> I submit that ANYTHING someone does, creates, produces, or brings about has meaning to its creator. It's not *possible* for someone to create something that doesn't have meaning to the creator.
> ...
> So you are stuck, now, with saying that "all things that people create are art" (or at least "all things that people create on purpose are art").
> ...
> If we restrict ourselves to things that one creates on *purpose* -- and I *hope* we can at least agree that art must be created on purpose -- then it's even less debatable that something can be created without meaning to its creator.
> ...
> So maybe you believe that art is art when what it means to its creator is "significant enough."

I don't feel any of these qualifiers is sufficient. In fear of opening a tricky new Pandora's box, I offer the following addition:

The creator himself or herself must consider the work to be art.


> Is my two swishes of a pencil art? Bah. The two swishes DON'T HAVE MEANING. The meaning is still *in my head*, not in the creation.
> ...
> On the other hand, if I painted something, or filmed something, or wrote something, or sculpted something that *conveys* those memories, or emotions, or states of mind, or even just a fractional part of them, *that* is art.
> ...
> To wrap this back up to the beginning, no, I don't believe that someone else has to find meaning in a creation for it to be art, but I *do* believe that the art has to be *capable* of conveying meaning.

To use another extreme example, it's possible that someone could see nervousness, frustration, impatience or boredom in your pencil strokes. That sort of thing actually can be conveyed in two pencil strokes. =)

This is why I offered the previous addition to the idea; the difference is that you didn't consider your own work to be art. But if everyone else you knew considered your two pencil strokes to be art, would that change your mind? I think it wouldn't.

Again, whether a work of art conveys something depends on the people experiencing the art. Conveyed meaning, in the end, relies on the observer. The work of art might make it blatantly obvious what meaning the creator intended, but sometimes it is up to the observer to find the meaning entirely on their own. This dependency means that pretty much anything is capable of conveying something, which is no less broad a generalization for art than the one I have.


> Music played stupidly slowly is art in the same sense that a Van Gogh through a cross-cut paper shredder is art. But the *act* of slowing it down beyond human perception (or shredding it) can't possibly be art. If it raises questions, maybe it's a philosophical exercise, but the act of slowing music down or shredding a painting -- outside of any context, anyway -- cannot convey anything.

And as I said, it DID convey something to me. It raised the philosophical questions, yes, but it also conveyed a sense of -- how do I put this? -- smallness, or insignificance about myself. The length of the song made me think about the notion of time and lifetimes... it's quite hard to describe (and I would not prefer it to be an impression that is easy to describe). The net result is that the work cannot convey anything to you in particular. But it did convey something to me, and it did to at least one person involved in organizing the performance, and thus it is capable of conveying meaning.

In other news, this thread hurts my head. =)