things when listening to soft rock or trance or glitchy electronic music ("IDM" which a lot of people dislike as a term) or rap or techno or metal or whatever. I imagine most people who listen to different genres do so for different reasons. They do so when they're in a different mood or when they want to get into a different mood. Some tracks I can listen carefully to 100s of times. Others I play as background noise and rarely focus on them. A lot of them can serve both purposes. Yada yada, you hopefully get the point I'm trying to make.

> The sculpture touched you, it triggered your emotions and thoughts. This is the goal of a modern artist. Their goal not to annoy, but to trigger emotions. I laugh at such things, you become angry, we are both influenced by art.

I get that, too. But a lot people might elicit laughter or anger from us that we'd have a hard time categorizing as art. Maybe someone broke a bench. A case of simple vandalism? You may laugh at the person who felt it necessary to destroy property, I might get angry about it. 30 Wordpress addons bought and turned into malware? Same reaction (although I laugh about this, too). We might witness someone kill someone else over a few bucks. Those were most likely not intended as art. So are they art if you laugh but I get annoyed?

The philosophers might argue further. I say it doesn't matter - "art" is ill-defined to begin with and we could never hope to say whether something is art definitively. Even a chair is not well-defined as I could sit on a rock and call it a chair, you may disagree. Yet we don't have "philosophy of chairs". We discuss the broad idea if what kind of definitions we can have and what properties they have in metaphysics and in other fields related to semantics. I haven't read much about this as it's obvious that there's no universal or definitive "chair" we can agree on. But I at least understand such broad fields, such as those that deal with what a definition is, what properties does it have an so on. But no with specific ones like "art" or "chair".

> You remember the caged rocks, so they are not like the others, the artist succeeded.

I literally saw them 2 days ago. There were other BS "art" installations/sculptures but the dumbest one IMHO were the rocks. I guess if someone had deliberately lumped several hundred people's shit in the middle of the park, I would remember that more. Future artists - people don't put a pile of shit in the middle of the park. A note with "imagine a ton of shit here" would be funnier.

> The sculpture touched you, it triggered your emotions and thoughts. This is the goal of a modern artist. Their goal not to annoy, but to trigger emotions. I laugh at such things, you become angry, we are both influenced by art.

If that's the goal, then it's relatively easy to achieve it, isn't it? What wouldn't trigger emotions if it was big enough? If I saw (rolls a mental dice) a blue Santa with GPUs for ears, wearing Geordi's VISOR sitting in a bathtub made of scrap electronics, I'd get annoyed. You might smirk like "wtf...?!" and so on.

[card_zero]

Imagine if I explained the difference. See now?

I don't know, I have some sympathy. Conceptual art is kind of meh. Travel is pointless, everywhere is the same, you can read about places and stay home, everything is unnecessary. Except I'm probably wrong.

[AlBugdy]

I get than seeing someone is different than it being explained to you, but not by much. "Picture 4 big stones with a metal mesh covering parts of them so... blah blah.". I can picture it if you explain it in detail. You can even make a drawing in a couple of minutes and I'll get it. Why go to the trouble of hiring people to move the actual stones and so on?

For traveling it's very similar. I've seen some monuments in pictures first and in real life later. When I see them IRL, it's just... meh. Maybe I've been desensitized to giant structures or to how much detailed a sculpture can be, but even if I realize I have been, the "damage" is done. I can't be in awe of something someone 300 years would find awesome. I can just think "Why did I waste X hours to see this in person?".

That's why I don't really travel anymore. I can get so much information about architecture or statues or nature from photos and videos that seeing the real thing would almost surely be a disappointment. Both the pictures and videos and the real things involve sight and maybe hearing. It's not like I'm reading about a recipe but not being able to taste the real thing.