the "sound" thing....(now: art definition) (ONE DEFINITION?)

[Scott Hansen <evanpeewee@gmail.com>]

ok, this is from wiki:

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions, and/or intellect. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics and even disciplines such as history and psychoanalysis analyze its relationship with humans and generations.

Traditionally, the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery. This conception changed during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".^[1] Generally, art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and emotions.

i think this is a pretty good definition, mainly the 1st sentence. (the 2nd part is extrapolating idea that before the Renaissance, the only thing that created was GOD, after the Renaissance, man could create....also the move from "craftsman" to "artist"...)

as i get older (grad school from 28-31, didn't find my "dream college teaching art job", now 46...), i think the academic tradition of art/arts/whatever are wrong, backwards, something.
i honestly think it should just be "Creative Studies" & encompass everything...this dividing things up i think becomes screwie (in my opinion)

in grad school i ran into this, one of my profs had wanted to teach a course on "Sound Art", which i was interested in, coming from my non-music background yrs of playing guitar...
but the music prof that he wanted to co-teach w/ didn't think that Visual Arts follow rules per say as music does (i guess us Visual artists are TOO FREE!!!). so the class was
bagged.

i understand that academics needs to follow some system, which is generally based on the Master-Apprentice model from the Renaissance....which i suppose for the most part
works....there was an article from early 70s we read in Grad school about this artist who did an experimental class, where they just had the room full of material, no 
specific type of material (not 2D or 3D specific)...and the people in the class just took the stuff and made things...it was interesting...but that was the care-free free-wheeling days of the 70s, doubt it would happen today....heck i got in trouble at my last "Art teaching job" for giving kids project based assignments & freedom...can't do that!!!!!

so my pt...well, there's the definition for you (above)...the first problem w/ the definition as i see it: where do you put Duchamp-he wanted to return art to the realm of the mind, he felt w/ everything from Ren to Cubism dealt only w/ the retina? of course the last thing says "intellect",
but his ready-mades took away the "deliberately arranging" part of art, he would just pick mass produced things (urinal, shovel, bottle rack), sign them, name them
and called them art. this happened almost a 100 yrs ago, i think most still don't know how to deal w/ that. Most Conservative Critics would say it is not art, and Duchamp's
fountain (the urinal) was rejected for it's 1st show he put it in. So there's the dilemma.   Same can be said for other Dada artists, and same for the Conceptualists...where you are
dealing only w/ an "idea".

how this deals w/ music...well, i'm not sure...i know for me, i never think of myself as a guitarist or musician (god forbid-i have no training!), i think of myself as a visual artist who plays guitar & likes electronic stuff....so there i go...more categories....
i'm sure i've confused the matter more....ha...
s---
www.myspace.com/scotthansen