[HN Gopher] Artists must be allowed to make bad work
___________________________________________________________________
Artists must be allowed to make bad work
Author : open-source-ux
Score : 216 points
Date : 2023-05-14 10:03 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (austinkleon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (austinkleon.com)
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| At least for photography, it's important to not take yourself too
| seriously. You might see something amazing, and every single shot
| ends up out of focus, or overexposed or with garbage bag in the
| foreground ruining the mood. In some ways, dedicated cameras are
| intentionally glitchy to achieve artistic effects, so sometimes
| they glitch in ways you have not intended. I would imagine that
| in the same ways a violin is not intended to be as precise as a
| digital music player and oil paints are not intended to be as
| true to reality as a smartphone photo. The point is to keep going
| without overthinking and let good stuff come once in a while by
| serendipity, while you gain experience to gradually increase
| average quality. If I was a novelist with a writer block, I would
| try to come up with a parody of my own writing and see if some
| comic relief helps me relax. Sometimes I take trippy photos
| through a water bottle when I am bored and can't think of
| anything else to do.
| markusstrasser wrote:
| he's been following his own advice religiously for years
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Actually this applies to humans in general.
|
| One of my pet peeves is artists (and journalists) setting
| themselves apart as a "high priesthood" and claiming things for
| themselves specially which should apply to humans in general.
|
| Yes, artists should be allowed to make bad work and go through
| bad times because humans must be allowed to make bad work and go
| through bad times.
|
| Yes, creativity and freedom is important for artists because
| creativity and freedom is important for all humans.
|
| Yes the government should not be spying on journalists, because
| it shouldn't be spying on people in general.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This has always been the case and always will be. Unfortently
| most people feel like they have to put everything online right
| away now. Most art is bad and doesnt need to go out into the
| world.
|
| The most creative I've ever been was when I was writing new work
| every day. MOST, maybe as much as 95%, of what I was creating was
| just okay. 4% was something that could be developed into
| something good. 1% was actually good.
|
| That meant in 100 days of writing 95 of those days I would feel
| like a failure if my measure of success was creating something
| good or useable. I had to shift my thinking so creating something
| was the measure of success and creating something good only came
| from creating a lot and seeing what actually stood out.
|
| If I was putting all of that work online right away I'm positive
| the negative feedback, or entire lack of feedback, would have
| been discouraging and I would have stopped.
| nikanj wrote:
| But must they be paid for bad work?
| fullshark wrote:
| And everyone needs to pretend it's good so their feelings don't
| get hurt?
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, even Leonardo da Vinci made some very bad stuff.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Social pressure is not higher now than in the other periods, when
| art could be called degenerate or heresy. Newspapers were
| influential and before them it was church and favoritism in the
| high society. Van Gogh, Mark Rothko and many others were not
| happy people who enjoyed a lot of support from the public. We do
| not know the names of artists from earlier periods who vanished
| because they were not understood. Suffering is the fuel of art.
| Take your broken heart and make it into art - that's how it
| works. If the pressure of social media is painful, you cannot do
| anything with it, so either you create or find something else to
| do, as it has always been.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Visual art is overrated and misunderstood IMO. Artists of the
| past were basically human rendering engines, which was very
| important because we didn't have any other kind of rendering
| engine and looking at artificial images can be pleasing.
|
| Can you imagine what seeing a nice painting of a person was like
| when you had never seen any other kind of artificial image in
| your life besides handmade ones? It was probably mind blowing.
|
| Photography has probably totally destroyed our relative reaction
| to visual art, like someone who eats way too much sugar trying a
| sweet apple.
|
| But now we seem to be running on cultural fumes in this area.
| It's as if people still bought hand cobbled shoes for millions of
| dollars and displayed them pretentiously.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| I donno, this comment feels like saying, "Machines have really
| destroyed our relative reaction to the Olympics. Who cares how
| far someone can throw a heavy ball when a cannon can do it much
| better and more accurately."
|
| When the reality is that people are still very much interested
| in the extent of human prowess AND other folks (often
| overlapping) are interested in the extent of mechanical prowess
| (We call those folks engineers and they are much closer to Art
| enjoyers than not).
|
| There's no doubt that Photography had an affect on "Peoples"
| idea of "What is Art" or "What do I value in visual Art" but...
| so does everything? Being extremely wealthy or extremely
| impoverished can destroy a relationship to Art. Its not so
| linear as, "All people care about is the ability to render
| images realistically"
|
| I feel like I could type a novel around this concept but I'll
| leave these seeds planted, for now.
| antiterra wrote:
| I think it's likely you're projecting your personal experience
| onto others. I knew someone who was obsessed with the Red Room
| by Matisse. He was in no way pretentious or academic in
| inclination, but something about the actual painting itself
| entranced him and he could disappear into it for long periods
| of time. I honestly don't know what was so powerful about it
| for him, but he was clearly having a genuine experience
| different than mine. Authoritatively providing my conjecture
| regarding his 'relative reaction' would be immensely pompous.
|
| Art is more than technique, the music performances that move us
| are very often not the absolute highest level of virtuosity.
| Photographs were incredibly common in my lifetime, but I was
| still very strongly affected by paintings on books, album
| covers and in museums.
|
| Further, non-representative visual art has a rich history. You
| merely have to look at the amazing art produced out of Islamic
| aniconism.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's not unique to art, nor does it speak to its importance.
| You could easily find someone who stares at ants for hours on
| end. What does it prove?
|
| I think we have to understand its meaning and impact on a
| societal level and determine its usefulness or
| uselessness[1]. Not all art is useful and not all art is
| useless but some are one or the other.
|
| [1]Very broadly defined and not focused on economic value,
| though being a. Inner dial success is also valid.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Art really shouldn't be measured on a useful or useless
| scale. How would we even determine adequate metrics for
| that? If we look at impact we'd need to consider The
| Bodyguard Soundtrack as high musical art.
| williamcotton wrote:
| "And IIIIiiiiiiieeeeeiiiiiee..."
| laratied wrote:
| Picasso was worth $250 million at his death in 1973 dollars.
| 1.6 billion in 2022 dollars from selling his own paintings.
|
| Painters at one point were rock stars. Just like today's rock
| stars are social media stars and not a group of guys playing
| guitar/bass/drum/vocals.
|
| Artistic mediums have their moment in time and then become
| niche, historical and retro once their time has passed.
|
| Marble sculpture is no less amazing than in times past. That
| mediums time in the sun though passed a long time ago.
|
| Just like if you go to an art gallery that arranges the
| paintings in period rooms, it completely obvious when
| photography became an up and coming medium and its effect on
| painting at the time.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| I'm sorry but this really betrays history, even
| contemporary history.
|
| We could point to a number of contemporary artists that are
| worth millions of dollars for whatever they are known for -
| you might even consider them 'rockstars', regardless of how
| myopic I find the term - but headlines that make it onto
| the "4 big websites" is not the same thing as being
| irrelevant.
|
| For every "Picasso" you can cherry-pick from history
| there's a Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Banksy, Ai Weiwei, etc
| - All worth millions or, at the very least, "Rockstars" in
| their own right.
|
| The idea that Marble Sculptures in Ancient Rome or whatever
| had passersby standing in amazement compared to today is
| not accurate. People walking into whatever temple for
| whatever God they were visiting would be just as bored by
| the marble back then as you are of marble now.
|
| What's _really_ changed is that accessibility to these
| things have exploded. More people than ever have access to
| Art, Art Tools, Art Education, and new Art Mediums. "Art"
| is in no-way dying out. Focusing so much on the "Medium" is
| missing the forest for the trees, honestly. (Which is to
| say, modern technology and socio/economic trends have a
| bigger effect on the use of Marble than "Marble as a
| medium", whatever that means. Sculpture is alive and well,
| I promise you)
|
| This is a little bit rambly because your post just kinda
| says, "Art changes over time" and doesn't, in my view, have
| a wide-enough vision of the "why" but this is all to say
| that like, as far as this thread is concerned, Visual Art,
| if anything, is omnipresent in our lives - not _less_
| relevant than in times past. If anything, the presence of
| "Rock Stars" is an indication of too few talented people,
| instead of what we have historically which is an ever
| increasing number of extremely talented people. I just
| don't know how we can say Painting is less relevant now
| when more people than ever are doing it lol.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > People walking into whatever temple for whatever God
| they were visiting would be just as bored by the marble
| back then as you are of marble now.
|
| What gives you this idea? You don't think that constant
| exposure to having one's human recognition instinct
| stimulated artificially has a tolerance effect? Isn't it
| a bit strange that people put so much effort and
| resources into e.g. statues despite finding them as
| boring as we do today?
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| I'm having trouble deciding if your post is tongue-in-
| cheek agreeing with me or not so I'll just add some
| earnest flavor. I'm going to answer your questions in
| reverse order.
|
| No, I don't think it strange at all that people put so
| much effort and resources into Art. The creator of the
| work gets a different kind of satisfaction than the
| people viewing it. These reasons vary from person to
| person but I've always liked my Highschool's Motto "Art
| for Art's sake". So it makes sense to put effort into
| creation. Personally, I love narrative and so when I'm
| creating sculptures or art of any kind I'm considering
| the narrative that goes into it. The effort is to achieve
| the narrative while considering tone and taste. A
| Nightmare Before Christmas would not be the same movie if
| it were all rendered as naturalistically as possible.
|
| I'm not going to pretend to know the entirety of reasons
| people have for liking their spaces designed, but we do
| like shiny things and people can be particular about
| their environments. Yeah, it might be most efficient to
| put people into perfect cubes but I doubt the emotional
| well-being of most people would be met by this kind of
| environment. So, on that basis alone we have a reason to
| put effort and resources into decorating our spaces.
|
| I don't really understand your second sentence. I'm not
| sure what "Human recognition instinct simulated
| artificially" even means. Do you mean our ability to
| recognize humans? Or our ability to recognize anything?
| Its a little short-sighted to view the whole of "Marble
| Statues in Ancient Greece/Rome, etc" as "Activating,
| artificially, our Human Recognition Instinct". Like, not
| only was a majority of the Art from that time
| lost/destroyed, and not all of the statues were of
| people, but those statues were humongous. David is like
| 17 feet tall. No one is going to mistake him for a human.
| Humans from antiquity weren't that different than the
| ones from today, at least no biologically/evolutionarily.
| So it'd be the same for them as any memorial statue is
| today - they fade into the background (While still
| providing some aesthetics, mind you)
|
| What you're really missing by pulling out this single
| quote is something I touched on later in the post -
| Focusing on any individual "medium" is myopic in the
| conversation of Art's Cultural relevance, and the thread
| you sparked is just as marrow-minded. We're definitely in
| a period of time absolutely saturated with Art but we are
| by no means running on cultural fumes. Maybe the spaces
| you occupy are dead-zones but that's a personal choice
| IMO - Its beautiful and full of culture out here.
| badpun wrote:
| The statues were there for religious or social reasons,
| were funded by people in power in those societies, and
| helped them stay in power.
|
| On the other hand, the statues were often painted, so
| they looked more interesting than the bare marble we see
| now.
| EoinB wrote:
| Oh wow, what an uninformed opinion. Not surprising, sadly,
| given that so many in tech are so one-dimensional.
|
| Perhaps a course in art history would help you understand that
| visual art has never been solely about image reproduction. Even
| cave paintings were allegorical. My goodness.
| Bran_son wrote:
| > Artists of the past were basically human rendering engines
|
| A lie promulgated by modern art as justification for forcing
| out all prior art styles and aesthetics, but nothing could be
| further from the truth. Have you ever seen photos like the
| following?
|
| https://www.wikiart.org/en/zdzislaw-beksinski/untitled-1976
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajikazawa_in_Kai_Province
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Aivazovsky#/media/File:St...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swing_(Fragonard)
|
| https://www.bonhams.com/zh-cn/auction/27421/lot/413/kimura-b...
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Absolutely bizarre opinion, friend.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I don't believe classical style visual art is overrated. My
| local art gallery, the AGO, had a large exhibition on
| Caravaggio a few years ago and I remember seeing the shocked
| expressions on the majority of the visitors.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| There is social pressure to have this reaction to appear
| cultured, which is a bit of a confounder.
|
| Not knocking the skill involved, being a high fidelity human
| rendering engine takes a lifetime of dedication as well as a
| base level of natural talent which very few possess.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I feel pretty confident in my ability to see through people
| that are faking it.
|
| Maybe I am exaggerating my perceptiveness, but being
| shocked by Caravaggio paintings is not at all uncommon.
| intelVISA wrote:
| I liken camera to art as (recent) ML is to code.
|
| The machine may threaten to usurp the mass market but the
| few, skilled organics will always, hopefully, have
| artisanal works to sell.
| dagw wrote:
| _had a large exhibition on Caravaggio_
|
| What is interesting and telling is that they showed a 'name'
| like Caravaggio, and not any of the countless contemporary
| painters who are every bit is technically skilled as
| Caravaggio was, and perfectly capable of emulating his style.
| If the classical visual style was still relevant in itself,
| every art gallery would be showing off those contemporary
| artists.
| [deleted]
| Bran_son wrote:
| By this standard, Beethoven's 9th Symphony is also no
| longer "relevant".
|
| The first to do something are remembered, those who come
| after must be significantly better or different to be
| recognized. If someone wants to see Caravaggio's style,
| they are likely to simply see Caravaggio - it's just name
| recognition, nothing to do with the "relevancy" of the
| style itself, whatever that means (Popularity? Or a self-
| fulfilling justification for whatever style the art world
| elite is pushing?)
|
| And there are in fact newer artists with name recognition
| that painted in a representational style (but not the
| _exact same_ style), e.g. Dali, Frazetta, Giger, Beksinski.
| dagw wrote:
| You're missing my point. People like Beethoven because
| it's Beethoven, they're on the whole not interested in
| new music that sounds a bit like Beethoven. If you're a
| contemporary musician and composer you're going to have a
| very hard time making a successful career out of
| composing and performing new music in the classical and
| romantic style.
| Bran_son wrote:
| I thought we were talking about relevancy of the style,
| not how difficult it is to make a living competing with
| Beethoven. If people still turn up in droves to perform
| and listen to Beethoven, that seems very "relevant" to
| me.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Which 'contemporary artists' still paint in the classical
| style? I can't think of any.
| dagw wrote:
| Go visit some of the top art academies around the world.
| There are still schools out there training people in the
| classical styles.
|
| The fact that you can't really think of any artists or
| ever see their work out in the world kind of proves my
| points.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Some of it must have been uploaded onto the internet. Are
| you sure there aren't any examples you can link?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/contemporary-classical-
| painti...
|
| However, I've not got a horse in this "classical is
| overrated" race.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Lol no. It's an interesting idea but photography didn't kill
| the purpose of painting on the 1850's, it just nudged human
| creativity into new dimensions of abstraction and images that
| were not attempts at rendering reality. There's no end of
| history, and we're certainly not sitting at the death of visual
| media. The drive for art, beauty, culture, and shared
| experience will continue. Creativity will meet that demand. Yes
| many of us have seen a lot and maybe can't predict what for new
| creativity will take.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| A) Photography is visual art
|
| B) What an artist produces with a rendering engine will be
| starkly different from that of an amateur with the same engine.
| Art isn't medium or technology.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Gross take. I generally loathe impressionist work for a number
| of reasons I won't get into here, but that doesn't change the
| fact that standing in a gallery in front of Monet's "Woman with
| a parasol" you can -feel- a light see breeze and smell salt. A
| powerful and (correctly) celebrated work done after the advent
| of photography.
| laratied wrote:
| [dead]
| mk67 wrote:
| Ah, yes. Single-minded tech guys' take on art. Not sure what to
| comment here, but art has nearly nothing to do with replicating
| a photograph/"rendering". Photorealistic art doesn't count as
| art to me at all.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Artists of the past were basically human rendering engines,
| which was very important because we didn't have any other kind
| of rendering engine and looking at artificial images can be
| pleasing.
|
| If this were true then the Impressionism movement would never
| have come after the Renaissance. But it's not, there's more to
| visual art than just reproducing what we see with our eyes.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding the history of art. Art up
| until the invention of the camera wasn't simply to generate the
| most realistic image possible.
| dsign wrote:
| This has been coming to my mind in the context of fiction
| writing.
|
| Today, the writer's gold standard is publication. In fact, many
| readers say they won't read anything that hasn't been "published"
| by a publisher.
|
| But the incentive of a publisher is money and sales, which means
| they will search for things that sell in volume, or handicap the
| writer's work so that "it sells." And how the publisher guesses
| if something will sell? They will look for things that have sold
| in the past, they have no other way. And they will do it even if
| it crushes the bibliophile's soul of everybody at the editorial,
| because they got bills to pay. And it results in...more of the
| same. It's not art anymore, it's commercial fulfillment, and it's
| not enjoyed to the point of being remembered.
|
| There is one good thing about fiction writing though, it's called
| beta-reading. It's a thing authors do, but it's also a great
| opportunity for readers to contribute to a story, to make it more
| to their liking. If you ever are feeling hyper-critic of a piece
| of contemporary fiction, as an alternative to cancel-bombing the
| author because they produce "bad work" and have the daring of
| publishing it on their own, consider doing some beta-reading.
|
| Remember, Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was traditionally published
| and an amazing commercial success[^1].
|
| [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5IV9n223M
| dcow wrote:
| This interesting (and I might personally add destructive) thing
| is happening in the romance genre where authors are going back
| and doctoring up all their prose from the 90s and 00s to
| address "consent issues" as the current cultural zeitgeist
| understands consent. It's not that I'm not okay with people's
| definition of consent changing and with writing new works to be
| acceptable under the new definition. And I even quite like
| well-integrated examples of affirmative consent in romantic
| literature, because a good author can weave it in ever so
| subtly and naturally when working with a blank slate. But this
| need to go back and "fix" the older works really kills me. If I
| could buy the older edition from the publisher that would be
| one thing, but in the age of digital publishing the new edition
| just clobbers the older ones, sometimes forcibly in your
| library or collection. I think there's value to being able to
| read literature from the 90s and understand what that time
| period was like, culturally. Or even works set historically
| back in previous centuries. I think it's important to be able
| to read old works and critique them, etc. I would even go as
| far as to say that it's okay to write modern works that lack
| strict adherence to affirmative consent so that they can be
| critiqued regardless (this might make them unpopular to the
| masses as pleasure reading, but it makes them interesting as
| social commentary). It really breaks the illusion for me when
| you're reading a scene from an older work and you encounter a
| section that was clearly doctored, or which just doesn't fit
| with the time period the story is set in. It's just not
| realistic in any way and I don't think it benefits the catalog
| of writing we have today to expect that authors go back and
| "fix" their work from 20 years ago that's suddenly become
| controversial by today's standards.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Publishing - actually all the arts - are two separate
| businesses.
|
| There's the entertainment side, which is basically market-
| driven - as in creating work for a market. If it's unsubtle and
| relatively crude, it lives here. It can be a very polished and
| professional kind of crude - superhero movies, the best pop
| productions, and so on - but it's not subtle, complicated,
| difficult, or understated.
|
| There's the cultural landmark side, which is about unusually
| powerful and fluent work that changes culture itself in some
| way. [1]
|
| Publishing pretends to be the latter but it's really the
| former. It's thrilled to make a lot of money from entertainment
| projects like Dan Brown, Fifty Shades, and the rest, while
| somehow maintaining the impression that the entire industry is
| Culturally Important.
|
| [1] This mostly means white well-educated upper middle class
| culture. But even so.
| j7ake wrote:
| In science the analogy is : "yeah this person did good work five
| years ago, but what have they done recently?" as a way to reject
| people for jobs, grants, and promotions.
| alentred wrote:
| I truly think of science and engineering, software development
| included, as an artistic feat in part. And we can easily see how
| the opinion expressed in this interview easily applies to what we
| do. Yes, we all have periods where we should be allowed to do bad
| work, learn on it and eventually come out with better ideas. Yes,
| the "public" pressure and the focus on novelty is there (right
| now on HN front page:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35955336).
|
| P.S. I have just realized that I have the "Steal Like An Artist"
| by Austin Kleon in my library. Proves the point of being an
| artist I guess :D
| eropple wrote:
| _? > Yes, we all have periods where we should be allowed to do
| bad work, learn on it and eventually come out with better
| ideas._
|
| Most people's GitHub pages are full of this kind of junk. And
| in this case, "junk" is absolutely not a pejorative. It's
| necessary, and it can show growth if somebody's looking for it.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. OKR- and measurement-based management --
| so ubiquitous as to be almost synonymous with "management" --
| seem to accelerate certain short-term movement, at the cost of
| stagnation in the long term. Punctuated equilibrium is replaced
| by a whirling vortex.
| mlok wrote:
| Maybe the proper word is "creative" and not "artistic" ? Both
| have an exploration/experimental side in common.
| paultopia wrote:
| How could we stop them?
| devmor wrote:
| Everyone needs to be able to fail sometimes. You don't grow and
| learn from nothing but successes.
|
| Failure is an essential part of life and learning.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| "Must be allowed to" sounds like a weasel word. It is not illegal
| to make bad work. I doubt any contract an artist signs usually
| has a clause against producing bad work either. That phrase may
| sound sophisticated and provocative but it means nothing, at
| least to me.
| Archelaos wrote:
| The article makes it clear that it is about social pressure,
| not legal obligations.
| nabla9 wrote:
| It's not a sophisticated way to write.
|
| If you get stuck on words, expressions, or idioms and
| constantly interpret them wrong, it usually means that you
| can't parse context well. If the expression "must be allowed"
| bothers you in this text, your OECD literacy level is most
| likely below 3.
|
| It's easy to fix if you start reading more books, you start to
| improve.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I don't mean that it is written in contrived manner. I mean
| that it is vague. There is no context, there is only a
| clickbait title.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > I mean that it is vague. There is no context, there is
| only a clickbait title.
|
| If you can't parse the context from the writing, there is
| no context for you.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| It seems like you can't parse the context of my writing
| and the problem lies way deeper than your level of
| English.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Given that your writing supports the notion that he knew
| exactly why you said what you said, it seems like he can
| parse the context of your writing just fine.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| you are behaving quite patronising to this guy for no
| reason. He is challenging the premise of the piece and
| you are telling him he is too stupid to read the piece at
| all.
|
| Do you not see the irony here? Commenters, too, should be
| allowed to have bad takes
| watwut wrote:
| Challenging the premise of the article based on reading
| only title while not really understanding the language
| the title is written on is not actually something praise
| worthy. If he is a.) not reading article and b.) not
| understanding normal and common English idiom, then
| pointing out he should stay away from the discussion is
| valid.
|
| And that is assuming it is genuine misunderstanding and
| not, like, typical nerdy "I refuse to actual engage with
| those idiots from other fields, better just make up
| something".
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I criticize the title because it says something vague
| piggybacking on the idea of freedom to guilt-trip its
| readers to support a controversial opinion that has
| barely anything to do with the title in question. And I
| can only learn the content by clicking on that clickbait
| title that provides no information.
|
| Well, if it is common in English to refer to the
| situation when the public opinion about you is allegedly
| shaped by your last work as "not allowed to make bad
| work" than indeed I do not know English on the third
| level of OECD literacy. But that sounds like a very
| peculiar trait of English, and a very deep ideological
| commitment incorporated into the language on a level that
| I couldn't expect.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > it says something vague piggybacking on the idea of
| freedom
|
| This is where you are wrong.
|
| It is not based on the idea of freedom. The point of the
| article, and the title, has nothing to do with whether
| someone is legally allowed to make bad art, or has some
| fundamental human rights, that are being infringed on,
| related to freedom.
|
| Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is
| that because artists are more in the public eye these
| days, this extra scrutiny on every single piece of work
| that they do, has anti-creative effects on artists, and
| this is bad.
|
| The only person who invented a fictional narrative about
| freedom, was you. The actual point of the title, and the
| article, was actually pretty obvious though, if you
| aren't looking for some gotcha.
|
| > that I couldn't expect.
|
| It was actually very easy to understand the article, if
| you start from the idea of "This article author isn't
| completely stupid, let me think for a second as to what
| such a person might be attempting to say, assuming they
| do not believe the obviously untrue statement that making
| bad art is illegal".
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is
| that because artists are more in the public eye these
| days, this extra scrutiny on every single piece of work
| that they do, has anti-creative effects on artists, and
| this is bad.
|
| So, explain what does any of that has to do with "not
| being allowed" to do something?
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Depends on whether the artist "owns" themself. If I go to a
| Harry Styles concert and the guy is unable to perform on the
| stage, I should get a refund, the corporations behind Harry
| Styles failed to deliver a product. If I go to a Marc Rebillet
| [1] concert, well, I know exactly what I am getting even if
| Marc is barely able to yell 3 times in the microphone (and
| those screams would be exquisite anyhow).
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytXwAvAdL4
| dghf wrote:
| It seems pretty clear to me, especially with the context
| provided in the article itself: don't judge an artist solely by
| the last thing they made; don't write them off just because
| they're going through a bad patch.
| awestroke wrote:
| People must be allowed to judge and write off artists solely
| based on the last thing they made
| User2000 wrote:
| It is preferable to take a more nuanced approach to judging
| artists, looking at their entire career and recognizing the
| inherent subjectivity of artistic appreciation, but people
| have a perfect right to judge an artist on a work of art,
| it simply shows a certain closed-mindedness
| nabla9 wrote:
| People are reading this text in two ways:
|
| 1) A suggestion is made for the readers and to the society
| to change how the judge and think about artists.
|
| 2) Writers tries to convey new norms, forbid judgement.
|
| What do you think the writer tried to do here?
| falcolas wrote:
| At the same time, artists of every kind have to contend with
| the fact that this is currently a golden age for art. We are
| confronted with more art of every kind than we could ever
| consume. The cost for moving on has never been lower.
|
| So while an artist should be allowed to have down periods, it
| also shouldn't be surprising if people move on. We're not
| looking for needles in haystacks anymore, we're looking for
| needles in a stack of needles. There may be value in coveting
| needles and hay from a particular artist, but that's an
| intensely personal decision to make.
| femto wrote:
| To my mind "must be allowed to" an English idiom. The "must" is
| a form of exaggeration, the effect being that the speaker is
| acknowledging that they are stating an opinion.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try
| to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass
| made the cut:
|
| "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone
| told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because
| we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple
| years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be
| good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing
| that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is
| why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past
| this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting,
| creative work went through years of this. We know our work
| doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all
| go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are
| still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most
| important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a
| deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only
| by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap,
| and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took
| longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met.
| It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just
| gotta fight your way through."
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Saved. This idea has been my ethos since my early teenage years
| and was how I motivated myself to self-learn to code despite
| being laughed at by my peers because the results weren't as
| fancy as software made by professionals.
|
| From this philosophy, I gained a lot of confidence in just
| diving into anything I was interested in, regardless of how
| embarrassing my early attempts ended up being.
| Animats wrote:
| > "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners".
|
| Then they went to a bad school. Chuck Jones, the animator,
| wrote in his biography that when he went to art school, he was
| told "Everyone has ten thousand bad drawings in them. Our job
| is to get them out of you as fast as possible."
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I've heard this expressed something like "you'll write 50 bad
| songs before you write a good one, so get started!"
| eslaught wrote:
| I basically quit writing when I was 12 because of this. I
| really wish I hadn't, it took another 10 years to get the ball
| rolling on that again (and from there about 10 years to
| actually get good enough to like what I was writing). I could
| have been writing good stuff in my 20s instead of my 30s if I'd
| stuck with it.
| digging wrote:
| I really wish I had learned this as a kid, too. I gave up on
| so many interests over my teens and 20s, because I didn't
| just get good at them the way I did with games. I'm not
| blaming games, they're doing what they're supposed to. I just
| wish people around me had taught me to put in effort, rather
| than praise me for what I could accomplish without effort
| (spoiler: it ended up being nothing).
| whoami_nr wrote:
| Great quote. Checked Ira Glass out and he seems interesting. I
| totally agree with what he has to say. I used to be super
| apprehensive when writing my blog posts but I don't care as
| much these day. I don't care if people think I am a noob in
| some topic. At the end of the day, we are all trying to improve
| in our craft and being a beginner is the most excusable thing
| there is in this aspect. I write these days because, writing
| makes me a better thinker and I learn more about the topic when
| researching a blog post.
| aigoochamna wrote:
| This brought another quote to mind for me,
|
| > "You know, the whole thing about perfectionism..
| perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your
| fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.
| Because doing anything results in-- it's actually kind of
| tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect
| it is in your head for what it really is." -- David Foster
| Wallace
| dimgl wrote:
| I love this, thanks for sharing. When I was younger I used to
| make a lot of music. A majority of it sucked, but some of it
| was legitimately good. So much so that some of my friends would
| go out of their way to listen to it even if they had other
| options. Funnily enough they'd still listen even if the tracks
| were always super low quality (I was young and didn't know how
| to mix it and I didn't have any kind of equipment or resources
| to master it.)
|
| My parents were the "artistry isn't a real profession" kind,
| and even seeing me persevering with all of these crazy
| constraints (like having to make music with an Intel Pentium II
| with no sound card) wasn't enough to convince them. After about
| four years I stopped making music altogether and I regret it so
| much. I always wonder what would have happened had I waited for
| the era that we're in today. Granted, my life trajectory still
| went in a great direction, but I miss making music.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I have a similar story, as I'm sure many people with musical
| or other artistic talents, but who don't come from families
| that have artists in them do. I finally decided to get back
| to studying music with a private teacher after nearly 20
| years away from it and it's great. Try out some teachers near
| you and just commit to spending 30-60 minutes a day
| practicing. You'll spend a bunch of time in that in between
| phase the quote from Ira Glass mentions, but it's worth it to
| do that for yourself if you can!
| epiccoleman wrote:
| It's impossible to overstate how amazingly effective having
| a teacher can be. I recently started taking guitar lessons
| again after over a decade of noodling (I took lessons in
| high school, and kept playing, but never sought instruction
| after leaving home for college).
|
| It is crazy how quickly I've improved in the last few
| months. Some of it is mechanical stuff, some of it is
| knowledge stuff, but I think the biggest thing is just
| knowing that every two weeks I'm going to chat with my
| teacher, which keeps me motivated to keep working on things
| and also just gives me a reason to play.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| For sure. Just having someone to keep you on track and to
| lend their ears to your playing is a beautiful thing. And
| in most cases with a teacher that's been doing it for a
| while, whatever problems you're encountering they've
| probably hit with a bunch of other students in the past.
| My teacher has been teaching for 50 years, so he knows
| where to point you. It's up to you to show up to your
| instrument and do the thing though.
| soperj wrote:
| It's not too late. You can still make music!
| [deleted]
| jfarmer wrote:
| The original video is neat. Right after this quote he plays +
| critiques one of his old broadcasts:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| I love when he plays the old crappy broadcast. Ira's current
| (casual, conversational) radio voice is so distinct that
| you'd almost think he just knew how to do that from day one.
| But even people who have a signature style need time to
| cultivate it.
| ckolkey wrote:
| Thats great, thank you for sharing it.
| artimaeis wrote:
| Zen Pencils covered this quote, it's remained one of my
| favorites:
|
| https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Made into a nice little video here: https://vimeo.com/85040589
|
| Hugely useful if you are starting to get into something new or
| are young and frustrated that your X isnt as good as you think
| it should be.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| That was great, thanks for sharing! I'll have to file that
| away on my Notion page for the quote so I can watch it again.
| qup wrote:
| They funded vice with like a billion dollars, right? We're not
| just allowing it, we're actively encouraging it.
| iambateman wrote:
| One of the fundamental principles of art is that the artist is
| allowed to do whatever they want.
|
| To the extent the artist is acting as a true artist, the public
| has no say in what they may or may not do. In that sense, their
| work is neither "good" nor "bad."
|
| But to the extent the artist is acting as a commercial entity -
| one who intends to sell a consumable product - the public has
| every say in the value and merit of a piece.
|
| The artist may do whatever kind of work she wants. The company
| may not.
| noam_compsci wrote:
| It depends on both the hit rate (success / attempts), the churn
| rate (length of time a success is successful for) and finally the
| output rate (length of time it takes do one attempt).
| leetrout wrote:
| In case someone wants to skip a click:
|
| > Artists must be allowed to go through bad periods! They must be
| allowed to do bad work! They must be allowed to get in a mess!
| They must be allowed to have dud experiments! They must also be
| allowed to have periods where they repeat themselves in a rather
| aimless, fruitless way before they can pick up and go on. The
| kind of attention that they get now, the kind of atmosphere of
| excitement which attends today the creation of works of art, the
| way that everything is done too much in the public eye, it's
| really too much. The pressures are of a kind which are anti-
| creative.
|
| I think the same applies to developing technology. Certainly
| resonates with me and the phases I go through.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's difficult for me to reason this sort of thing. Success, or
| even just being able to scrape out a living from art seems like a
| lottery. That is, there's not really any strong correlation
| between talent, effort and success. Plenty of starving, yet
| talented and/or hard-working artists. And plenty of successful
| artists with less talent or effort than their starving peers. So
| in this case, pushing for an environment that allows for bad
| periods is really only trying to improve things for those that
| won that initial lottery.
| velavar wrote:
| Something that blew my mind after I spent a few years learning
| art is that: everyone makes bad art.. even the best artists.
| For every good painting an artist produces, there are several
| that have been trashed or painted over. Sketchbooks are often
| encouraged in the artist community in order to allow ourselves
| to do bad art that doesn't have to see the light of day.
|
| And finally, when a customer buys a piece of art, they're not
| just paying for that piece but also for the time that the
| artist spent finding themselves :)
| User2000 wrote:
| There is necessarily a correlation between talent, effort and
| success, because you need at least one of the two parameters to
| succeed. And the third parameter that will be decisive is luck,
| but you need a pillar to allow luck to serve a purpose. The
| pillar is work, done with talent, effort or both. I agree that
| many artists who are very talented or who put in a lot of work
| may be less recognized than others. But in general, a great
| majority of artists, before having the luck, had the talent and
| the effort, it should not be denied. The only thing that really
| separates these artists from other talented artists is luck. So
| I would say that success is the result of a mixture of these 3
| main ingredients: effort, talent and luck.
| meristohm wrote:
| Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate
| the process of trial and error.
| mantas wrote:
| Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...
| mordae wrote:
| Even those. When the cost of failure is too high, we need to
| invest in practices that allow them fail safely. And get as
| much from failures as possible.
|
| It means giving doctors and nurses simulators, someone to
| look over their shoulder when learning new techniques, giving
| them high-quality followup data, finding top performers and
| make them explain what they do and so on. Which is currently
| very hard to do, because teaching others means you lose your
| advantage.
|
| It also means learning from failures of others. That means
| writing about the fuckups and telling them. Which is
| currently almost impossible to do, because admitting failure
| can often result in an end to your career.
|
| And all of this is exacerbated with consolidated, privatized
| healthcare where the shots are called not by outcome-oriented
| caregivers, but by profit-oriented MBAs.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Possibly yes, but on emulators/training data/virtual
| patients. One of the advantages of today's digital world is
| that you don't have to jump to the real thing immediately.
|
| Come to think of it, maybe even _laws_ should be tested in a
| laboratory first. We cannot emulate the human society fully,
| but some unwanted effects could be detected this way anyway.
| mantas wrote:
| It's easy to find issues in laws with some brainstorming
| over a pizza. The problem is people pushing certain laws
| frequently don't give a damn about side effects. Why would
| they care about results coming out from a simulation?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is easy to find _theoretical_ issues through
| brainstorming, but weeding out the false positives is
| much less easy.
|
| As an example, religious conservatives will brainstorm a
| lot of issues that are bound to rise (according to them)
| from gay emancipation. In practice, these failed to
| manifest.
| mantas wrote:
| You can easily manipulate results in a lab test too by
| messing with the environment and cherry picking results.
| And focusing on different outcomes.
|
| I'm pretty sure same religious conservatives will claim
| that issues they saw did come up. While the other extreme
| would just shrug off the same issues as non-issue.
| Different people value different things... More at 11.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Maybe the statement could be refined to "must be given
| opportunity for failure".
|
| For some professions that might include running some projects
| at a smaller scale, as a simulation or even as role play
| exercise
| taopai wrote:
| My grandfather, a photographer, told me this story: 20 years
| ago in a doctor's graduation ceremony held somewhere in Spain
| the old doctor who gave the speech told the graduates: "Now
| your job is to kill people. Along the years you'll learn, and
| if you are good, you'll kill less people and save some."
| evandijk70 wrote:
| For doctors looking to innovate, there are actually a lot of
| ways to fail fast and safely if you introduce a new drug.
|
| First, establish that a drug binds to the target in
| laboratory conditions (relatively quick). After that, test
| the drug in an animal model. After that, proceed to clinical
| trials, which are phased (phase I, II, III) to first
| establish whether a dosage exists that is safe (Phase I),
| what an effective dosage is (Phase II), and only after than
| testing if it improves upon the current standard of care
| (Phase III).
|
| Each phase is more costly (both in time and money) than the
| previous phase and will eliminate a significant portion of
| drug candidates.
|
| "The success rate of each drug discovery stage in academia
| was 31.8% for preclinical, 75.1% for phase I, 50.0% for phase
| II, 58.6% for phase III."
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24406927/
| dahart wrote:
| Doctors? This sounds more like the activity of a
| Pharmaceutical company?
| barberpole wrote:
| > trial and error
|
| There's a clip of John Cleese showing how Beethoven in fact
| composed the 5th symphony by trial and error.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I would very much like to see that if you have a link.
|
| Google search doesn't find it for me.
| gcmrtc wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wYwB3lJAbYY
| afpx wrote:
| Too bad scientists don't publish their failures
| coldtea wrote:
| Between the collapse of the music industry, GPT/Midjourney, big
| tech penny pinching ad-sponsored artists, copyright strikes for
| BS reasons, smaller attention spans, and a long recession
| (affecting disposable income), artists probably wont be allowed
| to make any work at all...
| js8 wrote:
| That's the free market pressure. The free market only cares about
| your present performance, not about your past. And it is by many
| believed to be a good thing, because it's very meritocratic.
|
| But it has downsides, too. People are human, not machines, and
| sometimes need to rest too. That's why we shouldn't leave
| everything up to the free market (not even the one that works in
| liberal theory and is perfectly meritocratic).
|
| It was also one of the justifications behind copyright, to give
| artists more stability.
| badpun wrote:
| > But it has downsides, too. People are human, not machines,
| and sometimes need to rest too. That's why we shouldn't leave
| everything up to the free market
|
| People are competing against other humans, who need rest too.
| Hence, everybody rests, and things work out for everybody in
| the free market scenario.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Clearly the machines need rest. "The unreasonable effectiveness
| of restarting a computer" did not come from nowhere :)
| lucozade wrote:
| > The free market only cares about your present performance,
| not about your past.
|
| That's blatantly not true in art, if it's true at all. If the
| art market agrees that some random sketch was by Da Vinci, it's
| not valued on merit.
| dahart wrote:
| This is a good point for Da Vinci, one of the most famous
| artists of all time. But how do things work for the rest of
| all the millions of not-very-famous artists? A few select
| pieces are valued by name, and then there's the vast ocean of
| work that isn't.
| js8 wrote:
| Free market assumes that goods from different producers are
| substitutable. Da Vinci has, clearly, a monopoly on original
| items from Da Vinci.
|
| So if you're an artist and people value your name, regardless
| of the product it's written on, you don't have the OP's
| problem. The problem described only applies if the consumer
| can get some other art that gives them equivalent
| satisfaction.
| lucozade wrote:
| > Free market assumes that goods from different producers
| are substitutable
|
| No it doesn't. A free market assumes that there are no
| constraining influences on trade except supply and demand.
| With the possible exception of a working contract law
| system.
|
| Free markets happily allow for people to make buying and
| selling decisions for any reason they choose. If it happens
| to be for a non-fungible asset, no matter how pointless it
| may be to other parties, so be it.
|
| _Efficient_ markets imply restricting assumptions on
| fungibility, so that there can be a meaningful fair price,
| but it 's not required in general.
| js8 wrote:
| OK, let's call it efficient market pressure in my
| original post, then.
| esquivalience wrote:
| I'm interested in your comment about copyright being
| proposed for stability. Can you direct me to a source
| please? If you have a reference or a hint for further
| research, I'd like to read into it more.
| anshorei wrote:
| A lot of that value is in the aspect of the sketch as a
| historical artifact. There's little present performance to
| speak of when it comes to Da Vinci.
| lucozade wrote:
| That's simply not true. Almost all the value will be
| because it's attributed to da Vinci. You simply won't get
| the same valuation if it's attributed to a lesser known
| contemporary.
|
| And you don't need to go historical. I just picked da Vinci
| as an example. If you or I made a balloon dog sculpture, it
| won't be valued the same as a Jeff Koons one [0]. Even if
| it's essentially identical.
|
| There's a whole subset of the art market that is valuing on
| provenance not the physical object.
|
| [0] I'm assuming you're not Jeff Koons. The problem with HN
| is that, sometimes, you are actually chatting to a
| celebrity in the field without knowing.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Well, the balloon dog example simply boils down to the
| fact that your work will only be seen as a rip-off.
|
| > There's a whole subset of the art market that is
| valuing on provenance not the physical object.
|
| Subset? I believe provenance is almost everything that
| matters in art, because it's what equips an artifact with
| meaning. Duchamp's urinal neatly exemplifies this.
| lucozade wrote:
| The vast majority of art sold is for decorative purposes
| and is valued as such. There is a subset though that's
| sold primarily based on provenance.
|
| Or to put it another way, most art sold isn't in urinal
| form.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > I believe provenance is almost everything that matters
| in art, because it's what equips an artifact with
| meaning.
|
| I've never "understood art", but when you phrased it like
| that it makes perfect sense. To me, provenance just isn't
| interesting. So I judge the pieces as they stand in front
| of me.
| dagw wrote:
| There are essentially 3 ways to judge 'art'.
|
| - Do I find this aesthetic
|
| - Do I find this historically/culturally interesting or
| significant
|
| - Do I find this a good investment
|
| The problem is that people don't always make it clear
| which one they are judging by and end up talking past
| each other.
| dagw wrote:
| People aren't judging (or pricing) random Da Vinci sketches
| as art, but as investments and historic artefacts. In fact
| I'd go as far as saying that anybody paying more than
| ~$300k-$500k for a piece of 'art' isn't paying for the art
| any more, but are investing in a financial asset (that may or
| may not look nice displayed in their living room)
| badpun wrote:
| I'd say the treshold is much lower, and depends on the area
| and wealth of the person. But I doubt even a billionaire
| would pay $200k for a piece of an unknown artists just
| because he loves it. Maybe he'd pay $50k. For regular
| people, it's more like $5k.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Of course they should. There are countless fantastic musicians,
| for example, who have albums that have both great tracks and
| filler tracks on them. Just because someone has demonstrated
| greatness (even consistently) doesn't mean that every track that
| comes out of their studio is destined to top the charts or win
| some sort of award.
|
| Even the best athletes have "bad days at the office" (just
| yesterday, the #1 tennis player in the world lost to a guy ranked
| #133). Why should artists of any given medium?
| badpun wrote:
| The difference is, artists can just shelve all the crap they
| made and release only the good stuff.
| chimineycricket wrote:
| Also, having good tracks will make up for the crap tracks on
| the album. Fans don't listen to the crap tracks as much.
| That's a benefit of throwing a bunch of darts at dartboard at
| once.
| ilamont wrote:
| You really see this in the music world. Nobody comes fully formed
| ... you're playing covers or recording practically unlistenable
| demos and experiments, "getting your chops" and getting feedback
| from your piano teacher or whoever happens to be in the club that
| night. It's excruciating.
|
| But over time, you get better. Practice pays off. Playing with
| other people of varying skill levels pays off. You stop doing
| covers and start making your own compositions. You learn to
| improvise.
|
| And, you encounter catalysts. It could be a recording by someone
| else. It could be a musician who lets you do things on your own
| instrument that you never thought possible. It could be a club or
| even a clothing store that becomes the center of a local music
| "scene."
|
| No one remembers Jimmy Page's skiffle band, John Paul Jones' 1965
| studio sessions with a half-forgotten R&B singer, or Robert
| Plant's and John Bonham's first band. But when those 4 came
| together for the first time in the summer of 1968, BOOM!
| iamsomewalrus wrote:
| Oh man, thousands of up votes for a Led Zeppelin reference.
| This mirrors my experience as a musician. Learning to play gave
| me the confidence to go into different scenarios and recognize
| that I had to tolerate being bad first and then I would get it.
| It's a journey. It's a sacrifice. Strangely, it never felt like
| a sacrifice at the time.
| hathym wrote:
| who told you they are not?
| https://www.vogue.com/article/the-120000-art-basel-banana-ex...
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's worth asking who counts as an artist for the purpose of this
| argument. Is an artist someone primarily concerned with creating
| art for art's sake, and their value is in expanding the public
| consciousness and deepening the discourse? Or, are they an
| entertainer, primarily concerned with popularity and commercial
| success? Are these different roles judged by the same standards?
|
| For instance, we could very well say that, if you are primarily
| making art as a product, you are like a vendor in a marketplace.
| And, as a vendor in a marketplace, we consumers don't need to
| nurture you, or be patient with your failures. If you make a bad
| batch, we just move on to the next vendor selling a similar
| product.
|
| The definitions of art and artists have changed a lot since 1969.
| We used to have this concept of selling out, and if you engaged
| in it, you weren't a serious artist to a lot of people. We don't
| really have that concept today, at least not in the same way. You
| also might not have been considered a serious artist if you
| worked in a popular medium: popular music, television, comic
| books, etc., all of which I think most people consider valid art
| forms today.
|
| I'm not saying this was the _right_ way to think about art. I 'm
| saying that's how it was. And while I don't know a lot about
| David Sylvester, I see that he was a fine art critic and curator,
| so I am assuming he might have been talking about a particular
| kind of artist when he said this.
| jcarrano wrote:
| I thought this was already the case, considering most "art" is
| garbage anyways (well, 90% of everything, according to that
| rule).
|
| I do not thinks artist are "punished" more for making bad works,
| as much as they are loosing that extra "excess attention" that
| our media-high society gives them. Of course, if you put regular
| human beings on a pedestal and make an Idol of them then any
| minor misstep will be unforgivable.
| Delk wrote:
| > I do not thinks artist are "punished" more for making bad
| works, as much as they are loosing that extra "excess
| attention" that our media-high society gives them.
|
| It might be partially about attention, but the problem with
| fine art is probably that it needs to be something novel or
| reach beyond the mundane somehow. Most people can keep doing
| more or less the same mundane work with mundane results every
| day and it's still passable or even completely fulfills
| expectations. You can't really do that when the work kind of by
| definition is expected to spark something or speak to its
| audience.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| What I don't understand about this sort of point is why it
| matters. Yes, it's hard to be novel or popular in some way.
|
| That's when anyone at all cares, because they add value in
| that way alone. No house is built, or disease is cured, or
| road is laid by their work.
|
| They choose to do something that is failure-prone, ill-
| defined, and almost by definition isn't intrinsically useful.
| They cannot be surprised when that turns out to have problems
| as well as advantages.
| nohaydeprobleme wrote:
| Perhaps related, in software development there is the idea of
| the "Marimba Phenomenon" as first described in the Joel on
| Software blog [1], where the author observes that: "PR grows
| faster than the quality of your code. Result: everybody checks
| out your code, and it's not good yet. These people will be
| permanently convinced that your code is simple and inadequate,
| even if you improve it drastically later. I call this the
| Marimba phenomenon."
|
| So, in the arguably creative work of creating new software, you
| are allowed to ship mediocre software at the start, but you do
| risk making a bad first impression that may be difficult to
| recover from.
|
| But on the other hand, if you never ship the software product,
| your software can become outdated by the time you eventually
| release it, or you can put it off indefinitely and miss out on
| growth as a developer. So, there can definitely be a balance
| between releasing a product too early and making a poor first
| impression, and waiting excessively to polish a product, to the
| point where the software becomes no longer relevant or
| outdated.
|
| [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/06/03/fixing-venture-
| cap...
| teddyh wrote:
| Better link for "Marimba Phenomenon":
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/04/09/picking-a-ship-
| dat...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| There's even a museum for them: https://museumofbadart.org/
| antupis wrote:
| Execution is lagging here it would be more fruitful if we would
| see Vince Van Gogh or Pablo Picasso bad work rather than just
| some noname artists.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeah, I know. It was just a joke.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Oh no, they've moved out of their gallery at the Somerville
| Theater. I mean, that's not a tragedy, just less convenient for
| me personally.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Fortunately for me this is not a problem , my problem is making
| good work.
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