> Even without getting into semantics about "what is art"
They say, before making comments about what they think is art :-)
> There's no artistic impetus, no political/social/cultural message.
There is, as you state in your next couple of sentences:
> … monopolistic megacorp funded to show off … typical "look at how much money we spent" exercise to showcase
You can, probably rightly, call it a crappy impetus. But that was impetus for the exercise and could be called the artistic impetus. Even if you disagree strongly on that particular point, it is definitely a message.
To be slightly more fair, that wallpaper is a major part of the initial impression people have of the OS version, much like XP's Telly Tubby Hill did. The XP image was trying to convey “friendly, welcoming”, the Win10 one tries to convey something more like “dynamic, technically competent, flashy”. While it may not be an expression of someone's inner feelings or a societal property or anything like that, some art is more about directing your impression of something than it is about expressing someone else's and that is what this image was for and what it does.
They say, before making comments about what they think is art :-)
> There's no artistic impetus, no political/social/cultural message.
There is, as you state in your next couple of sentences:
> … monopolistic megacorp funded to show off … typical "look at how much money we spent" exercise to showcase
You can, probably rightly, call it a crappy impetus. But that was impetus for the exercise and could be called the artistic impetus. Even if you disagree strongly on that particular point, it is definitely a message.
To be slightly more fair, that wallpaper is a major part of the initial impression people have of the OS version, much like XP's Telly Tubby Hill did. The XP image was trying to convey “friendly, welcoming”, the Win10 one tries to convey something more like “dynamic, technically competent, flashy”. While it may not be an expression of someone's inner feelings or a societal property or anything like that, some art is more about directing your impression of something than it is about expressing someone else's and that is what this image was for and what it does.