Some things art is not, and what it could be.

This was written in response to a fellow teacher's response to my friend Jason's post; a response to the responses that Ebert's response to Santiago's response to Ebert's original comment that "video games will never be art" produced. It is also in response to a debate conducted between myself and said teacher in which I was solidly and consistently trounced in my floundering attempts to back up my position. Another bit of evidence that my brain has been on standby for the past few months. What follows is a direct transcript from my response to Sam, the aforementioned coworker.

As regards our previous debate: one of the reasons I have for rejecting the stance that fact=opinion is that we are left suddenly impoverished for terms which distinguish that which can be backed up or shown by repeated experiment to be robustly valid from substanceless, uneducated or ill-informed blathering.

(A new link to check out, mostly because it's awesome, but also because it briefly touches on this point, is this 9½ minute beat poem from Tim Minchin. Of course, he's playing entertainer here, so it's not exactly a robust argument.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk

It is for this reason that I heartily disagree with Mr. Grohl's statement about what art is ["If you think you're [art] because you don't eat meat, you're [art]!"]. A statement which so boldly puts baseless opinion on equal footing with the best efforts of masters of their craft has no value (I humbly opine). I think it is an essential quality of art that while it defies rigorous definition, it very clearly comes in varying levels of quality. I am taking it as self-evident that this is the case, of course, and will happily argue the point in more detail if that particular torch is taken up.

Now, I have substantial personal investment in my side of this debate, as it pertains to music. I posit that, if one takes as given that popularity does not contribute to the artistic merit of a given enterprise (another point to potentially contend, if necessary), then the music *cough* of the White Stripes is, on a musically artistic level, somewhere around the bottom rung of the artistry ladder, as compared with that of Stravinsky, which is standing near the top, with a wonderfully informed view of the musically artistic world below.

The basis for this may begin with the psychological studies of the consonance or dissonance of tone pairs. Consonance and dissonance are perceptual phenomena, and we're dealing specifically with human perception here. Therefore, any fact produced concerning perception stands out as distinct from those facts about the rest of the world (i.e., the world is flat, not round), because it is perfectly conceivable that human perception of consonance or dissonance could change over time, though right now it seems very robustly rooted in vibration frequency ratios, to begin with. When one starts to get into the more interesting and daring musical enterprises, like jazz, these lines can appear to be blurred a bit, as jazz players and listeners love certain clashing sounds, but even this is based in concepts of teasing the brain by fulfilling or defying expectation, which has been put forth as a key factor in the enjoyment of music (this could constitute pages more of debate, which I would not mind in the slightest).

Back to my point about consonance vs. dissonance, though. I consider it a fact that the basic consonance/dissonance factor of any tone pair is based on its vibration frequency ratio (a perfect 5th is in the ratio 2:3, for example). This fact is based on opinion (either of participants in a study, or the interpretation of the scientists), and yet is more valid than any opinion to the contrary, as it successfully and experimentally robustly describes an aspect of the world. If you still consider it an opinion, it is crucial to be able to distinguish between opinions of value (informed opinions), and nonsensical gibberish, for a start.

From here, it is a process of refinement, which I contend is central to the value of most or all works of art. Why? Because to offer something that's already been done has no artistic merit. Like Ebert, Jason, and others, I'm still dancing around actually defining what constitutes art, but trying to nail down some idea of what it isn't, and with a supporting reason. In this case, it pares down to my personal opinion that plagiarism is not and will never be art.

I suppose if I were to present my own opinion of what constitutes art, it would be exactly that; refinement of presently held notions. Whether that means your cave drawing has more humour and a steadier hand than Grunk down the way, or you're a master of painting impressionism, art to me must present a refinement of some aspect of the present state of humanity.

So while there's lots of wiggle room in that definition (for people to take pictures of their poo and present it as art, for example), what I do not accept as being artistic (or indeed having almost any merit whatsoever), is the majority of popular music being produced today. If artistry is to be found anywhere in that scene, it is in the folks who are refining their ability to use music as a medium to manipulate and covertly subjugate the masses. These artists are the recording engineers and producers of shitty-yet-wildly-popular television shows like Britain's Got Talent, and their ilk. None of them are composers, and the music that they are producing is not art.

To insert my personal position on the matter, one of my main goals in life is to produce (compose and present) music which is both popular (that is, agreeable to the layman's ear, possibly even catchy), and holds some artistic merit in its form/construction and presentation. I want to bridge the gap between popular and good, basically, which I see as an ever-increasing gulf in present society, at least where the money-focussed "music industry" is concerned. Anything which is produced (let alone popularised) which does not refine the world of music itself I consider to be potentially damaging to the culture and society to which it is presented, and this effect is magnified the more it happens.

The same goes for over 99% of anime being produced today: if it has already been done (to death and then some), there is little-to-no artistic value in it.