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[gimymblert]

Art isn't about being "polish" or "visually appealing" especially if it goes against the expression. Also there is an idea herited by "high art" that only exist because it was an arbitrary line drawn by high class (and educated)people to separate themselves from low class people, mostly to maintain the class separation, ie it was snobery and that's where the stereotype come from.

[Schoq]

Art isn't about being "polish" or "visually appealing" especially if it goes against the expression. Also there is an idea herited by "high art" that only exist because it was an arbitrary line drawn by high class (and educated)people to separate themselves from low class people, mostly to maintain the class separation, ie it was snobery and that's where the stereotype come from.

This is also true for modern art and the bourgeoisie pretending to think jackson pollock splatters look good.

I actually find uneducated lower class people (me included) tend to gravitate towards more polished art where there's more of an immediate striking beauty (which doesn't imply less depth either). [/anecdotal]

[SousaVilla]

Art isn't about being "polish" or "visually appealing" especially if it goes against the expression. Also there is an idea herited by "high art" that only exist because it was an arbitrary line drawn by high class (and educated)people to separate themselves from low class people, mostly to maintain the class separation, ie it was snobery and that's where the stereotype come from.

The high classes usually establish values to judge art that oppose those of the lower classes to reinforce the division between them, but this has nothing to do with the ideas of "polish" and "visually appealing". Many of the low class examples of art that I usually meet, mostly handicraft and poetry, do not attempt to break this, but actually try to make something beautiful in their own traditions. What changes is what we consider beautiful.

The ones that actually try to make art that breaks what is considered visually appealing on their traditions are high/middle class educated people that live after the modernist art revolution. You could even make the point that this started with romanticism, but that is stilll high class art.

tl,dr: what Schoq said.   

[gimymblert]

I'm far from bourgeoisie and I find jackson splatter "good", I can't deny bourgeoisie play a part in the narative but really modern art was what allowed art to be class free today, by precisely deconstructing the social implication of art and its long standing relation to power. I have heard in a podcast recently about how nobody told michealangelo how to paint to disparage design by comitee, nothing could be further apart from the truth. In fact the narrative abot modern art being "prententious" was also a construct of bourgeoisie that tried to keep artist under their control as display of power (they were the primary market), and with the advent of photography which allowed anyone to capture reality as art was supposed to do until then, it really push artist to fight for relevance by turning to the fundamental of art. There is more to say, but I'm no here to write an essay

[gimymblert]

BTW in this context, I don't see how teh game describe aove is "unpolish", it's a different aesthetics sure, but one that appeal to a certain kind of people and ideals.

[SousaVilla]

I'm far from bourgeoisie and I find jackson splatter "good", I can't deny bourgeoisie play a part in the narative but really modern art was what allowed art to be class free today, by precisely deconstructing the social implication of art and its long standing relation to power. I have heard in a podcast recently about how nobody told michealangelo how to paint to disparage design by comitee, nothing could be further apart from the truth. In fact the narrative abot modern art being "prententious" was also a construct of bourgeoisie that tried to keep artist under their control as display of power (they were the primary market), and with the advent of photography which allowed anyone to capture reality as art was supposed to do until then, it really push artist to fight for relevance by turning to the fundamental of art. There is more to say, but I'm no here to write an essay

Art was always class free. People always made and will always make new stuff, they will sing, paint, create stories, etc. I've met with singers from the popular tradition in my country that have only the most vague idea about modernism (or dont know about it at all) and still make their songs. (actually some of them dislike modernist developments, like free verse) What changed was how middle/upper classes related to art. This definetly allowed popular artist to be more respected in academic circles, but this is a change in the reception of the lower class art by the higher classes.

I don't buy your argument of the bourgeoisie inventing the pretentious narrative, it feels just a statement without facts. I think that if you look to the background of the first modernists you'll see mostly middle class people. Also, I know a bunch of people that are not bourgeoisie and take no interest in modern/post-modern art, finding it pretentious. Actually, most of this debate would be irrelevant to many popular artists in my country and I think the same is true to europe/usa.

[s0]

im pretentious

[Cobralad]

you dummies never heard about realists or Peredvizhniki?

[Schoq]

realism and all oil paint was unfortunately made obsolete by photography (the best photo (the afghan girl) is 500x more powerful than the best oil painting (nymphs and satyr))

[Cobralad]

ok im out

[gimymblert]

I'm far from bourgeoisie and I find jackson splatter "good", I can't deny bourgeoisie play a part in the narative but really modern art was what allowed art to be class free today, by precisely deconstructing the social implication of art and its long standing relation to power. I have heard in a podcast recently about how nobody told michealangelo how to paint to disparage design by comitee, nothing could be further apart from the truth. In fact the narrative abot modern art being "prententious" was also a construct of bourgeoisie that tried to keep artist under their control as display of power (they were the primary market), and with the advent of photography which allowed anyone to capture reality as art was supposed to do until then, it really push artist to fight for relevance by turning to the fundamental of art. There is more to say, but I'm no here to write an essay

Art was always class free. People always made and will always make new stuff, they will sing, paint, create stories, etc. I've met with singers from the popular tradition in my country that have only the most vague idea about modernism (or dont know about it at all) and still make their songs. (actually some of them dislike modernist developments, like free verse) What changed was how middle/upper classes related to art. This definetly allowed popular artist to be more respected in academic circles, but this is a change in the reception of the lower class art by the higher classes.

I don't buy your argument of the bourgeoisie inventing the pretentious narrative, it feels just a statement without facts. I think that if you look to the background of the first modernists you'll see mostly middle class people. Also, I know a bunch of people that are not bourgeoisie and take no interest in modern/post-modern art, finding it pretentious. Actually, most of this debate would be irrelevant to many popular artists in my country and I think the same is true to europe/usa.

To be frank there is the perception of art and the performance of it, what I'm arguing is in the context of Torchkas' post, the way he judge art have nothing to do with how art is perform actually, but how the narrative has been construct.

When I'm arguing about social class, the perception of art (and art culture) stem from the fact that the art discourse is given by historical institution, authority and figures. It's only recently that folk art was bringing up as "Art" in theses institutions. Let's keep the context tight.

On top of that let's remember how (occidental) art history is tied to circle of power, from the clerical (with the sacred institution of power) to king (under the sacred pretense) to bourgeoisie (as merchant power rise) to the common and "primitives" (picasso stole from african art and wilfredo lam). This arc I like to call the promethean arc of (occidental) art history Brought power from instution to to the "profane" (non religious subject) then the artist then to the public. The whole centra concept of framing in (occidental) culture is a relic of that, the "icon" to be venered is central to understand the narrative of art, especially in the modern world where the arc still continue (the star have been replaced by the everyman then the anonyme as seen with meme).

[JWK5]

im pretentious

You're not pretentious enough to be pretentious. You're so pretentiously pretentious.

[SousaVilla]

To be frank there is the perception of art and the performance of it, what I'm arguing is in the context of Torchkas' post, the way he judge art have nothing to do with how art is perform actually, but how the narrative has been construct.

He judged the games as "pretentious", "unpolished" and "not visually appealing", and you made the point this criteria for judging art is born from historically high class snobbery. My counter-point was that a) a lot of low class art traditions use similar ideas for making/understanding art, example: a vase painting actually intends to be visually appealing and polished inside the beauty parameters from that culture; and b) High and middle class people tend to like a lot of the so called "pretentious" art, example: most students in universities are still from middle classes, but they tend to like it.

Torchkas simply disliked the games because the criteria he uses to judge games don't match the ones those games were made with, but this have no relation to class fight.         

[Pfotegeist]

People are confident they learned a thing because they display results.  Learning a thing wrong can show results sooner.  I read that ballet instructors sometimes encourage more dangerous techniques because additional training seems like a setback.  I'm sure this follows for less strenuous, and less punishing attempts.  Looking at picture art, if someone can make money throwing paint and then adjusting it, or even filming it, it would be a hell of a setback to learn application of geometry, fractals, and the golden ratio.

Art and spectacle are intertwined.  Chance events hold meaning to their witness.  I'm almost quoting something but I don't know the reference here.

[gimymblert]

@sousavilla
To be frank there is no more class division in taste today (evenb if some trend subsist). But I'm not sure if we disagree. The phrasing he use is what I have highlight historically, ie a certain kind of art representation that attract a certain discourse vs that art.

Whenever you have modernist looking art or associated (ie ar games) a certain discourse is made like clockwork. Even though this form of "art politics" exist in any culture of aesthetics apprecation, this particular set of trope have its origin in occidental art and the relation we have with it, i'm not sure your counter point invalidate mine nor I invalidate yours. The idea of "avant garde" and "experimental art" have always been suspicious by and art game criticism totally follow this.

I mean He directly reference arthouse film (even though I think it's not what is at the core of those piece), he start by considering the fact that pretentious is "overused" and talk about "self proclaim art game" ... It tells me he is deriving his discourse from a particular culture of art and art perception which I tried to highlight how it was historically construct.

I said not specifically that's it's a matter of class (I intended o say anyway), but it's inherited FROM era where social class were important and hasn't been abolished and still taint how we see art (along with the old proximity to power). Even though some artist where from different class, the higher class dictate what was to be made, Leonard da vinci and the other ninja turtles made painting through command given to them and these command where about glorifying the power of the time.

For example when speaking about abstract art, you can be sure people trace it back to the cultural impact of modernist even though abstract is older and more present (arabic, celtic, african, etc ...) than the kind of representative art western culture inherited.

The reason is that painting was design to celebrate power (starting with the sacred) and became symbol of that power (hence the pompous and pretentious narrative) so breaking from that to new theme and technique was seen as "sacrilege" in a culture accustomed to art being about expressing "sacred" ideals.That's why portrait (selfie's ancestor) where a thing, it started as a way to represent gods, then kings and noble, then bourgeois, and now everybody (the middle class have power).

[Torchkas]

I get the strong impression that the games that I called "pretentious" are usually constructed under the same environment. These might be social classes, or just snobby college students who've just learned what high art is.

The thing is, I don't know what high art is. So it could very well be that I'm pretentious by trying to criticize these works for being pretentious. I'm still in the middle of my art-related education business (not far into it yet, we're at 19th century romanticism) so I surely can't justifiably criticize any of these "self-proclaimed high artworks", right?

Or maybe not. Perhaps the things I'm saying should still hold some ground because I'm still part of the public that got to interact with it, even if just remotely. Perhaps the fact that I can only look at these things on surface level, that my initial criticism regards things like aesthetics and polish, are certainly things that should be merited. After all, what's art for it not to be judged?

I certainly like the discussion it caused.

[s0]

i don't think "art games" are really on the level of the avantgarde in other art forms (yet). existing videogame culture with its almost exclusive focus on "fun", escapism and consumerism is just so far removed from the contemporary art world that its going to take a long time and a lot of effort to bridge the gap. as a result of this complete lack of overlap there are also very few people with both a serious interest in videogames AND a serious interest in cutting edge avantgarde art. so the pool of people who could make a lot of headway into creating a more legit games avantgarde is extremely small and who knows how many of them are even interested in game dev.

that said im still happy that ppl are trying to do new things and etc.

[mks]

relentless as the tarantula

they're not going to let you
sit at a front table
at some cafe in Europe
in the mid-afternoon sun.
if you do, somebody's going to
drive by and
spray your guts with a
submachine gun.

they're not going to let you
feel good
for very long
anywhere.
the forces aren't going to
let you sit around
fucking-off and
relaxing.
you've got to go
their way.

the unhappy, the bitter and
the vengeful
need their
fix - which is
you or somebody
anybody
in agony, or
better yet
dead, dropped into some
hole.

as long as there are
humans about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth or
anywhere else
they might
escape to.

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.


Charles Bukowski

[gimymblert]

Yeah I think the "pretentious" judgement was just a bit to stretch here, especially when intention are well define, but at the same time modern art is a paradigm shift on art and there is still the inertia of the initial "sacred ideals" even though as a culture we are past that, we still appraised art under tropes born from this ideals.

Also they are less art games than game about art and they kind of are spot on as far as art is involve. They are more about the "asking question" type of arts, precisely question about art. I mean what does the deep learning tells us about reception of art? and what does procedural algorithm tells us about creativity (different algorithm represent different "artist" and have their own distinct quirks) ? They are less about the superficial polish than about raising valid question about art that can be as much as a paradigm shift as the invention of photography. I mean like photography what will happen if computer creativity match human creativity? also what about reception of art (which both works deals with)? Can computer arts, no matter how good or crappy, be received the same as human art? what about human art reception?

Let's break the two project, only one being a game anyway:

The first one which I dubbed digital critics (as  joke) is all about this
https://www.ted.com/talks/fei_fei_li_how_we_re_teaching_computers_to_understand_pictures?language=en



Someone taught a huge neural network to recognize images and form sentences that describe what happen in them, it's a huge breakthrough. On the other hand some contemporary art is notorious for being obscure and open to interpretation. The fun of the project is to juxtapose the two, to take "indecipherable" modern art image and let the algorithm tries it best, mimicking the posture of the lambda art goer who is confused by what he is seeing and tries to make sense of it. The result is the association of the phrase of the algorithm output and it kind of effectively remind what people say in front of these arts. It can be seen as a criticism of (some) modern art and it's perception. I would say it's very clever and straightforward, and not at all pretentious.



The second one was in the context of the Procedural generation Jam, whose goal was to explore procedural generation beyond map generation. So it's fitting that it use the ritual of art exposition to ask the question about perception of art (and procedural art) by framing algorithm as artist (they produce series of art) but also the setting as art exposition (the game art such as building and environment is also procedural). Given that procedural generation is hot, since minecraft made a great case FOR them, and the reoccurring criticism of procedural generation as not art, the way the game frame the issue is spot on.
By using the game format for both it's digital and experiential nature (what's more fitting than a procedural space to show procedural art or a pure digital space to showcase pure digital artist) it effectively put in a place to judge and question by drawing equivalence with the real world ritual of art. It doesn't pretend to be art as much as it use its metaphor to make a point (and thus is art), I wouldn't call that pretentious at all. I'm sure we can come with better algorithm to produce better art, but how much it would add to the discourse? It's not a demonstration but a question.

BTW the question of digital art is as old as computer, one of the best and interesting exploration was a very early works called AARON by Harold Cohen. It was much more about exploring the process of art by teaching the computer his own art rather than "about" digital art. The paper he published is fascinating as you see how he deconstruct his gesture and choice, along with his younger daughter, to look at what makes his art, it's a very reflective work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARON

I do think some modern art are indeed pretentious, but that's more about the loophole of an institution that kept its old ritual that don't fit the new paradigm at all, so effectively that's art that "pretend" to follow a tradition in performance that in essence he had long destroyed. But looking for pretentiousness is the least interesting things to do and ask about art, and is in itself pretentious as it is about passing a non constructive judgement as if we were an authority and police of good tastes. Let them be pretentious and took whatever is interesting and constructive out of them. Out of the scope of this is also the problem of the virtuality of value of art and its relation to money "in essence" historically.

Both works presented in my post totally don't follow these ritual, the first one is an image blog the second a game.

I tend to look at art along 4 parameters personally:
Abstraction or questioning
Research or exploration
Technique or execution
Subjectivity or expression

edit:
There is a little thread about art and procedural generation here too
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=26388.msg1136996#msg1136996

[s0]

They are more about the "asking question" type of arts, precisely question about art. I mean what does the deep learning tells us about reception of art? and what does procedural algorithm tells us about creativity (different algorithm represent different "artist" and have their own distinct quirks) ? They are less about the superficial polish than about raising valid question about art that can be as much as a paradigm shift as the invention of photography. I mean like photography what will happen if computer creativity match human creativity? also what about reception of art (which both works deals with)? Can computer arts, no matter how good or crappy, be received the same as human art? what about human art reception?

dum it not the computer beign creative it the person who wrote the algorithm being creative