I guess I find it difficult to buy into the origins of art mattering too much because it often seems to turn into a game of academics arguing among each other over the interpretation of symbols. A particularly spiteful take on this would be that if your nuance is so delicate and obscure that a lay audience can't figure out your meaning, maybe it represents a failing in your ability to communicate.
I'm not sure where you got the "single variable" as "aesthetic value". Yes, it's possible that some people are trying to hit a specifically aesthetic goal, but others, their vision may be "the poster that finally convinces Aunt Frank to vote no on Proposition 23", or "the short story that expresses the feelings of loss I have for my beloved hamster", and the people trying to express these things were unable to create what they wanted from whole cloth.
At the end, it's still people making the decisions of what to release, whether directly, or by designing some sort of scoring mechanism to do it. It's similar to the curation choices in a museum collection-- they say something, even separate from the artifacts themselves.
I'm not sure where you got the "single variable" as "aesthetic value". Yes, it's possible that some people are trying to hit a specifically aesthetic goal, but others, their vision may be "the poster that finally convinces Aunt Frank to vote no on Proposition 23", or "the short story that expresses the feelings of loss I have for my beloved hamster", and the people trying to express these things were unable to create what they wanted from whole cloth.
At the end, it's still people making the decisions of what to release, whether directly, or by designing some sort of scoring mechanism to do it. It's similar to the curation choices in a museum collection-- they say something, even separate from the artifacts themselves.