But is it art? — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	Hmm... I think of it in terms of communicative theory: ie, the work of art is the medium, the artist encodes the message to be sent through the medium (whether consciously or subconsciously), and the receiver (viewer/listener/reader) decodes the message (interprets the message according to his or her empirical code). The message we interpret depends on the code we use, which in turn depends on our experiences, which I think explains why people seem to read so much into art. As for "for it's own sake," I'm talking about something more than what you mention. If a work of art was created merely to imitate a subject in an aestheticly pleasing way, that would qualify in my book as "art for art's sake." However, I am not sure it is possible for an artist to avoid encoding other message(s) in the work. Often this encoding is done intentionally, but even if the artist does not intend to encode a message, I believe it will happen subconsciously anyway, at least on some level. Of course, this is not something that can be proven--it's just an idea. Basically, I don't think human beings are capable of doing/producing something if they do not feel it has meaning. In terms of art, the question is: does an aesthetically pleasing work have enough inherent meaning to override other meanings that may be encoded, or will those other meanings creep in anyway? I'm leaning toward the latter. To sum up, I don't think there's anything wrong with art for art's sake, I just don't think we're capable of it. It comes down to splitting hairs, though, I think, and most likely we could go back and forth on this until the cows come home. ___________________________ Suho: [url=http://www.liminality.org]www.liminality.org[/url] Loading...
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