[MD] Intellectual Level

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Mary]
Is art what's being made if one person (or one computer in this case) 
is not aware it is making it?  Is the sun creating art when it paints 
the sky in gorgeous reds at sunset?  Same question, yes?

[Arlo]
Yes, same question. I do think there is a volitional element to 
artful activity. So I'd say, no, the sun is not creating "art" (from 
our vantage, as you mention below, which I think is spot on). Does 
this mean humans can't instill art/meaning into non-volitional 
artifacts? No. (More below).

[Mary]
Short answer?  Yes.  The sun and the computer are both touching 
Dynamic Quality, but it is Dynamic Quality for their highest level not ours.

[Arlo]
Agree. Inorganic patterns can only respond to DQ from within a range 
of potential, and it is that similarity in potential responses that 
we use to form the categorical "levels". Humans respond to DQ with 
the repertoire of IBSI potential, and for us "art" is tied to 
activity that emerges from this range of possibility.

For a monkey, their range of responses is "IB" (and I'd argue, in 
contrast to Pirsig, possibly "IBS"), so if they are able to 
differentiate "art" from "non-art", their understand of this 
distinction would be based only on IB (or IBS) activity.

Personally, I don't think patterns beneath the "social" level are 
able to differentiate "art" from "non-art" in any way apart from the 
immediate response to the immediate moment. It is the social level 
that provides the possibility for symbolic represenatations that 
remove the biological organism from the immediate "now" moment, and 
in doing so we can make distinctions about past and future (or 
temporally removed) experience. That is, the sort of reflective 
activity required making value judgements concerning temporally 
displaced experienced only becomes possible at the social level.

[Mary]
Maybe if we operated only at the Inorganic we would see the 
_production_ of a sunset on Earth as 'art', but I think we experience 
the 'art' aspect at a much higher level, one that neither the sun, 
Earth, nor a computer will be able to comprehend.

[Arlo]
Yes, agree. Well said.

[Mary]
But the creator of what we value as art may not have felt they were 
doing art at the time.

[Arlo]
"Art" is as much about extracting meaning as it is instilling 
meaning. We interpret our world sometimes independent of the intended 
meaning of the signs and symbols we encounter. And, of course, we 
also deliberately imbue meaning into things irrespective of any 
"meaning" implied by the creator of the patterns we experience.

But I'd answer the question this way. If *I* do something random and 
some artifact is produced, and I don't see it as "art" then no, I did 
not create art. If you later find this artifact and proclaim it to be 
art, then YOU are the one creating this art. The volition in the 
production of art belongs to you. I produced a block of junk, you 
produced art. You instilled the object with a meaning, and then 
(ideally) communicated that meaning, but the meaning was not produced by me.

Does that make sense?

[Mary]
Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the term 'high art' doesn't it?

[Arlo]
Yeah. And I think one of the big problems talking about "art" is that 
we use it to describe different things, and in many ways this 
"common" or modern version sticks with us even as we walk into a MOQ landscape.

I've tried to see if it makes more sense calling any object an 
"artifact" instead of "art" to keep "art" a verb or at least an 
adverb to describe flow of high quality responses to experience. 
"Art" is the high quality assembly of a rotisserie, and that 
rotisserie would be seen as an "artifact" of that endeavor.

On that note, "art museums" are instead "artifact museums", where we 
see the outcome of the artful activity of others. A well-maintained 
motorcycle is also an "artifact" or such artful activity.

In short, I think we are too conditioned by our culture and language 
to see "art" as the object, to see "art" as something "created", 
rather than seeing "art" as the activity of creation itself.