Trying to forensically pick apart the language used to make a point and redefine what the writer intended without actually reading and understanding the point being made doesn’t help either
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All these slabs of text that you’ve dropped pedantically nitpicking the language and seemingly wilfully ignoring or misunderstanding the intent have done nothing to aid this discussion, only derail it entirely from the intended subject.
When the majority of them can also be summarised within a sentence or 2, it’s a highly inefficient use of language that is almost painfully difficult to plough through.
In terms of the discussions of what qualifies as art; I would suggest that art may be a conceptual work that provokes an emotional response. Whether this is an aesthetically pleasing visual work, a written piece, or piece of music - usually involving talent or craft to create; although the emotional response by no means has to be a positive one
Considering that board games can not only be aesthetically pleasing, but can invoke emotional reactions through the experience of gameplay, I’d wholeheartedly suggest that qualifies them
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I think that’s an inadequate definition. People can have emotional responses to all kinds of things.
It seems to me that if you want to define art, the starting point is things that are clearly and uncontroversially examples of it: paintings, drawings, sculptures, works of vocal and instrumental music, poems, novels, stage plays, ballets and other dances performed for an audience, films, videos. There are a lot of other things that aren’t normally considered “art”: mathematical theorems, codes of law, engineering designs, tools, weapons, vehicles, among others. Many of those things can be appreciated aesthetically for qualities such as good design, so “being appreciated aesthetically” doesn’t make something art. And all the things I named are conceptual works, and aesthetic appreciation is an emotional response, so being a conceptual work that evokes an emotional response doesn’t strike me as making something art either, because if you apply the term so broadly that it includes all those things, I think you’ve made it meaningless.
I often find that if I don’t immediately have something of substance to contribute to a conversation, patiently listening to allow the conversation to progress naturally can be really worthwhile.
It often leads to either learning new information I hadn’t considered, finding an interesting point of view that I can consider further, or that the subject may move into an area where I can positively contribute to the conversation.
Trying to steamroller the conversation to something contrary that I want to talk about instead doesn’t usually help me learn much
As far as the subject of games being used to make a statement or argument/conflict (however you choose to sub-categorise it), I haven’t come across many examples myself but the example above by brattyjedi of the designer specifically using mechanisms in the game rules to make a point of simulating inherent racial difficulties sounds very interesting.
I’d note another wee example. Wasn’t Monopoly originally designed as a statement against economic privilege and the consequences of the profiteering in how property was developed?
I don’t want to define art really. The only reason anybody started is because of all the boxes you tried to force it into in order to troll the thread to oblivion
I’m on very thin ice, but…
I think this is unfair, and a bit unkind. And not quite in the spirit of
which is an admirable attitude.
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I appreciate that. I apologise for that framing
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That’s a nice prescription, but it doesn’t seem to apply to the response that my own comments have gotten. Instead of patiently reading what I have to say to see what is to be learned from it, I’ve seen people rushing to assert that it can’t possibly be right, or, as in your latest post as I type this, dismissing my concerns as trolling. I don’t think I’m very inclined to take seriously advice that you yourself don’t follow.
It’s also trying to prescribe an objective definition for something which is entirely a subjective experience. Two people can see the same thing and completely disagree on whether it’s art. Neither is wrong. I’ve been told that when I used to breakdance that it wasn’t art because it wasn’t something taught in conservatories, which is bollocks gatekeeping because it wasn’t codified by some governing elitism. You can prescribe another’s concept of art as much as you can prescribe another’s catharsis, which is to say you can’t.
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I think this is being interpreted as trolling because the concerns don’t serve or further the conversation other than to detract from Benkyo’s purpose of the thread. The prescriptive definition of art wasn’t the topic. If others interpret games as art, it’s art for them. You can’t say they are wrong about their subjective experience with something, you can only disagree on opinion.
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These all absolutely qualify as art. I think you may be thinking that “art” must be “Fine Arts” or “Classical Arts”.
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That’s a philosophical claim about art, and it’s one that I reject.
A hundred years ago, there was an art exhibition that invited the submission of works of visual art without defining what it meant by that. Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to which he had given an arty-sounding title, Fountain. That was a brilliant reductio ad absurdum of the idea that art cannot be defined; unhappily, most of art world since then has said that Fountain was sculpture (and that John Cage’s 4’33" was music), at once failing to get the point of the joke and destroying the entire concept of art.
“I think that’s an inadequate definition.” Then proceeds to give no meaningful definition, except “These specific things are art, because I think that they are.” Congrats on your “precise use of language”, lol.
I find no fault with the definition, personally; The fact that you don’t consider car design, for instance, to be art, seems based solely on a preconception on your part that leads to a very arbitrary conclusion. I dare say, you go to a car show and say “This is not art.” and see if you can get away in one piece.
While certainly not all of car design is artistic, one could hardly say none of it is. The same could be said for many things often considered art. Architecture, journalism, cooking, and such, all have functional elements to them, but one can hardly argue that these can’t be artistic. They’re certainly not always art, as anyone who’s experienced my cooking can attest, but to say that a great chef is not an artist would be highly disrespectful.
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Destroying the entire concept of art is definitely art.
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Not quite. I think that those are the prototypical examples of the category.
What I’m saying is more that if you don’t have an objective definition of a category, if anyone is free to put anything whatever into the category and no one can say they’re wrong, then there is no boundary between what the category contains and what it doesn’t, and as a result you don’t have a category at all.
In ordinary English, none of the things I named is “art.” You will not find a university where the department of engineering, or of mathematics, or of law, is in the faculty of art, if there is a distinct faculty; or where students can meet an art requirement by taking calculus or DC circuits.
I accept the claim, so who is right in this case? Can either of us be right? There is no absolute truth here except that which we individually determine. No one else’s idea of art has to be approved by intellectual elitism deeming it worthy.
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If I may, I read this thread for over 65 posts without commenting. And I truly mean this in terms of trying some constructive criticism to reduce the frustration, I hope it is taken in that spirit. (I apologise again for my knee jerk reaction earlier)
Where you feel that your comments have been jumped on by others, I have read that as them being met with frustration because it seems as though you often haven’t engaged with the conversation unless you’ve picked apart other posts and put them back together to say what you want them to say - then attacked the strawman you’ve built from it.
Nothing can be discussed unless it has been defined beyond any meaning. And when you’re trying to be that analytical of the words used, you’ve stopped listened to what the words mean.
It doesn’t feel as if you are honestly engaging in the conversation if you refuse to take part unless you and everyone else fits your rules of what is discussed
For example, I gave a simplified generalisation of some criteria that could be applied to things which are considered art - your response was to rewrite what I said, imply that I was attempting to define ALL art, and when my suggestion obviously fell short of such a high bar you felt it should nullify it entirely.
Do you see where that could provoke my reaction?
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Your ability to understand precise language doesn’t impress me. I didn’t offer that list as a definition; rather, I said that a definition of art ought to start out from recognizing those things as art, and that it ought to include them and exclude things that, in the ordinary use of the English language, are not normally called “art,” of which I also gave examples. That was a suggestion for other people who want to define “art.”
Could you provide a specific, precise definition of art?
Edit: For what it’s worth, the Oxford English Dictionary has over a dozen definitions for art
The most analogous to the current conversation is perhaps:
“The application of skill to the arts of imitation and design, painting , engraving , sculpture , architecture ; the cultivation of these in its principles, practice, and results; the skilful production of the beautiful in visible forms.
This is the most usual modern sense of art , when used without any qualification. It does not occur in any English Dictionary before 1880, and seems to have been chiefly used by painters and writers on painting, until the present century.”
“Art is whatever I want it to be”
This is like, the most serious I have ever been about a response like this.
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