
An interpretation of art for the analytical mind - dblock
http://web.mit.edu/kiranw/www/HackingArts-2015/hackingarts.html
======
wfo
So someone has a database of art phrases and madlibs them together next to
pieces of art? Are we supposed to feel superior to people who create art now?
I don't. Why is it that people who claim to be 'analytical' always just use it
as an excuse to claim anything they don't understand is meaningless?

~~~
mcphage
Well, obviously us tech people are the only ones who can understand things.
Everyone else is just banging rocks together.

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yiyus
"This is another piece of art" would be as useful as the interpretations in
this site.

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mfoy_
I spent my first minute trying to click everything and anything to no avail.

It's worth mentioning that refreshing the page loads another image and
description in a random combination.

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fitzwatermellow
It's just randomized, right?

Or have I been misreading Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day"
(1876-1877)[1] as "High Impressionism" when all along it's really been "An
Abstraction of Classicism" ;)

[1]
[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/We...](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/WebLarge/WebImg_000281/215300_3365286.jpg)

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calibraxis
How does this work? It doesn't appear interactive, the title doesn't match the
painting (though has similarities to the actual piece), and the text on the
right seems like a total joke based on the painting industry's practice of
teaching artists how to use impressive-sounding gibberish so rich patrons look
smart and the uninitiated feel unintelligent.

~~~
beat
The exact same criticism applies to software engineering or the startup
community. It's only "impressive-sounding gibberish" if you don't understand
what it means.

Or, as someone once eloquently described modern physics, "It looks like
ancient Greek to anyone but another physicist or an ancient Greek".

The interesting part, to me, isn't the "gibberish", but rather the hostile,
arrogant reaction to its existence. Rather than saying "Huh, I really don't
understand the inner language of this sophisticated subject with a deep
history", people react with "Wow, those jerks with their inner language are
just faking it to act better than us". And it's not just fine art - it's true
of just about any complex ideas with deep communities. You'll see outsiders
say the same about startups, rap, poetry, whatever.

~~~
anthay
I assume the point of physics is to understand nature and communicate that
understanding to others, who will need sufficient interest and background
knowledge to understand what is being communicated. I don't personally
understand physics beyond the basics, but I'm prepared to believe physicists
are not talking bollocks to each other. I can see the concrete results of
their applied knowledge in my everyday life.

On the other hand, I can't help feeling that art language is deliberately
obscure and elitist and its purpose is not designed to communicate objective
truth because there is no objective truth to communicate. Perhaps the emperor
does have clothes and I'm just too ignorant to see them.

~~~
beat
As someone who speaks both art and computers, I can assure you that it's at
least as rigorous and significant as, say, the startup community's language.
The problem with trying to make a counterexample of hard science is that
you're opening up to excluding _every_ subject that isn't hard science to the
same criticism.

The purpose of the language of art theory and criticism isn't to communicate
objective truth, because it's _subjective_ truth. But just because a truth is
subjective does not make it less real, or less meaningful. Generally, we are
limited to the subjective reality of our perceptions. Art theory is the study
of perceptions, and a great deal of modern art is more or less experimenting
with perception itself. Knocking it as "bollocks" because it's not expressed
in formal logic or mathematics is both subjective and non-rigorous. Or, as the
Dude would say, "That's just, like, your opinion, man." If you don't
understand the language, that's fine, and if you don't care to understand it,
that's fine too, but calling it bollocks without understanding or caring to
understand it is itself bollocks.

If you start digging around in philosophy, there's a strong argument within
phenomenology that physics itself is subjective. Rigorous language doesn't
mean the subject of the language is objective. Godel demonstrated the limits
of language against objective nature in his incompleteness theorem as well
(basically, Godel proved that, within any system, there are statements that
are true that cannot be proven). But I digress.

~~~
anthay
I do have that hostility to art criticism of which you speak, which is what
prompted me to post. I know nothing about art, so I should have kept my mouth
shut, or at least been less insulting. Sorry.

When I read a story, hear a song or watch a movie and I might _feel_ something
or my world-view may have been moved. But I look at a painting or sculpture
and I feel nothing. It doesn’t feel right that a critic has to explain to me
that my perception is being experimented with.

~~~
beat
The need to explain it is one of the curses of modern art. I'm in the camp
where I think it should be able to move you without explanation. But there's
nothing wrong with not feeling moved by a particular kind of art, or by being
irritated when it has to be explained to you.

Art is also cultural, in the sense that only members of the culture really
grok a piece of art. If you're an American, you naturally understand cowboy
movies. But samurai films, which are in many ways the same thing, may feel
strange to you. Most art is made only for people culturally similar to the
artist. This includes fine art and modern art. If you aren't part of the
modern art culture, you'll never get it, any more than if you're not Japanese
you'll never understand eating natto (ugh, disgusting stuff, to even my
openminded and educated American palate).

Ultimately, though, we're all moved by things that feel personal to us. I've
spent probably several hours in total just staring at a particular Jackson
Pollock painting (Mural, University of Iowa collection). It's a profoundly
emotional experience for me. You'd probably see a bunch of green, yellow, and
black stripes and blobs. That's okay. That's how most people feel about it.
That doesn't mean you're dumb, and it doesn't mean I'm pretentious. It just
means we're different people, with different motivations.

Universal art is usually dull art.

------
werber
A portrait of Jesus being crucified from the 16th century is apparently a
contemplation for kitsch and fetishism and Olympia is a cogitation for
evocative postmodernism?

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lackbeard
This is a reflection for priggishness and humorlessness.

------
dblock
The code to this is
[https://github.com/kiranw/HackingArts-2015](https://github.com/kiranw/HackingArts-2015)

------
angdis
Why can't folks take a joke anymore?

