Check it out here.

Check out this guys work. Extremely good.

Reznor has been releasing the master tracks to his song in garageband format. Anyone so inclined can manipulate and alter the song. Effectively, he is putting him money where is mouth is. A large NIN theme found in practically all albums is about sticking it to the ‘man’. The act of freely dispersing his master tracks demonstrates a willingness to forego any profits that may be gathered by keeping the music protected from others. Not that releasing these master tracks will constitute a real threat to the profit potential of this album. People will always want to hear the way Reznor intended his music to sound and they will pay a reasonable price for it. Nevertheless, its cool that he shows no reservation in letting his music be manipulated altered as other see fit.

I’m inclined to say this should be another feature of the artist. When one is willing to release the blueprints to their work they are revealing that they have no fear in being copied. That is to say, they are not afraid that the end product is replicated without their say. By making this assertion, the artist ultimately embraces the notion that the process by which they bring about their art is much more important and can probably never be copied. Reznor’s music can be copied, but generating original Reznor sounding music can only performed by Reznor himself.

Perhaps more importantly, is the fact that the process of making music is in fact the art. Let us suppose that the actual process can be copied as well, such that one could generate Reznor-like original songs. Even in this case, the process still remains Reznor’s. By this I mean the craft, dedication, and methodology that Reznor applies to generate his music is where the art lies. Those that attempt to mimic this process inevitably become artist. They employ their own craft, dedication and methodology to produce Reznor-Like songs. In this way, the mimicry of producing music is in fact an art as well.

The essence of art lies in the process and not the product.

A good friend of mine is a poet. His website can be found here. In the section called poetry and prose their is a poem called Jumbled Profession. It’s one of my favorites.

Diatribe directs me to this article.

I have already said my piece about what art is. It lead to an extended discussion between me, my father, and Phil. You might want to check it out. See if my definition is similar to yours and if my definition would preclude this type of ‘art’.

Phil politely asks for more disabuse. Happy to oblige.

You’re not going to take the time to elaborate on that a little further with specific examples to explain exactly how you ‘can tell’, even if you (possibly) possess the most knowledge from the domain of art of those present on your blog and we probably won’t understand anyway?

Specific examples? Hmmm. Several things come to mind but lets focus on oil since that seems to be the medium he is painting in. The last thing I ever painted in oil was a cheetah. The first version of the cheetah was horrific. The biggest problem I had was determining the color. In the first rendition I was under the impression that you lay down an initial coat that most closely matches the color you are attempting to emulate. From their you add differing colors to give depth to the painting. Upon using this method I learned very rapidly that color is strongly determined by brush stroke. Furthermore the apparent color of a fur coat is not the constituent colors that make up that coat. But by the time I realized this the paint was laid and the cheetah looked like crap. However, upon becoming aware of this I modified my brush stroke and color choice and create a second version that was much closer to my vision. While I was much happier with the second version I would be hard pressed to call it art. It didn’t come close to hitting my vision.

Now having the knowledge that both brush stroke and more thorough color analysis play large roles in determining the look of the painting I know when someone has failed to utilize those elements correctly. I can tell because, their ‘art’ will look my first rendition. This is not profound knowledge that I’m applying to determine what real art is. Effectively through several serious efforts at creating art I learn just how difficult it is to accomplish even basic things. When I see creations that have similar faults to my own experience I know that its not art. Furthermore, its not hard for me to extrapolate the difficulties I faced to painting something even more complex like say human flesh. Allthough some may argue that fur is more difficult. Just imagine how difficult it would be to emulate hairy human flesh.

I think even in terms of the domains of hockey and art, there’s large grey areas between someone who, to use a colloquialism, ‘knows enough to be dangerous’, and someone that has an expertise level of knowledge when it comes to the domain. It is my job when you make a statement to the public to attempt to knock you down closer to the former than allow you appear moreso of the latter. And yes, I’m aware you can produce a PDF displaying exactly how many hours of “hard work” you’ve logged in the domain of art in your lifetime, and that we could process those numbers through an “Art-o-meter” that would evaluate all the information and tell us all what we already know - Steve Green Rules®.

Your version of my argument places way to much emphasis on hard work. Art is more a function of awareness and modification then raw labor. Vital to art is the awareness of how your current creation fails to meet your vision and the theories you will apply to make your next creation that much closer to your vision. In this way one might say you are perpetually dissatisfied with your work forcing you to constantly refine you technique to stave off your own disappointment. Hard work really doesn’t work into this equation directly. It has an indirect role since those that work the most at this process are the ones most likely to generate art. But this is a simple numbers game.

But what of the guy that’s put in less hard work than you have in the domain, yet is able to come and point out to you reasons why Gary Kelly is a crock that after contemplating, you cannot counter and must agree with? The guy that has a disturbing expertise level of knowledge in the domain of art, yet skipped out on that “paint a tiger mural on my bedroom wall” phase and instead has only been dabbling in art for a couple years so that he may attract anorexic young models that show up at high-profile New York art shows. How do you respond to that guy? You know those guys and gals are out there. The ones that are able to provide empirical examples that challenge the notion that “hard work is everything” because they possess intangible (I’m hesitant to use that word in speaking with a scientist fMRI freak because I’m opening myself up for a counter 14 years down the line where you show me a brain scan and say “HA! SEE?? WE KNOW WHAT THAT IS NOW! INTANGIBLE…PFF”) qualities that allow them to excel beyond the threshold of hard work. The ones that, if you realize progressing forward in whatever domain involves hard work for you, you know you’ll always be short of, because the same work will come with relative ease to them?

An individual that fails in the process of awareness and modification fails to generate art. No matter the amount of hard work, or lack thereof . He/she fails to make art.

But I suppose we are dealing with something interesting aside from your failure to understand my definition of art, yet again. This notion that certain people are born with some innate talent that just makes them superior to others. Okay, so let me go ahead and compile a list of all the people with some innate ability that allows them to create great things but were unaware of how their current output does not match their vision. Furthermore, they have no idea how to modify their current efforts to improve their output. Well as just so happens no one comes to my mind. I’m inclined to deny the truism that some people have innate greatness that allows them to bring about their vision without awareness or modification.

I would be much more inclined to believe that those with an innate ability in fact have no innate ability but instead have reduced pain to operating in their given domain. Thus, when they perform the awareness and modification process I speak of, the frustration of not achieving vision is not debilitating but more arousing. This enables them to maintain the process of awareness and modification longer thus making them more proficient at mastering their domain. Effectively, innate ability simply means hard work is neither hard nor work.

Your belief in innate abilty comes about from a romantic explantatory system. I will direct you here for a more extended discussion on this topic.

Speaking of hard work and knowledge, I think you should give up on the pursuit of knowledge in the domain of web design. Your shit is consistently broke. You didn’t believe me when I’d complain about disabusivesophist.com, but now there’s this on my screen:

Currently my brother is in charge of the look of the blog. Draw the relevant conclusion that you need to from this fact.

As for Disabusive Sophist I believe I have made the proper corrections so that website works as intended. Please confirm for me. For what its worth I had a vision for the sight, and it failed to meet those expectation so I had to make modifications to the methods. This of course requires work and some of it was hard. Manipulating frames in dreamweaver is pure hell.

Phil argues in my post about what art is:

I’m wondering if we showed you a series of Gary Kelly’s works before you read this article, if you would have coined him the conservative artist all the same and had this fit of masturbation.

Interesting suggestion. It might break your heart to know I had drawn my conclusions about this artist upon viewing a panting called “Wild Party” (I think) and not reading his words concerning his work. In fact it was the painting that drew me to the article and not the other way around.

He continues

How, without hearing explanations and descriptions from the artist’s own words, would you go about evaluating an artist’s work?

When it comes to any domain of knowledge, those within the domain will be able to recognize what takes effort and what does not. I have painted with oil, water, and acrylic and I can tell this guy had to really learn how to use his medium to capture his style. You also have this ability. I suspect something along the lines of hockey would be applicable. One may claim to be good at hockey but you know upon viewing them in action whether this was true or not.

Are you capable of comparing works with respect to time and not only being able to determine an artist’s unique, subjective ‘vision’ and figuring out how it is that that artist must work to achieve the transformation of that ‘vision’ into reality, but also being able to see the artist’s mistakes in earlier works and evidence that she has taken ample time and put forth ample effort in overcoming those mistakes?

While having a history might help its not necessary. The effort put in the current work reveals how much history went into bringing about his current ‘vision’. Again we can use Hockey as analogy. Watching a goalie during one game tells you how committed they are to their work because of they way they position themselves, the way they manage the puck, the different techniques they employ to to protect the goal and so on. Studying the goalie in all his previous games is not necessary, because its apparent to you, even in this one viewing, how knowledgeable he is about hockey. Examining the history would be interesting because it would let you see at what moments ‘insight’ brought about the most dramatic changes in manifesting his style. This might be a good way to discover how best to teach someone how to work in that particular style be it blocking pucks or illustrating pictures.

And if so…yeah, it must be great having that acute awareness, but not being able to make it come forth as a successful artist. Someone should write an aphorism about a distinction like that.

And how acute is your ability to determine a good hockey player without playing in the NHL? Actually, if memory serves me correctly nobody is playing in the NHL currently. MUHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA. So I guess we have no means for determining who is skilled enough to play professional hockey.

Trampage opens his pile hole too.

I see that you have fallen into the trap, that if you don’t like it it is not art, but it is crap….(that simplistic logic is crap)….

First of all I don’t regard work that is not artistic (by my definition) to be crap. Just not art.

The art picture is a still life ( photo) that someone has stylisted and while very interesting is but one sensory activator in the world of “art”

I can think of many different styles I don’t like but would still regard as art. For example cubism. I absolutely hate cubism, however their can be no doubt that Picasso mastered this style and was able to perfectly articulate his vision in the cubist style. I would regard his work as art.

Try to expand you adventure into art and forget about the photo stylising for a little while or at least until I can fetch my cannon image collector and fhotoshop manipulater and conservotor cash register.

I don’t believe that Gary Kelly was working off a picture, but even if he was I personally am not boxed into slightly stylized realism as the only qualifer for art. For example I have always enjoyed some expressionism. Such as “The Scream” by Edward Munch. Again this would be regarded as art because it’s near perfect articulation of his vision using impressionism.

Oh and if i have to wait for you to figure how to open up ‘fotoshop’ I fear I will die of old age before I can pay hard cash for your ‘art’.

Reading Create Magazine and I notice this painters work. He goes by the name Gary Kelley. The vast majority of artists are….. well….. not artists. Their work lacks something very important in order to be an artist. True works of art reek of absolute perfection in the execution of their chosen style. A ‘true’ artist takes his craft very serious and understands that greatness is not easy. In fact it’s work.

This stems from the fact that developing a near perfect style requires a great deal of problem solving. In the case of painting one must repeatedly figure out how each stroke, use of light, use of color, and composition will ultimately effect the final piece. To master these elements requires an artist awareness of what they want to see on canvas and what their current incarnation lacks in that vision. Once the artist realizes how this current piece lacks certain elements they begin the process of discovering what techniques they can employ to bring about their vision in their next work. The process of creating art is very difficult and absolutely arduous.

That being said, the vast majority of the art I encounter is absolute crap. You can tell the artist does not understand the basic principle of awareness and modification. Rather, they believe that once they get out some paint on canvas and that is left is to call it ‘art’ and it is transformed into this mystical piece arcane beauty. Sorry, this shit is just crap and your are not an artist, just a liberal. Real art is taking responsibility for making reality your vision. A real artist is a conservative.

The reason I call this to your attention is because as I’m scanning his art I form some hypothesis about him. First he considers his profession to be real actual work. Not something fun you do. Not something the liberal says is work because they are ’serious’ about getting their ‘vision’ out. No its work, cause you have to sit there and figure out a way to emulate your vision on canvas. And that is not easy. Confirming this hypothesis he states:

Art is Work - that’s a pretty honest statement.

Furthermore, because his style is so well developed I know that he understands the necessary process of awareness and modification in creating art. Such great style only can be attained when you become aware of failing to make your vision a reality and learn what modifications in techniques are necessary to bring about a closer reproduction of your vision. He also confirms this by saying:

Creativity is assembling influences. It’s not about having something totally original pop into you head all of a sudden. Creativity is using what you can get your hands and wrap your head around and then processing it

Good artist know what is required to bring about art. Strong work ethic combined with a healthy dose of problem solving will eventually yield beautiful works of art. Art produced without hard work and empirical knowledge is not art.