Look, no one is saying that a lot of this music isn’t crap or that you have to like the stuff that isn’t crap. I hate Boulez, find most of Stravinsky’s mid- to late output tedious and think Morton Subotnick’s music sounds like someone attempting to dismantle a plugged-in video game console with a fork. Heck, I thought Gorecki’s Third Symphony was horrible and it sold vast numbers of CDs. It doesn’t mean it’s not music. It just means that it’s music that I don’t care for, and history will be the judge of whether it has any lasting merit.
There are always people who try to test the boundaries of an art form, who go “Is this music? how about this?” Cage was one of those people, and the debate that 4’33" instigated is a valid one. It’s part of the development of the artistic world. If the experiment fails, at least it was tried.
No-one here has said anything approaching this man-of-straw.
Nor this. Even the most out-there definitions of art in this thread stipulate some minimum of artistic effort - 4:33, for instance, is not just accidental silence. It is performed silence. The pile of bricks has to be assembled. Etc. Plus there’s also context to consider.
There’s clearly some things that aren’t art - I wouldn’t consider a guy who told me “Step outside, see that Nature? That’s my artwork” to have done a work of art. But a guy who organised a blank gallery showing? Sure. The difference is in the context.
:rolleyes: Seen any good ankles, lately? Anything can be pornography - if you treat it as such and in the right context. Balloons. Fruit. Jello…
I’m not trying to define art. I’m pointing out that there’s a lot of foolishness and corruption in the art world, and this foolishness and corruption has a lot to do with elitism. In other words, if you’re “one of us” you’ll understand, if you’re not “one of us,” you’re a rube. That’s what leads some to angrily insist that cans of excrement or a bunch of steel girders welded randomly together are not art.
People may ooh and aah over such things and say that they “redefine concepts” and “challenge boundaries,” but such people are just trying to convince themselves that they aren’t rubes.
I really do think viewing this from an evolutionary standpoint helps. Or it helps me, at least.
It’s like nature recombining and mutating genetic combinations–most attempts ultimately fail, but the ones that succeed define new paradigms. Without taking the risk, those successful combinations would never be discovered. And the failures will be forgotten with time.
But what is the point? I just don’t fucking get it. Again: when you could reproduce the music created by throwing a cat onto a piano, something has gone wrong. I could create a computer program to write crap like “Mode de valuers et d’intensités”, and you know what? People would be unable to tell the difference. At the point where a fucking computer can replicate it with no problems and no questions asked, shouldn’t be time to reflect and say, “something has gone horribly, horribly wrong”? Instead, we’re taught about this music which nobody liked and which should’ve gone inconsequentially into the night without further attention as if it’s the next big thing in classical music! I mean, I could hold a whole fucking lesson over the difference between Judas Priest’s Painkiller and Death’s cover of the song, but that makes no sense because nobody fucking gives a fuck. Why give a fuck about this piece of musical garbage?
And es, I know It’s a subjective valuing. Deal with it–it’s the same valuing that 99.999% of anyone who hears the piece will give it.
Just to clarify: I know art is subjective, and music is too–12-ton musik and similar bullshit really shouldn’t bother me. You know why it does? Because we spend 3 weeks of music class talking about this shit. That’s more than we spend on Jazz, Rock, and Metal combined. Fuck that; I could go on and on about some niche parts of metal for the same length of time, and you know what? It’d probably be something that not only has more of an impact of music, but also that more people actually would listen to. -.-
What a bizarre standard. People can and have written computer programs that replicate all sorts of styles of music, and most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them and the composers they’re intended to emulate. And no one could tell definitively that the music was written by computer.
I have never encountered this attitude. I perform and listen to a lot of contemporary classical music and the vast majority of it bears little resemblance to serialism or any kind of avant garde music.
Who are you to define what art should and should not consist of? Why is your stipulation of “some minimum of artistic effort” any more valid than any other restrictions that people place on what constitutes art?
Yeah, sure, anything can be pornography :rolleyes:
Cakefarts. Goatse.cx, before the domain was taken away. Anything on the old Ogrish.com website and anything on the current rotten.com. The entire emetophilia, scat, vore, furry, inflation, amputee, and feeder subcultures. The more frightening dark corners of the BDSM world. The woman who is happily married to the Berlin Wall. You do not want to get into a discussion about where the limits of pornography are.
We’re not talking about possible definitions here. We’re talking about definitions people have actually advanced. Don’t try and run away from your strawmanning by referencing an argument no-one has actually proposed in this thread.
If someone seriously proposes a “no restrictions” definition of art, and makes an argument to defend that, then we can have the discussion on why some restriction is necessary.
Before that, it’s just you trying to divert attention from your shoddy argument.
Fap, fap, fap.
So, are you seriously saying those are pornography? Because you seem to have missed the “if you treat it as such and in the right context” part of my statement.
Again, surely intent has to be at least part of the equation. If an image/story/video/road sign/etc. is not intended to sexually excite, I think you’re already on shaky ground if you call it pornography.
I mean for all intents and purposes using something like java.random or something like that to essentially randomly generate strings of notes, and it would sound the same. You cannot claim the same for virtually any other type of music.
German high school music class. It’s fucking stupid.
Fap fap fap
This. I mean, if I made a CD featuring mostly chainsaws and the sounds of trees falling down, would it still be music?
