Robocadey: Shitposting as a Service
&quot;What is art? Art is when you challenge the assumptions that people make about a medium and use that conflict to help them change what they think about that medium.&quot;<p>I think the above definition, perhaps unwittingly, robs us of traditional value in art. By that above definition, a classical greco-roman statue that doesn&#x27;t challenge anyone&#x27;s ideas or perception cannot be art. I am not very interested in communicating with anyone who doesn&#x27;t sooner or later realize how preposterous it is to say &quot;your work doesn&#x27;t challenge anyone&#x27;s assumptions, so it can&#x27;t be art&quot;. It&#x27;s a self-defeater because at some point the unchallenged assumption that art challenges assumptions must itself be challenged in order to produce any more art.<p>I think the below definition is good, maybe better but also not perfect because of its insistence on beauty alone.<p>&quot;The conscious use of the imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.&quot;<p>The definition for &quot;object&quot;. I prefer the word &quot;pattern&quot; where any physical object is matter arranged in a certain pattern.<p>&quot;Something perceptible by one or more of the senses, especially by vision or touch; a material thing.&quot;<p>Here&#x27;s my pitch for an improved definition of art:<p>&quot;The conscious use of the imagination in the production or recognition of patterns intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful or thought-provoking such as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.&quot;<p>I am going to include the author likes to call art as art, because it is. I am going to exclude anything without a conscious intention of creativity in patterns. You are not making art unless you intend to. You may retroactively call something you did subconsciously &quot;art&quot;. When you do that the conscious creation is your identification and naming of the pattern you noted, through logos; that is, the power of the mind, and language. In this way, even pointing at a mountain can be seen as a kind of performance art. The way you pointed to it at that moment, if you call attention to it as art, that is <i>your</i> art of being and communicating. The distant mountain was one of your artistic ingredients, so was your finger.<p>What the writer has helpfully noticed is that art seems to be elusive; doesn&#x27;t easily allow its definition to be pinned down, but it has a concrete existence in part of who we are. It cannot really exist without this thing we call &quot;consciousness&quot;.