Through various artistic means the artist creates something - be it “poor” or “rich” in subjective/objective value - to some/many/all in various degrees due to individual taste and aesthetic sensibilities. The act of artistry in this way produces an “artifact” - a product of the artistic endeavor. The muscian produces “a song”, the painter “a painting”, the photographer “a photograph, and so on.

These items are of some magnitude. My concern here is with the comparative magnitudes through “time” and “space” with each medium of art - that is not merely the physical magnitude, but the human experience of the art temporally and spatially.

For example if we take “a photograph”. This is clearly not a item that stretches across time. It is an instant captured. Whilst on the other hand we can think of some movie we’ve seen recently and quite obviously understand it as being drawn out across time not experienced in a single instant.

My observation here shouldn’t be anything extraordinary I hope. I hope we can all see that experiencing every musical note in an instant would render a musical composition meaningless. For these briefly outlined reasons I am proposing that art that manifests itself in an instant (such as a photograph, sculpture, or painting) aims to essentially have the viewer of the “artifact” stretch the instant out across time from a singular instant captured in space, whilst at the other pole works that span temporal experience (films, poems, novels or musical compositions) aim to essentially bring the viewer to compress the experience into one instant.

The “photograph” is meant to be taken as positioned in time and thought of in reference to the past and future, whereas the “play” is meant to be taken as a stretch of time with a beginning, middle and end, that is to be captured in a singular position in time once the performace is over.

If you can bolster this idea do so. If you find it questionable then question it and offer counter arguments to this brief analysis. If however you understand the gist of what I am saying the I would like to know what you believe to be the “middle ground” and for what reasons? To be clear I mea whether you regard something like “a sculpture” to be the most appropriate “middle ground” between the “photograph” and the “play”? Or the “painting” to be the “middle ground” between the “muscal composition” and the “painting”? Basically what for of artistic medium has one foot in both the “instant” and a “span” of time?