"With his reading and training pieces, the artist wished to increase the spectators' awareness of the systems, actions and rituals that we persist in and carry out every day without reflecting on them," Ms Torp wrote.
Sounds like the old lady was the first one to actually be aware of the piece's call to action. :-)
Interactive art pieces like this are not uncommon. And there are way too many artists out there to be able to keep track of their style of work. It was clearly an honest mistake. They are pressing criminal charges "for insurance reasons", but they could have not, "for decent human being reasons".
This strikes me as an interesting case of failing communication in museums and art galleries. How is a visitor supposed to tell if something is supposed to be interacted with or not? This is not much of a problem in any museum with antique art — the common mantra being „touch nothing; at all” — but with contemporary art the lines often get blurred. Some pieces do explicitly invite viewers to interact in some way, but how is a visitor supposed to tell which installation is interactive and which is merely using inviting descriptions?
IMO museum curators should embrace that blurriness rather than fight it; it provides for interesting stories like the ones told in the article (I just love the party aftermath being cleaned up as rubbish); and that kind of misshappenstances at museums has become a trope all by itself.
Science museums have certainly followed that route, and I think they're better for it; becoming interactive makes for better learning. For those really valuable objects that could be damaged by willing interaction, there should be some kind of physical protection anyway.
I'm not sure that the insurance companies would agree with that sentiment. :)
Certainly, in such museums focussed on interactivity and a child-friendly experience, this is the (commendable) modus operandi, and it works exceptionally well.
Contemporary artists and curators at modern art museums, however, seem to have been pushing for less physical demarcation around their exhibits. Ground covering installations are sometimes placed right in the path of visitors (who are often caught up in their imagination admiring some other piece of art), with no barrier or warning in place.
With art installations that actually are intended to be interactive, I never feel comfortable interacting with them because of this air of ambiguity. Doesn't help that this may have very well been the artist's intent in the first place…
I'm not much of an artist, but I dislike people defining what is and is not art. I feel like it often takes on a level of snobbery or elitism. "My child could have painted that!" in regards to a painting that sold for $1.5m. Sure, but they didn't, and some artist did.
I like the definition of art as being: It's art if anyone has ever called it such.
Indeed. When people talk about whether something "is art", they're usually using that phrasing as a proxy for discussing whether they think something has artistic merit. But as a result, more often than not people end up in pointless semantic arguments about the definition of art instead of discussing their opinions of the artistic merit itself.
One may think a piece of art is worthless, but saying it's "not art" is rarely a useful way to express that.
For me something is art if I would find it put near a dumpster and would think "Wow, who would throw this out? That's an amazing piece of work!". And by this definition, I can assure you, a large part of the modern "art" wouldn't qualify - when put in a dumpster, it would be indistinguishable from trash.
See this is what I mean. Why not say "For me a piece of art is worthwhile if..." instead of "For me something is art if..."?
The latter leads to responses like "Oh no, it's still art because art means..." instead of "Oh but I really like X which doesn't fit your criteria, what do you think?"
> there's art that's basically indistinguishable from trash.
Indistinguishable from trash to you maybe. This [0] was an piece at Ai Weiwei exhibit I saw in Berlin last year (I don't much care for his work, but that's beside the point). This is mostly indistinguishable from this [1]. One is a pile of crabs intentionally placed in in order to make a pun in Chinese (if I remember right). One is a pile of crabs. One is art. The other is not.
I'm saying the Ai Weiwei piece is art because 1) he did it on purpose, 2a) he calls it art, and 2b) other people call it art. If I sculpted an exact replica of a trash can in the house I grew up with to symbolize {the passage of time, childhood, whatever, no symbolism at all}, then that's art even if it is literally made of trash and nobody but me ever called it art.
At the risk of sounding like a children's show with a shallow message: anything can be art if you want it to be.
This is my whole point. If it is art to someone, then it is art.
Let's say there's some country that considers the the exact dishes are organized in a cabinet to be art (pretty sure this isn't a thing anywhere). People have cabinets in their house so that they can show off their dish stacking. Now someone from another culture visits and is shown the display. They say "that's not art." Not to them, maybe not. But it's still art simply because someone (one person or many) calls it so.
Is this [0] or this [1] music? Some might just call that "sounds," but I like the wikipedia definition [2] for this as well.
> Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence.
Extremely broad and allowing for many things to be considered music. If someone wanted to record an album of them dropping coins into plastic cups and call it music, then they should be able to.
Sure you can change words to suit meaning, no problem. I saw an exhibit in SF that consisted of canvases with taxidermied dog parts stapled to them (briefly; I fled). The artist called it art; but it was junk. Defend it all you like; but there was absolutely nothing redeeming about it. You have to draw a line, even if its fuzzy.
But do you? I mean really, what gives anyone any authority to say that?
Quoting wikipedia[0]:
> Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.
Maybe it was the artists intention to horrify and disgust, in which case stapling body parts on canvas certainly seemed to have that effect. Certainly that qualifies it as art.
I really think it's exclusionary and elitist to tell anyone their creative works aren't art.
It was cheap and stupid. Designed by the artist to thumb their nose at everyone who came by. It was no different than standing out front and mooning everybody. If that is art, then every drunken hobo at the bus station is an artist.
That's why I prefer to use words like 'art' for things that are unambiguously artistic. Instead of abandoning the word (like that Wikipedia author) to goofy madeup definitions just not to offend somebody.
How about this: Its my 'performance art' to offend folks on HN by disputing what art is. Now any objection to my remarks is hypocritical. I have full authority! Hey! Every troll is now an artist! Fits the Wikipedia definition anyway.
People said Pollack and Warhol were cheap and stupid, but I think we can say that without a doubt they were artists.
I'm not saying "literally everything is art always." Yes, a hobo who is mentally unstable mooning people isn't art. Someone a hobo mooning people as a statement about nudity and people's obsession with being proper, sure, yeah, that's art.
> I prefer to use words like 'art' for things that are unambiguously artistic
Unambiguous to whom? That lends it's self to all sorts of biases based on culture, nationality, class, age, etc.
> How about this: Its my 'performance art' to offend folks on HN by disputing what art is.
Yes. If you think it's some sort of art to do so, then yes, what you are doing now is art.
> Every troll is now an artist!
If every troll claimed their ability to enrage the internet is an art form, then yes. Since most of them don't, no.
> Instead of abandoning the word (like that Wikipedia author) to goofy madeup definitions
I'm pretty sure all definitions are "made up." Propose a better one for what art is, and I'll debate you on that.
Hm. Art by the wishy-washy definition doesn't have to be framed as art, it just has to be 'intentional'. Its hard to argue that Trolling is not intentional, to provoke emotional response. In fact that hits the nail on the head.
I refuse to call Trolling 'art'. We all know it isn't. Well sometimes a particularly inspired, evil troll comment can be said to 'rise to the level of art'. We all know what that means. Its not art just because somebody says it is ('frames it' as art). Its not art because it generates an emotional response, like the hobo or troll. Its not art because it took skill to do. That whole Wikipedia definition is flawed.
> I refuse to call Trolling 'art'. We all know it isn't.
This is why I like a definition of art that is overly broad, so no one can get swept away and called not art. I don't want someone's real, actually creative efforts to be casually dismissed because it was lumped in with something that "isn't art."
I feel like when people say "that's not art" as a criticism, they really mean "this work and works like it are no art, and therefore I don't like it because it's not art." I don't get the impression most people who say that mean "this technically qualifies as art but I merely dislike it."
I misphrased the last line slightly. I don't mean to imply that people think something is art, but say it isn't because they don't like it. I'm saying they think it's not art because they don't like it.
And in terms of conveying that, saying that they don't like it might lead to a discussion of aesthetics. Whereas, saying they think it's "not art" almost invariably leads to a semantic argument, in which people state their own personal definition of "art" and then getting annoyed when people don't agree. Which is no where near as interesting or satisfying.
Yes, as long as enough other persons identify it as such. Otherwise, there are fairly few things that we could call 'art', and modern art wouldn't exist at all.
If you think the people of Germany follow orders, then go to Tokio. You might be surprised at how much stricter a population can follow rules. Even visiting the neighbor Switzerland will reveal a more trust-based society where people follow common rules and shun those that don't. Take their garbage disposal system for instance. But you're right that the population of Germany is more disciplined compared to many other societies.
It's more of a matter of reputation and historical precedent (Nuremberg defense and all that) than an accurate representation of modern day behaviours, really.
We're actually quite an unruly bunch compared to some other countries. It's true we have absolute no sense of humour, however.
I always try (and fail) to explain to my friends why Conceptual Art can at times advance the state of artistic inquiry, even if the material product is on itself quite unremarkable.
Labeling it as "literature" may shift the frame of reference, and make people realize its value. I'll try that trick next time.
Sounds like the old lady was the first one to actually be aware of the piece's call to action. :-)