Becoming an 'artist'

[bribrius]

As support to qleak.
Several years ago there was a going away party for my son who was technical lead in a company that was bought by Microsoft.
Someone, knowing Mike was my son, told me that Mike wrote the most elegant code he had ever seen.
I asked for an explanation, he made a couple of starts, then finally laughed and told me he couldn't explain it to someone who didn't know coding.

Let me try, as someone who has coded and managed software development. It's actually quite a bit like music. There is a strong, fundamental algorithm (or path, or melody, or idea), that is both powerful and yet seductively simple, supported by clear and straightforward initializations and terminations, nested in a way that make the logic easy to follow, and provides for a robust test approach without loose ends or potential underfined results. Good, elegant code is actually fun to read. Bad code is turgid, has no obvious coherence to it, brings in irrelevant stuff, and has a bunch of hanging bits that can be tripped over. When doing design reviews of "good code", usually the KISS principle is embodied in the implementation. Elegant code does the job with a minimal set of lines that don't leave anything to chance.

And this relates to "artists" as well. I've had so many programmers tell me, in defending their turgid mishmash of redirections and pointers, that they were "artists" who created finely-crafted expressions. The true coding artists produced clean, easy-to-follow code that got the job done with minimal effort and was easy to test and verify.

Think you guys are reaching quite honestly. The purpose of the code or equations is the end result. Like when they built the pyramids they relied on leverage (physics). But the math wasn't the art. It was a necessary vehicle to produce it, as was the art they put in side. In my mind (i could be wrong) it seems some of you are claiming the vehicle to be the art. In which it is a manner in which to produce it. Clay pottery comes to mind as well. You can claim the physics of it are the art. But no one thinks that. They look at the finished art as the art. While methods of producing art almost always factor in the final perception of it. I can't personally think of anyone that has attributed the physics of producing clay pottery as being the actual art. But rather they look at the materials and devices as knowledge or craft and the finished product as art. Same with statues ( how do they hold themselves up?). The equations in the process are they considered the actual art? And the further you get into the technical perhaps the more difficult it is to separate the technical craft side from the art itself (i alluded to this earlier in the thread). While davinci had a knack for both it isn't often or easily attained. The off track banter of the thread into math as art, code as art, i volunteer for proof of how quick people can be in claiming something to be art with technical merit but little of actual artistic value.

I think your overarching idea in this post is a good one.. but I have to interject on one thought. While the physics of making a clay pot are not art in and of themselves (unless you believe in a god which created them).. the movements of the persons hands in order to shape the pot by using physics are.

Code may be about the end result, but so is a poem or a novel. The lines are just as artistic as the whole story. I think what they are saying is the same goes for code. And sure there are technical aspects to coding that must be learned but there is also room for an individuals own creative input.

If you want to consider something even deeper. And now i am reaching. Consider if photography really has to be a communication or visual art. As we are suggesting photography to be a art. Seems a lot of art in history had no communication purpose. some utilitarian in concept. Others religious in nature (communicating only to their god, give reverence to, or perhaps to protect themselves from seasons or astrology reasons). Much of art was not about communicating from one person to another. It was steep in culture, utilitarian concept, or religion. It seems people consider something a visual art both from seeing it and its communication. However a statue to a God has little to do with communication between one person to another but often in reverence to the God they believed in. Some of that pottery we claim to be artistic they made to eat out of or had utilitarian concepts.. The languages as art, more to avoid grunting. A necessary vehicle for basic communication. Is language really a art? Or a utilitarian vehicle?

When we take a photo, it seems assumed it is a visual art communication designated for certain individuals. To say "something". However i wonder if that is necessary. As how does a statue considered art have the main purpose of giving a God reverence with little purpose of communication among other individuals? You can see both. Some statues and artifacts were individual or customs based. Little to do with communication (except for a god or to the dead perhaps, spirits). In fact a different peoples or tribe would not even know what the statue might represent. Some art, even visual. Was never meant to be seen. When they entombed someone it wasn't expected it would one day be unearthed so people could look at the art. It was put there for a different purpose. So now we have to differentiate the difference between paintings for different purposes, photography, and wall carvings figurines and statues. Were all monuments created for communication?. All can be considered somewhat a visual art. Or at least you can see it at least. But some were not meant to communicate to people of this world anyway. And some were not meant to communicate at all but give reverence to someones deity. All are visual. So on this forum i see repeatedly that photography can not only be considered a art, but it is a purposeful one for visual communication. Which in and of itself i question.

 

[W.Y.Photo]

As support to qleak.
Several years ago there was a going away party for my son who was technical lead in a company that was bought by Microsoft.
Someone, knowing Mike was my son, told me that Mike wrote the most elegant code he had ever seen.
I asked for an explanation, he made a couple of starts, then finally laughed and told me he couldn't explain it to someone who didn't know coding.

Let me try, as someone who has coded and managed software development. It's actually quite a bit like music. There is a strong, fundamental algorithm (or path, or melody, or idea), that is both powerful and yet seductively simple, supported by clear and straightforward initializations and terminations, nested in a way that make the logic easy to follow, and provides for a robust test approach without loose ends or potential underfined results. Good, elegant code is actually fun to read. Bad code is turgid, has no obvious coherence to it, brings in irrelevant stuff, and has a bunch of hanging bits that can be tripped over. When doing design reviews of "good code", usually the KISS principle is embodied in the implementation. Elegant code does the job with a minimal set of lines that don't leave anything to chance.

And this relates to "artists" as well. I've had so many programmers tell me, in defending their turgid mishmash of redirections and pointers, that they were "artists" who created finely-crafted expressions. The true coding artists produced clean, easy-to-follow code that got the job done with minimal effort and was easy to test and verify.

Think you guys are reaching quite honestly. The purpose of the code or equations is the end result. Like when they built the pyramids they relied on leverage (physics). But the math wasn't the art. It was a necessary vehicle to produce it, as was the art they put in side. In my mind (i could be wrong) it seems some of you are claiming the vehicle to be the art. In which it is a manner in which to produce it. Clay pottery comes to mind as well. You can claim the physics of it are the art. But no one thinks that. They look at the finished art as the art. While methods of producing art almost always factor in the final perception of it. I can't personally think of anyone that has attributed the physics of producing clay pottery as being the actual art. But rather they look at the materials and devices as knowledge or craft and the finished product as art. Same with statues ( how do they hold themselves up?). The equations in the process are they considered the actual art? And the further you get into the technical perhaps the more difficult it is to separate the technical craft side from the art itself (i alluded to this earlier in the thread). While davinci had a knack for both it isn't often or easily attained. The off track banter of the thread into math as art, code as art, i volunteer for proof of how quick people can be in claiming something to be art with technical merit but little of actual artistic value.

I think your overarching idea in this post is a good one.. but I have to interject on one thought. While the physics of making a clay pot are not art in and of themselves (unless you believe in a god which created them).. the movements of the persons hands in order to shape the pot by using physics are.

Code may be about the end result, but so is a poem or a novel. The lines are just as artistic as the whole story. I think what they are saying is the same goes for code. And sure there are technical aspects to coding that must be learned but there is also room for an individuals own creative input.

If you want to consider something even deeper. And now i am reaching. Consider if photography really has to be a communication or visual art. As we are suggesting photography to be a art. Seems a lot of art in history had no communication purpose. some utilitarian in concept. Others religious in nature (communicating only to their god, give reverence to, or perhaps to protect themselves from seasons or astrology reasons). Much of art was not about communicating from one person to another. It was steep in culture, utilitarian concept, or religion. It seems people consider something a visual art both from seeing it and its communication. However a statue to a God has little to do with communication between one person to another but often in reverence to the God they believed in. Some of that pottery we claim to be artistic they made to eat out of or had utilitarian concepts.. The languages as art, more to avoid grunting. A necessary vehicle for basic communication. Is language really a art? Or a utilitarian vehicle?

When we take a photo, it seems assumed it is a visual art communication designated for certain individuals. To say "something". However i wonder if that is necessary. As how does a statue considered art have the main purpose of giving a God reverence with little purpose of communication among other individuals? You can see both. Some statues and artifacts were individual or customs based. Little to do with communication (except for a god or to the dead perhaps, spirits). In fact a different peoples or tribe would not even know what the statue might represent. Some art, even visual. Was never meant to be seen. When they entombed someone it wasn't expected it would one day be unearthed so people could look at the art. It was put there for a different purpose. So now we have to differentiate the difference between paintings for different purposes, photography, and wall carvings figurines and statues. Were all monuments created for communication?. All can be considered somewhat a visual art. Or at least you can see it at least. But some were not meant to communicate to people of this world anyway. And some were not meant to communicate at all but give reverence to someones deity. All are visual. So on this forum i see repeatedly that photography can not only be considered a art, but it is a purposeful one for visual communication. Which in and of itself i question.

I agree that these differences are important and should be considered when viewing a piece of art, as the context can explain a lot about any type of work. But everything you mentioned besides the pot made for utilitarian purposes alone is still a form of expression. Even if its not made for anyone at all, if it was made to express an idea about something then I'll consider it art. You also have to consider that a person making a pot because they need it is still going to craft that pot to look a certain way that they find pleasing, which is expressing some thought process or subconcious idea of what a pot is to them, therefore making it art.

The hardest thing to consider here is language, language is some sort of collaboratively made form of communication, which in essence is a creation of the human race as a whole. Whether it is art in and of itself or simply a medium to be used to create art is hard for me to wrap my head around though.

 

[waday]

 

[bribrius]

View attachment 97316

nope. The theory of the red dot, the concept of if you should try to catch it, and what it means if you did or didn't catch it. Is much more interesting to consider. And is the red dot really even there? That is a matter of perception as well.

 

[Fred Berg]

The hardest thing to consider here is language, language is some sort of collaboratively made form of communication, which in essence is a creation of the human race as a whole. Whether it is art in and of itself or simply a medium to be used to create art is hard for me to wrap my head around though.

Words in and of themselves are mostly arbitrary and have little or no meaning. The word cat doesn't purr, hasn't got a rough tongue and shits not in my garden. On the other hand, the associations connected with the word cat are very real and at least one of these stinks to high heaven!

 

[W.Y.Photo]

View attachment 97316

 

[bribrius]

just to further confuse the subject...

"Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts."

Visual arts - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[otherprof]

I absolute agree.
which is why i mentioned the "white paper with paint just splashed on it".
I find a huge portion of post modern art to be tacky, ugly, and devoid of any real artistic talent.
It seems to be mostly comprised of people whose sole artistic repertoire consists of an amazing ability to perfectly imitate a monkey flinging poo.

You do have to accept, because it's fact, that every change in the concept of art and its execution was met with mass public disapproval.
So there is a good possibility that in some cases your judgement is just plain wrong.

Without discussing religion, I quote Jude 1:10: " Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand".

and Andrew Smith (author of Dr Who)
“People fear what they don't understand and hate what they can't conquer.”

I once read that when Beethoven's 7th Symphony premiered, the audience rushed to the box office during the performance demanding their money back. They claimed they were listening to noise, not music.

 

[W.Y.Photo]

just to further confuse the subject...

"Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts."

Visual arts - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

But those schools were full of snobby artists who thought they were better than other craftsmen because they studied art.

from the same article:
"The current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts..."

 

[limr]

The hardest thing to consider here is language, language is some sort of collaboratively made form of communication, which in essence is a creation of the human race as a whole. Whether it is art in and of itself or simply a medium to be used to create art is hard for me to wrap my head around though.

Words in and of themselves are mostly arbitrary and have little or no meaning. The word cat doesn't purr, hasn't got a rough tongue and shits not in my garden. On the other hand, the associations connected with the word cat are very real and at least one of these stinks to high heaven!

The thing that ties these seemingly disparate fields together is the use of symbols for communication or expression. Like Fred said, words are generally arbitrary. What gives them meaning is the agreement that we make that when we utter the sounds "cat" they will refer to the furry little creatures that are not dogs or ferrets. We use these symbols to communicate and express, but they go beyond just basic communication. Language also allows us to think of these real world objects and concepts.

Math is communication and numbers are symbols for real world referents as well, but in every day life, we're more likely to interact with those objects or behaviors or phenomena rather than with the symbols. Other than basic functions like arithmetic or maybe even some algebra, we don't go around using equations to communicate. But those versed in the 'language' can do so with each other. Some will use the code more elegantly and some will be hacks, even if the end result is more or less the same.

Ernest Hemingway and Danielle Steele were both writers. Only one of them was an artist, however. The tool itself was the same, the symbols were the same, but the way they used those symbols differed greatly.

When one understands the symbols - the tool - that well, one can use them more efficiently, more beautifully than those who don't understand. That's why I feel that even craftmanship can be considered expression and art. There are a lot of architects. There are a lot of good, even great architects. But someone like Frank Lloyd Wright knew his medium and knew his message so well, so thoroughly, that he was able to create buildings that speak to people decades later. I consider that art as well.

 

[fjrabon]

As support to qleak.
Several years ago there was a going away party for my son who was technical lead in a company that was bought by Microsoft.
Someone, knowing Mike was my son, told me that Mike wrote the most elegant code he had ever seen.
I asked for an explanation, he made a couple of starts, then finally laughed and told me he couldn't explain it to someone who didn't know coding.

Let me try, as someone who has coded and managed software development. It's actually quite a bit like music. There is a strong, fundamental algorithm (or path, or melody, or idea), that is both powerful and yet seductively simple, supported by clear and straightforward initializations and terminations, nested in a way that make the logic easy to follow, and provides for a robust test approach without loose ends or potential underfined results. Good, elegant code is actually fun to read. Bad code is turgid, has no obvious coherence to it, brings in irrelevant stuff, and has a bunch of hanging bits that can be tripped over. When doing design reviews of "good code", usually the KISS principle is embodied in the implementation. Elegant code does the job with a minimal set of lines that don't leave anything to chance.

And this relates to "artists" as well. I've had so many programmers tell me, in defending their turgid mishmash of redirections and pointers, that they were "artists" who created finely-crafted expressions. The true coding artists produced clean, easy-to-follow code that got the job done with minimal effort and was easy to test and verify.

Think you guys are reaching quite honestly. The purpose of the code or equations is the end result. Like when they built the pyramids they relied on leverage (physics). But the math wasn't the art. It was a necessary vehicle to produce it, as was the art they put in side. In my mind (i could be wrong) it seems some of you are claiming the vehicle to be the art. In which it is a manner in which to produce it. Clay pottery comes to mind as well. You can claim the physics of it are the art. But no one thinks that. They look at the finished art as the art. While methods of producing art almost always factor in the final perception of it. I can't personally think of anyone that has attributed the physics of producing clay pottery as being the actual art. But rather they look at the materials and devices as knowledge or craft and the finished product as art. Same with statues ( how do they hold themselves up?). The equations in the process are they considered the actual art? And the further you get into the technical perhaps the more difficult it is to separate the technical craft side from the art itself (i alluded to this earlier in the thread). While davinci had a knack for both it isn't often or easily attained. The off track banter of the thread into math as art, code as art, i volunteer for proof of how quick people can be in claiming something to be art with technical merit but little of actual artistic value.

I don't really understand what you're saying makes code not art? Or equations not art? Because they have other uses? Can an automobile not be, in and of itself an artwork, even though its primary purpose is to drive other people around? Is a portrait not a work of art if its primary purpose is simply to record what the person looks like?

 

[fjrabon]

I think part of the problem is that it seems like we are trying to define art v. not art in a binary manner. to me it's much more of a spectrum. A thing can have artistic aspects of it, and those artistic aspects can be more or less "art-y." A Ferrari can have many aspects: utilitarian, artistic, status, etc. I think the question is confused right off the batt if you're trying to say something is or isn't exclusively art or exclusively not art. Almost everything produced has some aspect of it that is artful, and almost all "art" has aspects that are about things that aren't art; status for much art is much more the point than actual artistic value.

 

[qleak]

Let me try, as someone who has coded and managed software development. It's actually quite a bit like music. There is a strong, fundamental algorithm (or path, or melody, or idea), that is both powerful and yet seductively simple, supported by clear and straightforward initializations and terminations, nested in a way that make the logic easy to follow, and provides for a robust test approach without loose ends or potential underfined results. Good, elegant code is actually fun to read. Bad code is turgid, has no obvious coherence to it, brings in irrelevant stuff, and has a bunch of hanging bits that can be tripped over. When doing design reviews of "good code", usually the KISS principle is embodied in the implementation. Elegant code does the job with a minimal set of lines that don't leave anything to chance.

And this relates to "artists" as well. I've had so many programmers tell me, in defending their turgid mishmash of redirections and pointers, that they were "artists" who created finely-crafted expressions. The true coding artists produced clean, easy-to-follow code that got the job done with minimal effort and was easy to test and verify.

This is terrific

How do you feel about Fast Inverse Square Root?

Fast inverse square root - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

The comments on the above code are comical (and justified) to say the least.

 

[W.Y.Photo]

I Just Realized

 

[limr]

Actually, language and art run very similar paths in a sense. The more hackneyed the art, the more tortured the commentary on that art.

"With regard to the issue of content, the internal dynamic of the purity of line threatens to penetrate a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s."

Generate your own Critical Response to Art Product (CRAP) here: PIXMAVEN - The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator