• What is art?
    @Punshhh Could you please point me to other parts of the forum where consciousness is discussed?

    This is interesting regarding consciousness as there is a lot of debate. But we are on the verge of artificial intelligence which, even in today's primitive state has emerged a consciousness .Purely out of an algorithm.
  • What is art?
    You are conscious right now, yes? That - that - is consciousness. It's a state of you - and you're in it right now. And you knew you were conscious before reading Piaget, yes?

    It's wrong too - consciousness is not a logical construct. That makes no sense at all.
    @Bartricks

    I had a narrow consciousness before reading Piaget, subsequently my consciousness broadened.
    It took many years to fully digest. My instinct about this construct was strengthened by the double slit experiment, and further buoyed by recent developments in theoretical physics where they talk about consciousness creating matter.

    try to substitute ' understanding of self and world that i live in ' for 'consciousness' in the definition of art.

    Then it would become art is an expression of understanding of self and the world, and art work is information about understanding of self and the world, including subconscious elements


    Art is an expression of human consciousness, and art work is information about the artists consciousness, and subconsciousness


    See if that works for you?
  • What is art?
    Jackson Pollock was a very formal painter many would be surprised to hear. The underlying structure of his work is quite rigid - this allowed him the freedom of splatter. Not total freedom, but he could produce a lot of artifact without compromising his work.
  • What is art?
    Punshhh you are deciding which accidents you keep, and which you correct.
  • What is art?
    nice painting punshhh.

    Brett yes, but we know that we are imperfect and much of what we produce is not intended and we never produce exactly what we want to - this is the human condition. Yet we continue to produce knowing this will be the result - this is a conscious decision.
  • What is art?
    my understanding of consciousness is that it is influenced by psychopathology and biology, so biology would account for instinct.
  • What is art?
    After having a smoke.

    Its hard to know how big a role instinct plays in human art. No doubt it plays a role.

    I think the definition is still valid, but ill try to learn a bit more about human instinct in art.

    Other nuances that are not explained in the definition:

    Artifact - chance products like unintentional paint splatter

    X factor: what you set out to achieve minus what you actually achieve
  • What is art?
    Yes instinct is interesting - the definition dose not exclude instinct as it contains subconsciousness but dose it sufficiently account for it ? - this is going to take some thought
  • What is art?
    an expression of human consciousness, and art work as information about the artists consciousness, and subconsciousness

    The definition works for animals also, and it will be fascinating to see what AI produces. Not much so far, but in ten twenty years
  • What is art?
    Brett --- If they want to be.
  • What is art?
    Brett There are birds that create nests and decorate them. There seems to be consciousness beyond humanity. AI will develop a consciousness.
  • What is art?
    I believe art has already been defined as: an expression of human consciousness, and art work as information about the artists consciousness, and subconsciousness

    This definition can be invalidated by producing one artwork that dose not fit the definition.

    Nobody has done this yet.
  • What is art?
    I agree with your thoughts about Consciousness, but I would extend the definition of consciousness beyond the sensibilities of mind. For example, as Colosseum said, animals are artists, but they don't have conscious minds like humans. Fish, clear a patch of gravel, for a female to like it, or the bower bird creating a beautiful bower for his female, who has a critical eye. — Punshhh

    There is more evidence every day about consciousness in animals and plants even!
    But I'm trying to restrict this to Human Art.
  • What is art?
    or a ripple as you say
  • What is art?
    Absolutely, Its a steady build up of something - like a snowball
  • What is art?
    Brett art is not only cultural, it is also generational .
  • What is art?
    @Brett Art is a part of it. Artists move the fastest. They influence music and music really delivers the message home.
  • What is art?
    @Brett But they will have one, and it will be different to what we currently have.
    It has yet to be invented.
  • What is art?
    So by that point it was no longer genuine, and in fact may have already been commercialised and made irrelevant in the UK. Generally, I feel, by the time the media and elites discover something “new” it’s already gone and all that remains is a commercial replica. — Brett

    Whats interesting to me is that culture was nevertheless changed.
  • What is art?
    i think you are in the ball park. I do not think it has to be instantaneous but a different art should emerge. An emerging culture will differentiate itself from the status quo . I think to Hippies, then Punk, now Millennials - what will their art be?
  • What is art?
    Yes in Australia it wasn't a movement that reflected the working class. It was a middle class movement.
  • What is art?
    @Yes, because there was a vast working class, unemployed, disenfranchised, angry culture that existed, had their own cultural references and felt its relevance instantly. They had always existed. Malcolm Mclaren didn’t create them.@Brett"

    Malcolm Mclaren created the Sex Pistols and the culture was receptive to them and adopted them, which changed how the kids dressed and behaved, and danced, and what they listened to, and how they understood themselves - It changed their consciousness.

    I think it works both ways - yes the culture had to be receptive to punk, and this was primed by their living conditions. Absolutely.
  • What is art?
    Art and culture are inextricably linked. Except for hermits , consciousness develops in a culture.
    So an artists culture will be reflected in their art work.
  • What is art?
    Possibly in the US punk culture had different roots, But in Australia and Britain this is how it started.
  • What is art?
    Obviously from my posts I don’t go along with that. Artists don’t create culture and culture doesn’t allow itself to be changed by anybody. If art changes then it’s because culture has shifted. Culture creates art. But I don’t think there’s “new” cultures, just ones that have not had legitimacy up until then, even though it always existed. The art is one way of making its presence felt. Punk was not invented. That working class attitude was always there, it was just repressed and devalued by social mores and power bases. — Brett

    In the 70s Malcolm Mclaren as a joke created a punk group - the Sex Pistols
    Punk culture grew out of that.

    Its not that simple, but everything cultural has a beginning. this thread might be one of them:)
  • What is art?
    I think it might be closer to the truth that artists, major game players, smashed definitions but never owned them. — Brett

    Quite possibly
  • What is art?
    'Art is an expression of human consciousness. And art work is information about an artists consciousness and subconsciousness'

    I ask respectfully that all those who agree with the above definition put it at the top of their post, and those who are casually viewing also please.
  • What is art?
    Pivotal artists throughout history owned the definition of art.They took the definition of art away from the powers that be. It is why they are pivotal.

    When they changed the definition of art they brought culture with them. Culture allowed itself to be changed. It was receptive to the new definition, and so it adopted it.

    The definition of art can be changed literally.
    We are artists, so why dont we?

    It requires agreement. We need to be deeply convinced that our definition is valid.



    'Art is an expression of human consciousness. And art work is information about an artists consciousness and subconsciousness'

    i am convinced the above definition is valid for all of time. If you understand consciousness as I do then I think you will agree.

    It cant happen immediately.It will take a long time to adjust to this. This is a challenge to your consciousness - as all new art is.
  • What is art?
    Why would you want to change the definition of art?

    Past artists who changed the definition of art:

    Van Gogh, Pollock, Lichtenstein, Postmodernism was imposed on art, performance, digital art, etc, etc
  • What is art?
    The following is my understanding of consciousness.It draws largely on the work of Jean Piaget:


    Consciousness

    We all have an understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in.
    This understanding is consciousness.

    Consciousness is a logical construct, influenced by psychopathology, and biology. It develops out of intelligence. Intelligence is a tool to solve problems. As we live life we need to constantly solve problems, eventually we develop an encyclopedic array of solutions to problems, and constructs of how things are and how they will be. This forms our understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in. This is consciousness. Consciousness allows us to venture forward to live life confident that what we expect to happen will happen. Without consciousness we would go forward completely in the dark, if at all.

    Our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in underpins our personality. Psychopathology and biology influence our personality, but do not dominate it. We can not experience the world through psychopathology, or biology. We experience the world through our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in - our consciousness . Personality is consciousness in action.

    Consciousness effectively is the world, as the world is not directly experienced but construed, so the world and experience always remain a construct in our head. We make constructs in our consciousness as a result of sense stimuli. We filter and construct the world in our consciousness. Our understanding of self and the world we live in is our entire world - our consciousness is our world. Nothing exists outside of it.

    Of course much must exist in the world that we are not conscious of. This information is blank to us until it enters our consciousness.

    Because we all must construct our consciousness out of solutions to problems personally experienced, and our experience is always unique, even identical twins develop a slightly different consciousness. Siblings brought up in the same environment can develop remarkably different consciousness. We all posses an imperfect, psychologically, and biologically skewed consciousness. Communication is necessary to orient ourselves in each others consciousness. When there is agreement, we call this reality.

    Our consciousness is the only world we have. And we all have a slightly different consciousness, hence we live in slightly different worlds.



    The most beautiful thing in the world is the knowledge that we can expand our consciousness by increasing our understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in, and thereby expand our world.
  • What is art?
    [/quotThat's not necessarily true - take my Gainsborough example. He didn't like painting portraits, and so there's a decent chance that most Gainsborough portraits were painted by a grump who resented every brushstroke. But you can't tell that from the portraits plus it is grossly implausible to think that whether or not they qualify as art turns on whether we can reliably infer anything about his mental states from them.e]@Bartricks

    You are describing Gainsborough's consciousness.

    Sorry I should post my understanding of consciousness .
    It will take a while I type with two fingers.
  • What is art?
    [/You also don't seem to understand that the concept of art transcends our definitions.quote]@Bartricks

    The way to prove your assumption is to find fault with the following definition:

    'Art is an expression of human consciousness. An art work is information about an artists consciousness and subconsciousness'

    Show me a work of art that dose not fit the description..
  • What is art?
    @Bartricks There is nothing wrong with your test.

    In any society it is theKing who decides what is art. We get a bit off topic if we define who the king currently is.

    If we had a definition of art, it would be the @definition that decided what art is.

    If we can agree on a definition of art in this thread then we take the power of what is art away from the king and give it to the definition. All it requires is wide consensus.
  • What is art?
    @jgill You are an artist. I bet by varying the formula you could learn to control the patterns / colours produced.

    Ive never seen anything like that before. Its very impressive. You have a mathematical consciousness and my consciousness could not normally relate to mathematics, but translated into images I can start to understand it:)

    I think ' art as an expression of human consciousness ' would still contain it.

    If art had a definition you would have certainty about what your work was.
  • What is art?
    @Bartricks yes the artifact would provide information about the creator and the culture -we cant predict specifically what information it would provide except to say it would give us clues to the 'consciousness' of the creator. We then would use our 'consiousness' to to build an imperfect picture of the culture they lived in.

    @Bartricks @Punshhh You both seem to have a beef about who gets to decide what is art. Can you see how if you had a definition of what is art would empower you? Can you see how lack of a definition of what is art dis-empowers you ?
  • What is art?
    Wow so many good responses. Thank you all.

    It is amusing how commonly this topic of ‘what constitutes art and what does not’ is debated. — Colosseum

    Exactly, that is why I brought the topic up here.

    It is also frustrating for an artist because their intent and purpose is so often misconstrued. Also anybody can produce valid art, but not many can really understand it, and i think this is due to the definition of art being so vague. Almost all that Colosseum mentions is an exploration of human consciousness. Art really is a conversation about consciousness. So a definition of art should, I think, direct the focus on human consciousness.

    @Punshhh and Colosseum bring up the notion that a definition of art might create a sort of intellectual totalitarianism over creativity, and I thank them as that did not occurred to me, hmmm, I think this would be mitigated by allowing art the freedom of consciousness, but it deserves further reflection.

    Consciousness is everything, everything is construed into consciousness. That which is outside of consciousness is blank until it enters consciousness ( thanks @tim wood )

    What is amusing about those 'what is art, what is not' discussions is that they are really consciousness vs consciousness discussions.Human consciousness seems to need to propagate itself. It needs to be validated through communication, and art is one form of this. Posting in this forum is another! When one consciousness agrees with another we call this reality.

    When you create art you are giving me information about your consciousness, and subconsciousness Thanks @jgill. You tell me how you understand art by showing me what you use it for. You give me an insight into your intelligence, your intent, your sympathies, your talent,your demographic,your politics,your spiritual beliefs, etc, etc. A whole bunch of information which I have to interpret with my consciousness. The process reminds me of a conversation.

    @Punshhh reminds us that historically it is artists who define art by expanding on it, but I am an artist, and like Marcel Duchamp bestowed the status of art onto a urinal, I now bestow the status of art on to this thread :)

    It seems to me there is enough information to define 'what is art'. At least for myself, but I am only one consciousness. For the definition to become reality there needs to be wide consensus, and this seems a good place to start.

    So far I've got: Art is an expression of human consciousness, and art work is information about the artists consciousness and subconsciousness. - thanks@jgill

    A variation might be: Artifact of human consciousness - thanks @unenlightened

    If you have a better way to encapsulate it, or have other things to add please do.

    This could be interesting - we may define art on this thread for the rest of time.

    PS: I cant see that human art would be constrained by this widest of possible definitions - human consciousness, but it would be refocused, in one way for the better, but there may be unforeseen negative consequences - is focus restraint?

    To allow art to remain as is, is to maintain the cultural status quo, to change art is to challenge the cultural status quo.
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