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Yep. The term ‘art’ is not precisely defined. I came up with my definition involving ‘function’ after watching intellectual people discussing if video games are art or not, if they ever get there, etc. Blah, blah, blah. Without any outcome, other them confirming each other how interesting their blah is.
I've had similar experience in art school before. Blah, blah, blah. Talk over work.
Then i worked as artist for many years. Nobody ever talked there about art. Not a single time. And never ever i did anything close to true art in my art job. The art there was about function first: To sell stuff. As soon as such function dominates, true art is no longer possible nor even desired. The same applies to artists working for games. But that's not a bad thing, because function > art, IMHO.
It is common to confuse things like skill or good engineering with art. It's used as an idiom, to express impression or respect. No bad thing either, ofc. But think of the true artist. Don't you think he's quite pissed if you say ‘code is art’, because you are a coder, or ‘micro mechanics is art’ because you are impressed from watchmakers? Isn't there a form of disrespect against the true artist? His work has no function, so this little word is all he has :D
NikiTo said: But they overcomplicated it for the sole reason of art.
Nah. They do so to give their products more value. No art involved.
NikiTo said: Are you feeling inspired to code when you read some paper that tells you something like - “our technique makes fluid simulation 500 times faster”. Does it make you want to code? Does it inspire you to implement this code as part of your program?
Inspiration comes from many things. Art is one of them, beside science, religion, woman, nature… whatever. So inspiration does not proof an art source.
NikiTo said: You spent many years coding for a project…. for what? You could have used Houdini/Unreal instead. The most enginerical and logical thing to do. Why are you illogical writing code?
Why do you constantly assert me to replicate Houdini or UE?
NikiTo said: The moment you start to make something too good, more good than it is needed, that process becomes art too.
Nope. Obsession is not art.
NikiTo said: Sacrifice gives art extra value.
No. Because you can not declare your own work and sacrifice as art. Only others can do this. The cliche of the poor artist is just that, but poverty does not help with achieving true art.
JoeJ said: It's used as an idiom, to express impression or respect.
I agree on that.
JoeJ said: But think of the true artist. Don't you think he's quite pissed if you say ‘code is art’, because you are a coder, or ‘micro mechanics is art’ because you are impressed from watchmakers?
I am pissed off when somebody sells an orange stain painting for 50mln$… Imagine all the GPUs i could buy with that money. It is offending me.
JoeJ said: Inspiration comes from many things. Art is one of them, beside science, religion, woman, nature… whatever. So inspiration does not proof an art source.
Fair point. Though you should admit, most of art is inspired by a woman. How much of the poetry out there is inspired y a pair of big bouncing 80085 that some single male poet fell in love with? Should we ban poetry produced by horny?
JoeJ said: Nah. They do so to give their products more value. No art involved.
It could be. It could be not. They could pretend to be art-ish and when nobody sees, they could use machines to produce the peaces that they claim were made manually. But i think you are wrong to ban art from selling. I feel it like that - if your initial motivation is to sell the thing, it is not art. It is a job. But - if you suffer from insomnia episodes and during these episodes, you feel the urge to paint and you paint, you can sell it, because money was not your initial motivation. And when you consume out your musa and fall asleep, the next day you could feel dry and empty. Then somebody could offer you money for your painting from the last night. then you could feel cold about it. You could sell it with money in mind, because at the moment you are empty. You wasted it all the last night. The artpiece was created with passion in mind, no money, but now you can sell it. Still art.
Ask Van Gogh now - “Sir, do you think that your paintings lost their value just because billionaires use them as a tool for making money and become richer?” I think Van Gogh could tell you - my original intention was not to make me rich out of my paintings. It is still art, it is just in dirty hands now.
Then from other side - it is not bad thing to paint in order to sell in order to buy food, paint and brushes. good paint and brushes are very expensive.
How would you feel if i tell you - “I believe in you and i think yo are a genius. And i want you to prosper with your genius coding. So i will go outside to work in construction and make money to can buy you more GPUs. Because i think you are a genius.” Isn't this beautiful? It happens in movies often - the usual setup - two brothers, one is genius of IQ 200, the other is dull. The dull brother works in construction in order to feed his clever brother. In order the clever brother to can work in his laboratory, the dull brother work his ass out moving bags of sand. Isn't this beautiful?
Now imagine this - a person with money tells a person with no money - you are poor and i see you can not buy brushes, i will give you MONEY for you to buy brushes and paint. I will give you MONEY for food and rent too, because i don't want you to waste your fingers on the construction place.
Isn't this the most beautiful thing ever? More beautiful than love. Because i can always reduce your Romeo and Juliet love thing down to hormones during puberty and urge of two teenagers for rebellion against the will of their parents. I can reduce all the love-talk from hollywood down to simple cause and effect - somebody got horny.
But if somebody loves the art of another person, this is a pure thing. Purest than love from hollywood.
In case you absolutely ban selling of art, don't do that. Reconsider the original intention. Maybe some talentless asshole wants to become rich fast by pretending his stainshit is art, OR, maybe it is true art being sold to people who love the art they buy. And the money is given from heart.
This is from a movie -
A hardcore coldblooded criminal mofo appreciated the doodles of a kid and his art melted his cruel heart of a criminal. He gave all his money from looting to the painter so he can keep doing art. A cruel mofo gave his blood stained money for art.
Here the criminal dies -
but he uses his last minutes to show that he saved the doodles of the kid all that time -
Much more beautiful an purer than love stories. It is paying for art… with criminal money.
JoeJ said: Nope. Obsession is not art.
You are painting a painting. But your red paint runs out. You need red paint, but it is at night. You cut your arm a bit to get red paint. Definition of art. Pretty much insanity.
JoeJ said: No. Because you can not declare your own work and sacrifice as art. Only others can do this. The cliche of the poor artist is just that, but poverty does not help with achieving true art.
If other people value my art, i would be happy. But i can give my own art my love.
I will pay you to buy your work and use it for the crimes you hate the most. Are you gonna sell it to me? When i sell art, i am not giving it away. I could meet the person i sold a drawing 5 years ago and ask him how is my drawing. He could tell me - “meh, i used it as toiled paper, you know the covid crisis of toilet paper.” I would like to punch him if he did this to me. Other people show the same kind of appreciation toward their code -
Remember when i refused to show you my programming work, because you could be rude to it? This is how you treat your art - you care what will happen to your art once you let it go away from you.
Then again, our world is cruel, and art could be fake. A marketing trick. Somebody could doodle some shitstain the previous night, then bring it to a gallery and tell them - “i did this painting when i broke with the only woman i ever loved. It was 20 years ago. I mixed the paint with my tears and other love liquids. It is very important to me. Money can not buy it….. Anyways, i am giving it to you for 10K, 8K if you buy one more of my paintings for 2500, deal?”
I think we could reach an agreement on this - “Sacrifice is not part of art. But if sacrifice was done, it gives additional value to the art, but the value is sentimental or of other kind, not artistic.” Like when regular panties obtain value because somebody famous used them. I mean when it is not only a trick to make money. For some people some objects have a special value. Other speculate with such objects making money. I think we can agree sacrifice adds more value to something, but this value is not of an artistic nature.
Though sacrifice could show how much you consider your own work to be important. Imagine that somebody gets burned attempting to save paintings from a burning house.
In an awesome comics i read currently, they talk about value. It is a currency used in the depths of the planet. The currency measures how much you value something, not his actual value. Pretty much like money - worth nothing at all until you believe it is worth something. In the comics, a character got half devoured by beasts. But the character was immortal. So he was lying there half devoured. Then other people came close and broke apart part of their bodies and used these parts of their bodies to feed the immortal character. This is how the character can recover organic tissue. The people in the comics said - “we give you value through our sacrifice. Take that value in exchange of nothing at all, and have it always with you”.
What looks like a stainshit to one person, could look like art to somebody. You can not really tell, until one - you open his brain and read the truth, or two - you make him sacrifice something for the art. If somebody is only making money out of an object, and he only pretends he values this object, he would not suffer for it. But if somebody consider this to be art, he could suffer for it. Would get burnt to save this precious thing of big value out of a burning house.
So sacrifice is not part of art, but it can prove how much you value an art piece. Not limited to art. Sacrifice can tell how much you value anything. But if a painter dies for his art, i believe him more than i believe to somebody who painted a stainshit in only 2 hours last night. Sacrifice is a kind of proof. Would you earn an hernia in order to make a life-like statue? Would you sacrifice your health for it? Or you would rather carve it a bit, not perfectly and sell it already, having a regular life as an artisan, not as an artist. Would you spend 5 months more only to polish the skin of David to be perfect? 5 months full of physical pain in the back and shoulders. Then again, if you do it, is it because of art, or because you are plain insane?
Imagine the wife of a person who carves a statue for 5 years - “I am leaving you! You are insane. We have kids to feed, and you bring no money home. All day long with that damn statue of yours. I am gonna break it now” Then the wife takes the axe and swings it toward the statue and the artist puts his hands to protect the statue. Is it art or insanity? He could be a mad guy who carves a perfect sphere out of a piece of marble. Trying to make it perfect, never achieving it. A sphere, nothing more.
It is harder for me personally to define productivity as art. Imagine a factory, it is a piece of art. Engineering art, but it was made with productivity in mind in order to reduce suffer. To reduce costs. But if you look at the factory, at the robots and the assembly line, it is art. At least for me it is art. But was made to lower the value of things. But as an achievement, as a creation it is art. Somebody could claim - “Your OOP is pure art. It is pure perfection. Your OOP is the most productive in the world”. This scenario becomes more unclear for me. Can OOP be art when it was made to lower the value? Is procedural creation art? Too easy to be art. I think if you model a character voxel by voxel 12 hours a day during 5 years, it will be more art-ish than if you generate 10000 characters procedurally. The procedural code could be art, but the 10000 characters produced are not art.
JoeJ said: IMO: coding is skill, but not art. Skill ≠ art, although it should be necessary
In my opinion (and the opinion of some colleagues), real Programmers are artists because they are looking for creative solutions to yet unknown problems. You can have tons of experience of solving problem A with solution B but that doesn't make you a good programmer.
Shaarigan said: real Programmers are artists because they are looking for creative solutions to yet unknown problems.
Which is exactly why programming is not boring : )
So maybe all the off-topic blah (sorry as well) can motivate the opening poster to try some programming himself. The excitement after solving a problem (e.g. sprite moves as intended) is a very similar feeling to that after composing an earwig melody. I did a lot of comics drawing as a kid and later at work too, which never was nearly as exciting than that. Just saying ; )
