Re: Artists and Engineers

QueeneMUSE@aol.com
Wed, 30 Oct 1996 11:35:17 -0500


ALex in a post I mostly agreed with and enjoyed wrote:

>"how" is the domain of technology---
>"useful" belongs to the domain of econonics ---
>"enjoyable" is art and is counted by the human internal
>emotional machinery.

That statement may be one take, yet not complete. Art
is of course, one of the ways to get *in* to a person
through their emotional response. (This may be the "how")
Music is an obvious example of this. I have seen
otherwise dry eyed people cry at a beautiful song.
Art is not defined by how much one enjoys it.
Art is often confused with beauty, but art can be
many more things than pleasureable or beautiful.
In fact many po-mo 'artiste's' eschew that aesthetic.
I try to fuse as much beauty into my art as possible,
but still get my mesage across, but often art does
not *function* as enjoyable in terms of domain.
Sometimes it is highly intellectual. It can be educational
and political. It can piss people off.
(This may be the "use" )
One function it can have is to "prepare" people's psyche
for what is to come, or for things they have a hard
time accepting (like transhumanism, for example).