Had a short mini-conversation with LM this morning that is kind of relevant to the task at hand. (LM = girlfriend). LM is, in fact, a real artist already. She is a sculptor, or you might (or at least she might) say she has a ‘spatial practice’. Anyways, LM had an annoying (for her) experience in a theory class she was teaching last week where a not-so-young country bloke wanted to propose that Prince was the greatest artist of all time with the greatest spatial awareness of anyone ever. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz….

LM said that ‘hit her in a numb spot in her brain’ and she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. And I know what she means, it’s an incredibly boring comment, but it somehow deserves an answer. Even if the answer is the kind of put down Louis CK might deliver to a heckler. Because it somehow goes to the question of what Art is. Zzzzzzzz… Wha? Oh sorry. OK, so why isn’t a Prince rock show able to be considered as the kind of art that is talked about in art theory tutorials? I mean, as Ron Swanson said, ‘It’s Art- Anything is Anything’. LM and I didn’t get very far with the conversation, except to agree that somehow there needs to be a reflective dialogue, or role, or intention in the production of the artwork which situates it as an artwork. You can’t say the Masterchef is the greatest footballer that ever lived because of the way he moves through traffic in the kitchen. If somebody was working at a desk in the corner of a room and walked away unintentionally leaving the most perfect composition of objects sitting together, we probably wouldn’t want to call that an artwork. But if they deliberately arranged them to be an artwork, then we probably would be quite happy with the description. That’s not to say the artist has a monopoly on the meaning of an artwork, just that they must enter it into the conversation.

Point being, if I am going to make stuff that is actually art (whatever that means), I better have a feeling for why it’s art. And if I don’t, I can’t expect anybody else to bother. I mean, I can list here a range of things I am interested in or have experience of- composition, evolution, musicology, AI, linguistics etc. etc. But if I produce something like OO-001 then I need to know how it’s different to a screensaver (LM’s comment when she saw it) or an educational science visualization of Newton’s First Law.