Indeed it would seem that a book wiil require more imagination to elicit an equivalent emotional response — Janus

I’ve just had a thought about this. Was it the demands on my imagination that gave me more insight into the TTRL book or the skill of the writer that elicited them?

I agree with what you say, and would only add that most decent novels would require a series (or a very long movie) to adapt them adequately, if everything that is to be imagined (that is, everything described or evoked) in the novel is to be actually shown in the film.

I would say the skill of the writer to describe and evoke places demands on your imagination, and the greater your engagement with the work and your imagination is the greater will be your insight. Probably the degree of your engagement would also depend upon your imagination (as well as your basic affinity with the work), so it would seem to be a kind of "feedback" system.

Maybe this is the problem: art seems to be man made (unless you believe in a God), and all things man made have a foundation, a set of rules or agreement for it to function or be accepted. Except with art we can’t seem to find those rules.

Does this mean, then, that

1: art is a one of the great mysteries of man, or

2: it exists outside of us, which would mean there is an objective truth to it.

Some people are better at judging than others. Those that believe they are better than others are either making a good or a bad judgement. This leaves us with the hard problem of knowing who thinks their worth as nothing special when they’re a genius with so much to offer and who is incompetent yet of equally poor judgement as the former genius yet believes their work to be of the upmost importance.

Does belief in one’s own genius trump genius itself? Can believing one is a genius enough make one a genius? A genius can only be recognised for producing work that rouses those of better judgement.

The naivety of saying “art is above judgement” and holding to some romantic and noble notion of “art” is childish and vapid at best - at worst we’re talking about the actual self destruction of the human spirit to strive to be better rather than to abscond cloyingly to the petticoats of some comforting mother whom wishes only to end your life to ‘protect’ you from pain ... join a monastic order instead and save your drivel for the silent corridors of your minds.

To paraphrase a madman:

“Humanities biggest mistake is to set an obtainable ideal.”

A genius can only be recognised for producing work that rouses those of better judgement. — I like sushi

I like that and I like the word genius. And I’d like to believe that there is the work of genius, then there is the work of also rans.

So let’s ignore the also rans, let’s consider the geniuses.

Is Mozart a genius, Picasso, Miles Davis, Shakespeare?

Is this genius?
“Bay has responded to his critics, saying "I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime."[77] Besides being accused of making films that pander to a low demographic, critics and audiences have been critical of elements of Bay's filmmaking style such as the overuse of Dutch angles, rapid cutting, and cliché camerawork.” Wikipedia.

Great observations.

People may "disagree", but it's quite clearly the case that when reading a novel you must use your imagination to visualize the characters, things, places and events described, whereas you do not need to use your imagination at all to see the characters, things, places and events shown in a film. — Janus

Books are just sets of marks on paper. Films are just sets of shapes, colors and sounds. To understand either, you need to think about what you're seeing, you need to supply semantic content, you need to fill in/imagine things that you're not told/shown, etc.

Trying to quantify which requires "more imagination" is a ridiculous notion in my view. Not only because the very idea of quantification is not well-defined here, but because every experience is going to be unique--each book, film, and person, on each occasion, is going to be different.

I have seen the film ‘The Thin Red Line’ and thought it a great film — Brett

That's one of the very few films I've ever been tempted to walk out of. I hate Malick.

Some people are better at judging than others. — I like sushi

By what criteria?

...the novel is superior to film — Brett

I agree with a lot of what @Janus has written, so I won't repeat. I have also come to conclusion that because of the nature of what art is, some art forms are just limited in format, regardless of how skilled the artist is.

Art communicates something that's beyond it's physical state. To simplify things let's say that art communicates to our imagination. Well, some art formats present too much direct obvious information which doesn't allow our imagination to work much. Like movie, even more so, photograph. The thing is given to you on a plate. A face, a color, a shade, an angle, a move, a speed, a sound.

That's why a lot of movies move you superficially, as many have experienced, having a great time in cinema and then walking out and forgetting what you were seeing just 15 minutes before. Your mind just didn't work much to get it, and it's out of it. Like what a candy, empty calories, does.

But when you read a novel, you are creating along with it, you are working with it much more. So the experience is much more ingrained in you, deeper, richer. Better.

Of course, there are degrees of quality in any art form. Great movie is better than bad novel. But I would say that great movie cannot be better than great novel, simply due to format constraints.

That's why music is so powerful as an art form, too. It's abstract yet relatable. Our minds have no option but to work with it.

With any art form, a great artist is able to create a product that can dance with your mind in a way to extract the most "imaginative work" out of you, so you get the most ingrained experience. Both artist and you are humans, both of you bleed, dream and die. What best artists are able to do, in a way, is to get closest to the core of what human is within their piece of work, making a piece which ends up communicating with your mind, through your imagination, like a glove to a hand.

Now, as Janus mentions in one of the posts, it's a feedback system of sorts. It is not only about the piece of art, but about your mind that works with it. It does take a certain exposure, certain "training" or "getting used to", certain experience, to be able to receive the art the most. Especially the greatest art, since there's greatest intricacy in it. Probably even an attitude of humbleness to receive is needed. But it's not about intelligence, as I see it.

That's why a lot of movies move you superficially, as many have experienced, having a great time in cinema and then walking out and forgetting what you were seeing just 15 minutes before. — Henri

If you were to read something for just 90-100 minutes, say, and then not read it again, or if you were to listen to a piece of music just once and not listen to it again, and especially if you were to do this regularly, do you think you'd remember the reading or music long-term any better than you remember films you just watch once?

There's not a right answer there--it's going to depend on how your individual mind works, but I'm just curious what your answer would be.

I am not interested much in a dialog with you, really... How your memory works is not important factor in this discussion. The experience itself is richer, as you are experiencing it. The example of a movie in a cinema you forget 15 minutes later is about a consequence of having a shallow experience itself.

Doesn’t matter. If you wish to believe everyone is equally as good a judge of anything as the next person go ahead and believe that nonsense if it makes you feel better.

I don’t care for it ... if my judgement bad? If so you’re in the awkward position of denying judgement as being good or bad whilst insisting it is good or bad. You be the judge :)

If you wish to believe everyone is equally as good a judge of anything as the next person go ahead and believe that nonsense if it makes you feel better. — I like sushi

So were you just saying that each individual might prefer some people as judges, where different individuals might prefer different people?

So literally you might watch a film and forget it 15 minutes later?

? During the movie, what you got is shallow experience, and after the movie, you remember the thing nominally, but it's as if you didn't even watch it, it's inconsequential. That's the meaning of "forget a movie 15 minutes later".

You're saying it's not important to you 15 minutes later then? Not that you literally can't recall it?

There is skill and performance in art.

A ruleset I think is: how much skill does the artist have based on his/her work scaled.with how much work was done, is it new? This would constitute to whether a good judge might consider it a good experience, not a minority because the majority is the only real judge of art appeal.

Art is truly a competition of things who want to showcase their artwork. In Martial Art you can win or lose, in Art, it is the same.

How would you suggest we quantify skill?

In arts, aptitude with chosen tool. A good singer is able to hold notes for longer or hit higher or lower pitches; is noteworthy skill (aptitude of vocals). In a painting, it's aptitude of brush, which is directly, 'stroke'. Paintings are greater the greater, or sometimes luckier, one's stroke is. This requires careful observation.

Some arts may be lucky splashes of paint on paper because it has new style about it; but in asking the artist to redo the picture he/she may become stuck. This makes the artist lucky but his/her art may become popular.

A good singer is able to hold notes for longer or hit higher or lower pitches; — Schzophr

One thing I wanted to clarify is if you were looking to correlate it to effort, work put in, etc. So I suppose not?

Aside from that, do you think that music, say, is better if it has a wider pitch range (in a vocal part, say)?

Books are just sets of marks on paper. Films are just sets of shapes, colors and sounds. To understand either, you need to think about what you're seeing, you need to supply semantic content, you need to fill in/imagine things that you're not told/shown, etc. — Terrapin Station

From an artificially de-lifed perspective books may be thought of as "just marks on paper, etc.", but that is not our ordinary experience. This kind of attenuated view of things is always abstracted from lived experience, so it is secondary and derivative. It is the one-dimensional machine man who claims this view is somehow the one and only truth of things.

From an artificially de-lifed perspective books may be thought of as "just marks on paper, etc.", but that is not our ordinary experience. — Janus

It's weird that you'd not understand what I wrote contextually. The whole point of the first part is that a book qua a book (not qua our experience of a book--because that's different than what a book is), is just marks on paper (and likewise with films). The reason to point that out is to stress the second part--"To understand either, you need to think about what you're seeing, you need to supply semantic content, you need to fill in/imagine things that you're not told/shown, etc."

It's the same deal for both.

Not only that but it is one case of if.

What would be some examples of music that you think is some of the best because of an extended pitch range?

Whitney Houston, Elton John

Try this song I think is good:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TlV1TkA2S3E

Wouldn't you think that someone like Mike Patton is better, then? He has a wider vocal range than Whitney and Elton. He's the singer on the album below, for example: