[MD] Defining Art (was Churning Point)

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Platt,

I'll try to answer your questions. In them, I represent my questions to you,
perhaps you'd be so kind as to answer them.

[Platt]
I guess by your question that you have decided primal screaming and 
farting contests are art forms. If not, who decided they aren't ? You?

[Arlo]
I would say that in our culture, no, these have not emerged as viable "art
forms". However, whether or not they could, culturally or historically
anywhere, for anyone, is a question I don't know.

I don't personally favor the idea of "live burial" to shatter static patterns,
nor has our culture embraced such a activity, but there are cultures where it
has emerged as a viable device for shattering static patterns.

[Platt]
So now it's the culture who decides what is art?  Is that your position?. 

[Arlo]
Its always been my position, Platt, in every post we exchange, that there is a
structurating effect of the cultural mythos on the individual. "Art", as I've
said in several posts, relies on culturally significant clues to point out. So,
a "work of art" can only serve as such if its "cues" (or pointers) are
recognized as such by the viewer/listener. We learn cultural metaphors in
ever-decreasing circles, from those that continue to exist in the mythos from
ancient cultures from which we descend, to very local-immediate circles of our
town, valley or hollow. In a less specific way, you could say culture orients
the individual towards valuable metaphors learned over historical time within
that culture.

[Platt]
So in your world what is art is up to a vote?

[Arlo]
Not at all. "What art is" is defined at the Quality event by an individual who,
having appropriating a cultural mythos, has learned to interpret certain
cultural cues in certain ways. If the event is such as to produce a "static
pattern shatter", then the individual may choose to define the moment as "art".

However, as I've said before, "art" is also used in the vernacular to categorize
specific genres of activity (painting, tromboning, ballet, mime, theatre,
etc.). Pirsig has shown the ill effects of such separation between "art" and
"non-art", saying in effect that all activity, from english composition to
rotisserie construction to motorcycle repair, has an element of "art", a way of
doing it that reveals the Godhead, and a way of doing it that does not. My
morning ritual of making coffee is "art" to me, when I do it with right mind
and right heart (with care and identity) for me, in the same way repairing his
motorcycle was "art" for Pirsig, and in the same way the Japanese Tea Ceremony
is considered very High Art in Japanese culture.

[Platt]
So why question what I consider art?

[Arlo]
I don't question what you consider art, I question your belief in having
"superior discriminatory ability" in that you can tell others what art is and
what is not. For example, while I personally don't think "throat singing" is
listenable, I don't tell others who find it beautiful that they are wrong, that
it is nothing but "noise", and that it is truly "not art" because it lacks
certain cultural cues (like tune or song) that work "for me".

When you make such statements that digiderooing is "not art" because it lacks
"tune" and "song", or that Barry Manilow is "art" while Mick Jagger is "not
art", it is not to express which "art" has succeeding in shattering your static
patterns, but to say which art should also shatter mine. Or better, only that
which shatters Platt's static patterns is "art" for everyone.

Unless I've misunderstood, do you recognize that, although digiderooing does
nothing for you, it is an art form for many that is not only beautiful but very
powerful? Can the Godhead be revealed through digiderooing? (Arlo says yes)

Also, for the aboriginals (and many westerners as Khaled, I think, pointed out)
who consider digiderooing "art", do you think they are indiscriminatory?
Primative? Uneducated? What?

[Arlo previously]
If aboriginals tell me that digiderooing is high art, and quite beautiful to
them, who am I to tell them it is really only "noise", that they are
"indiscriminatory", and that what *I* find as beautiful art in sound is really
what art is.

[Platt]
If Platt tells you noise isn't art, who are you to tell him otherwise? 

[Arlo]
Because you're not saying it isn't art "for you", you are saying it is not art
"period".

Arlo