There is no clear answer to what art is, but there are many approaches to try to answer it. That is essentially what Theory of Art (or Philosophy of Art) is concerned about as a field of study.

Those approaches appear at distinct points in time and their ideas are rooted on the art and context of that time.

If you want to look at this site like Kant looked at art, from a pure aesthetic form, then you will say it is not art. You may even be offended that the question is asked.

But look at it through the lens of modern art theory, where art is communication, where art is experience, where art is interaction, where art is more about the content than the form, then it is definitely art.

If Kant had access to the Internet and was concerned about privacy, he might have found it to be art too :)

I am mostly arguing that modern/contemporary art theory is just one alternative - it's not "above" more traditional views of art, and there isn't some linear progression from Kant to Rosalind Krauss.

I think the more modern view has dismissed beauty as some lower form of making and understanding art. As something superficial and entirely optional, perhaps even discouraged by some.

I'd prefer to synthesize the more traditional perspectives on aesthetics with some of the modern insights, rather than assuming newer theories must supersede older ones.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691163895/af...

"The classic and provocative account of how art changed irrevocably with pop art and why traditional aesthetics can’t make sense of contemporary art"

I know a few local galleries that would trip over themselves to do an exhibition with this photo set.

I am very all ears about these galleries, where should I reach out to?

Is it really fair to take advantage of a free, public resource to make yourself money?

Intentionally monetizing that which is provided for free. Seems exploitative, to me?

Separately, based on my life experience, this notion of "exploitation" is truly harmful to those who subscribe to it. You'll never outdo your limiting beliefs. You don't have to take my word for it, but I encourage you to explore who was it that instilled that belief in you and what you stand to gain from subscribing to it. I mean this in earnest, as advice from a stranger, for what it's worth. <3

The value does not come only from the arrangement of the pieces, but also from the pieces themselves. To say the only value comes from the artist is just as wrong as saying its only value comes from the source material.

A painter cannot paint a picture without a canvas, and yet the canvas itself is generally not free, with the canvas-maker earning something from the sale of the canvas itself.

The rest of your comment is wildly condescending, and while I am open to reconsidering my beliefs, I generally do not follow the advice of condescending people. My life experience tells me such people are generally both more close-minded and more morally bankrupt than those who can evangelize their beliefs without condescension. Perhaps consider changing your approach to providing unsolicited advice?

I'm arguing against calling these photos art.

> But for the most part if you believe what you're doing it art, it's art— this is for sure a performance piece.

I understand this is the prevalent view in the 21st century. I'm not convinced it is true. And similarly just because I rent a place, put up a sign saying "Art Gallery" and put some things up for display, that doesn't mean those things are works of art. The emperor has no clothes and all that.

Used to be in someone's basement, but I think they now set it up in various semi-public places.

But it's definitely not "for sure" anything, as in it's not obviously, axiomatically, intrinsically, self-evidently the case. Even if the art scene today has collectively agreed on that view for the most part.

I subscribe to a more formalist or conservative view of art, particularly Roger Scruton's. Art is based on its intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits. Meaning the artwork’s formal or aesthetic aspects are central. It's those things that make it art and give it value, rather than whatever the artist intended to say or do.

If you subscribe to this view—which to me is what the average person would subscribe to, or the "common sense" view—then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value and elicit no contemplative experience. At best, they promote discussion about state surveillance, which is a political but not an artistic endeavor. It's not just "bad art", but rather "conflating political statements with art", as I said at the top.

I think you have more to gain from loosening your grip on the boundaries of the word "art", for purely selfish reasons. It makes the world more nuanced and interesting.

For similar reasons, I'd recommending widening your lens of what is considered political. All art is political, even if it's not the artist's "intention" or within their awareness. Because it's the production of a political context. There's no such thing as an apolitical life or human act.

You can argue against it for semantic reasons, but again I'd challenge what value you gain from leaning on those semantics, beyond sorting a gloriously continuous and analog universe into artificially-exclusive categories.

I used to have very loose grips on the boundaries of the word "art". I've been there and done that. Then I realized that humanity has more to gain from holding art to higher standards than it does from the "anything goes" approach.

I did note that art can be political. By all means it should be political in those situations where the artist has a certain objective in mind and believe art can be a meaningful way to make politics. I have nothing against that and I appreciate the historical and current relevance of art as as means of being and acting political.

If you're keen to understand my position as explained by someone much more knowledgeable than me and much more studied in art and philosophy, I encourage you to watch this remarkably interesting video essay by Roger Scruton: https://vimeo.com/groups/832551/videos/549715999

The piece that this article is covering (not the individual photos, but the whole project) is clearly making people in this comment section contemplate the role of these cameras and the policy surrounding. It’s also made you pretty contemplative on what qualifies as art.

What makes this contemplation political and not artistic?

Do you find this artwork aesthetically interesting? Pleasing? Intriguing? Which aesthetic properties does it have that make it worthwhile? I'm not arguing you should define "art" on my specific aesthetic sense, but rather on anyone's (everyone's?) collective sense.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find even one person saying this specific artwork is aesthetically interesting. The bar shouldn't be that everyone must find it interesting. We can debate what the threshold for "aesthetically interesting" or how prevalent that view must be among receivers of the art, but clearly my 3 year old's drawings and Vermeer's body of work are in different categories, so the distinction does exist somewhere.

> What makes this contemplation political and not artistic?

For starters, the fact that the contemplation is about "the role of these cameras and the policy surrounding" and not about the artwork. And what made me contemplative on what qualifies as art is the general insistence on labeling any type of creation as an artistic one these days, which is something that I have thought about frequently in the last 2 years or so.

Some art maybe only be 90% aesthetics and others could be only %50 or %10. How much non-aesthetics is acceptable to you?

Where do you draw the line? Why does it matter? Why did you choose that number?

It’s self evidently art if someone goes three comments deep to argue it isn’t.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw

Also your comment feels like a shallow dismissal... HN tries to be better than that, so I encourage you to review the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It’s not. Nobody debates whether most things are art because most things aren’t noticed. The fact that someone got you to give a shit enough to protest it’s not art is self-evidence of its influence over, at the very least, you.

This is a semantic punt. "Aesthetic merit" is no less subjective than "art."

If there are grounds to debate whether something is art, it's almost always art. It may not be fine art. (Or art to your taste.) But there's a reason those are qualifications.

Functionally, I think arguing about what is and isn’t art broadly diminishes support for the things you probably consider “real” art. It makes it unnecessarily pretentious and gate kept.

I'm not even sure what a semantic punt is, but having "intrinsic aesthetic properties and the kind of contemplative experience it elicits" (my quote from earlier in the thread) is clearly less subjective than just "art" which has no inherent meaning.

To be clear, my definition is a set of observable properties about some object. You can debate who should to the observing (I argue "no specific person but the collective"), but it's still observable. "Art", on the other hand, has no inherent meaning. It's an assigned value.

> If there are grounds to debate whether something is art, it's almost always art.

I'm not convinced and I honestly don't see how that holds logically. I appreciate the fact that people are taught as much these days. Doesn't make it more truthful, though, just more collectively agreed upon.

> Functionally, I think arguing about what is and isn’t art broadly diminishes support for the things you probably consider “real” art. It makes it unnecessarily pretentious and gate kept.

I think not arguing about what is and isn't art makes it so "anything is art" for which a corollary is "nothing is specifically art" and therefore art has diminished value. There's no gatekeeping, just a desire to value and treasure artistic beauty.

Does it? Aesthetics and experience are as inherently subjective as art. We're having a contemplative experience in this discussion, after all.

> appreciate the fact that people are taught as much these days

Most people have zero art education.

> not arguing about what is and isn't art makes it so "anything is art" for which a corollary is "nothing is specifically art" and therefore art has diminished value

I'm not convinced. One can meaningfully discuss the ontology of art--and its meaning, impact and value--without needing to precisely delineate its boundary.

Some things are absolutely art. Some things are probably not. In between is ambiguity. That doesn't diminish the value of anything; hell, that ambiguity applies to almost everything we treasure, from literal treasure and love to the internal distinctions between forms of art.

Would that mean that you don’t recognise the existence of bad art? Because that seems to be the consequence of what you are saying.

> or the "common sense" view

Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you are the resident common sense expert this week. Next time i will make sure to ask you what i should think before i think.

> then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value

What you seems to be missing is that the photos here are not the art. This is not photography. The whole package together is what is art here. The story behind the photos, what they did and how they did it. This is a sort of performance art.

The photos are just an aspect of this performance art. Imagine that you would hear the sound recording of a dance performance. Shuffling feet, occasional stomping. Would it have an aesthetic value? It might or might not. But that doesn’t mean the dance wasn’t artistic. Similarly to this case the audio recording is not the art piece, just an imprint of it. Part of the whole package, but not the package itself.

> and elicit no contemplative experience

Lol. You are just wrong on that. I’m here contemplating the whole thing since half an hour at least. But you sure seems to like to just declare things.

> Would that mean that you don’t recognise the existence of bad art? Because that seems to be the consequence of what you are saying.

To be honest, I can't think of anything that would constitute "bad art" in accordance with this view of art. It's an interesting question, and maybe it does exist, but right now I just can't think of anything that qualifies as such. To me, there's "art" and "not art", though I admit the line dividing the two is fuzzy. "Bad" would require some form of ranking, but it's hard to imagine an adequate criteria even before factoring in different art forms.

>> > or the "common sense" view

> Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you are the resident common sense expert this week. Next time i will make sure to ask you what i should think before i think.

I went out of my way to say that it doesn't matter what I personally think, but rather the aesthetic properties of the artwork and the contemplative experiences it evokes on the receivers of the art in general. And the choice of the words "contemplative" and "experience" are not accidental. This feels like a bad faith rather than a charitable interpretation of my position.

My use of "common sense" (in quotes) was perhaps a poor attempt at saying that, if within a given social and cultural context there exists some moderately agreed upon view of what is and isn't "aesthetically interesting and a contemplative experience", then this may also be applied to a broad enough social and cultural group to arrive at a "common" view of what has artistic merit. Ask a million people if Vermeer is art. I can't imagine a significant number of them will say it isn't.

> > then the photos in the article have very little aesthetic value

> What you seems to be missing is that the photos here are not the art. This is not photography. The whole package together is what is art here. The story behind the photos, what they did and how they did it. This is a sort of performance art.

I'm saying it has very little artistic value even if it might have meaningfully political value. It can be a political performance. A form of protest, even. It's just not art, performance or otherwise, according to the model of artistic reality which I espouse.

> The photos are just an aspect of this performance art. Imagine that you would hear the sound recording of a dance performance. Shuffling feet, occasional stomping. Would it have an aesthetic value? It might or might not. But that doesn’t mean the dance wasn’t artistic. Similarly to this case the audio recording is not the art piece, just an imprint of it. Part of the whole package, but not the package itself.

That's a strawman. My argument goes way beyond claiming this isn't art because the photos aren't artistic enough. Even with the performance, the project, the bringing the people together, posting, getting reactions from people, it's all just a cool project with a political bent. It still doesn't qualify as aesthetically interesting.

> Lol. You are just wrong on that. I’m here contemplating the whole thing since half an hour at least. But you sure seems to like to just declare things.

It's quite remarkable how visceral of a reaction this causes on people. This whole response just reads like cognitive dissonance, but particularly this final bit. My arguments have generally been about art and aesthetics. I rarely used the words "you" or "your", except to point out what I perceived as less-than-adequate debate manners for the most part. It would be nice if others would extend me the same courtesy.

Many can. It is everywhere. Trite poems, uninspired paintings, thematically muddled novels, boring photos. The people who made them aimed at creating something great and kinda missed. Either by a litle or a lot. I call that bad art.

> I went out of my way to say that it doesn't matter what I personally think

But you also said your view about what art is is the “common sense” view. In other words you are right others are wrong. Which is what i take an exception with.

> Ask a million people if Vermeer is art. I can't imagine a significant number of them will say it isn't.

Why would that be at dispute?

> My arguments have generally been about art and aesthetics.

You postulated that this work of art has no contemplative value. As if you are the final arbiter of that. If you would have said “folks, this doesn’t do it for me”, I wouldn’t have cared. But you choose to pontificate on it in absolute terms. As if your analysis is going to have universal value.

> you also said your view about what art is is the “common sense” view. In other words you are right others are wrong. Which is what i take an exception with.

I questioned whether the general public is right while the art world can't see the emperor has no clothes.

> > Ask a million people if Vermeer is art. I can't imagine a significant number of them will say it isn't.

> Why would that be at dispute?*

Great, now ask a million people if Duchamp's Fountain is art. That's what I mean by common sense. That's what's at dispute.

> You postulated that this work of art has no contemplative value. As if you are the final arbiter of that. If you would have said “folks, this doesn’t do it for me”, I wouldn’t have cared. But you choose to pontificate on it in absolute terms. As if your analysis is going to have universal value.

I'm really repeating myself here, but to be clear I'm not saying I am the one who is deciding its artistic merit. I'm saying works that evoke no contemplative experience through their aesthetic characteristics shouldn't be called art, even if they evoke contemplative experiences through other features such as political relevance.

This is certainly not pontificating in absolute terms. It's just debating Theory of Art. My analysis doesn't have to have universal value to be logical and cogent.

I'm aware that goes against the contemporary view of art in the art world, which seems to equate artistic intent with artistic expression (or some other long form variant of that statement). To me that's just a charade, a long con, a hack. It solves for high-browness at the expense of beauty. But b e a u t y m a t t e r s.

And that's what I take issue with, hence this thread. If you're allowed to challenge my view, why am I not allowed to challenge yours?

I never claimed that my analysis would have universal value, whatever that means. What I am trying to do is to arrive at a definition of art through first principles. But the cognitive dissonance is deafening in this thread, so most of my energy has been spent trying to explain why I'm allowed to even present an argument instead of actually debating the issue. Oh well.

Let me quote your own words to you: "It still doesn't qualify as aesthetically interesting." and "photos in the article have very little aesthetic value and elicit no contemplative experience" These are your opinions masquerading as universal truths.

> What I am trying to do is to arrive at a definition of art through first principles.

And you ended up with "art is what people call art"? Deep.

It's not that the photos are the art, it's the whole project to get people to change these images, posing for them, etc.

- yes but he didn't"

You don't understand that art. This is fine. You don't have to understand everything.