If you like Bob Ross, you'll burn in hell

[elfsprin]

this may not be the correct forum for this thread; regardless, i press onwards...

i've been thinking a lot lately about, and trying to also evaluate the validity of, a double standard that i personally employ for making judgments about creative clout and genius. i'm wondering if others here operate similarly.

for the sake of brevity, i'll illustrate via example.

if a painter or a musician can put out a finished product every couple of days, i have no respect for them whatsoever, and will likely sneer at their work (privately). i just don't consider mass production to be at all compatible with true creativity.

the key there, i've realized, is that i consider their work to be all about form, and lacking in meritorious content. so, you have comprehended some sort of "form" for a landscape painting, and are able to pound out an oil painting to that effect for each episode on a pbs television series? your work is worthless! this is my pithy internal monologue on the matter.

similarly with musical compositions that are entirely instrumental, i am quite skeptical of artists that are extremely prolific over a short period of time. bach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach), as one example, gets no respect from me. his works are perfect form-wise, but in my opinion they have no real value because their content is meaningless (in other words, because the musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake of the form). it is even the case that i have no respect in general for classical composers who are not especially prolific, if their pieces seem to me to be focused on form rather than content.

so, there seem to be two elements at work here- my scoffing at their reliance on form when it comes to creativity, and in most cases the speed with which they create. indeed, if i know that an artist slaves over their work, i am inclined to initially give their genius the benefit of the doubt, until such time as it may become obvious that they struggle from ineptitude.

however, in other arenas it is those very same two things (intuitive grasp of form to such a perfect degree that correlations about usefulness and innate qualities are consistently made, and speed in production) that win my respect, and incline me to suspect that they have some sort of genius.

for example, a musician who composes pieces that have vocals and instrumentals can be as prolific as they like- as long as it's not pointless pop music, i generally highly respect them as long as the relationship between the instruments and the words seems cohesive, and the words are saying something worthwhile.

chopin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin) is my favorite composer, and he was extremely prolific. he obviously has an excellent grasp of form, but as the "tonal poet" his pieces subject the form to the content, and that is precisely why i have an immense love for his works.

say i am in a bio-organic chemistry, or quantum mechanics class with someone new to the subject. if they are able to quickly grasp overall structures, patterns, and forms, then quickly present a handful of further implications based on that understanding, i suspect them of genius. they can be pointing out simple implications- mere reiterations of the thing we have already learned (i say reiterations to underscore a similarity to formatic musical composition- and one example here would be that they understood one metabolic pathway that we are studying, and are able to then immediately make inferences about the nature of enzyme structure) - and it doesn't matter, i will still be inclined to consider them highly intelligent, and to suspect them of what amounts to 'creative genius' in that field.


perhaps at this point, you're thinking 'duh, elfsprin. right and left brain differences are being reiterated here.' and i've considered that, but i don't think the issue is really that simplistic. the thing is, in both the arts and in the sciences, i tend to respect those who speak from both 'minds' or sides of the brain, i think that's the key to understanding why i respect some, but not others.

what's interesting is that commanding both hemispheres generally results in completely different behaviors and modus operandi, depending on which discipline you are working at the time.

so, my question bit. is this really obvious to everyone here? and i making a pointless point? do others have this same double standard for accessing and respecting genius based on the discipline you're encountering, or do you apply the same standard across all disciplines (ex. do you love bach for his form)?

i am quite curious.

[MacGuffin]

"That's not writing, that's typing."
-Truman Capote, on Jack Kerouac

I think some people do the opposite. They equate genius with ease - a genius creates something that takes a tremendous effort by the average artisan/thinker/scientist.

Are you perhaps differentiating between the creation of art (like a composer or painter) that has a tangible output; and the intuition of a thinker (like a physicist) that might think of something that requires mathematicians months to work out the math?

[MikeD277]

the implicating of speed of output with genius or non-genius i don't see as valid. of course there are many manifestations of genius and speed might be one of the symptoms but it is not the only one.

[Hexchild]

When I compose music (and purely instrumental for the most part, I should mention), I get extremely bored if I make it too similar to something I've done recently. That's part of why I tend to create a lot of bizarre, bordering on insane, stuff, most of which never successfully leaves the larva stage. At times I've tried to make "formula" works, following the form of some other work or set of works, but I can rarely bring myself to follow through unless I add at least a few quirks in some form or other to keep my brain occupied. So I can't help but feel a slight bit of respect for those people who can easily mass produce stuff on demand, including those cases where the creation in question, according to my preference, qualifies as crap. It's perhaps not creativity per se, but it is still a skill of sorts.

[eyebyte_atWork]

You seem to have made sub categories for "genius".

Proficiency is one type and creative is another type.

Who the fuck cares? When we die we die.

Maybe you are trying to make the difference stand out as a way to make yourself feel better that you are not all that prolific? Just a thought (because creativity takes longer to measure).

I don't care - I think both prolific proficiency and creativity are needed to truly stand out. Few of us are willing to work on both.

Richard Wagner - composer - did not have proficiency in any musical instrument. I used to think he was an overrated sham - but these days I acknowledge his body of work. Mozart was both prolific and creative. To each his own.

Work on yourself before tearing down others.

or maybe I am misunderstanding the intent of such an observation.

[Nighthawk]

I tend to admire the highly prolific, and even ascribe genius to them, because they do something I cannot ... produce something of decent or good quality very quickly. I have a ton of half-finished projects and great ideas that never saw the light of day. In the final analysis, they mean nothing to anybody but me. I would love for them to mean something to others as well.

That's not to say I don't value the highly creative long works as well. Many of those are truly worth waiting for.

[camille]

I tend to admire the highly prolific, and even ascribe genius to them, because they do something I cannot ... produce something of decent or good quality very quickly. I have a ton of half-finished projects and great ideas that never saw the light of day. In the final analysis, they mean nothing to anybody but me. I would love for them to mean something to others as well.

That's not to say I don't value the highly creative long works as well. Many of those are truly worth waiting for.

As do I.

I often wonder how much people wrap creativity and ambition around each other.

I think the basis of creativity is that the result is for the artist before the public. So you've got something going for you, Nighthawk. ;)

This topic reminds me of timed IQ tests.

[Spartan26]

There are quite a few lawyers-turned-writers working out here in Hllywd that while maybe know structure and can color in the lines, I wouldn't call them artists in the least. I also tend to roll my eyes over PhD's who become writers but that view's held in fiction publishing as well. I don't think you can teach creativity, per se. So I also grind my teeth at Ivy leaguers who get left brain work when I have not seen evidence of so many of them having "talent." (Not saying that they can't be, but doesn't validate creativity to me.

I do know some highly productive people. I can be myself but I would attribute it to being manic and not a highly tuned J-function. I think there's a difference. It may seem that I'm bitter or just making up rules as I go along but some people I view as artists and others I don't.

[s0978]

so, my question bit. is this really obvious to everyone here? and i making a pointless point? do others have this same double standard for accessing and respecting genius based on the discipline you're encountering, or do you apply the same standard across all disciplines (ex. do you love bach for his form)?


I am really tired right now, but no, your point isn't obvious and your premise is actually very obscure, though it held my attention long enough for me to skim the whole thing.

My question is: why are you so stingy with your respect? Why the dissing on not-real-genius works? What is this attitude about?

I can be hyper-critical about some things/fields and really it's not a very pleasant way to be.

[elfsprin]

"That's not writing, that's typing."
-Truman Capote, on Jack Kerouac

I think some people do the opposite. They equate genius with ease - a genius creates something that takes a tremendous effort by the average artisan/thinker/scientist.

Are you perhaps differentiating between the creation of art (like a composer or painter) that has a tangible output; and the intuition of a thinker (like a physicist) that might think of something that requires mathematicians months to work out the math?

this is a very valid point- at first when i read it i wasn't sure exactly what you meant, but while i was riding the bus out to my car while leaving work i suddenly came to the exact same conclusion myself :)

i think this in particular is a question of hypothesis- in the sciences, you start with a hypothesis, and then do all the work to prove or disprove it. in other words, you start with the result.

in art or music, you have to do all the 'proving or disproving' before you reach a result that others can interact with.

then i started thinking about what the 'intuitive scientific revelation' would have as its equivalent in the arts or in music- would it be imagination? how could something you very quickly imagine be conveyed to other people, in the same way that an insight into science can be conveyed quickly through words?

i'm not sure the arts and music have such a vehicle available to them for the conveyance of imagination. so that's interesting, but i have to think about it more before i feel anything i have to say about it is worth saying.

[elfsprin]

the implicating of speed of output with genius or non-genius i don't see as valid. of course there are many manifestations of genius and speed might be one of the symptoms but it is not the only one.

i would agree with everything you said here.

i'm not trying to dissect the nature of genius, or its indicators. i'm presenting a 'prejudice' that i've identified in myself that troubled me- presenting my 'assumptions' openly for critique, and for development. it's very out of character for me to present an aspect of myself to others without spending ages dissecting it internally first, i wanted to try something different this time.

i still don't feel that i've thought about every aspect of this, i may end up completely contradicting myself later.

also i'd like to note that i wanted to mitigate a lot of things in my OP, to make them seem more reasonable and thought-through. but i didn't. the examples i gave in the OP are my real knee-jerk reactions. isn't that troubling! i think it is.

[Night]

Genius, eh?

Has anyone ever met one?

Sometimes experience is an ample tutor.

[elfsprin]

When I compose music (and purely instrumental for the most part, I should mention), I get extremely bored if I make it too similar to something I've done recently. That's part of why I tend to create a lot of bizarre, bordering on insane, stuff, most of which never successfully leaves the larva stage. At times I've tried to make "formula" works, following the form of some other work or set of works, but I can rarely bring myself to follow through unless I add at least a few quirks in some form or other to keep my brain occupied. So I can't help but feel a slight bit of respect for those people who can easily mass produce stuff on demand, including those cases where the creation in question, according to my preference, qualifies as crap. It's perhaps not creativity per se, but it is still a skill of sorts.

i would agree that it is a definite skill, and moreover it's a skill i don't possess.

so why is it that my immediate reaction is to discount the skill? what is making it seem worthless to me?

i was thinking about this and bach specifically last night. for him, and perhaps in general but i'm not sure yet, the reason i seem to immediately discount the skill he has is this: ultimately, i feel strongly that when he restricts music to form, he cheapens music. he deprives music of some of its essential characteristics, presents his results to the general public, and thereby publicly distorts its nature.

this is interesting, because i see myself as having the same kind of notion in the sciences. so many people simply memorize the formulas, memorize the pathways, learn the forms. there's no real cohesive understanding of 'the nature of things.' and moreover, there's no desire to question the forms and the formulas. i guess a much better way to say this, is again by example: i am one of the people who thinks math is a language used to describe reality, not that math actually is innately possessed of Truth.

i guess when i see people being able to extrapolate on their own, i immediately suspect that they are able to step outside what they are being taught, in order to independently evaluate it. and i really personally value that kind of viewpoint when i find it in other people.


You seem to have made sub categories for "genius".

Proficiency is one type and creative is another type.

Who the fuck cares? When we die we die.

Maybe you are trying to make the difference stand out as a way to make yourself feel better that you are not all that prolific? Just a thought (because creativity takes longer to measure).

I don't care - I think both prolific proficiency and creativity are needed to truly stand out. Few of us are willing to work on both.

Richard Wagner - composer - did not have proficiency in any musical instrument. I used to think he was an overrated sham - but these days I acknowledge his body of work. Mozart was both prolific and creative. To each his own.

Work on yourself before tearing down others.

or maybe I am misunderstanding the intent of such an observation.

i am not an artist or a musician. i have plenty of skill, but no meritorious creativity.

never fear, i tell myself i am a failure every day.

i'm not trying to tear anyone down. i'm trying to examine a prejudice i seem to have.


I am really tired right now, but no, your point isn't obvious and your premise is actually very obscure, though it held my attention long enough for me to skim the whole thing.

My question is: why are you so stingy with your respect? Why the dissing on not-real-genius works? What is this attitude about?

I can be hyper-critical about some things/fields and really it's not a very pleasant way to be.

i am generally not a hyper-critical person, and i'm consistently self-deprecating, which is not a pleasant way to be either (it turns people off in the same way that being critical turns people off).

why do i have this attitude? i'm not sure.

[Ada_Lovelace]

I tend to admire the highly prolific, and even ascribe genius to them, because they do something I cannot ... produce something of decent or good quality very quickly. I have a ton of half-finished projects and great ideas that never saw the light of day. In the final analysis, they mean nothing to anybody but me. I would love for them to mean something to others as well.

That's not to say I don't value the highly creative long works as well. Many of those are truly worth waiting for.


''Genius: 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.'' - Thomas Edison

I recall touring Thomas Edison's home in Florida as a teen. I was impressed by the vast collection of numerous interests he pursued during his lifetime... and by the fact he had the luxury of employing scientists who took his ideas and ran with them! Even back then, this seemed to me to be the definition of Utopian living and creating.

I've generated a lot of ideas in my life thus far, but daresay I have not put in nearly enough perspiration to bring even one of these ideas to maturity.

I would love to have the luxury of employees to carry out the detail work of my ideas. :)

This is not to say Edison, and others like him, didn't initially invest in doing the perspiration side of work - which in turn earn his the luxury of employing others to carry out the details of his ideas.

How many prototypes did Edison develop prior to inventing the light bulb?

Some would say something such as the invention of the light bulb is not a "work of art" . . . I'd disagree.

Regarding the OP:

Form vs. Function...

w/o Function, Form is meaningless.

w/o Form, Function is uninspiring.

Start with a foundation of Function... Form transforms something which is simply functional into something which is both functional and inspirational.

Form and Function, working together, create a ying-yang relationship... each inspiring the other to aim higher - neither totally separable from the other.

[mgb]

I wonder if maybe comparing music, art and physics isn't kind of comparing apples and oranges, and say pomegranates.

They are all different in their own way and to reach a high level of achievement in each meets an incomparable standard.

I, for one, applaud your snobiness. I think more people should take a higher stance on what qualifies as genius for any particular subject. In and of itself, I don't think the issue is pointless at all. It would be kind of interesting to see other people's takes on both your version of genius and their own.

[greenblob]

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty —a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
Bertrand Russell

Actually, I believe that form/aesthetics and passion are interconnected.

[elfsprin]

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty ?a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
Bertrand Russell

Actually, I believe that form/aesthetics and passion are interconnected.

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showpost.php?p=874379&postcount=8

i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this post. please reply in that thread and not this one, though.

cheers

[Mr.Miagi]

I believe that geniuses or gifted individuals are at their best in their 20's. All labout after that is supplementary. Ones 20's creates the groundwork for discoveries that is to follow. Of course, I dunno how this fits into the thread.

By the way, I've been trying to express my creative energy at my university with limited success. I've contemplating maybe leaving this place, and roam the world aimlessly, being creative whenever the mood allows me to be. Creativity does not equate hardwork. Many creative people spend a lot of their time doing absolutely nothing.

[amelia_underwood]

^^ This is a really interesting article about a newish theory which holds that there are two forms of genius, one manifests early in life and the other manifests later... though seems skewed toward more creative endeavors.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius_pr.html

[Mr.Miagi]

^^ This is a really interesting article about a newish theory which holds that there are two forms of genius, one manifests early in life and the other manifests later... though seems skewed toward more creative endeavors.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius_pr.html

Conceptualists

Many geniuses peak early, creating their masterwork at a tender age ...

LITERATURE: The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Age 29

PAINTING: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Pablo Picasso
Age 26

FILMMAKING: Citizen Kane
Orson Welles
Age 26

ARCHITECTURE: The Vietnam War Memorial
Maya Lin
Age 23

MUSIC: The Marriage of Figaro
Wolfgang Mozart
Age 30

Experimentalists

... while others bloom late, doing their best work after lifelong tinkering.

LITERATURE: Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Age 50

PAINTING: Château Noir
Paul Cézanne
Age 64

FILMMAKING: Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock
Age 59

ARCHITECTURE: Fallingwater
Frank Lloyd Wright
Age 70

MUSIC: Symphony No. 9
Ludwig van Beethoven
Age 54


Interesting, one can apply this theory to sciences as well. Just think Einstein.

[amelia_underwood]

^ Yes, sorry I meant the article is skewed toward more creative endeavors... though it's thought it applies equally to science, technology and business.

[Autumn]

This thread reminds me of the film Dead Poet's Society.
And I agree with Mr Keating here...
It's funny how you try to analyse art, decomposing it to formal and "creative" components. Omg, it's exactly the same in the film! :stupid: But it's an epic fail. I got a bad news for ya: actually art is to be felt. Nothing to analyse here.


... and Bach rulez! (I also love Chopin, mind you)

[Thevenin]

In many ways, one could say that Chopin was the quintessential piano composer. However, the piano was his limit. Aside from the odd cello concerto, he only wrote for the piano, and his orchestrations for concertos were not genius--he regularly sought help from friends. Don't get me wrong. I love Chopin and have played most of his works, including regular workouts with his Etudes. Even his most difficult pieces seem to fit the hands. Bach, however, was a genius who spanned the whole musical spectrum, from solo keyboard, strings, voice, etc. to large choral and (for his time) large orchestral works. He was way ahead of any other baroque composer, including, in my opinion, Handel. Genius is where you find it and one of the great pleasures of music is there's lots of genius out there to enjoy. It's best to keep and open mind and look for genius. Don't preordain it because then you'll miss a lot of it.

[elfsprin]

my main point was not to list out specific individuals whom i consider to have valuable contributions to their discipline, and to ese if everyone else agreed with me about them.

they were just examples, which are very personally mine.

what i am getting at is that within myself, i seem to have unexamined (not yet consciously identified, extracted, and dissected) assumptions that are evinced by these kind of knee-jerk reactions, eg. hearing a piece of music that is commonly acclaimed and feeling very strongly opposed to that fact.

i noticed that there does seem to be a pattern, my reactions aren't random. there is a clear double-standard at work, and i wonder why that is. being prone to Objectivism, you'd think i would say there is one thing, Genius, and regardless of their discipline to be a genius you must fall within the set Genius.

the double-standards might not contradict this at all, actually; it may simply be that each standard at its core is based upon the same idea or assumption, or in other words, the standards might be penultimate while some objective concept of Genius is ultimate.

i am very curious as to how other people discover/discern and deal with unexamined premises in themselves. we all have them and they should, in my opinion, always prompt questions. though in retrospect or to a second party they might seem to be painfully obvious questions, i think there's really nothing to be embarrassed about in admitting you've found yourself out.

this sort of double-standard for genius may or may not evince an unexamined premise in me, but as i have yet to discover the entire path that my mind has taken, i can't rule out the possibility.

and i wondered what others thought about it.

so again, my point was not to rip on or praise the individuals i mentioned, so much as it was to masochistically expose a piece of my mental workings that i haven't successfully thought through completely (and as INTPs, you'll all realize just how much this goes against my instincts- sending out a thought or concept before its been completely and thoroughly analyzed ad nauseum).

Mac was on the right track, pointing out that a pivot in my thinking relates to the nature of hypothesis. maybe after i have time to think about this more, it will turn out i'm not really talking about genius at all. we'll see.



now that i've bored you all with self-explanations, i do have a potentially controversial question to ask.

has anyone told you personally that you are a genius?

peer? (classmate or non-academic friend?)
teacher? (what grade/s)

i'm curious.

[PenguinHunter]

Try looking more carefully at why you consider an artist or a scientist a genius.

If I'm correct in understanding your problem. . .briefly. . . you consider an artist a genius when they meaningfully diverge from the norm and a scientist a genius when the function supremely efficiently within established laws. (?) (Though it should probably be noted that there are many historically significant scientists who were considered geniuses because they stepped out of the established laws.)

Now I think you can escape this (illusion of a) double standard in two ways:

1) In the case of your scientist friend who grasps concepts and extrapolates from them quickly and easily, would it not also be fair to say that (at least for them) the well-established theory they have managed to extrapolate to is still new and revolutionary to them. Even if it is just in your subconscious, there is still a recognition that this individual has come up with an entirely new (to them) theory on their own (despite the fact that the scientific world has know this theory for many years). This is essentially the same mechanism that creates the suspicion of genius in a revolutionary artist, isn't it?

2) From the other side, some people suggest that an artist is a genius when they can do one of two things. They should either be able to capture the zeitgeist of the time in their work or they should be able to capture feelings or ideas that will become significant in the future (thus being "ahead of their time"). The artist is again the same as your scientist friend. They are able to quickly and easily understand present "laws" and they are also able to extrapolate them to the future.

[Mr.Miagi]

This thread reminds me of the film Dead Poet's Society.
And I agree with Mr Keating here...
It's funny how you try to analyse art, decomposing it to formal and "creative" components. Omg, it's exactly the same in the film! :stupid: But it's an epic fail. I got a bad news for ya: actually art is to be felt. Nothing to analyse here.


... and Bach rulez! (I also love Chopin, mind you)

It's funny that you say that. :stupid: Just because its art doesn't mean it cannot be analyzed. You think artists compose art purely based on feeling? Hell no, even the most obscure and unconformed artist has some kind of strategies and structures in place. I think, my friend, you're basing your assumptions on the Romantics, on by-gone poets such as Keating, Blake and Shelley, men who glorified art into an idealistic form which it unfortunately did not live up to. Art can be analyzed. In fact, art requires analysis if we want to better understand it. If I had to feel art all day long I'd go mad.

[TheRising]

I've never measured a creative genius by how prolific their work was. I consider Stevie Wonder to be a musical genius and he only has a few #1 songs or albums nor the worldwide sales to the likes of Mariah Carey or Madonna. I think creative genius have to have a mastery of their field in which they can produce works that transcend time. I think its thrown around too loosely in regards to certain artists. I'm not saying these artists who receive such a title aren't talented. But I feel there's a big difference between someone who writes great romance novels to one who writes great novels of any genre or one who can play one instrument well as oppose to one who can play several instruments well and create good music.

[Ecko]

this is a very valid point- at first when i read it i wasn't sure exactly what you meant, but while i was riding the bus out to my car while leaving work i suddenly came to the exact same conclusion myself :)

i think this in particular is a question of hypothesis- in the sciences, you start with a hypothesis, and then do all the work to prove or disprove it. in other words, you start with the result.

in art or music, you have to do all the 'proving or disproving' before you reach a result that others can interact with.

then i started thinking about what the 'intuitive scientific revelation' would have as its equivalent in the arts or in music- would it be imagination? how could something you very quickly imagine be conveyed to other people, in the same way that an insight into science can be conveyed quickly through words?

i'm not sure the arts and music have such a vehicle available to them for the conveyance of imagination. so that's interesting, but i have to think about it more before i feel anything i have to say about it is worth saying.

If you want to see true creative genius being expressed, there is a video of Picasso painting on a semi-translucent medium. So, the camera is on the opposite side of the canvas filming his action, as well as, shots over his shoulder. Not much in life impresses me or makes my jaw drop, but when I saw him paint, I realized that I had just seen true genius displayed. He is so fluid, spontaneous, and free flowing.

[oxyjen]

I think when it comes to arts/music, everyone has a subjective preferences and you don't have to apologize for them.

I think I understand where you're coming from, and had a conversation about topics that parallel those expressed in the OP. The museum had a new installation where the artist used lights and carefully positioned glass to create this amazing colored light display. While assuredly he isn't the first to do this, it was the first time that I had ever seen work like this. While completing this work doesn't take any more skill than the "hey there's a bowl of fruit on a table which I will recreate faithfully in detail on this canvas," I tend to attribute more to someone who I perceive as a unique vision, and other works that I consider as "following a template" I am apt to appreciate for technical skill rather than any supposed "creative genius."

[rainfall]

if a painter or a musician can put out a finished product every couple of days, i have no respect for them whatsoever, and will likely sneer at their work (privately). i just don't consider mass production to be at all compatible with true creativity.

the key there, i've realized, is that i consider their work to be all about form, and lacking in meritorious content. so, you have comprehended some sort of "form" for a landscape painting, and are able to pound out an oil painting to that effect for each episode on a pbs television series? your work is worthless! this is my pithy internal monologue on the matter.


How dare you assault The Almighty Bob Ross?!

[elfsprin]

oh, i dare. bring it.

[rainfall]

oh, i dare. bring it.

THE MAN CAN PRACTICALLY POOP FANTASTIC ART! IN SECONDS! WHAT CAN YOU DO?!

[elfsprin]

THE MAN CAN PRACTICALLY POOP FANTASTIC ART! IN SECONDS! WHAT CAN YOU DO?!

i draw stuff sometimes

[Vilpin]

One can never understand art

Art is a lie

[elfsprin]

One can never understand art

Art is a lie

*rubs hands together with glee*

care to elaborate?

[Wise Fool]

has anyone told you personally that you are a genius?

peer? (classmate or non-academic friend?)
teacher? (what grade/s)

i'm curious.

I am like you in your valuation tendencies. I am particular to what I like for reasons that are particular to me.

One professor who I have great respect for has told me he has sensed "glimpses of genius" from me, and he really believed in me, which was a new experience to me. His belief in me really kinda fucked me up because he sorta started to make me believe in myself, which is pure madness.

[10_percent_ninja]

Sort of tangential to the OP, but part of the creative process of making 'fine art' or 'craft art' involves many trials. Many of those trial efforts are flawed, and since they cannot be editted, are non-salvagible. However, that does not mean that they cannot be sold. If authors could convince people to buy draft copies of their works in progress, they would.

[elfsprin]

Sort of tangential to the OP, but part of the creative process of making 'fine art' or 'craft art' involves many trials. Many of those trial efforts are flawed, and since they cannot be editted, are non-salvagible. However, that does not mean that they cannot be sold. If authors could convince people to buy draft copies of their works in progress, they would.

this was only partially tangential :)

the comparison to draw here would be to the classic paradigm shift in science, and the fact that even if we 'know' something is not 100% True, we still can find its merits, utilize it, and moreover utilize it to effect its own undoing (as we move into the next paradigm).

this has everything to do with the scientific method- the creation of hypothesis, limiting of environmental factors, and testing. so in that way, it definitely ties in with the OP.

interestingly, i think art has embrace this, partially and in its own way, and i have a theory that it started because of what you are describing... the process of finding value in drafts. take painting as a main example. abstract art, during its inception at least, definitely had certain things on its agenda, for example asking the question 'well, why isn't this beautiful, meritorious and valuable, the same as a classic and finished work- especially when finished works often fall so short of what has been imagined'? even impressionism starts moving in that direction, deconstructing the image in both shape and hue, and presenting it to the end-user as something to be valued. the same thing has happened in sculpture.

i see this as art's way of incorporating the paradigm shift, and the hypothesis, uniquely. rather than focusing exclusively on precise and accurate representation, art is now allowed to hint at what is wants to portray... and sometimes, hinting works much more effectively than making definite statements (much like poetry, or poetic prose (fragmentary prose) is often more effective at communicating something than prose).

i think this has its roots in the drafts that you mention- and with both artists and purchasers/financiers finding value in them.

[Technical]

I'm late to the party (fashionably, of course), but I have to say that yes, I do hold a "double standard" when it comes to genius. Because I'm a genius no matter what I do, and no one else is no matter what they do.

[elfsprin]

I'm late to the party (fashionably, of course), but I have to say that yes, I do hold a "double standard" when it comes to genius. Because I'm a genius no matter what I do, and no one else is no matter what they do.

what a wonderfully inadmirable statement.

[Technical]

what a wonderfully inadmirable statement.
Here our different standards come beautifully under display, since I had already admired the statement as a slight work of genius.

[elfsprin]

Here our different standards come beautifully under display, since I had already admired the statement as a slight work of genius.

i dunno. we might have to delve into the semantics of the word wonderful, and the nature of double entendres (perhaps triple, even?) before we can fully assess our congruence.

[Technical]

i dunno. we might have to delve into the semantics of the word wonderful, and the nature of double entendres (perhaps triple, even?) before we can fully assess our congruence.
I think perhaps you mean the word beautiful, as opposed to the word wondeful. But that's just my genius speaking.

[elfsprin]

I think perhaps you mean the word beautiful, as opposed to the word wondeful. But that's just my genius speaking.

no, i meant what i said. i always mean what i say, even though no one else ever does.

[Technical]

no, i meant what i said. i always mean what i say, even though no one else ever does.
No one else ever means what you say? Surely that's just because those such as you and I possess such uncompromising genius that we are forever matchless.

[elfsprin]

No one else ever means what you say? Surely that's just because those such as you and I possess such uncompromising genius that we are forever matchless.

you're right.

i'm awarding us a theme song (http://www.last.fm/music/Parov+Stelar/_/Spygame) for sexy awesomeness.

[30footsmurf]

It seems most would agree that their are varying types of intelligence. I would go at step further for which I don't foresee any objection to saying there are different types of creativity.
As the nature of art is of expression, we must look at it as a conversation being had between the consumer of the art (one who sees a painting hears a song, not necessarily someone who purchased the art) and the artist. Looking at in this regard shows that art like any other endeavor requires communication to be of value, If Einstein was incapable of communicating with his peers we wouldn't regard him as a genius, probably just a lazy wacko if we regarded him at all. Therefor the genius of an artist, if you wanted to call it genius, lies in the ability of the artist to communicate with the observer. There are tons of artist that I think make their way by making their creations as obscure as possible rendering the art entirely on the observer to create. While some artists will simply combine images to illicit a feeling or a connection between the different parts of the piece, but also they connect themselves to the consumer.
Any art that doesn't do this in my opinion is trashy pop art thats sole intent is to sell shit. I hate that crap. I don't really care about the effort that one puts into it, just that it says something I can relate to.
I do agree that mass production takes away from it, but I still like mozart because it shows me a piece of myself that I don't generally notice. Its the same for all my favorite works, I don't necesarily regard stairway to heaven as genius, but it shows me a bit of myself when I hear it.
Also, I think it is important to note that we naturally force ourselves on our observations, and in doing so create art in everything we see. I think it was nieche, but I can't remember who said it, but it was something to the tune of, we all are the artists of the world we percieve. I think this is important as it showcases our own ability to make meaning and truth where perhaps there is none.

[elfsprin]

It seems most would agree that their are varying types of intelligence.

while i see what you're saying, i in no way mean for this to be a discussion about types of intelligence, or right brain/left brain. i don't think it comes down to that.



As the nature of art is of expression, we must look at it as a conversation being had between the consumer of the art (one who sees a painting hears a song, not necessarily someone who purchased the art) and the artist.

rather than retyping (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?p=910223#post910223).

the nature of science is expression as well, though. all this dichotomous nonsense that is set up between science and art, or science and the humanities, is pure rubbish. people who are bigoted in this area are the worst kind of stupid.

when i say this, i have in mind heidegger, szymborska, nietzsche, and eco. (if we were to start talking about this, i imagine that, at least on my end, it would end up looking a lot like this (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=15496&page=10), starting around post 474.)




Looking at in this regard shows that art like any other endeavor requires communication to be of value, If Einstein was incapable of communicating with his peers we wouldn't regard him as a genius, probably just a lazy wacko if we regarded him at all. Therefor the genius of an artist, if you wanted to call it genius, lies in the ability of the artist to communicate with the observer.

that's a very interesting stance to take. kandinsky would definitely not agree with you. he is one of the art philosophers most able to be related well to kuhn, in my opinion- i think their vision of how society moves forward and of the nature of paradigm shifts is actually quite similar. kandinsky in particular sees his version of 'the superman' as someone who is magically aware of the collective unconscious of a civilization, represents this in his art, and through the resulting strife essentially effects the transition into a new paradigm of his society as a whole. however, it's key for kandinsky that this happens through strife- because the kind of communication that occurs between the artist and the viewer is extremely atypical. the viewer is initially so confused that they fall into (basically) a rage, and can't handle what they're seeing.

personally, i wouldn't quite agree with you either, and my reason here would point back to eco and what i talked about in the watercolor thread.



There are tons of artist that I think make their way by making their creations as obscure as possible rendering the art entirely on the observer to create. While some artists will simply combine images to illicit a feeling or a connection between the different parts of the piece, but also they connect themselves to the consumer.
Any art that doesn't do this in my opinion is trashy pop art thats sole intent is to sell shit. I hate that crap. I don't really care about the effort that one puts into it, just that it says something I can relate to.

i am on the same page as you, here. unfortunately, hand in hand with deconstruction and abstract art comes the potential for hacks to mimic and swindle.

it is interesting, though, to speculate as to whether the artists who are hacks can end up being artistic power-players (if you are looking at the role of art in civilization like kandinsky, and thinking of change like kuhn) in spite of themselves. talking about this in any length would quickly turn into an entirely theoretical and abstracted meta-discussion, though.



I do agree that mass production takes away from it, but I still like mozart because it shows me a piece of myself that I don't generally notice. Its the same for all my favorite works, I don't necesarily regard stairway to heaven as genius, but it shows me a bit of myself when I hear it.

that's fine. i'm not going to look down on anyone for liking any artist in particular... unless it's modern pop, dammit.

the strong objection that comes to my mind when i think of someone like bach centers around the things he composed for masses. metaphorically, he used a cookie cutter to slop out the same thing every week, week after week, and just added different sprinkles on top. i know you've got to make a living, but come on! how worthless is that? extremely.



Also, I think it is important to note that we naturally force ourselves on our observations, and in doing so create art in everything we see. I think it was nieche, but I can't remember who said it, but it was something to the tune of, we all are the artists of the world we percieve. I think this is important as it showcases our own ability to make meaning and truth where perhaps there is none.

ah, but going back to the eco discussion, how do you know 'there is none'? does it even matter? i think it does, in the final analysis, but my reasons for saying so would be very particular.

do you think we're on the same general page here, or are there critical differences?

[blackdahlia515]

They always call you crazy before they call you a genius. For example, Galileo.

[TheMANimal]

Galileo wasn't considered crazy. The catholic church wouldn't have put him under house arrest if they thought he was crazy. His theories would have just been dismissed.

[gardnerj]

the key there, i've realized, is that i consider their work to be all about form, and lacking in meritorious content. so, you have comprehended some sort of "form" for a landscape painting, and are able to pound out an oil painting to that effect for each episode on a pbs television series? your work is worthless! this is my pithy internal monologue on the matter.

bach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach), as one example, gets no respect from me. his works are perfect form-wise, but in my opinion they have no real value because their content is meaningless (in other words, because the musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake of the form). it is even the case that i have no respect in general for classical composers who are not especially prolific, if their pieces seem to me to be focused on form rather than content.



Some consciousness of the parameters is inevitable. I agree with you. I can't listen to Classical (style) music for a second. But to say that Bach is bosh would be to disagree with 99% of musicologists.

Can you compose within a form? No. Can Bach compose outside of a form? No. Different composing styles. It's music. It's what you listen for.

[iksikaksi]

th

so, my question bit. is this really obvious to everyone here? and i making a pointless point? do others have this same double standard for accessing and respecting genius based on the discipline you're encountering, or do you apply the same standard across all disciplines (ex. do you love bach for his form)?

i am quite curious.

I love Bach for the effect he has on me on the emotional and spiritual level. It has so much depth of feeling sometimes I cannot listen more to it because it will make me cry. Sometimes it is so beautiful it makes me shiver. Art is the appreciation of beauty and most of all of life so in that respect Bach is a genius for me. When I listen to him he makes me love life no matter how misserable I am and that is genius.

I dont think Im making much sence, but putting terms like genius... superior is stupid. Eventually we are all idiots on this planet so we might as well appreciate the short period of time we have for our existance

[elfsprin]

iksikaksi, i hear what you are saying, but the main point of the OP is not to make snide judgments about who is genius and who is not, or to determine the value of personal preference (because i can acknowledge that someone is possessed of genius without personally preferring their work).

the main point is focusing on why i/we might grant value to great minds from the different schools (broadly, the sciences and the arts) in a unique manner.

the last several posts have focused heavily on the arts, and i agree with what people have been saying about how personal preference merits a place of distinction. but would you say the same thing about the sciences? if personal preference merits the highest importance, is that only in the arts, or also in the sciences? if it precludes the existence of genius by its own nature (an argument which is fairly easy to understand when it comes to the arts), are there no geniuses in any science then, as well? if there are, why do you allow for their existence in that realm and not in the other? this is the key question i started with, reworded: is it the case, and if so why is it, that i personally seem to assess value differently in different disciplines? assuming i'm not alone in this, why is it that we all do this? what is the key pivot point here? and i wonder, if i am able to locate this pivot point in myself, will it be the same point that is operating in others as well, or will their point be different in nature?

it seems clear to me that personal preference plays a huge role in how people develop preferences for scientific thought, as well as the arts; if you insist on awarding the highest importance to personal preference and follow that argument through, all that is really being said is that nothing has any objective value in any arena. that may be true, we really can't know. our brains won't allow for that kind of knowledge, frankly. so the key to this argument, in my opinion, is to re-frame it.

rather than trying to frame up the possibility of 'objective meaning' as Reality vs. each unique personhood and deciding in favor of absolute subjectivity (on a person by person basis), frame the question against something smaller but still impersonal - for example, as human nature (the nature of the mind, the nature of human experience) vs. each individual person. re-framing to this level makes it clear, in my opinion, that there are objective meanings to be found, because we are what we are, and our assets and limitations - our structural makeup- determine how we encounter and experience the world.

we don't have to agree on how the word genius should be defined. personally, i don't think it is synonymous with 'superior.' if you want to travel further down this vein, you could go to extremes and contend that even people who are stereotypically stupid are 'superior' in one way or another... at getting other people to do their work for them by accident (out of sheer ineptitude), or something like that. i can understand that argument, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to be honest.

i guess that would be because every word has value, and every word exists for a reason. objecting to words like this ultimately, if you embrace all the implications there for the sake of consistency, means objecting to all words, all-together. plenty of thinkers have done this, in their own way, but ultimately this path is fruitless because it is something that can only be comprehended internally and, moreover, will demand that you enter into drastic and complete isolation to remain true to it. it doesn't even allow for idyllic, impersonal harmony, really.

[bonsai]

If you think Bach isn't prolific, then you don't understand Bach. Bach didn't follow forms, he defined forms.

[elfsprin]

Bach didn't follow forms, he defined forms.

that's irrelevant to my point.

[30footsmurf]

while i see what you're saying, i in no way mean for this to be a discussion about types of intelligence, or right brain/left brain. i don't think it comes down to that.



rather than retyping (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?p=910223#post910223).

the nature of science is expression as well, though. all this dichotomous nonsense that is set up between science and art, or science and the humanities, is pure rubbish. people who are bigoted in this area are the worst kind of stupid.

when i say this, i have in mind heidegger, szymborska, nietzsche, and eco. (if we were to start talking about this, i imagine that, at least on my end, it would end up looking a lot like this (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=15496&page=10), starting around post 474.)




that's a very interesting stance to take. kandinsky would definitely not agree with you. he is one of the art philosophers most able to be related well to kuhn, in my opinion- i think their vision of how society moves forward and of the nature of paradigm shifts is actually quite similar. kandinsky in particular sees his version of 'the superman' as someone who is magically aware of the collective unconscious of a civilization, represents this in his art, and through the resulting strife essentially effects the transition into a new paradigm of his society as a whole. however, it's key for kandinsky that this happens through strife- because the kind of communication that occurs between the artist and the viewer is extremely atypical. the viewer is initially so confused that they fall into (basically) a rage, and can't handle what they're seeing.

personally, i wouldn't quite agree with you either, and my reason here would point back to eco and what i talked about in the watercolor thread.



i am on the same page as you, here. unfortunately, hand in hand with deconstruction and abstract art comes the potential for hacks to mimic and swindle.

it is interesting, though, to speculate as to whether the artists who are hacks can end up being artistic power-players (if you are looking at the role of art in civilization like kandinsky, and thinking of change like kuhn) in spite of themselves. talking about this in any length would quickly turn into an entirely theoretical and abstracted meta-discussion, though.



that's fine. i'm not going to look down on anyone for liking any artist in particular... unless it's modern pop, dammit.

the strong objection that comes to my mind when i think of someone like bach centers around the things he composed for masses. metaphorically, he used a cookie cutter to slop out the same thing every week, week after week, and just added different sprinkles on top. i know you've got to make a living, but come on! how worthless is that? extremely.



ah, but going back to the eco discussion, how do you know 'there is none'? does it even matter? i think it does, in the final analysis, but my reasons for saying so would be very particular.

do you think we're on the same general page here, or are there critical differences?

I don't think we are in too much disagreement, and I wasn't really trying to go into right brain left brain shit either, just setting the playing field before I knew what I was saying. All of my statements were based on my experiences of art and just what I think of it. I think you touched on it briefly discussing the artist as someone who takes on a super man role and can cause a paradigm shift given their enlightened view of the world. I think we totally agree in this regard, but we're attacking it from two different sides. I thinking more in regard to what is actually happening when anyone looks at something, and looking at art in a sense as an interrogation room mirror that shows an abstract representation of the artist combining with the observation of the viewer leading the experience of the moment being the connection of the two. The artist cannot continue the conversation once the art has left their hands, and the viewer is getting a look into the artist that shows a lot, but what the viewer gets out of it is dependent on how well that person can relate to the artist. I love art for its ability to take on tough subjects in a way that may just cause people to think about something. It doesn't tell them something is happening, it just takes a simple statement that may not even seem relevant to anything in particular, but it makes us think and make connections. I guess I kind of think of it as a non linear means to communication as it is more implied than stated. A tendency for implication away from statement of fact is often a far better approach when discussing "touchy" subjects and can essentially get passed the radar of an individual and rest on the idea that they will come around or they wont.

But I digress, I think you're use of actual art philosophers is the only thing dividing us. I haven't been exposed to most of the work though the names are familiar. Its likely that I may have a change of mind after reading some stuff.

I agree that Science is communication, everything outside of us is. Our very observations could be viewed as a communication with our environment. I'm looking at this in an input output type way.

Just a thought really, but don't you think that in fields outside of the sciences that it is harder to prove a hack. I mean if someone claims something in science that cannot be replicated by his colleagues isn't he kinda written off? There are very few ways to actually say who is a better artist, and none of them are really sufficient on their own. The form argument and cookie cutter stuff seems more like you are not trying to look passed the form to see what else may be there. Time is irrelevant to what makes art. Also the myriad of people may require such a thing to be done in order to reach maximum understanding of you're work. Perhaps Bach was just being thorough in attempting to say one thing, and so said it over and over in different ways. If perhaps you could find something within the form you are so turned off by shows something relevant to you.

There are many things that can been done quickly that are just as artful as those that take time. Comedy is art, and yet I have noticed that, at least for myself, if I try to be funny, I will generally fail, however if I let myself just say whatever comes to mind I can usually come up with some stuff per random situations I experience that my friends and I will find hysterical. All art will have some form, and thats not a bad thing, it only becomes bad if we do not grow from it. But reusing the same form isn't that big a deal. The same could be said for an artist that continually used the same instrument. It is not ours to judge art, but only to experience it. Those that really judge art are in actuality judging themselves not that I don't judge myself and art as much as you may.

This got jumbled I hope it makes sense. :banana:

[elfsprin]

it made sense :) i think we're very much on the same page, especially with the whole nature of communication in both art and science.


Perhaps Bach was just being thorough in attempting to say one thing, and so said it over and over in different ways. If perhaps you could find something within the form you are so turned off by shows something relevant to you.

yes, i do think there's something critical there. the fact that i react so negatively to artists who employ form while neglecting content definitely says something about me as a person, and i've been pondering what that could be. however, what i'm really interested in is why it initially seems that for me, the negative emphasis is on form / positive is on content in art, and that the positive emphasis is on form / negative is on content in science.

what i would love to hear from people are the second halves of their posts. if you posted about liking a composer and gave reasons, i'd love if you posted again with an example of a scientist who fits the same bill, and analyzed whether it was for the same reasons. if not, why? what's the most effective description of the difference, in your case? is it this reversal of the roles of form and content, like it is in my case, or is it something else?

that's what the OP is getting at, and asking for.

i also think the point you brought up about identifying hacks deserves more consideration. i've glossed over it a bit in my thought processes so far, thank you for bringing it up.



Those that really judge art are in actuality judging themselves not that I don't judge myself and art as much as you may.

this has been chaffing me from the beginning, and i'm finally in the right mood to say something about it.

while this thread necessarily exposes me in the act of judgment, which i acknowledged as being snarky in nature, it's really quite annoying that so many people seem to have taken this as a valid springboard from which to make assumptions about my general character.

in general, i'm an extremely non-judgmental person. in music and art, since those examples have been referenced the most in the thread, i'm more likely to like things than to dislike them.

the key difference between being a generally unpleasant/judgmental dick and the kind of judgment i reveal in the OP can be understood if you realize that one of the crux words i've used is 'genius,' that 'genius' clearly implies some kind of superlative or extreme, and the fact that the examples i listed are figures who are widely acclaimed in such an extreme fashion. i don't have any problem with someone liking bach. i don't have any problem with someone liking bob ross, though i might giggle a little bit if confronted with someone's true admiration of him. i am reacting with a strong judgment to a strong judgment: the judgment awarding a superlative where i don't think it's appropriate to engage in such awarding. the fact that i use judgment when located at these extremes (and i'd say genius is certainly an extreme) in no way implies that i use it freely elsewhere as well. hello, meet my friend non sequitur... and learn to open your eyes and read what's actually been written, rather than making wild assumptions that have no relevance or value.

this wasn't directed at you, smurf. it's been pissing me off in general, so what the hell. i'm in the mood to rant. i'll cry later for my tarnished INTPc reputation.

/ :soap:

[iksikaksi]

the main point is focusing on why i/we might grant value to great minds from the different schools (broadly, the sciences and the arts) in a unique manner.

By unique manner what do you mean? That we use different criterion in the arts vs the sciences. Or that within both areas of culture there are different ways of valuing works?




the last several posts have focused heavily on the arts, and i agree with what people have been saying about how personal preference merits a place of distinction. but would you say the same thing about the sciences? if personal preference merits the highest importance, is that only in the arts, or also in the sciences? ?

In the sciences it depends on WHOSE personal preference and the means this person used to arrive to his/her conclusion (Means justify the ends). In the sciences you'd need to ask someone knowledgeable in the field to determine whether or not the theories or discoveries made are "more valid" than other and it is of outmost importance that this person adheres to the strict rules of logic. Unfortunately there may be discoveries that will never be acknowledged by academians that will still be "genius level". In the sciences things are eighther wrong or right, obviously since we are humans and not Gods we wont find the answers hence we create theories and one theory surpasses another theory once it is proven through rigorous experimentation. Personal bias may occur when the material is so darn complex or impossible to prove and the person choozes to believe in what is more convenient for them to believe but at that point it isnt science and it may be knocking on the door of philosophy sometimes theology. Science is the search of truth via analysis and experimentation. Hence personal preference is irrelevant if the person is not competent enough.

However once we knock on the door of the arts (Ends justify the ends). We are more into searching for beauty and as we know beauty is highly subjective as well as omnipresent. So in this case you can rely on basically anybody´s opinion on what constitutes beauty. However since we are quantitative and limited beings we measure the degree of genius of an artist, writer etc considering how long the work of art has endured through the passing of time and how many people within a knowledgeable elite still enjoy the work and how these people rank the artists work in comparison to other artists but their opinions as you pointed out in the Bach and Chopin comparisons may not concur with the general public or with certain individuals. Ironically they cannot be more correct than you because your experience of beauty is different from theirs and the beauty you experience is a reality and a truth in and of itself.

Personal preference is relevant in both fields the only difference being that a select few can have a more valid personal preference in the sciences as opposed to the arts.



if it precludes the existence of genius by its own nature (an argument which is fairly easy to understand when it comes to the arts), are there no geniuses in any science then, as well? if there are, why do you allow for their existence in that realm and not in the other? this is the key question i started with, reworded: is it the case, and if so why is it, that i personally seem to assess value differently in different disciplines? assuming i'm not alone in this, why is it that we all do this? what is the key pivot point here? and i wonder, if i am able to locate this pivot point in myself, will it be the same point that is operating in others as well, or will their point be different in nature?

An idiot can ask more questions than what a wiseman could answer. Im not a wiseman hence I cant be bothered to answer all of these questions. If somebody appoints you to be a genius you may or may not be.



it seems clear to me that personal preference plays a huge role in how people develop preferences for scientific thought, as well as the arts; if you insist on awarding the highest importance to personal preference and follow that argument through, all that is really being said is that nothing has any objective value in any arena. that may be true, we really can't know. our brains won't allow for that kind of knowledge, frankly. so the key to this argument, in my opinion, is to re-frame it.

I would still insist that there is some objective value in the sciences though deficient and none in the arts.




we don't have to agree on how the word genius should be defined. personally, i don't think it is synonymous with 'superior.' if you want to travel further down this vein, you could go to extremes and contend that even people who are stereotypically stupid are 'superior' in one way or another... at getting other people to do their work for them by accident (out of sheer ineptitude), or something like that. i can understand that argument, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to be honest.

The superiority and inferiority of others when comparing material assets will always be a reality. We all know that a human being is smarter than a carrot but we may not be 100% sure that a human being is more important than a carrot. It is faulty to think that way yet our culture resorts to that type of thinking because generally speaking we are avaricious douschebags who need to justify their shit with the superiority clause.

[elfsprin]

By unique manner what do you mean? That we use different criterion in the arts vs the sciences. Or that within both areas of culture there are different ways of valuing works?

i meant at a foundational level - at the roots of the valuation process- we each may be using the same 'bullet points' or criteria to assess value, but they may be in a different order, or emphasized differently. the personal examples i gave are meant to illustrate what lies at the foundation of my assessment process as evinced by the case of awarding the 'genius' appellative: a strong demand that both form and content be respected/addressed.

when acclaim is popularly awarded, as with the examples i list, it really bothers me if the recipient of the acclaim seems (to me) to obviously neglect one or the other.

the fact that this form/content thing lies at the heart of my thinking and valuation process does not surprise me in the slightest, and actually i was expecting a lot of people to be on the same page in that respect- after all, what are we really complaining about when we rant about being an exceptional worker, but being threatened with disciplinary action if our butt isn't in a chair in a cube at precisely the right moment (whereas someone who is relatively worthless at work will escape with no censure, as long as they're physically present at the right time)? we're complaining about an emphasis on form to the neglect of content. it just seems like something that plenty of us possess at a foundational level- the demand for an embrace of both form and content together, or one over the other if it seems more logical that given a certain scenario, one should be more important than the other.

what surprised me, as i looked a bit deeper into this, was that while i personally embrace the ideal that both form and content be upheld, in art i tend to weight my favor more on the side of content, and in science i tend to weight form more favorably overall. maybe this seems like a 'duh' thing, but i think it evinces something deeper, and i wanted to see if others seemed to use the same 'foundational bullet points' in the same way, or not.



In the sciences ... sometimes theology.

i think we have two different distinct scenarios in mind here, like ships passing in the night. i can see what you're getting at, and i agree with most of the points you're making.



Science is the search of truth via analysis and experimentation.

i would say here that the description you've provided can be just as correctly applied to art or music: Art is the search for truth via analysis and experimentation, or Music is the search for truth via analysis and experimentation. the difference is that science's object is the natural world which either surrounds us or which we are comprised of, and the object of art/music is our own conscious selves. art and music can seem more informal/unstructured because they face the classic 'an all-knowing computer could not analyze itself because there's not enough computing power' problem.

the objection tossed my way here is that i'm talking about idealized Art or idealized Music. however, i'd toss that right back and say that you're talking about idealized science as well, so it's only fair that i be allowed to do the same ;)

i don't know any statistics about this to be 100% sure, but i would wager that the majority of science today is done in the pursuit of the next anti-wrinkle cream, botox formula, gadget, or latest wicking athletic apparel. while finding any of these things is 'finding the truth' in the sense that you found a way to construct something that gives you the results you were looking for, it's not really a 'pursuit' of the truth in the way that you and i are talking about it. so, the science you're discussing is idealized, and so are art and music when i'm talking about them.



Hence personal preference is irrelevant if the person is not competent enough.

see, when i think of personal preference being relevant to science, i think of the classic split between newtonian physics and quantum mechanics. here, we have two incompatible descriptions of the universe that both somehow are true, and we haven't figured that all out yet. by and large, the majority of our attention and learning efforts are given to the newtonian description, because that's the one that we think (for now, at least) is most useful.

one thing i see clearly - and maybe i'm off in lala land with this, but you'd have a hard time convincing me of that - from having undertaken intensive studies in several scientific schools is that in one branch of science, such as physics, you will have some idea or concept x which is heatedly contended and disagreed upon. but then, if you go over into, say, a biochem class, you'll suddenly find that concept x is considered to be axiomatic. then you could go back into a theoretical mathematics course, like something in group, set or number theory, and there you'll find all new descriptions, concepts, hypothesis and axioms, and it's hard work trying to make them all mesh together well.

this is what i'm talking about when i talk about personal preference having a place in the sciences- at the very least, we all universally change which set of axioms and rules we're using based on what we want to accomplish. i'm also thinking of the fact that as human beings, our senses and faculties - our only available input routes for assessing the world around us - are extremely limited.



However once we ... and of itself.

i agree with a lot of what you said here, but i would say again that it's unfair to be so ... pragmatic?... about the nature of art of music when you're talking about idealized science.

i tend to view art and music more as languages, i guess. as languages, i do think that they rely on, reveal, and explore our structure as human beings.



We all know that a human being is smarter than a carrot but we may not be 100% sure that a human being is more important than a carrot. It is faulty to think that way yet our culture resorts to that type of thinking because generally speaking we are avaricious douschebags who need to justify their shit with the superiority clause.

that's a great summary. generally, i'm on the same page as you here, having a very adverse reaction to superiority wars, just as you're describing.

that may or may not be the exact reason why it grates on me so intensely to be accused of general snobbishness. that's essentially my own personal version of anathema.

[Cachao]

similarly with musical compositions that are entirely instrumental, i am quite skeptical of artists that are extremely prolific over a short period of time. bach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach), as one example, gets no respect from me. his works are perfect form-wise, but in my opinion they have no real value because their content is meaningless (in other words, because the musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake of the form). it is even the case that i have no respect in general for classical composers who are not especially prolific, if their pieces seem to me to be focused on form rather than content.
Yes, Bach's music is more architectural than poetic or scenic, no doubt. But...no real value because the content is.. meaningless?

How much Bach have you studied and listened to? How much have you tried to get into Bach's emotions? You really think he spent his entire life composing music just for mathematical pleasure? That he had no real emotional intent behind his works? At least nothing that was "of value."


Please. You are entitled to your opinion, but it sounds like you haven't tried very hard. Sometimes structure can be the framework for unparalleled creativity.

[elfsprin]

Yes, Bach's music is more architectural than poetic or scenic, no doubt. But...no real value because the content is.. meaningless?

How much Bach have you studied and listened to? How much have you tried to get into Bach's emotions? You really think he spent his entire life composing music just for mathematical pleasure? That he had no real emotional intent behind his works? At least nothing that was "of value."


Please. You are entitled to your opinion, but it sounds like you haven't tried very hard. Sometimes structure can be the framework for unparalleled creativity.

and one more time i say, my specific examples were essentially meaningless. that is not the point. get over our differences in opinion about freaking bach. i gave examples to lead people into this idea by the hand in illustrative fashion. the examples are useful as a preamble, not as a thesis.

yes, i have studied him.

no, i don't think his work was worthless and valueless in general.

the parameters of this discussion were specific. i am talking about genius. i used that word to indicate superlative, extreme. think of a number line with large bubbles on either end. the bubble on the right is the realm of genius. the bubble on the left is the realm of idiocy.

the fact that bach created forms is impressive. in my little world, that would slide him to the far right on the general number line. however, since i personally feel that he neglects content in favor of form, he doesn't get pushed into the genius bubble on the right hand side.

but wait! that's not what this thread is talking about. it's talking about something far more interesting and important than my personal opinions about bach. who knew!! why do you waste time focusing on this when there are much more interesting things to apply your mind to?

given that the thread assumes the parameters of the genius bubble, i say "worthless" and "valueless" because i've explicitly stated that i'm talking about genius, and standing inside its parameters.* looking out from inside those parameters is how the words "worthless" and "valueless" define their meaning in this thread. hello, relative perspectives.

how is this not obvious? last i heard, the internal worlds of INTPs were structured. that means being able to comprehend when a certain frame of reference and a certain set of parameters are being used.

i'm sorry for not explicitly stating all this in the OP, increasing its length to such epic proportions that no one would read it. i'll mend my ways and never start a thread again without detailing every tiny disclaimer. i had thought that that would be an insult to everyone else's intelligence, but apparently i was wrong on that note.

just let me know how many more times, and in how many alternate ways, i need to express this. i'll get right on it.


* in the spirit of detailing disclaimers, i suppose it would be unsafe to let this slide. no, i do not mean by this to claim that i am a genius. by "standing inside the parameters of genius" i mean that i perceive it as having a more extreme set of criteria than the rest of the metaphorical number line, and that i'm assuming that more stringent criteria.

[Cachao]

but wait! that's not what this thread is talking about. it's talking about something far more interesting and important than my personal opinions about bach. who knew!! why do you waste time focusing on this when there are much more interesting things to apply your mind to?I'm glad your excited about your topic and all, but really.. my post wasn't about your opinion on Bach. It was more about how awfully you worded that paragraph.

Carry on..

[elfsprin]

It was more about how awfully you worded that paragraph.



well, that's fine then. we can still be friends.

[Bking]

You would love Led Zeppelin..Their songs are not boud by restriction...Pureee creativity

[Wise Fool]

the main point is focusing on why i/we might grant value to great minds from the different schools (broadly, the sciences and the arts) in a unique manner.

I think it is because each different discipline represents a different part of the spectrum of objectivity, as do each of us as individuals.


is it the case, and if so why is it, that i personally seem to assess value differently in different disciplines? assuming i'm not alone in this, why is it that we all do this? what is the key pivot point here? and i wonder, if i am able to locate this pivot point in myself, will it be the same point that is operating in others as well, or will their point be different in nature?

Could the key pivot point be our relative perspective? I think we all value a balance between form and content, though our relative perspectives perceives that balance in a way that is coherent to our relative perspective.

I think genius depends in part on the ability to reconcile differing viewpoints. see transcendental perspectivism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Perspectivism)

[fduniho]

This has been written as a dialog between two speakers.

Science can be judged by adherence to the scientific method, which is a method for better arriving at truth. Art cannot be judged by anything comparable. Truth is one measure for judging art, but it is not the sole measure. For example, a realistic novel isn't necessarily any better than a science fiction novel on the grounds that the realistic novel is truer to life. Nor is a thinly-veiled biography necessarily any better than a realistic novel for being even truer to life.

It is not the particular truths expressed in a work of art that make it great but the eternal truths. Consider a sad country music song. It is not any better for describing something that has actually happened to someone, but it can be great for capturing the essence of a sad situation that many different people can relate to. Likewise, a science fiction novel can be better than a realistic novel for better expressing core truths about human nature.

It makes sense to say that songs and novels can express truths, for they make use of words. But instrumental music is entirely wordless. It cannot express truth of any kind and must be judged by some other means, such as beauty. For example, Bach has written many beautiful instrumental pieces. This music has worth simply for its beauty and not because it expresses anything true.

Bach was a deeply religious man, and his music expresses the majesty of the divine.

Since I'm an atheist, that means that Bach's music expresses falsehood. Yet I still find his music beautiful and appreciate it for that.

Or maybe it means that you actually believe in God down in your heart and appreciate Bach's music for expressing truths you won't recognize consciously.

Or maybe it just means that you will turn anything around to make your argument stick. Beauty is not the same as truth. If it were, art would have led straight to science, and we would have had advanced technology all the sooner.

At this point, I have to get off the computer.

[elfsprin]

i think it was intended that the italicized speaker there be loosely equated with the argument i am presenting? just for the record, i don't identify with it at all. i find it quite pathetic, actually.

i wouldn't agree with the non-italics either, though. particularly with this paragraph, i see some major problems in what it assumes about the nature of communication and language:


It makes sense to say that songs and novels can express truths, for they make use of words. But instrumental music is entirely wordless. It cannot express truth of any kind and must be judged by some other means, such as beauty. For example, Bach has written many beautiful instrumental pieces. This music has worth simply for its beauty and not because it expresses anything true.

anyway, i don't disagree with or object to how either this 'speaker' or, to use an example from this thread, iksikaksi are citing beauty as a measure against which works of art and music are placed for each person. however, when i see 'beauty' referenced in this way, it seems to me as if the word is being used in such a way that it would also be accurate to say 'just beauty,' almost as if beauty and the perception of it are things completely divorced from any significant implications whatsoever in life. even if you only see art from a consumer perspective as the production and trade of beautiful things (which i think is also an oversimplification even of what, for example, iksikaksi is saying), this still doesn't seem like a trivial occurrence to me.

if i take myself out of my own understanding of these things and adopt yours or iksikaksi's, i can see that what you are saying is quite valid, relevant, and moreover significant (in the sense that it is not trite). i'm not trying to combat those views, or trivialize anyone who presents them, so much as i want to move past them. there's a deeper, more significant argument there, living at the roots of that stance, and making it possible.


ok, here i'm going to tackle the tangential science as objective topic. this is kind of part of a thesis i've been privately working on for... maybe 12 years. i have strong arguments developed on these points, but honestly i remain unconvinced as to whether this giant meta-thesis of mine will prove worthless, pointless, or incorrect in the end. also, i'm using the term thesis here loosely... this is basically something i just think about all the time. my own personal theory of everything :wub: this is just a part of it, it's much larger. anyway, enough disclaimers.

the most concise way to explain the flaws i see in that deeper argument is this. there is a precise distinction that must be made here, and usually it remains unvoiced and unelucidated: the view that science is objective has nothing to do with science itself- as a process or discipline- at its core, even though that's what people tend to talk about or bring up the most often when discussing science and its objectivity. in fact, there is a primary premise at work in this argument, and all this conversation about the method and process of science itself is merely ancillary.

the primary premise here revolves around certain convictions about the object of science, which is the natural world. in fact, that view (that science itself is objective) ignores the process of science to a great extent (not the scientific method employed by persons, but the actual way in which the human mind is constructed- which comes before, and trumps, method).

it seems there are two extremes to take regarding the nature of the natural world. one of them is to see it as something essentially unchanging and absolute in nature. in other words: a new species may evolve, humans may pollute the atmosphere, etc. etc., but none of this is going to change the fact that electrons orbit protons.

this conviction that the world around us has an objective and fundamentally unchanging or unaffected nature is the only premise that can support the act of also labeling science as objective.

the reason is this. science is primarily a methodology with a specific object: the world as we are able to perceive it. people generally claim to view science as objective because the method is impersonal, and because repetition of processes (which are unique applications of the method) by different persons will yield the same results.

however, if you used the same method on an object which changed at a fundamental level, you would not obtain consistent results, and that would have nothing to do with the method: it has to do with the object. since the method is dependent on its object in this fashion (in other words, since there is a scenario in which the method can be used where consistency is not maintained), it cannot be claimed that the method itself is also possessed of objective value.*

therefore, it is the object of science which has objective value, and in a retrospective fashion, it is the object itself which casts the 'objective' label back onto the method that is used to explore it, making science as a methodology seem to us to also merit the objective label.

however, casting this value backward is erroneous because science does not have a direct causal relationship with its object. in other words, science as a method derives from human persons, and is dependent on their nature and composition. science is a derivative of persons; science does not have a similarly direct and derivative relationship with the world at large. since humans and the method of science are directly linked, all sorts of fun things can happen- you can get looping feedback, one can change or influence the other in a consistently linked fashion, etc. but science - while it seems to work adequately to assess and explore nature - does not have a similarly direct and derivative relationship with reality. therefore, while a human characteristic can influence science or vice versa because they are directly linked, a characteristic of the natural world does not influence science in the same fashion, because there is no direct link between them.

to use a simplified mathematical analogy to say this same thing in a different way, let human structure be H, let science be S and let the object be O.

H=/=O in terms of their essences. moreover, H=/=O if you define the "=/=" as perception (in other words, we do not directly perceive reality in any sort of comprehensive, accurate, or True fashion. this is obvious. we see a tree, we don't see spin states and millions of chemical reactions. hell, we don't even see what's on a slightly larger scale - the molecules - as if they were little globs of matter in relationship with one another. we see something that appears whole, constant, and simple).

S = f(H). science (a method) is determined in its nature and structure directly by H. if you do an operation to H (say, add 2), you will see a direct change to S as well (perhaps it will add 8, since that's a power of two... it will depend on the ways in which science is related to human structure).

"=/=" can be substituted with S, because S is a method of access from H to O. at this point, "=/=" can no longer be read both backward or forward, it can only be read forward: because S is determined by H, and not by O.

if you add 2 to O, you will most likely modify S in some fashion, but there is no guarantee that it will be at all related to the operation you performed (you might add 5 to S). what you do to S will depend on how exactly H and O are related. in other words, any change to O first must be filtered through H, and then only indirectly affects S.

therefore, science loops in an indirect fashion. whereas art could be said to loop in a closed circle- relying on, revealing, exploring and perhaps then altering human structure- which is the most obvious kind of looping, whenever the process that science is involved in loops it bypasses science altogether (it loops between H and O directly) which makes the loop less obvious and harder to perceive. moreover, there is a second loop between H and S that is related to the H/O loop, but not equivalent with it.

to state this even more simply: this effects a kind of 'method bypass' (science being the method) and points to the primary premise (that what we're really talking about is the nature of the object, not the nature of the method) precisely because the object (natural world) is perceivable by us in distinct, describable and limited fashions.


all this is basically saying is this: science seems to move in a straight line forward, originating in human persons and looking at the natural world. it seems to us that our studies don't fundamentally affect the world, and that if we use a consistent method, the world will consistently appear the same each time we use the method. this makes us feel like there is some kind of higher validity to be found in the method, but that is a false equation.

the only step left to complete here is to revisit the opening paragraph concerning this argument, and to point out that this basic premise - that the object of science is in some form static - is again based entirely on our own perception-capability, which is seriously limited.

whether or not that object - the natural world- is actually static in this fashion or not has no bearing on the validity of this argument. this would not change the fact that our basic premise is determined by our own limited perception.


this doesn't devalue science, it simply places it in the proper perspective as a method of understanding, or academic discipline.

i you take this description and mold it to fit back into art or music, you'll see that once again the primary premise has to do with the object, and not with the method itself. usually when people say that art or music has no objective value, they aren't really thinking of art or music at all. they're working from (perhaps unconsciously held) convictions about the object of art or music, which object is the structure of human beings (which is not equivalent with eternal truths, italicized imaginary speaker).



... if anyone actually reads this i will die of shock.



* in fact, changing at a fundamental level has nothing whatsoever to do with whether something has an objective nature or not. that's not the key point here. the key point is that for humans to have any hope of really grasping something, it must either be somewhat unchanging, or be perceivable as unchanging or in other words constant. if, for example, the scientific method was applied to something which had a relatively simple nature but whose nature rapidly changed, we would be just as mystified and convinced that there was no objectivity to be found. thus, the point is that the method will take on its apparent characteristics due to the characteristics of the object, but the method will not take on the same characteristics of its object necessarily.

[nullPointerException]

The moment I read the title of this thread you lost all respect from me. Bach took baroque music and did it better then anyone else before him. Bach did not follow rules and guidelines, he did what he wanted, yet you tell me he was not creative? Bach was never recognized as the genius he was during his time period because Mozart started the Classical music era while Bach was still composing Baroque. Bach created nothing for "the sake of the form," he was the essence of a nonconformist. Bach is not creative, but somehow he came up with an alternative tuning for the harpsichord that resulted in a well tempered clavier? How could someone who is not creative have created (notice both words share a root word) so many compositions of music in such a short time? Bach was a musical genius because--not in spite of--the fact that he could compose such brilliant pieces of music with so much ease.

[C.J.Woolf]

The moment I read the title of this thread you lost all respect from me.
elf's originial thread title was "Double standards for genius?" MacGuffin changed it to the current title (who knows why, but I'm sure it amused him); please redirect your scorn to him.

[nullPointerException]

elf's originial thread title was "Double standards for genius?" MacGuffin changed it to the current title (who knows why, but I'm sure it amused him); please redirect your scorn to him.

Fixed 10char

[elfsprin]

elf's originial thread title was "Double standards for genius?" MacGuffin changed it to the current title (who knows why, but I'm sure it amused him); please redirect your scorn to him.

he changed it because i asked him to.

look, it never even occurred to me that the hyperbole employed in the OP would be taken so litterally. i was too apathetic about defending my rep when the thread first began to say anything about it. now it's just pointless to even say as much as i have about it. whatever, i want to think about more interesting things anyway.

[nullPointerException]

he changed it because i asked him to.

look, it never even occurred to me that the hyperbole employed in the OP would be taken so litterally. i was too apathetic about defending my rep when the thread first began to say anything about it. now it's just pointless to even say as much as i have about it. whatever, i want to think about more interesting things anyway.

post unfixed XP

[elfsprin]

post unfixed XP

it's fine.

here's the thing. i don't feel that anyone is obligated to have a clear picture of my identity. but in case you want one, it is wise to keep in mind that even when i'm really fucking pissed off, i usually toss in a comic relief element.

i don't feel at all abashed about my opinion on bach. partly, this is because i have no doubt in my mind that every other person on the planet has the same sorts of knee jerk reactions, whether they realize it (or admit it) or not. in my opinion, he gives form precedence over content - to the extent of making content a slave to form- and therefore i have problems with his work, especially because it is so widely acclaimed as being superlative in some fashion. i'm not backing down on this point, but i don't really think it's something worth spending a lot of time discussing.

however, the way in which i expressed this was soaked in hyperbole, which was a nod at the comic. that's just how i am.

despite all the various forms of cajoling i may or may not have engaged in later in the thread to try and push it into the more interesting topic, i do realize that using my speaking voice in the OP rather than a scholarly voice was a faux pas, because i don't post enough here for people to have a sense of my tone. oh well.

and now, i am never mentioning bach in this thread again.

[Wise Fool]

... if anyone actually reads this i will die of shock.
time for you to die of shock...

ok, here i'm going to tackle the tangential science as objective topic. this is kind of part of a thesis i've been privately working on for... maybe 12 years. i have strong arguments developed on these points, but honestly i remain unconvinced as to whether this giant meta-thesis of mine will prove worthless, pointless, or incorrect in the end. also, i'm using the term thesis here loosely... this is basically something i just think about all the time. my own personal theory of everything :wub: this is just a part of it, it's much larger. anyway, enough disclaimers.

I like what you are on to. I can relate. Worthless, pointless, or incorrect? Sometimes i say, "all the best things are good for nothing."


the most concise way to explain the flaws i see in that deeper argument is this. there is a precise distinction that must be made here, and usually it remains unvoiced and unelucidated: the view that science is objective has nothing to do with science itself- as a process or discipline- at its core, even though that's what people tend to talk about or bring up the most often when discussing science and its objectivity. in fact, there is a primary premise at work in this argument, and all this conversation about the method and process of science itself is merely ancillary.

I think I agree with you, and I think I argue this point from a slightly different perspective in the thread Evolution is "just a theory"???? (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=23944&page=2), starting at post 241.


the primary premise here revolves around certain convictions about the object of science, which is the natural world. in fact, that view (that science itself is objective) ignores the process of science to a great extent (not the scientific method employed by persons, but the actual way in which the human mind is constructed- which comes before, and trumps, method).

Yes, to me it seems that the 'objective of science' is often taken as God-given or something, sometimes. People seem to overlook (and even deny) human intentions behind the formation of the scientific objective.


it seems there are two extremes to take regarding the nature of the natural world. one of them is to see it as something essentially unchanging and absolute in nature. in other words: a new species may evolve, humans may pollute the atmosphere, etc. etc., but none of this is going to change the fact that electrons orbit protons.

this conviction that the world around us has an objective and fundamentally unchanging or unaffected nature is the only premise that can support the act of also labeling science as objective.

the reason is this. science is primarily a methodology with a specific object: the world as we are able to perceive it. people generally claim to view science as objective because the method is impersonal, and because repetition of processes (which are unique applications of the method) by different persons will yield the same results.

however, if you used the same method on an object which changed at a fundamental level, you would not obtain consistent results, and that would have nothing to do with the method: it has to do with the object. since the method is dependent on its object in this fashion (in other words, since there is a scenario in which the method can be used where consistency is not maintained), it cannot be claimed that the method itself is also possessed of objective value.*

* in fact, changing at a fundamental level has nothing whatsoever to do with whether something has an objective nature or not. that's not the key point here. the key point is that for humans to have any hope of really grasping something, it must either be somewhat unchanging, or be perceivable as unchanging or in other words constant. if, for example, the scientific method was applied to something which had a relatively simple nature but whose nature rapidly changed, we would be just as mystified and convinced that there was no objectivity to be found. thus, the point is that the method will take on its apparent characteristics due to the characteristics of the object, but the method will not take on the same characteristics of its object necessarily.

i think perhaps the method could be assigned the same 'objective value' it assigns objects of consistency. Thus making it a self-limiting value (method), self: representing science. Which I think is what you are saying, in a slightly different way. I could be wrong though...


therefore, it is the object of science which has objective value, and in a retrospective fashion, it is the object itself which casts the 'objective' label back onto the method that is used to explore it, making science as a methodology seem to us to also merit the objective label.

yes, in a retrospective fashion...

time=cause. time is subjective. science objectifies (compiles) time. time is objectified. subjectivities are degraded in favor of the efficiency of objectivity and method. content is neglected in favor of form. this is where I see us to be, generally speaking.

science's objectivity is defined by the limits of the method being used, thereby forming a 'mass of science' amidst a sea of relativity, as part of a process of the natural world...


however, casting this value backward is erroneous because science does not have a direct causal relationship with its object. in other words, science as a method derives from human persons, and is dependent on their nature and composition. science is a derivative of persons; science does not have a similarly direct and derivative relationship with the world at large. since humans and the method of science are directly linked, all sorts of fun things can happen- you can get looping feedback, one can change or influence the other in a consistently linked fashion, etc. but science - while it seems to work adequately to assess and explore nature - does not have a similarly direct and derivative relationship with reality. therefore, while a human characteristic can influence science or vice versa because they are directly linked, a characteristic of the natural world does not influence science in the same fashion, because there is no direct link between them.
To say that humans and the method of science are directly linked, i think, is to say human and an object of reality (the natural world) are directly linked. the method of science, an aspect of the natural world, does not have a similarly direct and derivative relationship with the world at large as does humans do, because they represent different aspects of the world at large; but in the sense that they represent aspects of the world at large, they do have a similarly direct and derivative relationship with it.


H=/=O in terms of their essences. moreover, H=/=O if you define the "=/=" as perception (in other words, we do not directly perceive reality in any sort of comprehensive, accurate, or True fashion. this is obvious. we see a tree, we don't see spin states and millions of chemical reactions. hell, we don't even see what's on a slightly larger scale - the molecules - as if they were little globs of matter in relationship with one another. we see something that appears whole, constant, and simple).

I really like this example of the tree. The closer you examine a tree, the more the boundaries of the tree become blurred, and the tree comes to represent less of a distinct entity and more of an interaction of interconnected processes.


"=/=" can be substituted with S, because S is a method of access from H to O. at this point, "=/=" can no longer be read both backward or forward, it can only be read forward: because S is determined by H, and not by O.

or S could be thought to be determined (limited or defined) by O, to the extent that S fails to to incorporate O as process. if that makes sense... I don't think that would contradict your statement in any way, just frame it in another perspective.

The particle and the wave. Interchangeability. O determines S as S would have it. S is determined by its method. This method is a particle. O determines S as a particle.


if you add 2 to O, you will most likely modify S in some fashion, but there is no guarantee that it will be at all related to the operation you performed (you might add 5 to S). what you do to S will depend on how exactly H and O are related. in other words, any change to O first must be filtered through H, and then only indirectly affects S.
I don't know what it means or how it would look like to add 2 to O. it seems there must be two O's, one which represents a constant, and one which represents a relative O. You could add to/change the relative O, but it is meaningless to add to the the constant O so far as I understand.

I think a change in S can effectively represent a change in a relative aspect of O, so it could be said that any change in O(S), to continue on with your example, must first be filtered through H, and then only indirectly affects S. So what this says to me is that it begins with and depends on H. More finely, it begins with me, and what I make myself out to be.

Here, I am reminded that my intentions and values are different than the humanists', largely because I refuse to limit myself to a strictly human definition and understanding of myself. To do so, to limit self to a human definition/understanding, is to cut oneself off from the possibility of being privy to the determining mechanisms of humanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism) itself.

I found these concepts to be interesting and relevant: metaphysical naturalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_naturalism) & methodological naturalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism).


therefore, science loops in an indirect fashion. whereas art could be said to loop in a closed circle- relying on, revealing, exploring and perhaps then altering human structure- which is the most obvious kind of looping, whenever the process that science is involved in loops it bypasses science altogether (it loops between H and O directly) which makes the loop less obvious and harder to perceive. moreover, there is a second loop between H and S that is related to the H/O loop, but not equivalent with it.

to state this even more simply: this effects a kind of 'method bypass' (science being the method) and points to the primary premise (that what we're really talking about is the nature of the object, not the nature of the method) precisely because the object (natural world) is perceivable by us in distinct, describable and limited fashions.


I think- within the context of science, that is, in relation to science itself -science can be said to loop in a direct fashion.

I think i agree with you. It sounds to me like you are saying the epistemological is referential to the ontological.


all this is basically saying is this: science seems to move in a straight line forward, originating in human persons and looking at the natural world. it seems to us that our studies don't fundamentally affect the world, and that if we use a consistent method, the world will consistently appear the same each time we use the method. this makes us feel like there is some kind of higher validity to be found in the method, but that is a false equation.

the only step left to complete here is to revisit the opening paragraph concerning this argument, and to point out that this basic premise - that the object of science is in some form static - is again based entirely on our own perception-capability, which is seriously limited.

whether or not that object - the natural world- is actually static in this fashion or not has no bearing on the validity of this argument. this would not change the fact that our basic premise is determined by our own limited perception.


this doesn't devalue science, it simply places it in the proper perspective as a method of understanding, or academic discipline.

i you take this description and mold it to fit back into art or music, you'll see that once again the primary premise has to do with the object, and not with the method itself.

mmyes! I agree... unfortunately though, I don't really know what I'm talking about.

[elfsprin]

captain! i thought we were tangential friends, and here you are trying to effect my corporal demise.



the epistemological is referential to the ontological.

that is exactly what i'm saying, in its simplest linguistic form... though i'd add 'and the structural' or something like that to relate the conversation back more specifically to our somatic makeup.

the reason i dissected that phrase further is this: intelligent persons (and i'm assuming that means many of the people here) will recognize the validity of the statement "the epistemological is referential to the ontological" and, i imagine, wonder why i'm making such an obvious point.

however, it's been my experience that someone who recognizes the validity there would then, in the context of this topic, go on to say: "that doesn't change the fact that science is objective, because for something to be objective means for it to be arrived at without personal bias/prejudice, which is an issue entirely separate, though perhaps parallel, to the relationship of knowledge to nature of being."

while i think that statement is valid, here's the problem. if you abstractly assume only those things (the nature of objectivity, the relationship of knowledge to category of being), in order to maintain consistency you would have to award the label 'objective' not only to science, but also to art and music (assuming you are thinking of them 'idealistically' or in a pure form, as disciplines or methods).

however, most people will only award that label to science, which immediately indicates that there must be a more fundamental premise at work. i think that premise can be located in the realm of the object of those methods, hence the pedantic breakdown of humans, methods, and objects.

granting all that, the first frustrating problem that usually comes up is the same one that was introduced by that italicized voice in the earlier post: there's usually a somewhat unconscious leap on the part of most people from absolute subjectivity to eternal truths, with no middle ground being acknowledged. while eternal truths are usually scornfully tossed aside if the topic is art, eternal truths are embraced when the topic is science. this seems fairly foolish to me, since it assumes a very basic kind of duality in human nature... one that dates back thousands of years and is generally not given credence in modern thought.

anyway, i think it's important to locate and comprehend where and what that primary premise is, because if it goes unexamined it (and this is evident historically, to the point of cliche) forces an irrational stasis on intellectual development.



various things

i like that you brought up relativity. in my mind the conversation about sciences vs. arts is really a conversation about special relativity.

for the tree example- yeah, i like thinking about that kind of thing a little too much probably (actually thinking about things in terms of their molecular etc. composition as opposed to seeing them as a functional whole). as amazing as the human mind can be and as much as it may allow us to transcend the senses to some extent, i think it's important to keep that train of thought grounded by reminding ourselves that the way in which we sense things informs the way in which the mind is constructed and operates on a massive level.


hey now, you weren't supposed to notice that i added 2 to O. i know that was cheating, mainly i was being lazy. by that i meant that if you have the laws of the universe as they are now (call that O') and then if you imagined that the laws were fundamentally different (O''), i would postulate that S could easily transfer from one to the other without a change to S being necessitated.

as for humanism, i'm undecided myself. i tend to sympathize quite strongly with literary humanist characters - for example, the doctor whatshisname in The Plague. i also kind of see hints of 'anguished humanism' in Ivan K., whom i identify with quite strongly. i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on humanism in more depth, if you're in the mood to share. write about it in your blog and i'll come spy on you :)

[fduniho]

Instead of getting caught up in the current line of thought about the objectivity of science, I thought I would approach the original issue of this thread by comparing some scientists and composers I admire for similar reasons. I'll start with Immanuel Velikovsky (scientist) and Ludwig Van Beethoven (composer). I have read several books by Velikovsky, and he has routinely impressed me with his dedication to the scientific method -- even in the face of opposition from the scientific orthodoxy, which he has had plenty of. I have not found any flaws in his reasoning, and I'm generally convinced that he was on the right track. He is best know for Worlds in Collision, which argued from historical and mythological records that the Earth had encounters with Mars and Venus in the still not-too-distant past. I just finished Earth in Upheaval today, which enumerated loads of geological evidence that the earth has been through several cataclysms, and which used this as evidence against the uniformitarianism that became the basis of Darwin's theory of evolution. Velikovsky offered his own theory of cataclysmic evolution, which answered questions the uniformitarian theory of evolution could not, such as how speciation occurs. He has also made sense of Egyptian and Biblical history in his Ages in Chaos series. One thing I really admire Velikovsky for is his dedication to doing true science in the face of considerable opposition from the scientific establishment.

Like Velikovsky, Beethoven pursued his art in the face of conditions that would stop most men. For him, it was deafness, which is the worst ailment that might befall a composer short of death. Despite being deaf, Beethoven went on to compose one of the greatest works of classical music, his 9th symphony, as well as a lot of other great music. It's also noteworthy that Beethoven worked without official sponsorship, a luxury earlier composers had enjoyed, and during a time of political turmoil in Europe. Like Velikovsky, he met with criticism from those with established views. One person who looked at manuscripts of his Rasumovsky string quartets said to Beethoven "that he surely did not consider these works to be music?—to which he replied, “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.”" This is similar to how Velikovsky replied to his own critics, stating that future generations will come to appreciate his scientific work even if it goes unappreciated in the present.

[glitch]

his works are perfect form-wise, but in my opinion they have no real value because their content is meaningless (in other words, because the musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake of the form).

It's because the 'content' is embedded in the form! Bach was a genius who inspired Beethoven, Mozart, Webern, Stravinsky and even your favorite composer Chopin admired him. I do find meaning in Bach and I can prove it to you: Try to listen and analyze Bach's Never-ending Canon or Canon 5 a 2 per tonus. This piece alone destroys your argument, and even if you don't believe me try reading the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Hofstadter there is a section where he explains the difference in the idea of meaning comparing John Cage and J.S. Bach.

[Furtive]

I've been convinced that I'm going to hell for my entire adult life. Great to hear that they'll be piping J.S. through the muzak. The only piece I ever sat down and learned on guitar was Parkening's version of Prelude in C.

[elfsprin]

I've been convinced that I'm going to hell for my entire adult life. Great to hear that they'll be piping J.S. through the muzak. The only piece I ever sat down and learned on guitar was Parkening's version of Prelude in C.

unless i'm sorely mistaken, Gaiman (who is an indisputable expert on these things) posits that only franz liszt (or was it him + mozart?) will be allowed in the fiery deep.

oh no wait, those were the only two who would be played in heaven.

but that doesn't matter, since it was stated (under the thinnest of thin veils) that their effect in either place would be the same. ah, ineffable.

[glitch]

You can offend me if you want, I won't get offended. I admit I didn't read the whole thread. I don't have that much of free time, but I've read some of your arguments and you have a point to some sort of degree. I've heard most of Bach's work and yeah he attaches to baroque harmony rules that can be computer generated (see David Cope's book Experiments In Musical Intelligence). Still, how can his music be meaningless? And non-creative? That's absurd. Inserting hidden tritones when it wasn't allowed isn't creative? Pioneering Shepard Tones isn't creative? Making music riddles isn't creative? Making a 6 voiced fugue isn't creative? Being able to improvise fugues isn't creative?

[elfsprin]

scientist vs. musician

is it the case that when you approve of or gravitate toward the story behind a person's work, you tend to also find that you sort of 'de facto' prefer their products as well? as an example, since beethoven is someone whom you appreciate as a person or figure, is his music also something that you tend to prefer above other music?

do you think if you were denied access to information about the person behind the product it would be harder for you to connect with the product and establish preferences for certain things over other things?


offending

i'm not sure i'm reading your tone correctly - that was either a bristling statement consisting of a dismissal of me (you mean little hence cannot offend), or it actually was a general calm statement of fact that i didn't need to worry about giving offense. either way, just in case i was misunderstood: very often you'll see that people with a low number of total post-counts can become 'upset' if people generally ignore them by not replying. i don't like to leave people feeling that way, so my rep to you was, more than anything else, born out of a general preference for civility and the fact that you didn't have many posts yet.

to save us all from the clarify and re-clarify activity that this kind of statement often precipitates, i'll just state here openly my assumption: that you took it this way, and regardless would have remained unoffended (for either reason) no matter what my intentions had been.


he who shall not be named

i'm not naming him, my word is still my bond.

this focus on that one part of my OP does bring up some interesting questions on the historical value vs. absolute value topic. i guess i'm putting this out to anyone who focused on that part of the OP, and not just glitch.

generally, people tend to appreciate what a scientist may have accomplished in a historical sense, but they would also consider it foolish to therefore (because of historical import) ascribe to the scientist's views... for example the four humours and leeching.

in fact, most people would say that it's erroneous to find equivalent present day value in the work of a scientist who belonged to an earlier paradigm. that would be a form of unacceptable regression, even if you are candid with yourself about the fact that today's paradigm is just as flawed, though in new ways, as the previous ones.

however, it seems to me that these same people will not present the same argument when they have the same dicsussion... but in the realm of art or music. if they did, they'd state that it's fine to honor someone like polygnotus and claim that in his day he was a genius, but they'd also say that anyone alive today was a fool if they named polygnotus as a painter whose works are still to be considered genius today.

there seem to be several possible underlying convictions about human nature that could account for the fact that most people would not apply the same sort of "chronological progression" standard to art or music as they would to science. just based on the posts already given, i'd say that most of the people who replied to this thread would uphold this double standard, and i wonder what your particular underlying conviction about human nature might be.

here are some possibilities- is it several of them, none of them and something else entirely, or... ? i'm curious as to the various answers people might give.

- human nature remains absolutely constant throughout history, so while it may manifests itself in new ways and therefore seem to evolve, noticing the changes in manifestation and equating it with a change in human nature itself is erroneous

- human nature does evolve, but could be described as 'geological' in the sense that its rate of change is so slow that we cannot perceive it easily. whereas we've devised ways to 'discover' stages in the actual geological sphere that may predate our own histories, humanity has not been conscious long enough for us to have passed into any discernible and discrete phases at all. this would go hand in hand with a second conviction, relating to the cliche that a genius is never recognized until they are dead, which in turn could be used to illuminate a possible 'nature of hypothesis' in the art or music realm

- the fact that on a large scale humans tend to move through phases of finding certain things beautiful (and here, it might be better to consider something like architecture rather than painting) reveals nothing about human nature at all, so to look at this progression of aesthetic preference and try to find either a correlation or a causation between it and human nature or (on a larger scale) social evolution is a fundamentally flawed path of inquiry

- when humans find something from the past and raise it back up as a present-day iconic item, there is not a true reincarnation of the thing but rather these scenarios can be viewed as truly new reiteration. it's almost as if it's not the same piece of art, or style of architecture, or genre of music (even though it is) since if you presented this thing to the people who were alive when it was created, they'd interpret it/value it for a set of reasons a, b, c etc. but when you present the same work to a group of humans or a human in a different historical setting, they'll assess and value it for reasons z, y, x.

[bass_n_treble]

This type of overly-critical left-brained jargon is exactly what makes creative people get writer's block. People would never create great works of art if they didn't practice or perform, or make mediocre works first. To allow yourself to actually go out and actualize a concept regardless of what is considered "proper" or "correct" is like doing homework and studying before a big exam (the masterpiece).

There are times where a collection of pieces are meant to be seen/listened to as a whole, and are not meant for stand-alone purposes.

You can do whatever you want with your opinion, but to post a damning opinion about the creative process itself just bewilders me.

[elfsprin]

when did i ever damn the creative process?

[fduniho]

is it the case that when you approve of or gravitate toward the story behind a person's work, you tend to also find that you sort of 'de facto' prefer their products as well? as an example, since beethoven is someone whom you appreciate as a person or figure, is his music also something that you tend to prefer above other music?

do you think if you were denied access to information about the person behind the product it would be harder for you to connect with the product and establish preferences for certain things over other things?

No, it would not be harder. I have liked Beethoven ever since childhood, his music being among the earliest of all music I have ever liked. I liked his music before I became aware of his character and his life story. I have known about his deafness for a while, but I didn't know much else about his life until I saw the movie Immortal Beloved (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110116/) only a few years ago. In general, I connect with music because I like it and not for other reasons. In fact, I do not know much at all about most of the musicians and composers I listen to. Also, it is mainly when I already like a musician or composer that I try to find out more about him.

[Kazan]

Yayyyy hell. I knew I was going there anyway for knowing how to program.

And now I'm going there for the fact that I like Bach.

Music and Art and all Creative products are subjective. Accept the fact that there is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" piece of art or music and just go with what you like.

[elfsprin]

yay.

out of curiosity, i would like to ask you a clarifying question:


Music and Art and all Creative products are subjective. Accept the fact that there is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" piece of art or music and just go with what you like.

does this apply, as written, to all Creative products, or only to products for which there is a conscious and intentional participation in the creation thereof; in other words, if there is any unintentional or implicit creative activity on the part of the (assumed) observer or participant, does this subjective label and the implications you've assumed for it (correct me if i'm wrong, but they seem to be 1. that anything observed subjectively has no inherent value for observers individually or collectively and 2. anything observed subjectively has no inherent value in and of itself, irrespective of any observers) still apply?

[Kazan]

does this apply, as written, to all Creative products, or only to products for which there is a conscious and intentional participation in the creation thereof; in other words, if there is any unintentional or implicit creative activity on the part of the (assumed) observer or participant, does this subjective label and the implications you've assumed for it (correct me if i'm wrong, but they seem to be 1. that anything observed subjectively has no inherent value for observers individually or collectively and 2. anything observed subjectively has no inherent value in and of itself, irrespective of any observers) still apply?

hmmm. A clarifying question. First of all, I'm going to state that all human endeavors are subjective in some way. So really, if you looked at it that way, it makes the label "subjective" meaningless. But so it is with all words. Really, at their root, if you look hard enough, you can prove that they are meaningless. However. That defeats the purpose of having words. So we need to just move beyond that and realize that even language itself is... subjective. ;)

To directly answer your question, minus the vauge rant, I do not mean that something has no value because it is subjective...that would be childish. I simply mean that your argument that Bach isn't "good" because he creates too much music too fast really could be argued forever.

My two-cents worth was that: There is no answer to that sort of question.

Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.

So, all in all, I have no point, but I had a hell of a time getting there.
The journey is more important than the destination, because there is no destination :grin: .

[elfsprin]

thanks for the clarify. i'd agree with everything that you said (conditionally, of course), except for the argument about bach thing... because i wasn't making an argument about bach.

i was going to take issue if your reply seemed to evince the whole view of reality which can be well-characterized by the belief, for example, that matematics is something with inherent truth to it that humans discover rather than formulate based on their limited perceptive capabilities.

so, we're back to the inevitable basic questions. based on your love of science shown in other posts, i'm going to assume that that you're fairly well-educated, or at least on that road, in several disciplines.

so, question- let's stay away from intrinsic values for this one and focus on the scenario in which there is both an object and an act of observation by an observer. do you see the sciences as strictly objective, or more primarily as intrinsically subjective because of physical and mental human structure? if you see them as primarily objective, what differentiates each scientific paradigm from the generally 'subjective' arts and music in your mind? is it primarily the fact that phenomena, behaviors, and results can be repeatedly and independently reached/verified by any competent individual?

if that's the case, what are your thoughts on pop culture, or the fact that cultures in general seem to shift through aesthetic- or aural-preference paradigms? in your opinion, how is a scientist being able to individually observe gravity differ from a majority of the individuals in a population (and i do think it's significant that there be defined populations, because that means generally sharing a somewhat similar worldview and inherited history or cultural identity) preferring certain artists or musicians strongly over others?

i'm interested to read your personal opinion on this matter, but also will warn that my attention span for this thread is extremely limited, so if i don't reply again... sorry.

[Kazan]

so, question- let's stay away from intrinsic values for this one and focus on the scenario in which there is both an object and an act of observation by an observer. do you see the sciences as strictly objective, or more primarily as intrinsically subjective because of physical and mental human structure? if you see them as primarily objective, what differentiates each scientific paradigm from the generally 'subjective' arts and music in your mind? is it primarily the fact that phenomena, behaviors, and results can be repeatedly and independently reached/verified by any competent individual?

Good question. I see the sciences as not strictly objective, but as at least pursuing the goal of objectivity. Anything that comes in contact with a human is subjective in some or another way. That doesn't mean that it's bad, though. It just means you have to take into account the lens it is being viewed thorugh if you want to seek the truth.



if that's the case, what are your thoughts on pop culture, or the fact that cultures in general seem to shift through aesthetic- or aural-preference paradigms?

I think science goes through the same things...paradigm shifts that occur over time, or all at once, when we see things in a new way. However, I think that in science, these shifts are a good deal more rational people deciding to go with the more proven theory, where as in pop culture it is even more subjective because people are not (as scientists are, or are at least supposed to) asking themselves "why do I think this?" "what is the evidence?" "what are my reasons?" "do they make sense, or am I just getting swept up in the hype?". Of course, hype situations occur in science too. Look at hoaxes. And at the many fads that occur in science history.

I do love science, and the objective (if it exists :ph34r: ), but I realize that it's not perfect. Used to argue that it was, until it became obvious that was wrong.



i'm interested to read your personal opinion on this matter, but also will warn that my attention span for this thread is extremely limited, so if i don't reply again... sorry

INTP :p

[hitomirou]

When it comes to Bach, the form is the content. That's what we love him for. The beauty of form.

[nonrandian]

this may not be the correct forum for this thread; regardless, i press onwards...

i've been thinking a lot lately about, and trying to also evaluate the validity of, a double standard that i personally employ for making judgments about creative clout and genius. i'm wondering if others here operate similarly.

for the sake of brevity, i'll illustrate via example.

if a painter or a musician can put out a finished product every couple of days, i have no respect for them whatsoever, and will likely sneer at their work (privately). i just don't consider mass production to be at all compatible with true creativity.

the key there, i've realized, is that i consider their work to be all about form, and lacking in meritorious content. so, you have comprehended some sort of "form" for a landscape painting, and are able to pound out an oil painting to that effect for each episode on a pbs television series? your work is worthless! this is my pithy internal monologue on the matter.

similarly with musical compositions that are entirely instrumental, i am quite skeptical of artists that are extremely prolific over a short period of time. bach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach), as one example, gets no respect from me. his works are perfect form-wise, but in my opinion they have no real value because their content is meaningless (in other words, because the musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake of the form). it is even the case that i have no respect in general for classical composers who are not especially prolific, if their pieces seem to me to be focused on form rather than content.

so, there seem to be two elements at work here- my scoffing at their reliance on form when it comes to creativity, and in most cases the speed with which they create. indeed, if i know that an artist slaves over their work, i am inclined to initially give their genius the benefit of the doubt, until such time as it may become obvious that they struggle from ineptitude.

however, in other arenas it is those very same two things (intuitive grasp of form to such a perfect degree that correlations about usefulness and innate qualities are consistently made, and speed in production) that win my respect, and incline me to suspect that they have some sort of genius.

for example, a musician who composes pieces that have vocals and instrumentals can be as prolific as they like- as long as it's not pointless pop music, i generally highly respect them as long as the relationship between the instruments and the words seems cohesive, and the words are saying something worthwhile.

chopin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin) is my favorite composer, and he was extremely prolific. he obviously has an excellent grasp of form, but as the "tonal poet" his pieces subject the form to the content, and that is precisely why i have an immense love for his works.

say i am in a bio-organic chemistry, or quantum mechanics class with someone new to the subject. if they are able to quickly grasp overall structures, patterns, and forms, then quickly present a handful of further implications based on that understanding, i suspect them of genius. they can be pointing out simple implications- mere reiterations of the thing we have already learned (i say reiterations to underscore a similarity to formatic musical composition- and one example here would be that they understood one metabolic pathway that we are studying, and are able to then immediately make inferences about the nature of enzyme structure) - and it doesn't matter, i will still be inclined to consider them highly intelligent, and to suspect them of what amounts to 'creative genius' in that field.


perhaps at this point, you're thinking 'duh, elfsprin. right and left brain differences are being reiterated here.' and i've considered that, but i don't think the issue is really that simplistic. the thing is, in both the arts and in the sciences, i tend to respect those who speak from both 'minds' or sides of the brain, i think that's the key to understanding why i respect some, but not others.

what's interesting is that commanding both hemispheres generally results in completely different behaviors and modus operandi, depending on which discipline you are working at the time.

so, my question bit. is this really obvious to everyone here? and i making a pointless point? do others have this same double standard for accessing and respecting genius based on the discipline you're encountering, or do you apply the same standard across all disciplines (ex. do you love bach for his form)?

i am quite curious.

Yes, i do love bach. In fact, he's one of my favorites. Not all of his works are magnificent..., but to me, it is undeniable that some of them are. Further, to me... i think that it might even oft be necessary to create many works to find a few of true brilliance.

For example, take any band, or musician.... very, very few of them will have many, many songs that are all, in their entirety, great.... not even including unpublished, or unreleased works. This should be obvious anytime the average album is purchased (as if anyone still does that, heh). [though, indeed, this might often be due to the way in which the music industry functions]. Still, what about one-hit wonders? There are many of them, but usually accompanied by 10 other shitty songs.

Also, I could work for years on a song. Bach might work for a day. That does not necessarily make my song better than his, either, i think. In that case, his form, as you suggest, might be all that is required to overcome my abilities (by far). Sure, you could respect me more for putting more work into my song than bach did, but i don't personally believe that that makes my song any better.

[nonrandian]

One of several greats.

Air on the G String

[Fichtenbaum]

Let's just step back a second...forget about form and paradigms. The problem with Bach is that his irritating staccato has all the aesthetic of listening to a bag of popcorn going in the microwave (or better yet, those stove-top Jiffy Pop things...the kernels hitting the aluminum sound JUST like a harpsichord).

[teleforce]

not sure if this has been pointed out already, but bach and chopin are from different musical eras. i can't speak with much knowledge on the subject, but it seems to me that it's kind of like comparing proto-renaissance with high renaissance art, or impressionism with expressionism or whatever. there will be stylistic as well as conceptual differences, but this speaks nothing of genius. artists will always be a part of their time, and art evolves.

i think there's beauty and meaning in form, and it makes more sense to me to gauge genius through form as "content" can be rather subjective and varying among individuals. this isn't to say that i don't appreciate "content"--i do, immensely. however, show two people one piece of art and it's likely that their interpretations of "content" will not be the same. this is how it is less reliable from a formal point of view (sorta goes without saying, hah). form is technical and excellence in form/craft is harder to dispute. ultimately i think that form and content are inseparable as form is the presentation of content in a way.

when it comes to music, i usually focus most of my attention on either the form or content, depending on the style. i appreciate music that's technically superb as well as music that resonates with me emotionally. actually i may be more of an "emotional content" listener nowadays.

[Ferrus]

not sure if this has been pointed out already, but bach and chopin are from different musical eras. i can't speak with much knowledge on the subject, but it seems to me that it's kind of like comparing proto-renaissance with high renaissance art, or impressionism with expressionism or whatever. there will be stylistic as well as conceptual differences, but this speaks nothing of genius. artists will always be a part of their time, and art evolves.
Yes, exactly they composed at times when the standards of art were very different - Chopin in an era where, similar to our own, the creative effort of an individual was more important than the 'form' it took, Bach was very much in the opposite era (these applied to the other arts too).

Bach's Tocata and Fugue is one of the glories of the baroque movement.

[elfsprin]

Bach's Tocata and Fugue is one of the glories of the baroque movement.

yes, but baroque music makes me want to punch someone in the face.

[Ferrus]

yes, but baroque music makes me want to punch someone in the face.
Really? I tend to associate that with the worst excesses of the Classical period.

[nonperson]

Do you think JS loved squirrels as much as dear old Bob?

[fripping]

bob ross noooooooooooooo *dives away from exploding school bus* *catches little bird nest in extended baseball glove*

[kuranes]

I value "illustration" for its craft, and "fine art" for a number of things, which can also include "craft". I can understand how there is more feeling in a Van Gogh or Klee, or Munch than someone like Mondrian, but still like Mondrian. While it is true that people who are prolific with their creations are probably more likely to generate crap, I'm not sure that it's a rule etched in stone, and I don't use it as a primary filter.

As far as "genius" that's a complex question, and ( as others have said ) there's a lot of things that only approach that level that are still to be appreciated. There are different kinds of creativity and maybe different kinds of genius, too. http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/other-psychology-topics/9084-different-kinds-creativity.html

I'm unfamiliar with Bob Ross, but I think I know the kind of thing you're getting at. Thomas Kinkade is not that prolific, I suppose, but he cranks out a hefty volume by some standards, and is all technique with a kind of saccharine feeling. Interesting to read him defend himself and his POV in this article.
http://www.susanorlean.com/articles/art_for_everybody.html

[elfsprin]

Really? I tend to associate that with the worst excesses of the Classical period.

well, i should clarify. baroque music bugs me in the same way that non-ironic mustaches bug me, whereas the classical excesses you speak of bug me in the same way as mullets do.

i wanted to pass this on, for anyone who is interested enough in the question of form v. content to read it through. i was actually unaware that kandinsky wrote on this same issue; while reading kandinsky can often cause grimaces to rise unbidden, it still might be worth a pass.

On the problem of form (http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/kandinskytext5.htm).

text excerpts (http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/06autumn/short.htm) for items that are not available online (http://books.google.com/books?id=R_2wIujisH4C&pg=PA343&lpg=PA343&dq=kandinsky+content+and+form&source=bl&ots=pxtIEMx2ck&sig=lRxJGugFPxRSZTRIZOfNLHvOG10&hl=en&ei=onVwSqmRFILYNuuN5NcI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3) (such as his essay 'content and form') can be found here. i personally am particularly drawn in by the sentiment that if a writer were to put a period in a nonsensical place, "Kandinsky writes that the reader 'has suddenly been transformed into a spectator [my emphasis]', as the point appears in a clean part of the page. 'He says farewell to the now insane punctuation mark and sees before him a graphic and painterly sign' ..." as it touches on the connections i see between this question of form v. content and the writings from heidegger.


a little cultural background (http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/kandinsky.html) for his (http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/) writing.

edit: this bit i had read, a part from 'concerning the spiritual in art' called 'the language of form and colour (http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/kandinskytext3.htm#6).' worth a perusal.

[nonperson]

But what about the squirrels?

Puts on O Mensch bewien' dein' Sunde groB on the CD and goes to look for some nuts and oil paints..........

[elfsprin]

fine. (http://www.clipser.com/watch_video/208)

JC clearly did not love squirrels as much as mr. ross. when did he transform fishies into nuts for their benefit? never.


edit:

oh wait... JS.

he never did that either, so yeah.

[stuck]

Reading this and loving it. I wanted to respond as I went, because I'll get overwhelmed.



then i started thinking about what the 'intuitive scientific revelation' would have as its equivalent in the arts or in music- would it be imagination? how could something you very quickly imagine be conveyed to other people, in the same way that an insight into science can be conveyed quickly through words?


I have gotten these from pieces of music from other composers, and I have coded them into pieces of music. I have had flashes of musical insight that have taken me decades to work on.



Genius is where you find it and one of the great pleasures of music is there's lots of genius out there to enjoy. It's best to keep and open mind and look for genius. Don't preordain it because then you'll miss a lot of it.

The best thing about music is that different, brilliant genres can easily contradict each other, and share literally no qualities. (other than being organsized sound)

edit: removed something because became annoyed with self




1) In the case of your scientist friend who grasps concepts and extrapolates from them quickly and easily, would it not also be fair to say that (at least for them) the well-established theory they have managed to extrapolate to is still new and revolutionary to them. Even if it is just in your subconscious, there is still a recognition that this individual has come up with an entirely new (to them) theory on their own (despite the fact that the scientific world has know this theory for many years). This is essentially the same mechanism that creates the suspicion of genius in a revolutionary artist, isn't it?


+1.
Yeah, sure feels like it. That's why you fish in the deepest waters you can (to quote David Lynch), to catch a big one that nobody has caught before. Sometimes you gotta go way out to the middle of the ocean.

[goes back to reading]

[stuck]

I wish we were talking about Bach more.

I think a comparison between a scientific genius and an artistic genius would have to account for the vastly different nature of the science and art worlds. In science, there is progress towards consensus, however fractured it may be. Things like ICs get invented and become a platform for other technology, which allows more simulations and experiments. Nobody is really using an abacus anymore.

In the art world, it happens all the time that artists dig up the "dead and obsolete" and use their craft. Any illusion of progress in art, especially music, is temporary. The biggest thread that exists in "Western Art" music is "common practice", but people, like me, still find Machaut and Palestrina relevant.

There's a grey area of composers who end up using scientific ideas in music. Especially around the middle of the 20th century, Stockhausen was working on 'unifying' several elements of music through serialism, which has an odd parallel to Einstein's failed attempt at a GUT. Xenakis is another good example. I would say these people are examples of composers using the fruits of a strong scientific framework.

However, a parallel revolution that was happening in jazz, at the same time, had much more to do with Bach. Dizzy and Bird used to read Bach scores on long train rides. There's a famous story of Bird shedding to a Wagner record. Arguably, the music they created was more 'relevant' than 'Art Music' of the time. That's beyond my point. I'm trying to point out the vast discontinuity between valid art forms.

So, if you talk about 'content' in music, you have to check your shit to make sure you aren't dragging in a big set of inappropriate ideas and ideals. That's the biggest problem for understanding music. Because we have the luxury of such a body of work as the 'common practice' period (Bach to Wagner), people assume that it has a large chunk of objective reality. It doesn't.

To have any kind of clarity, you'd have to define exactly what it is you're hearing as 'content' in Chopin. I'd wager it's actually just attractive, lyrical melodies over compelling chords. The problem is that, in Bach, those melodies exist, but they often become the form. His particular, conspicuous genius was taking the rules of renaissance polyphony and simplifying them to where they could achieve a circular perfection through a duality of his own refining. Simply said, he helped codify tonality as much or more than anyone else.

He didn't stop there, being the incredibly clever person he was. If you listen to the Musical Offering (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQWsOG7IJA0) and Art of the Fugue (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vacZrMF32Y&feature=related), you hear the type of complexity he was headed towards. It's much deeper than his imitators (including Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schostakovich...), including logical consequences of manipulations of his basic materials which have never been achieved since. That's Bach. He made musical systems which still stand as some of the closest mankind has ever gotten to the purity of systems like logic or mathematics. It'd be normal to assume that he did this at the expense of melody. I don't hear it like that, at all. His melodies haunt me like Chopin's melodies.

Baroque music simplified Renaissance music, and Classical music simplified Baroque music, both in the interest of building more robust and complex structures.

/rant

[elfsprin]

I do love science, and the objective (if it exists :ph34r: ), but I realize that it's not perfect. Used to argue that it was, until it became obvious that was wrong.


my opinion on how subjective science is, as a branch of human inquiry, is a bit more extreme even than what you've said here. i just found out that TED talks are available as free podcasts in iTunes, and went over board and got them all. today, i watched this old one from Dawkins (2005) for the first time. it was so appropriate to our recent exchange that i had to post it. my opinion of the 'objective nature' of science is very in line with what he has to say here (http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html).






rant

i fully intend to reply, but am out of time for the day. suffice to say for now: i liked your post quite a bit.

[Kazan]

"the universe is not only queerer than we have supposed, it is queerer than we can suppose".

that quote made my day.

also, stuck at bronze, nice post.

EDIT: The quote was from the Dawkins video

[nonrandian]

Let's just step back a second...forget about form and paradigms. The problem with Bach is that his irritating staccato has all the aesthetic of listening to a bag of popcorn going in the microwave (or better yet, those stove-top Jiffy Pop things...the kernels hitting the aluminum sound JUST like a harpsichord).

On the contrary, let's do step back for a second. You are judging his work subjectively in an analytic way.

I am judging it subjectively in an aesthetic way.

There is a difference. Music is meant for aesthetic appreciation. If you care to provide to me a reason that it should be analyzed in any other way, let alone subjectively in any other way... so much that you can no longer appreciate it, or at the very least respect it aesthetically... please share your rationale. Until then, no.

[elfsprin]

i did say i fully intended to reply... it's just going to happen in pieces after ridiculous delays. nice.


I wish we were talking about Bach more... in Bach, those melodies exist, but they often become the form. His particular, conspicuous genius was taking the rules of renaissance polyphony and simplifying them to where they could achieve a circular perfection through a duality of his own refining. Simply said, he helped codify tonality as much or more than anyone else. ... He made musical systems which still stand as some of the closest mankind has ever gotten to the purity of systems like logic or mathematics. It'd be normal to assume that he did this at the expense of melody. I don't hear it like that, at all.

i appreciate what you're saying about bach and don't contest any of the facts you've presented; i may not consistently agree with the implied valuations you personally give to those things, but i think that's ok.

i have studied bach, having played piano for 23 years and having a strong background in musical education whether it be formal/classroom or personal (history, theory, avid audiophile in my own time, pianist, chorale, etc.). i don't go out of my way to listen to bach, and i'm certainly not exceptionally familiar with his catalogue (ie. i can't name his various pieces, beyond the most famous, though i've had a lot of exposure).

why did i pick on him then, you ask? well, it's interesting. as an example, i am a member at last.fm and on that site you can listen to things like 'bela bartok radio' where you not only hear bartok songs, but songs from other 'similar' artists. i minimize my last.fm window and go about my business, often recognizing tracks but also often hearing things for which i cannot name the artist or composer. here's the interesting part. without knowing who the composer was, every single time a bach piece has come up i have felt aversion or dislike for it, with the shining exception of cello suite #1. i didn't know they were bach pieces. my dislike was great enough for me to stop what i was doing and open up the browser window in order to ban the track from ever playing again on a radio station i listen to.

i ban lots of things i don't care to hear again- bach is not the only artist in my banned tracks listing. however, he is unique in the fact that without knowing it's him, i will ban all his tracks (minus the shining exception, which is on my favorites list). clearly, there is something about bach that i don't like, and the trend is not distorted by simple prejudice (as i don't know it's him beforehand... unless there's some sort of unconscious residual memory at work, which i could see being true perhaps).

hence, he became my musical example and subject for analysis when i started dissecting my preference-knee-jerk-reactions. i can logically agree with everything you have said here, and it's not going to change the fact that i don't like him. i think it's a worthwhile pursuit to be comfortable enough with my prejudices, irrational or otherwise, to admit to them and rip them apart to find their root causes- and then ask if anyone else is able to do similar things with their own preferences, and to see if those root causes are perchance the same from one person to the next. and as much as some people will disdain me for it, i don't really care that though i spend the majority of my time eradicating the irrational from my life, i still have prejudices that may be irrational. i've finally relaxed enough, in my late twenties, to choose meh over oh-my-god-must-research-and-resolve. personally, i don't think my dislike of bach is irrational at all; however, i have yet to communicate in a successful fashion why i say i can't stand him and therefore i think it's valid for everyone else to accuse me of irrationality pending further explanation.


enough apologetics! i disagree with the valuations you assign to the points you name, and i'll here say why in poorly worded fashion; hmm, perhaps i'll even be lazy and allude via analogy.

joyce is an author whose works i can enjoy (ie. dubliners is pretty OK), but whom for the most part i have a problem with (again, partly because he is so popularly acclaimed). finnegan's wake is the only book i have ever opened and not finished, and i've read a lot of books. i made it three pages into FW. what joyce was doing in FW is similar to what i see bach doing for music. because joyce's efforts are, in my opinion, intrinsically at odds with the 'nature' or 'function' of literature (obscuring language or personalizing it to a point where it can no longer successfully and directly communicate anything to a third party), in my college days i could often be found sitting in class, making all the joyce aficionados hate me by arguing that when he wrote FW, joyce was not acting as an author and did not deserve to be considered as such. FW ceased, in my opinion, to be a book and instead became the sigil of a theory. i mean that as a piece, its nature is more akin to that of a sculpture than a piece of literature, because it suggests concepts or implies its thesis in a way that is more abstract than the label of 'literature' allows.

as a sigil, it certainly communicates (as one can read it and begin to comprehend his theory and comment upon it). however, in my opinion it is invalid to consider it a book/piece of literature, as the 'words' therein cannot accomplish any communicative purpose. FW is not a book, it's a concrete representation of a theory that indirectly/abstractly communicates with a third party, not through the words but through an abstract meta-analysis of its form. rather than bringing in sculpture again, i'll say that in this way, FW is much closer in its nature to being validly labeled as free verse poetry (as it suggests the theory it represents rather than laying out in concrete terminology the axioms or conclusions of the theory itself in any directly linguistic fashion) than prose or a piece of fiction literature. if i considered only FW and Ulysses i would in fact conclude (to the chagrin of many) that joyce had a great mind for symmetry and mapping, but that he was a shitty author. :)

grant that bach codified tonality in an unprecedented fashion, and that this was a giant step forward for music. i will grant that. in my opinion, this has nothing to do with bach as a composer. i can't think of a better word, so i'll say it has to do with bach as a great musical theorist, which i do think he was. but i think, as great as that theory might have been, that then repeatedly embodying that theory in musical scores was an epic fail in the same way that FW was an epic fail. only part of that fail belongs to the creators though - there's an epic fail on the part of everyone else who, for example, goes on insisting that FW is a great piece of literature. no, it is not. it blows. the end. interesting and great commentary on the nature of language, conducted with such elegance that it even mimics free-verse poetry in its method of communication and thereby achieves a beautiful repetition and correlation between the point it makes and the very way that it is structured and composed? yep, i could agree that it's that. but that is not synonymous with 'great literature.' sure, i've flipped through it over the years and found sentences that i can appreciate for being quite clever, but those individual instances do nothing to change my overall evaluation of the piece as a whole.

they both (bach, joyce) in my opinion come down to the fact that structure or form was the true subject at hand, and (however abstractly) it was the job of FW or one of bach's pieces to communicate something about that form or structure to an audience, and in neither case (in my opinion, which i again am fine with people not sharing: just elucidating here, not attempting to 'convince' anyone of anything) were the words on the page or the melodies allowed to say something on their own; just as the 123 or however-many-characters-it-is long word on the first page of FW can communicate nothing to a reader but on a meta level you can say that joyce was trying to represent items in reality via language in the least-human-edited-way-possible and that that is interesting, bach's pieces come across to me as lifeless and mute in and of themselves but can become interesting when you step back to a meta level and see that the melody was the form, or that a piece was mathematically perfect, etc. etc. i don't see joyce as having value as an author, i see him having value as a theorist. i don't see bach having value as a composer, but as a musical theorist. i personally don't think this is a trite distinction, because i like fine distinctions :) i occasionally find instances in both - sentences or melodies - that capture my interest on their own, but my personal overall opinion remains unchanged.

and that's the painfully long explanation of what i think of bach. again in my opinion: just as in FW, which piece intends to communicate something that has nothing to do with what the words are saying in such a drastic fashion that it ceases to merit the 'literature' label and become something else, in bach's pieces the notes, silences and melodies are not there to say anything on their own- they're there to collectively say something else and are thereby robbed of their voices. i object to this strongly. just as i think it was fraudulent of joyce to publish more than three pages of FW under the guise of book form and that FW is a crap piece of literature, i find bach to be a somewhat less-than-impressive composer whom, based on my opinions of the essential nature and function of music, it can be detrimental to appreciate 'as a composer' and whom should be primarily appreciated with the 'theorist' label forcibly borne in mind.

[MacGuffin]

I love Dubliners.

[elfsprin]

I love Dubliners.

the first time i read it i really loved it (freshman year of college), but i've read it several times since then and have liked it less each time. i'm not sure why that is, actually. i was prompted to return to it the first time because i remembered having been enamored with it to a very high degree, perhaps it was an overblown expectation of still finding it at that level of greatness that caused my subsequent heightened dislike?

i can't recall- one of the stories in there is about the drinking guy who comes home and his child provokes the guy into beating him rather than his mother, correct? i still find that story extremely potent.

[MacGuffin]

the first time i read it i really loved it (freshman year of college), but i've read it several times since then and have liked it less each time. i'm not sure why that is, actually. i was prompted to return to it the first time because i remembered having been enamored with it to a very high degree, perhaps it was an overblown expectation of still finding it at that level of greatness that caused my subsequent heightened dislike?

i can't recall- one of the stories in there is about the drinking guy who comes home and his child provokes the guy into beating him rather than his mother, correct? i still find that story extremely potent.
Isn't that the way with all art? You can never recapture the way you saw/heard/felt something that first time. You can still enjoy it, but the pathways in your brain aren't being lit afire.

[elfsprin]

Isn't that the way with all art? You can never recapture the way you saw/heard/felt something that first time. You can still enjoy it, but the pathways in your brain aren't being lit afire.

for me personally, that's not usually how it works with literature, sculpture or music, actually (though that is what happens generally with paintings and architecture). i reread my favorite books and listed to my favorite music on repeat constantly, and it's very rare that they lose their potency.

i also go back and reread books i initially found completely unpalatable, and perhaps 90% of the time if i've waited long enough, they end up being either all-time favorites or at least very enjoyable reads. dostoevsky's the idiot and demons are great examples of this. the first attempt was made for them when i was about 12, and it was too early.

pieces that i truly detest i rarely find actually unpalatable, so that unpalatable marker works quite well as an indicator of future greatness :)

[MacGuffin]

for me personally, that's not usually how it works with literature, sculpture or music, actually (though that is what happens generally with paintings and architecture). i reread my favorite books and listed to my favorite music on repeat constantly, and it's very rare that they lose their potency.

i also go back and reread books i initially found completely unpalatable, and perhaps 90% of the time if i've waited long enough, they end up being either all-time favorites or at least very enjoyable reads. dostoevsky's the idiot and demons are great examples of this. the first attempt was made for them when i was about 12, and it was too early.

pieces that i truly detest i rarely find actually unpalatable, so that unpalatable marker works quite well as an indicator of future greatness :)It's never quite that same high for me.

Though I can have that breakthrough you describe. Then I go :stupid: and wonder how I ever missed the delicious.

[PenguinHunter]

. . .i mean that as a piece, its nature is more akin to that of a sculpture than a piece of literature, because it suggests concepts or implies its thesis in a way that is more abstract than the label of 'literature' allows. . .

. . . if i considered only FW and Ulysses i would in fact conclude (to the chagrin of many) that joyce had a great mind for symmetry and mapping, but that he was a shitty author. . .

. . .i don't see joyce as having value as an author, i see him having value as a theorist. i don't see bach having value as a composer, but as a musical theorist. i personally don't think this is a trite distinction, because i like fine distinctions :) i occasionally find instances in both - sentences or melodies - that capture my interest on their own, but my personal overall opinion remains unchanged. . .

Doesn't it make Joyce a literary super-genius then? . . .if he is able to transcend the confines of literary medium (that is, words typed on a page) to convey elements of other mediums, say sculpture, as you suggested for FW. Often those considered to be the great minds of the world are the ones which combine elements of two or more genres/mediums into something new which goes beyond both.

Why can't Joyce (and Bach, I suppose, who I don't know much about) have value as an author (or a composer) and a theorist simultaneously?

Also, what do you consider to be great literature, by your own definition of the term?

[MacGuffin]

Doesn't it make Joyce a literary super-genius then? . . .if he is able to transcend the confines of literary medium (that is, words typed on a page) to convey elements of other mediums, say sculpture, as you suggested for FW. Often those considered to be the great minds of the world are the ones which combine elements of two or more genres/mediums into something new which goes beyond both.

Why can't Joyce (and Bach, I suppose, who I don't know much about) have value as an author (or a composer) and a theorist simultaneously?

Also, what do you consider to be great literature, by your own definition of the term?
Perhaps if you go too far outside the chosen medium you fail at the medium itself?

[elfsprin]

Doesn't it make Joyce a literary super-genius then? . . .if he is able to transcend the confines of literary medium (that is, words typed on a page) to convey elements of other mediums, say sculpture, as you suggested for FW. Often those considered to be the great minds of the world are the ones which combine elements of two or more genres/mediums into something new which goes beyond both.

Why can't Joyce (and Bach, I suppose, who I don't know much about) have value as an author (or a composer) and a theorist simultaneously?

Also, what do you consider to be great literature, by your own definition of the term?

again, i intend to reply but am busy at work right now. i wanted to post this bit for general consideration in the meantime. these are the first two pages (http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/) of FW, and a link to the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake) entry with quotes from joyce about how meaningful, serious and relevant FW was:


1.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-
linsfirst loved livvy.

**

2.

What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-
gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu
Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still
out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-
pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie
Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod's brood, be me fear!
Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-
killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired
and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-
solvers! What true feeling for their's hayair with what strawng
voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the
duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and
body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of
soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks
of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if
you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the
pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.
Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen's mau-
rer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofar-
back for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers
or Helviticus committed deuteronomy (one yeastyday he sternely
struxk his tete in a tub for to watsch the future of his fates but ere
he swiftly stook it out again, by the might of moses, the very wat-
er was eviparated and all the guenneses had met their exodus so
that ought to show you what a pentschanjeuchy chap he was!)
and during mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edi-
fices in Toper's Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the
banks for the livers by the Soangso. He addle liddle phifie Annie
ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part
inher. Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in
grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like
Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-
les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the
liquor wheretwin 'twas born, his roundhead staple of other days
to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth
of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from

[stuck]

I'll just say a couple things...

Great literature and great music is a big cultural guess, at best. You're certainly entitled to your opinion. You may be a little out of step with the prevailing opinion of the oversoul, but there have certainly been periods in history when people didn't like Bach.

The other point I have is that theory almost always trails art. Most great "composers" are great theorists. They are one and the same.

[elfsprin]

oh, relevance! your comment about theorists and composers being one and the same really struck me, my instinct is to nay say but i can definitely see several points on your side of that argument. interestingly, i'm a fan of the MNArtists group on facebook, and they just posting a link to this (http://glasstire.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3702&Itemid=74) right after your post. i perused and it seemed like something you might also enjoy.

[stuck]

Interesting.

I'll supply my own countertheory.

Theory leads music. Examples- Xenakis and his black box. Henry Cowell and his new notations. Varese pushing for new instruments. All of microtonality was done with the idea of finding new tone colors that were unheard.

I think both situations exist simultaneously. Many composers are theorists, many are not, sometimes technology leads to music, sometimes theory leads to music, sometimes the opposite for both-people will simply 'work' with whatever they have and then let someone else figure it out.

I have a feeling that sometimes, artists don't care enough to attempt to verbalize their technique, they'd rather just let the music be itself.

[blue willow]

I'm unfamiliar with Bob Ross, but I think I know the kind of thing you're getting at. Thomas Kinkade is not that prolific, I suppose, but he cranks out a hefty volume by some standards...

Ok kiddies - just to clarify: Bob Ross is awesome! The man is a television genius. Come on - how can you not like happy little trees? It's not about the art - it's about the process. I can tell you this: nothing can put me to sleep on a weekday afternoon when I have the flu faster than Mr. Ross.

[Will2009]

I wish we were talking about Bach more.

I think a comparison between a scientific genius and an artistic genius would have to account for the vastly different nature of the science and art worlds. In science, there is progress towards consensus, however fractured it may be. Things like ICs get invented and become a platform for other technology, which allows more simulations and experiments. Nobody is really using an abacus anymore.

In the art world, it happens all the time that artists dig up the "dead and obsolete" and use their craft. Any illusion of progress in art, especially music, is temporary. The biggest thread that exists in "Western Art" music is "common practice", but people, like me, still find Machaut and Palestrina relevant.

There's a grey area of composers who end up using scientific ideas in music. Especially around the middle of the 20th century, Stockhausen was working on 'unifying' several elements of music through serialism, which has an odd parallel to Einstein's failed attempt at a GUT. Xenakis is another good example. I would say these people are examples of composers using the fruits of a strong scientific framework.

However, a parallel revolution that was happening in jazz, at the same time, had much more to do with Bach. Dizzy and Bird used to read Bach scores on long train rides. There's a famous story of Bird shedding to a Wagner record. Arguably, the music they created was more 'relevant' than 'Art Music' of the time. That's beyond my point. I'm trying to point out the vast discontinuity between valid art forms.

So, if you talk about 'content' in music, you have to check your shit to make sure you aren't dragging in a big set of inappropriate ideas and ideals. That's the biggest problem for understanding music. Because we have the luxury of such a body of work as the 'common practice' period (Bach to Wagner), people assume that it has a large chunk of objective reality. It doesn't.

To have any kind of clarity, you'd have to define exactly what it is you're hearing as 'content' in Chopin. I'd wager it's actually just attractive, lyrical melodies over compelling chords. The problem is that, in Bach, those melodies exist, but they often become the form. His particular, conspicuous genius was taking the rules of renaissance polyphony and simplifying them to where they could achieve a circular perfection through a duality of his own refining. Simply said, he helped codify tonality as much or more than anyone else.

He didn't stop there, being the incredibly clever person he was. If you listen to the Musical Offering (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQWsOG7IJA0) and Art of the Fugue (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vacZrMF32Y&feature=related), you hear the type of complexity he was headed towards. It's much deeper than his imitators (including Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schostakovich...), including logical consequences of manipulations of his basic materials which have never been achieved since. That's Bach. He made musical systems which still stand as some of the closest mankind has ever gotten to the purity of systems like logic or mathematics. It'd be normal to assume that he did this at the expense of melody. I don't hear it like that, at all. His melodies haunt me like Chopin's melodies.

Baroque music simplified Renaissance music, and Classical music simplified Baroque music, both in the interest of building more robust and complex structures.

/rant

Wow. Goddamn that was a great post, stuck at bronze. You clearly have a passion for and great knowledge about music. Not only that, but you are also obviously a great thinker and skilled writer.

Thanks for writing that. It's a keeper.

[asperger]

...
so, there seem to be two elements at work here- my scoffing at their reliance on form when it comes to creativity, and in most cases the speed with which they create. indeed, if i know that an artist slaves over their work, i am inclined to initially give their genius the benefit of the doubt, until such time as it may become obvious that they struggle from ineptitude.

however, in other arenas it is those very same two things (intuitive grasp of form to such a perfect degree that correlations about usefulness and innate qualities are consistently made, and speed in production) that win my respect, and incline me to suspect that they have some sort of genius.
…


Because you asked for a response I will reply to your original post but because my “vacation time” is running short I'm going to be a sleaze bag and only respond to your first post and skip those that follow.
Further I'm the wrong person to respond to this. In some ways I'm a dumb shit. I make most of my evaluations from the gut and only analyze after someone slaps me up the side of my head and tells me, that's a dumb shit of an evaluation.

And I'm only going to address part of the issue you raise and only in limited breadth. To be specific I find Bach deeply emotional. Listen to the Cantatas, the “musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake” of expressing the ideas and emotions of the text. And he wrote one per week while rehearsing his orchestra and choir for the performance of one he had written the week before. And he did this for years. But I also find the Art of Fugue just as deeply emotional. Thus from my point of view your evaluation of Bach is just plain sucky.

That said, every person's nervous system is different. What taps your foot will not necessarily tap mine and contra-wise. That tells one nothing about the music, it tells one only about the resonances of one's own nervous system. A composer friend of mine who’s musical knowledge sensibilities I deeply respect likes jazz which does nothing at all for me. And if it don't got that swing it don't mean a thing – to me. And when I here jazz critics analyze and praise a work, it's like gibberish to me. (I could say much the same about much of Haydn.) Am I to conclude that these people are tone deaf music sluts or that there are some aesthetic territories I am, for what ever reasons, unable to enter? Personally I go with the latter even if it means I have to forgo that quintessentially human pleasure of looking down my nose at those whose taste does not agree with my own. And that said I do not at all care for Chopin as to my ear the aesthetic territories he explores are the same as those of soap operas. (Bach is avenged!)

So in the end I conclude that the most important artistic judgments are the result of a subjective interaction between ones 'self and the work. Further nothing about the artist, their life, their work habits or their productivity matters in the judgment of the work. And for me judging the artist is basically a matter of factoring quantity of output into the evaluation of the works. But in the end it is still subjective so in my mind is no big whoop. You think Chopin's the greatest, I think Bach is the greatest, you like vanilla, I like chocolate – that's nice, but no big whoop.

But that does not mean that an analysis of the techniques and content of a work is without value, only that one has to be careful about one's attempts to distinguish between the objective and the subjective.

Science is another matter. All I will say is that in terms of evaluating the intelligence of people I rarely get past, “are they sharp enough no to bore me and am I sharp enough not to bore them”. Beyond that, frankly my dear …. I'm the wrong person to ask.

[Jennywocky]

And I'm only going to address part of the issue you raise and only in limited breadth. To be specific I find Bach deeply emotional. Listen to the Cantatas, the “musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake” of expressing the ideas and emotions of the text. And he wrote one per week while rehearsing his orchestra and choir for the performance of one he had written the week before. And he did this for years. But I also find the Art of Fugue just as deeply emotional. Thus from my point of view your evaluation of Bach is just plain sucky.

That said, every person's nervous system is different. What taps your foot will not necessarily tap mine and contra-wise. That tells one nothing about the music, it tells one only about the resonances of one's own nervous system.

All very true.

For me, Bach doesn't necessarily appeal on the more OVERT emotional spectrum, but he still generates a sense of awe. When I play his piano Inventions, for example, I can feel the music moving forward inevitably like clockwork, every note in its place and leading to the next, like a giant complex machine where all the gears are meshed perfectly, inexorably driving toward the inevitable resolution.

On that level, I can appreciate him... and there is some emotion that comes with it, whether a sense of awe, or completion, or thoroughness. But I've heard others state him as a favored composure because their world is often more feeling dominated, and the structure of Bach helps anchor and stabilize them and provide something different.

Me, overall, I tend to favor more Grieg or Stravinsky or at times Wagner (for the sheer overwrought drama, yet with some beautiful themes) or Dukas. I also find a lot of the modern film scores appealing, whether those that are more classically conventional or those like Don Davis' "Matrix" theme music, more atonal and any inherent musical structure self-created.

And I do think a lot of it has to do with how it impacts off the nervous system and what a person feels they need in order to find some stability/peace/revelation, or whatever else. So in that sense it's even tied into personality, which I believe is also driven at least in part by nervous system wiring, which leads to energy gains/drains as well as feelings of peace/anxiety in different situations.

Getting back to the OP, I don't really have an issue with Bob Ross, although he's quite the sight to behold. I scan him as ISFP, and as such he's far more interested in form rather than what lies underneath connecting it all. I could never say there is not a value in learning how to manipulate tactile materials directly, as having worth in themselves, and that's all I believe he is doing. He never intended to go deeper because he's focused on what we see right in front of us. And that's the sort of artistic manipulations that ISFPs seem to drift into -- creating pastiche, rearrange tangible and known items to suggest other shapes and forms. What's funny is that I don't know if I could do what he does, so I find it rather amazing that all of those things can be suggested by just understanding the texture and density and stroke style of applying paint to a canvas without actually having to be aware of all the detail or trying to recreate all the detail within it. It's kind of like chaos, where the details are left to chance but from a distance still resolve into a discernable picture. I'm more into Arisman than Ross, in terms of personal taste (in regards to oils)... but... whatever. And I don't think I'd call Ross "genius," he is more just a producer of work and style rather than making new connections in old mediums, but it doesn't mean he's not good at what he does.

[elfsprin]

And I'm only going to address part of the issue you raise and only in limited breadth. To be specific I find Bach deeply emotional. Listen to the Cantatas, the “musical motifs, the tone, the dynamics, the silences, etc. are all created for the sake” of expressing the ideas and emotions of the text. And he wrote one per week while rehearsing his orchestra and choir for the performance of one he had written the week before. And he did this for years. But I also find the Art of Fugue just as deeply emotional. Thus from my point of view your evaluation of Bach is just plain sucky.

that's cool. here's the thing, though, that i've come to realize plays a major roll in my evaluation:

i am not a creative (in the arts) person. i have artistic and musical skills, but it has much more to do with discovering a formula, or methodology, and following it. this, in my mind, doesn't preclude skill, or emotional content, or breadth or depth, but it does preclude being described as having some kind of creative genius.

i don't have creative genius. i merely find a form to utilize, and work from there, to some amount of success. i've been described here on INTPc as being extremely creative for these (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?29495-some-watercolor-stuff.) threads (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?31782-blank-project), and i strongly object to that. i'm not creative, and i don't deserve to be "honored" as such. i have simply been able to find forms from which i derive my content, and those forms are apparently "keys to success" because people really like what i come up with, in terms of the content.

another thing to note is that i haven't been extremely prolific, but there's no reason i couldn't be: simply pull out the old, trusty form, derive some content ad nauseum, and boom: i'd be prolific. if i cared to do this, i've even had indications that i could make my living that way... selling paintings to businesses and hotels and such, or doing commissioned works for individuals, which i've had offers for.

but... this doesn't interest me. there's no real creativity there, so i'd find my products essentially empty and worthless. like... big deal, i found a form to use over and over and over again, and i can blindly produce different content from it. blah. it's almost completely uninspired.

anyway, this is completely spurious, since it can't be verified one way or another, but i recognize some amount of kindred spirit in bach. my N tells me that he was lucky enough to happen upon some forms that were goldmines, and that he used them over and over and over again to produce content. i just don't respect that in him, the same way that i don't respect it in myself, or in bob ross.

this is different than the lack of respect i have for, as an example, a contemporary pop star. they've also found formulas to follow (lady gaga, as one example), but i don't respect them because of the nature of the forms they use and what those forms themselves derive from... whereas, i have a hard time respecting bach not because of which form he used (seems like a pretty good one/few, actually), but because he had to use one, period.

perhaps no artist, ever, has escaped the use of a small subset of all possible forms informing their content? i think that there must be some who have, and i would honor those individuals for their creative genius.

what do you think about this? feel free to rip it apart.

[stuck]

The form-and-genre-busting genius is one kind of creative genius. I'm not surprised to hear a fascination with it, seeing as the 2nd half of the 20th century invented a whole genre OH THE IRONY- conceptual art- based on just that idea.

Many, many other kinds of geniuses do not care to assail forms. Look at Bob Dylan. He's widely regarded as a genius. Did he start the talking blues? Are his forms groundbreaking? T'ain't the point. Only in finding the point do we understand the genius.

[elfsprin]

i guess i'm very curious- and it's probably been discussed here before but i'm too lazy and drunk to go find out - : do people who work professionally in the arts generally rely on such forms to produce their content?

for the 20th century stuff, are you thinking of someone like andy warhol? i guess i see him as both having some real content to deliver, but also (and more importantly) his works also tend to bore me en masse... because he seems to use the same form over and over again.

bob dylan is someone whom i would not describe as being stuck to a particular form. it seems clear to me that his form wasn't the point, his content was. bach, bob ross, andy warhol... they rely on their form. this is what my N tells me. bob dylan? he didn't rely on his form. he was all content-based and content-driven, and his form was just a happenstance.

i'd like to discover exactly why my N tells me these things for no truly apparent reason. i guess that was the point of this thread in the first place.

[teleforce]

who is and isn't hailed as a "genius" is purely political. i'm outing myself as a total art school stereotype right now but if you think about it throughout history the "geniuses" have mostly been of a certain gender, a certain class, a certain race/culture, etc. same deal with what makes and doesn't make it into the history books and halls of fame. "genius" is a concept i'm no longer compelled by for this reason.

i have thoughts about the OP but i can't get into this now because i'm busy. i'll try to, later. interesting topic.

i remember posting here a long time ago but i forgot what i said...

edit: rofl, typical. i talked about style having nothing on genius. these terms are problematic.

[stuck]

I guess Warhol was a conceptual artist. I think you simply forgive Dylan for his use of form because you enjoy his content.

I think that you probably like 'transcendent' art the best. It's a vestige from the romantic era.


do people who work professionally in the arts generally rely on such forms to produce their content?


yes. i've found that mature artists tend to adapt forms to their creative needs.

and i'm sorry if i'm recycling or contradicting my arguments. multitudes etc

[asperger]

perhaps no artist, ever, has escaped the use of a small subset of all possible forms informing their content? i think that there must be some who have, and i would honor those individuals for their creative genius.

I'm uncomfortable with the word form because of its definition within common practice having to do with the architecture of tonal compositions. I gather that your definition of form is a super set of musical structures that properly includes common practice forms. But before going further I will have to ask you to elaborate on what you mean when you use the term form.

http://crhzfg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pmBBiu-R5WfVK7INAGOkTLOEH_jhBu87q8ViVo4jMmt7sbgEQoQ0FKGXbK9A7BU5062CdqWq24LkO7Jg5HD_b-poydwGbO0MQ/Bob%20Ross.jpg?psid=1
However this image from http://www.hataway.net/ visualizes much of what I have to say and is worth contemplating in that regard -- no kidding.

[elfsprin]

i just opened your reply in-thread for the first time and now i am going to have to gouge out my eyes.

bear with me - i need a moment before i can come post my answer. it may actually be a few moments.

[asperger]

Ok, elfsprin, how about a starter question. Is the crucifiction a form?

[Skinart]

My spin on the OP: What a load of crap. However, you are correct, you do have a double standard.

Your standard for art is crud though. Creativity is mostly about paying attention and searching for forms, then, when you find them, you hang on and don't let go. You store them and collect them and keep looking for more. You mash them together to see what will happen. Creativity is to Experimental Chemistry as forms are to elements.

When creating music, I just listen to what is. I've always got something going in my head, I just turn my attention to it and gradually direct it's flow. Sometimes I think my direction is more about filtering and turning up the gain on some particular part, other times I clearly start with an arbitrary structure and start mutating it, but I'm never certain where I will end up. I'm just fiddling with forms and listening to the result. If it's lame, I move on. If it's cool, I try to memorize it and integrate it.

If I have an instrument, I usually start with some known good patterns to get things going, then let things flow from there and listen for the good stuff. When something good happens, even if it's just for a moment, or a hallucination of what I wanted it to be vs. what actually happened, I stop, rewind and spend the next indefinite period of my life obsessively working at it until I own it, and then I expand on it, using some other forms for translating and transforming until something good happens.

According my studies, Chopin used a similar method. He didn't actually write pieces to be played note for note--or at least that wasn't his style of playing. He had pieces that were loose structural forms and let shit flow in the moment. From my perspective, he was a Jazz pioneer before anyone knew that was going to be cool. That sheet music? It's just one particular iteration of a concept he was continually hammering at.

This paradigm continues in the other arts as well. When drawing or painting there is a lot of just throwing out shapes and pushing them around in a general form toward an idea during the creative stage, and then looking at what happens and culling for the best bits. You get inspired by yourself. You learn new techniques by paying attention to accidental movements, liking the result, then figuring out how to replicate them. Once you have armed yourself with your forms, you compose them in some manner that moves toward your goal.

With time and practice though, the forms come more easily, and you gradually build a toolkit to work with. The better you are, the better your toolkit, the more problems you can solve without the mooshing phase. Or perhaps you just get faster at mentally twiddling your Legos?

There's an old story about some famous painter whose name I don't recall in old age. He was commissioned to do a painting for a book cover or some such. Like most of the successful artists of the period before royalties, he was a hard negotiator. After negotiating for a considerable sum, he banged the thing out in 15 minutes, and it matched the specs they had agreed on. The client was irritated and commented on the short amount of time vs. the large amount of money. The painter replied he wasn't be paid for the 15 minutes of work so much as the 75 years of experience that enabled him to be so expeditious.

Prolific output may not mean skill, but it certainly encourages the creation of skill. You cannot be a truly good artist without also being a prolific one. This is different than the sciences but in the opposite manner than the one by which you judge them.

[asperger]

According my studies, Chopin used a similar method. He didn't actually write pieces to be played note for note--or at least that wasn't his style of playing. He had pieces that were loose structural forms and let shit flow in the moment. From my perspective, he was a Jazz pioneer before anyone knew that was going to be cool. That sheet music? It's just one particular iteration of a concept he was continually hammering at.


It's not clear to me if by “my studies” you are referring to original research on your part or sources you can cite. Would you mind clarifying the basis of your assertions?

[Skinart]

Yeah. I was interested in a girl about 15 years ago with a hard on for Chopin. I spent some time learning why. This included multiple trips to the library and reading a couple bios and critical analyses of his work etc. Given the amount of time that has passed, I couldn't even begin to tell you what my sources were. I just went to the card catalog and started with 'Chopin' and kept going until I had a pile of books. Then I started reading and took note of anything interesting. That which I referred to was probably the most interesting and inspirational thing I rand across, hence it has stayed with me over the years.

[proverbs6:13]

I have no idea where to start.
Two kinds of form: retroactive and schematic. The crucification is retroactive, the trinity of arms + head, the halo over the cross being symbolic of the sky with the "top" of the cross being mid-heaven. But of course at the time this symbolism did not exist it was just a way to crucify someone. Schematic was when Saint Peter asked to be crucified upside down.
Most art forms are retroactive but almost every artist, of note, used schematic forms. That means that we are mostly idiots when it comes to talking about art, unless we are making art ourselves. What does a Rothko say to you? Probably nothing it's just colour. But if you spent hours trying to figure out what to paint or what colour the sky actually is or should be then Rothko says something powerful about colour and art.
But what form is his painting? I guess abstract expressionism? Like De Kooning and Pollock? It makes no sense to talk about form unless you can imagine the schema the artist had at their disposal.
So what about Bach und Chopin. Well Bach used forms that were archaic, the reasons for this are many and probably much less romantic than people imagine. He worked in a small area, never traveled to Italy or France. He wrote church music for a backwater audience that had no desire for anything but the old contrapuntal style. He had mouths to feed, he didn't have the musicians, he had very few peers etc. Consider how much he pushed his sons towards the new gallante style and urged them to write popular new music. I think Bach would have liked to have lived in Paris or London, like Handel, and have written hit operas but instead he stayed in Leipzig and wrote cantatas. Anyway, I'm definitely going too in-depth here so I'll move on. Just to say that Bach was not churning out compositions un-artistically just that he had other considerations when choosing his forms. To many this struggle, represented by his dialectic religious belief, that bordered on Catholicism, is highly emotive and artistically satisfying.
Chopin is very unusual, I have my hypothesis but don't have the time to research it. His forms are not new. Mazurkas, Preludes, Valses, Ballades, Sonatas, Nocturnes etc. had all been written before and Chopin was well aware of them. So he wasn't exactly inventing schematic forms. Rather he was subverting them. So that, for example, his Ballades are weird hybrid Sonata forms. Anyway, this all means that Chopin was about as progressive as Bach. Chopin being a Polish immigrant who couldn't properly speak French and never fit into la societe Parisienne but had no place in Poland. To some this struggle makes his music seem overly-sentimental or faux-nostalgic/heroic. To others the subjugation of form to affekt is very intellectually satisfying.
So basically both of them had their schematics and both had their subversive desires. I find it counter-productive to use forms retroactively unless it is done with some intellectual wit, i.e. Chopin was a jazz improviser, so that's my bias.
As to productivity, Joyce wrote four books.

[elfsprin]

i'll be responding to all above soon, sorry for the delay. i really appreciate the responses, but have been in lazy, avoid-all-things mode.

i was also scared to open the thread because of the picture that asperger posted, so i'd rally for having all blame be shared between us both.

anyway, i'd like to throw a couple things out there for immediate consideration.

1. in the three years since i wrote the OP, i think rachmaninoff has come to overshadow chopin as my favorite composer, but my double standard does seem to still be firmly in place.

2. this is another anecdote, and i apologize for how much i've been relying on that, but i'm struggling to find the best wording to convey exactly what i'm getting at without them. if you will, consider all these anecdotes to be the n's i am producing as i travel through a grasshopper function toward expressing my ultimate point clearly:

does anyone else have scenarios in which they are lauded for brilliance or whatever, but internally you're thinking "um... WTF. this is easy and obvious."

i mean something along these lines: say you have to train someone how to troubleshoot something at work, because they have demonstrated time and time again that they have zero troubleshooting instincts/abilities, and they're royally fucking up your life by causing massive data errors or whatever, then just leaving them sitting there for you to deal with later.

say it's as easy as finding a model (easily accessible and easy to find), making yours look like the (validated, working) model, and... well, that's it. it's easy, and it seems obvious.

say you illustrate this for them, and it's like a revelation: they look at you with gooey eyes full of adoration, and again you're thinking: "WTF... stop that. this wasn't brilliant... this was just... FFS DUH."

also say that they continue to fail epically, because they can't seem to wrap their head around the idea of using a simple model to answer basic questions. they keep creating massive data errors, and leaving them there for you to fix. you keep going back to show them exactly how one may move a mouse down half a centimeter, open a model, isolate the answer, and apply it to the data in question.

now, surely you deserve some "credit" for the fact that this Troubleshooting 101 is obvious to you (as it seemingly isn't obvious to everyone else), but isn't it a bit excessive for this to be celebrated by everyone around you as some form of superhuman brilliance? i think it's excessive.

in case this was too vague, i'll just specify that a large part of my job centers around adding XML to raw data, so i have in mind things like "what should the populated attribute for this wrapper be," or "what special entities need to be used in order to create a functioning target.location." finding this out is as easy as opening any neighboring node for edit, and looking at what was done there. and trust me: this is really easy, and once you do it, the answers are really, painfully obvious.

in my mind, this is an extremely mild version of the same point i'm trying to drive at: something you do easily seems mystifying to everyone else in its brilliance, but in reality... all that's there, at the core of it, is some mundane and elementary "formula" or "methodology" that you follow, which produces results.

i'm interested in hearing similar anecdotes from others: things you do produce or do that seem amazing to everyone, but which you arrived at or did according to very mundane, elementary step-by-step processes.

i'll expand later on how this relates to the larger thread topic.

[stuck]

Again, you're looking at art through a lens of your preferences, namely what you consider to be 'good style'. It seems as if your 'good style' means that you, yourself, don't understand exactly how it was constructed. That's fine, but we could probably ruin Chopin and Rach for you by sitting you down and explaining enharmonic modulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation_(music)#Enharmonic_modulation) and secondary dominant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_dominant) chords. Romantics use forms too, they just warp them, similarly to what jazz artists do.

My ear tires of that stuff, thinking "well, they couldn't think of anything better to do than to draw out that gesture some more and pretend like their pain/love was just growing and growing".

Ever heard Verklarte Nacht by Schoenberg?

To diagnose your appreciation of music, I would say that you have an ability to hear some of what's going on. You have found the art that speaks clearly to you, that appeals to exactly how far your ear can go in hearing the manipulations of a theme. This is fine, but then you have made the lamentable error of applying that lens to every other piece of music. If it doesn't have that thing, you don't want it.

I would like to give you my framework, because, in trying to discover the lenses through which works of art I don't understand were composed, I have found that I will always find new and valuable works of music. Every time I think "oh shit, I've reached the end," I find something new that blows my mind.

My view grew from one similar to yours. I was so enamored of that "romantic theme development thing" that I tried to compose like it. I learned how to hear those enharmonic modulations and pivot chords. It didn't end the appreciation for me, but I'm less surprised. I hear elegance when it happens, the manipulations sound mostly 'clever', perhaps how Bach sounds to you.

Who are my favorite romantics right now? Schubert, because his melodies are insane, and Brahms, because he was the cleverest.

I have a second intuitive diagnosis of you. I think that perhaps you might have been an artist- many artists begin their journey waving this flag or that about the relative importance of certain values that are currently under-represented in culture. That energy lasts until their momentum hits the actual thriving culture at large, at which point they begin to reflect the world around them. If they are really good, they will be able to convolve the two impulses and create something for the ages.

[teleforce]

op: aren't you really saying that chopin's form is more efficient in expressing the content that you like?

i don't see content VS form being the issue here. a lot of the time the ideas in art are actually governed by form, so when the forms change, the ideas change too.

basically i don't know shit about classical music, but everyone knows pop music, so i'll use the beatles as an example even though i hate using the beatles as an example for anything: to me this is like saying "the beatles were better than everyone that came before them" (common opinion actually) when really it was "everyone before them" that provided that foundation to build upon and break out of. this is the simplest analogy i can think of.

would chopin still be chopin if bach never was?

sorry if i misread anything but i'm only going by what i remember of the op. i'm still "busy", haha.

[elfsprin]

@ angrystuck

but it's not whether one understands it or not... and form is obviously going to be used in any case, unless we can at some point in the future learn to transmit imagination from one brain to another, or if we could learn to transmit thought without language, etc.

it's really a question of whether the form was the point, or the content was the point. you're going to have both in every case, but imo which one should be granted priority of place changes depending on whether you're talking about the sciences, or the arts. if someone is an artist, i think that the content should be the point, and that the form should be selected to serve the content. in the sciences, it seems to me as though the form is the point, and the content should derive from it.

the anecdote above isn't intended to focus on the understanding of what's going on, so much as i meant it to bring to people's minds examples of "plodding methodology" IRL, and how seemingly brilliant results... like never creating data errors... can often be reduced via procedural analysis to extremely drab and mundane methodologies or formulae.

i suspect that most people can think of examples from their own life where they do this: produce results that others consider stunning, but which derive from ridiculously simply methods. once you've done this a few times, you start being able to intuitively recognize when someone else is doing it, as well. at least, that's been my experience. perhaps this is only the case because i've acquired a well-developed Fi to couple with my Ne; in any case, making such claims about composers from centuries ago is (i acknowledge) completely absurd, but i decided to do it anyway, so that i could provide personal examples and get a conversation going.

i still contend that the examples (bach, bob ross, whoever) aren't the point, and are largely irrelevant. they're just that: examples where i Ne/Fi that this is how they got their results. it doesn't really matter if i'm right or not... because the more basic point remains: that is, the double standard itself, which asserts that content should be subservient to form in the sciences for true genius to be achieved, and that form should be subservient to content in the arts for true genius to be achieved.

i admit that this is all very convoluted in my brain. on the one hand, i think that i have a misbegotten, idealistic fantasy that there must be people out there (with artistic creative genius) who arrive at their results without falling back on such drab, elemental processes.

on the other hand, i don't want to say that i think there are such people, at all, because that would seem to be (clearly) foolish.

perhaps it's the difference between being able to accurately reduce a creative process to one step-by-step method, or a few of them layered upon one another, and having a creative process become irreducible beyond a certain threshhold of complexity that i have in mind. that, too, would be a bit ridiculous, because to be rigorous you'd have to eventually identify some sort of firm number, ie: if you cannot reduce the creative process to below 15 disparate and layered methodologies, then you have verified the presence of creative genius.

i mean, i'm snickering rudely at myself just for having written that, but it's entirely possible that my comprehension of "artistic creativity" is so absurdly flawed that this is really what my argument regarding it would be reduced to.

anyway, keep the critiques coming. also, if anyone wants to take a stab at explaining "the creative process" to me, i'd really appreciate it.

[teleforce]

it's funny, but this does bring to mind a prejudice of mine towards artists who are very critical of other artists' work, especially if within their specialty. if elfsprin had revealed that she was an artist but had no respect for artists who work/create (whichever word is appropriate) in a certain way simply because she could not relate to their process, i probably would've had less respect for her, not as an artist, but as a person. i would consider this a general inability to see the merit of different artistic processes and, in an artist, telling of an actual lack of insight and/or arrogance that is likely jeopardizing their artistic growth. the exception would be clearly accomplished artists who have maybe had a hand in developing the genre of art they dominate/are associated with. still, it is time that determines that.

there's my double standard, i guess. i know that this sort of critical attitude similar to elfsprin's towards art/genius is sometimes existent in very great artists, but i try to not let this affect my ability or desire to experience their art as fully as i possibly can. that is, i separate the person from the artist and i'm less interested in an artist's art philosophy than the art itself-- if the art doesn't... suck. to me.

if someone has a strong opinion on art, though, i'm gonna want to know what they do so i can judge them "properly", in context of their own perspective. then explain how their perspective limits them. it's important to break out of the familiar. similarly i'd like to be aware of my own biases so i can break out of them if it makes sense to me to do so.

edit: idk about "the creative process". there isn't just one. people make art differently and i try to be open-minded when it comes to ways of harnessing creativity.

edit 2: i have nothing against elfsprin or anyone here as a person, nor do i mean to disrespect anyone, if it sounds that way. just spewing my thoughts.

edit 3: if this matters to anyone, i do make art, but i call myself an "illustrator" instead of "artist" 'cause it's a profession and the word avoids the philosophical. that's where i'm coming from.

[proverbs6:13]

Yeah I can relate to the success anecdote. But my experience of that is more negative, in that mostly I lose people, not enlighten them, by leaping to what I think are obvious points about the situation.

I've also had the opposite experience of doing something complex and someone thinking I'm an idiot. In fact that's been happening a lot recently and it really does wonders for self-esteem. This sounds really negative but what I was trying to say is that you can underestimate your abilities very easily. What seems obvious to me is obscure to them and many times, but not often enough, vice-versa.

I think you nailed it with Fi. The true to yourself aspect of Chopin and Rachmaninoff appeals to you as something totally alien and so a form of genius. The maxim about form subservient to content must come from this. I think Ne is probably rebelling against the forms you identify in Bach et al. and Ti is telling you that they are not Fi because you can identify them. My guess would be that if you examined Bach etc. closer you would discover a huge seam of Ti rich content and probably revise your opinion though still nowhere near Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

I like the idea of objective measurement for genius but the problem, as my anecdote at the start points out, is that the mind of creator of the instrument would need to be able to come close to that of the artist. Otherwise, what the instrument might think is stupid is in the eyes of the artist a masterstroke.

My creative process is constant so I don't think I could explain it. Other than to say I have a lot of ideas that nobody would want. Like a piece of music that involves playing Vaughan Williams at half-speed on a tape and having the orchestra jive around like Yngwie Malmsteen. There's at least 15 strata of methodologies there but I doubt anyone would call me a genius.
In general, I'd say the creative process is an advanced form of active interaction with one's environment based off one's dominant function.
This answers your double standard because for an INTP Ti will manifest creatively in structural design, i.e. scientific forms. Be that programming etc. I mean, that for Ti, creativity comes from designing a system that is so sound it will withstand entropy. So the double standard to you is that Fi, which you see as alien is the standard you judge genius by in one field. In the other field, of structural creativity, which appears more creatively accessible to you, you identify Ti as the driving force. Hence, form over content (Ti) and content over form (Fi).

[asperger]

i was also scared to open the thread because of the picture that asperger posted, so i'd rally for having all blame be shared between us both.



Truly, I felt the picture was a very relevant work of meta-art and just as truly I cannot understand what "blame" might possibly be due for my posting it. But to be clear any blame for the posting it belongs entirely to me, noting that should anyone think posting it deserves blame, they are a mindless ass.

[teleforce]

2. this is another anecdote, and i apologize for how much i've been relying on that, but i'm struggling to find the best wording to convey exactly what i'm getting at without them. if you will, consider all these anecdotes to be the n's i am producing as i travel through a grasshopper function toward expressing my ultimate point clearly:

does anyone else have scenarios in which they are lauded for brilliance or whatever, but internally you're thinking "um... WTF. this is easy and obvious."

i mean something along these lines: say you have to train someone how to troubleshoot something at work, because they have demonstrated time and time again that they have zero troubleshooting instincts/abilities, and they're royally fucking up your life by causing massive data errors or whatever, then just leaving them sitting there for you to deal with later.

say it's as easy as finding a model (easily accessible and easy to find), making yours look like the (validated, working) model, and... well, that's it. it's easy, and it seems obvious.

say you illustrate this for them, and it's like a revelation: they look at you with gooey eyes full of adoration, and again you're thinking: "WTF... stop that. this wasn't brilliant... this was just... FFS DUH."

also say that they continue to fail epically, because they can't seem to wrap their head around the idea of using a simple model to answer basic questions. they keep creating massive data errors, and leaving them there for you to fix. you keep going back to show them exactly how one may move a mouse down half a centimeter, open a model, isolate the answer, and apply it to the data in question.

now, surely you deserve some "credit" for the fact that this Troubleshooting 101 is obvious to you (as it seemingly isn't obvious to everyone else), but isn't it a bit excessive for this to be celebrated by everyone around you as some form of superhuman brilliance? i think it's excessive.

in case this was too vague, i'll just specify that a large part of my job centers around adding XML to raw data, so i have in mind things like "what should the populated attribute for this wrapper be," or "what special entities need to be used in order to create a functioning target.location." finding this out is as easy as opening any neighboring node for edit, and looking at what was done there. and trust me: this is really easy, and once you do it, the answers are really, painfully obvious.

in my mind, this is an extremely mild version of the same point i'm trying to drive at: something you do easily seems mystifying to everyone else in its brilliance, but in reality... all that's there, at the core of it, is some mundane and elementary "formula" or "methodology" that you follow, which produces results.

i'm interested in hearing similar anecdotes from others: things you do produce or do that seem amazing to everyone, but which you arrived at or did according to very mundane, elementary step-by-step processes.

i'll expand later on how this relates to the larger thread topic.
i have experienced this, but you start seeing it differently once you realize that the way you solved the problem isn't the only solution. other people will be inclined to solve the problem differently and they may see your solution and marvel at the "form" since they don't understand its corresponding "content". likewise, you may see another person's way of solving (or attempts at solving) a problem and not be able to see past the "form" since you don't understand their "content" or way of thinking. basically there isn't always just one answer to a problem and it's arrogant to assume that yours is the only valid answer, as easy and natural as it may be to you. for another person it would be difficult to do it your way, and you'd likely marvel at something done by someone else if it seemed awesome at the surface, if you didn't understand how simple it was at the core for whatever reason.

maybe this wouldn't apply to your troubleshooting example specifically, but it would with the more open-ended problem-solving that happens in art and a whole bunch of other things.

consider a scenario where you're asked to solve a different problem, one you're not used to solving with your familiar methods. often you'll find that you must adapt your methods to solve the problem. in art, the "problems" and standards of excellence surely differ between cultures and change with the times, and "solutions" of the past always have a hand in shaping the "problems" of the future.

[elfsprin]

it's funny, but this does bring to mind a prejudice of mine towards artists who are very critical of other artists' work, especially if within their specialty. if elfsprin had revealed that she was an artist but had no respect for artists who work/create (whichever word is appropriate) in a certain way simply because she could not relate to their process, i probably would've had less respect for her, not as an artist, but as a person.

yeah, i realized maybe a year ago that i needed to make it clear that i'm essentially operating from an assumption which is the exact opposite of that: i know how i produce art, and i don't think it's anything special. my basic assumption is that there must be something more to real creativity than this simple reductio ad ... formulum. so, i assume that this thing that actually, artistically creative people must have or do is something that's beyond me.

the artists i don't "respect" are the ones in whom i perceive (whether correctly or incorrectly) a fundamental and at times intentional reliance on pedantic methodology. the artists i tend to like the most are those whom i perceive as using form in order to serve the content that they want to deliver.

despite thinking about this off an on for years, i still don't know of any way to concisely and precisely describe why i perceive this in this or that artist... again, i think that that's my Fi/Ne at work. i only just recently (in the last couple of years) came to grasp what Fi really is, so i couldn't properly identify it within myself before that, which seriously hampered my ability to address this topic in a Ti fashion.

anyway, i'm perfectly content to allow that any conclusions reached by my Fi are erroneous. i'm sure i'm "doing it wrong" in many cases, because it's a function that had to be developed intentionally, as opposed to one that came naturally. so, i have no problem with people contesting the various examples i might use.

however, i still there that there must be validity in the double standard itself. it has been identified, isolated and distilled via Ti/Ne, dammit, and i'm sticking to my guns.


Truly, I felt the picture was a very relevant work of meta-art and just as truly I cannot understand what "blame" might possibly be due for my posting it. But to be clear any blame for the posting it belongs entirely to me, noting that should anyone think posting it deserves blame, they are a mindless ass.

alright, i promise to look at it closely and seriously. did he really have to be naked, though?

initially, in answer to a different query: my initial response was that the cross was not a form. but then, i thought about it more and have reconsidered, and need to reconsider it further still.

[stuck]

So what is the content in a Chopin nocturne? Is it the melody? Is the accompaniment the form?

Is the form the harmonic rhythm?

How do you feel about John Kilduff?

[stuck]

I'd like to add that it's brave to come out and lay your preferences on the line.

There's an art to art criticism, and it's a thankless and snarky task. I'm of the opinion that gatekeepers are an unavoidable evil.

What you should do to flesh out your 'layers of methodologies' is actually analyze a couple of pieces. See if it holds up, even informally. I'm sure someone (me) would love to duke it out over the specifics of a chopin prelude or something. Who knows, your ideals of art might be useful. imo, that's the value of criticism, to add context and understanding to pre-existing works of art. The other stuff separating 'art from craft' in your system, that is probably less useful to me, but I'd endure it, especially if it made you write with extra acrimony.

My next question is "can you appreciate genius in works of art you don't like?"

...

"Creative process": you swim out in the deepest waters you can find, trying to let the material speak to you, not trying to force ideas. One idea hits and you like it. You use your methods to develop the idea. You keep listening and listening, perhaps listening to other music, trying to coax the idea out to where you can flesh it out completely. You take frequent breaks in order to free your mind and hear it fresh. It becomes a living, organic thing, quite separate from you and your feeble talents. You try to finish before you polish it into a fine dust. You try to develop new methods to explore, based on hypotheses about art or whatever else.

I do work with the convolution of ideas and methods, always trying to be bold and assert some 'style' or other, based on all the convolutions I've made in the past, everything I've learned, the battles I've won. I try not to refer to my successes too much, knowing that, in the long run, they will overshadow their lesser relatives.

[Skinart]

Creative art is 70% observation, 5% inspiration 10% labor and 15% 'concealing your sources'. Unless you are a famous genius, in which case swap the percentages for observation and 'concealing your sources'.

[Cachao]

I wonder if the real underlying premise could either be distilled to a discussion of how cognitive functions influence your approach to music or whether all music has the potential to be an acquired taste (save maybe Milton Babbitt? Kidding...).

That being said, my favorite composer has always been Ravel. Whether I'm analyzing a piece with a score in front of me, or just listening with my eyes closed in a dark room with a glass of wine, the majority of his pieces strike me as magical. [I wish I knew why that was (or maybe I don't)... maybe some advanced A.I can tell me some day after analyzing a brain scan of me listening to Gaspard de la Nuit.] Over the years, my approach to music has become less T oriented and more F/aesthetically oriented. Ravel has been a steady constant.. as if he transcends any 1 perspective or approach to music. Maybe that's why he took forever to compose a work [to see the same work from many perspectives]? Or maybe he was just constantly trying to reinvent himself/his idiom out of some crazy narcissism... which forced a strong meticulousness to conceptual detail.

And then sometimes... a sublime/lucid performance can make the most banal piece of music come alive. The beauty (or genius) is in the details noticed, whether consciously or not, I suppose.

[elfsprin]

Ok, elfsprin, how about a starter question. Is the crucifiction a form?

ok. the cross is not a form. "crucifixion" is a form... in the sense that it's part of a larger historical trope and (imo) it's being used in the piece you posted to evince very specific premises that the artist holds (just as the nakedness does, as well).

that picture, to my eyes, is a visual syllogism, and specific forms are used to represent each premise.

nothing in the image itself is a form, though.


I have no idea where to start.
Two kinds of form: retroactive and schematic. ... As to productivity, Joyce wrote four books.

just to make sure i'm understanding the two types clearly, would you agree that finnegan's wake is comprised at the foundational level of almost no content, a massive single schematic form (the whole personal language thing) and a vast quantity of instances of retroactive form (all the "discoverable" references to other writers/artists/books/etc.)?



To diagnose your appreciation of music, I would say that you have an ability to hear some of what's going on. You have found the art that speaks clearly to you, that appeals to exactly how far your ear can go in hearing the manipulations of a theme. This is fine, but then you have made the lamentable error of applying that lens to every other piece of music. If it doesn't have that thing, you don't want it.

it may be the case that this is true, but it seems unlikely to me that i'm not hearing thematic manipulations well. i could be wrong.

can you expand on what you're getting at here, and how it relates to the form/content thing?

as an example, i can hear how each of the variations in Rach's Variations on a Theme of Chopin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ9222RDGX8&tracker=False) are, indeed, variations. is this irrelevant to what you're saying here?


i have experienced this, but you start seeing it differently once you realize that the way you solved the problem isn't the only solution. other people will be inclined to solve the problem differently and they may see your solution and marvel at the "form" since they don't understand its corresponding "content". likewise, you may see another person's way of solving (or attempts at solving) a problem and not be able to see past the "form" since you don't understand their "content" or way of thinking. basically there isn't always just one answer to a problem and it's arrogant to assume that yours is the only valid answer, as easy and natural as it may be to you. for another person it would be difficult to do it your way, and you'd likely marvel at something done by someone else if it seemed awesome at the surface, if you didn't understand how simple it was at the core for whatever reason.


i would agree with this, generally. in this instance, i included a focus on "being the only one" in the anecdote to make it parallel the bach scenario more strongly: many people who praise bach focus very specifically on the idea that "his music is mathematically perfect" and that he's really unique and praiseworthy for this (partly because of his uniqueness).

since so many people focus on this facet when they talk about bach, i usually have it in mind when i'm forming my opinions of his music.

ha - maybe my real problem here is that i prefer quantum mechanics over newtonian physics, and have trouble granting the label "discrete" to physical objects.


So what is the content in a Chopin nocturne? Is it the melody? Is the accompaniment the form?

Is the form the harmonic rhythm?

How do you feel about John Kilduff?

i'd say that the content is the sound/silence+what it's communicating, just as the content of a painting is the shapes/colors+what it's communicating, and the content of a book is the story/ideas+what it's communicating.

ex., i think of the picture asperger posted as being a visual syllogism.

ex., i think of finnegan's wake as being more like a sculpture than a fiction novel, as it seems to me to be primarily concerned with inferring a larger, somewhat academic thesis that isn't directly discussed in the book itself.

i'm not familiar with kilduff, so i'll spend some time today listening to him on youtube. have any recommendations?



My next question is "can you appreciate genius in works of art you don't like?"

in general, i can "doff my hat" to art/artists that i don't personally care for. as an example, lady gaga gets my respect, even though i don't like her products, methods, chosen venue, etc.

on the science side, i would be inclined to acknowledge genius in newton, even though i have huge issues with his products.

i need to think more to figure out if there are examples of this in the arts that i can pinpoint.

[elfsprin]

also, i wanted to pass this on (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1914) and this thread seemed like the right place, given the tangents it's traveled down in the past.

yesterday's was pretty great, too.

[stuck]

Theme and variations are pretty easy. How about some Webern (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyHIG5rxo7s)?

How about Brahms' developmental variations? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXGt45-04RY) [hint- the theme is the first 17 seconds]


i'd say that the content is the sound/silence+what it's communicating, just as the content of a painting is the shapes/colors+what it's communicating, and the content of a book is the story/ideas+what it's communicating.

I think this is inconsistent. In a strictly expanded metaphor, wouldn't written content be "words+ what it's communicating"? And then, here we see the problem. The form in all cases is strictly made of content. There is no scaffolding.

That's where Bach and Webern come in. In some of their more famous works, they have made the form and the content almost equivalent, through pruning away of all extraneous techniques of attention maintenance. That's exactly what's so compelling about the music.

That's one facet of music history that is always relevant- the periods of foundation vs. the periods of decay. Bach and Webern came along at times when certain styles were being formed, and they took the opportunity to create things that were very pure and controlled. They didn't allow much filigree (except when they did, of course- like Bach in some of his slower movements). Everything after Mozart until Stravinsky reflected a period of decay, where the forms were allowed to morph and bloat to accept more extra-musical information.

I think that's what you're hearing, and that the lack of filigree makes you think there's no 'content' beyond a methodology. I guarantee you this is an illusion. Bach is simply such a masterful composer that he can make you feel as if there's not a single extra note, that you're just hearing 'form'.

Listen to him when he's not doing that austerity thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfZVflJdp0). This piece sounds exquisite to me- the bright and sparkling theme giving way to the deep psychology of the development.

[stuck]

Oh, here's the most famously condensed Webern piece (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXE8gPrkRkQ).

As Schoenberg said:


Though the brevity of these pieces is a persuasive advocate for them, on the other hand that very brevity itself requires an advocate. Consider what moderation is required to express oneself so briefly. You can stretch every glance out in a poem, every sigh into a novel. But to express a novel in a single gesture, a joy in a breath-such concentration can only be present in proportion to the absence of self-pity. These pieces will only be understood by those who share the faith that music can say things which can only be expressed by music. May this silence sound for them!

I think that's a good illustration of how something so apparently dry and academic can sound rich and emotional to a fan.

[proverbs6:13]

just to make sure i'm understanding the two types clearly, would you agree that finnegan's wake is comprised at the foundational level of almost no content, a massive single schematic form (the whole personal language thing) and a vast quantity of instances of retroactive form (all the "discoverable" references to other writers/artists/books/etc.)?
Not really. By retroactive I meant we applied it onto works and the creator of the work wouldn't have been familiar with our ideas of what they were doing. Schematic then is the form or plan that the creator used.

So Finnegan's Wake doesn't have a retroactive form, other than a generic, "modern novel", appellation. Whereas, it has a lot of schematic form, the references etc. They are schematic because Joyce planned and used them.

Retroactive is harder to define with Joyce. But if you examine the aura of Joyce you can see some of that kind of form. For example, Joyce is difficult, high art, modernist etc. These categories are commonly used to describe Joyce but they tell us nothing about the actual work. In fact, they tell us a lot about now and how we view the past, hence the term retroactive.

The point I was making about Bach and Chopin was that Bach is considered cerebral, logical, mathematical, etc. now but not during other periods of history. Chopin is seen as creating musical forms around his content now not during other periods of history. So those ideas are retroactive and don't say anything about the creation of the works. That is not to say retroactive forms are inferior to schematic forms just very different.

My analysis of your proposition is that, since you are using retroactive forms to discuss Bach, Chopin and Rach then it is important to understand why you agree with particular retroactive forms. That is, why do you think of Bach as logically formal and not über-religious or as having too many children or similarly as utilising child labour. My conclusion is that Ti and Fi, retrospectively your first and last functions, have informed your decision making process.

I don't know why you think science and art have different valuations of genius. I certainly don't. I think science and art have almost no clue about genius. From my perspective there are, statistically, a huge number of geniuses, about 9 million. The fact that even those who are considered to be geniuses are open to constant doubt, Warhol, Stockhausen, Cage, Rothko etc., means that people are politically motivated to assign genius. I could care less about political perspectives on art and science. Anyway, I think art and science use the same, political, way to incorrectly value genius and that actual artistic and scientific geniuses are very similar. Which is why I wonder why you think they are different and why you have identified the form/content dichotomy as the difference, hence, the Ti Fi point.

I don't think I'm being very clear/structured in my explanations.


That's where Bach and Webern come in. In some of their more famous works, they have made the form and the content almost equivalent, through pruning away of all extraneous techniques of attention maintenance. That's exactly what's so compelling about the music.

That's one facet of music history that is always relevant- the periods of foundation vs. the periods of decay. Bach and Webern came along at times when certain styles were being formed, and they took the opportunity to create things that were very pure and controlled. They didn't allow much filigree (except when they did, of course- like Bach in some of his slower movements). Everything after Mozart until Stravinsky reflected a period of decay, where the forms were allowed to morph and bloat to accept more extra-musical information.

I think that's what you're hearing, and that the lack of filigree makes you think there's no 'content' beyond a methodology. I guarantee you this is an illusion. Bach is simply such a masterful composer that he can make you feel as if there's not a single extra note, that you're just hearing 'form'.
The lack of filigree has more to do with modern performance practice than with the composers. For example, the bland logical 16ths that permeate Bach, apparently the first of each group of four was "always" given an accent. There are dozens of these ideas that were apparently so common that no one bothered to write them down and which would add a lot of ornament to our ears.

Webern might be profoundly misunderstood, here's a link (http://www.scribd.com/doc/47990298/Webern-Op-27-small) that will tell you something 90% of people don't know. It is fascinating, I heard the Stadlen recording but I can't find it online, anyway he's not very good but the piece sounds totally different. Imagine a minimalist Scriabin or even a Satie style Webern and you'd be close to his performance. It's amazing to think that Webern's most famous attribute, logical/strict rhythm might be the exact opposite of his intention.

I definitely agree that good music sounds like there are no extra notes, just disagree as to what counts as an extra note.

[stuck]

That paper is great, thanks. That's how Webern sounds to me, anyway, like high german romanticism honed to a miniature. I didn't mean to imply that Bach or Webern's music was refined past emotion, or meant to just be logical illustrations of music.

I would kill to hear a good, emotional performance of Webern's piano music. Those pieces have always fascinated me with how 'loaded' they sound. They really have a minimum of notes, nothing is wasted.

That's mainly my point. Foundational, and to a certain extent "classical" tendencies exclude unneeded gesture. I'm thinking about when Stravinsky began exploring neo-classical music, for instance. His orchestration (at least to my ear) contracted from the violent, wonderfully bloated anarchy of his ballets.

Genres are founded, and then develop and bear more mutation and outgrowth.

Listen to Slint and then later post-rock. Slint sounds very spare and simple compared to later bands.

Listen to opera- Monteverdi contrasted with Mozart.

Listen to Beethoven compared to Rachmaninoff.

Listen to Steve Reich's music for 18 musicians compared with a John Adams opera.

And, in listening to Slint, Monteverdi, Beethoven, Steve Reich, it would help to understand how revolutionary those pieces of music were at the time, how bold the composers were being in rejecting old ideas and forming new ones. The size and difficulty of the task of inventing a style means that the modern listener, having all of the descendants of the style readily available, might hear the seams of the form more than in later works. This problem is one of the reasons that 'a fresh ear' is always required when listening to an unfamiliar piece of music.


Not really. By retroactive I meant we applied it onto works and the creator of the work wouldn't have been familiar with our ideas of what they were doing. Schematic then is the form or plan that the creator used.

qft

Whichever of those you feel is more pertinent will define your answer. Feeling that one has THE schematic by which all art forms are created/judged is really misleading... and quite popular. It's like putting a cardan grille over the newspaper and then believing you're reading the truth. Trying to extricate yourself from the situation is almost not totally useless, and actually quite fun.

Part of the fun in art, to me, is the act of finding patterns. I love the sensation of not understanding something and then having it dawn on me. This happens in specific works of art as well as in general artistic tendencies like "OH that's what ALL THOSE PEOPLE heard while I was hearing talentless noise or pedantic wankery".

Regarding your framework, elfspirin, I think it's interesting to stack heuristics in search of an aesthetic. I've worked that way with algorithmic music- sort this, filter that, combine modularly. It produces neat results. I think you're part of a greater intellectual style that's gaining popularity, that which is obsessed with filtering and pattern recognition, an inevitability in the information age. Maybe what you're (not) hearing in Bach is that the music could hold more information, like those mathy shapes should be considered a carrier wave for the important message of humanity beneath.

Without commenting further on the actual vs perceived lack of schematic humanism in Bach, I'll say this: for me, the objects themselves have inherent beauty. But that's a wannabe composer talking. I can, and have, sat and listened to sine waves for extended periods of time. Pink noise is really lovely, too. When composers use the raw material so honestly in and of itself, I think it's breathtaking.

[elfsprin]

for anyone who's reading/posting, i'm curious as to whether you like these tracks:

parov stellar - psychedelic jazz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNYCN-aOl4k)

ibid - red haired woman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIWxAWty2PY)

alif tree - melismes extatiques (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNaVAGE88U)

scriabin - sonata-fantasy 2, Op. 19: II. presto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvSjIvteeWo)

[stuck]

they're fine, i'm not quite sure what you're trying to illustrate. i'm not blown away by any sense of the new with the first three pieces. scriabin is always dazzling and insane.

I think you need to come to terms with your tastes being fairly quirky. Can you say a little about why you chose each of those pieces and what they mean to you?

[elfsprin]

NO. i've illustrated far too much lack of self-pity in this thread already; time for you jokers to cough up.

just kidding- yeah i'll be back in a bit to comment.

[elfsprin]

in the meantime though, do you like this? it's a DL.

son lux - etude (http://asthmatickitty.com/mp3/mfvgv1/11_etude_-_son_lux.mp3)

[stuck]

that's fun. you do realize that most of the music you like has a piano in it, even though it's not inherently called for by the genre, right?

oh, and you like minor and exotic scales.

[elfsprin]

short answer as unfortunately, i must run:

i don't think there's much that's special about those first three tracks either, although i like the beginnings of each of them and think that they had some potential. they frustrate me because i want them to be less stereotypical. i agree that the scriabin is insane and excellent.

interestingly though, i do hear a similarity between those four pieces; there's a common factor there and i haven't bothered yet to strongly isolate it/find a way to enunciate it. perhaps it's easier to hear with the first movement of the fantasy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6nuGZ3-BA4). i wondered if anyone else would pick that out.

[stuck]

piano and exotic scales

although, with the scriabin, it's just minor in that case.

[elfsprin]

Ha. There's something else there. Something jazzy.

It's not the piano and exotic scales.

[asperger]

... Bach and Webern came along at times when certain styles were being formed, and they took the opportunity to create things that were very pure and controlled.


I thought that Bach was the conclusion of the Baroque style and had little or nothing to do with its formation. Is that wrong?

[stuck]

I thought that Bach was the conclusion of the Baroque style and had little or nothing to do with its formation. Is that wrong?

Yeah, I feel like he ended the style, which to me is kind of the same thing as forming one. IDK, made sense when I thought about it.

What's that saying "every great work of art either starts a genre or destroys one"