A New LEA? How Can LL Best Support the Arts in Second Life?

[KanryDrago]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

lol. Colourful, or at least odiferous image, Kanry. And not the first time you've employed it, or something like, with regards to one of my threads. I'm beginning to worry that it's not the threads that are malodorous, but me!

There are a number of points you make here. First, did "anyone ever come to see it"? Yes. I did, many others did. I'm pretty sure that you'll find that nearly everyone who has posted in this thread visited at least sometimes.

But your question is valid: was LEA effective?

And mostly, the consensus is probably no, at least for the last few years of its existence. And that's why, if you read this thread, you'll see that no one here is simply asking that it be resurrected as it was: the actual focus, the point of this thread, is to ask what can be done differently to ensure that it is 1) showcasing as much worthwhile art as feasible, and 2) integrating that art, and creativity in general, more effectively into people's day-to-day virtual lives here. No one thinks that what is required here is some sort of rarified, cloistered art space that no one except artists cares about: we all want to raise the profile of art and creativity, and make it matter.

So, this thread is about reforming LEA, not merely "saving" it. And, I might note, so too is the in-world group working to bring new proposals to LL: it's called "LEA 2.0" for a reason.

That said, I'm a little curious how you can be so sure that LEA was a failure, when you admit you've never visited it. Did you imagine that LEA was going to come to you?

Serious question, because this is an issue we've been discussing here, and that needs to be addressed: what would it take to get someone like yourself to use LEA, or whatever it is that may replace it?

firstly I didnt check who made the original post, so my comment about lingering wasnt directed at you

My point is this really same as it is in rl

There is art that is appreciated by few people and needs government funding because there are not enough people wanting to see it or buy it but a certain sector of government sees it as art even though most people dont care about it. In my country opera and ballet are examples of this

There is art a lot of people like and that makes its own way in the marketplace, they can fund the sim they sell from quite happily, a lot of people like it and buy it

Mostly the first type is the LEA type, pretentious twaddle that few will ever like or buy. I don't think the new LEA will be any different to the old LEA in that respect. As to what will make me go and see it....being commercially successful will make me go and see it, friends recommendations will make me go and see it. The stamp of the LEA is a reason not to see it. Art by committee is always bad art

[clivesteel]

11 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Thanks Clive.

We now return to our regularly scheduled sanity.

Your precious, gliberal LEA grant has GONE...

You can be rude to me, but that must sting you 😊😊. So, on behalf of the other 98% of SL who are tired of your whining.,..

LOL!! ☺️

[Mollymews]

19 minutes ago, clivesteel said:

Your precious, gliberal LEA grant has GONE...

LEA grants are not Scylla's anything

this conversation is about: If the LEA were to be reconstituted then how might that be done ? And if so then why ?

 

[Caerolle Llewellyn]

28 minutes ago, clivesteel said:

Your precious, gliberal LEA grant has GONE...

You can be rude to me, but that must sting you 😊😊. So, on behalf of the other 98% of SL who are tired of your whining.,..

LOL!! ☺️

I think you may need to adjust your medication, Clive.

Take care of yourself.

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, clivesteel said:

If this is true...and LL really is withdrawing LEA funding...I say...

GOOD RIDDANCE 👍

The LEA charlatans and poseurs have NEVER given one damn about the SL dispossessed...the homeless sandbox dwellers...the civil rights advocates, fighting a mounting tide of nazi filth on these forums...the residents who turned to griefing because insane 'creators' jacked up their prices by 50%+ in their greed-fuelled fantasies of wealth and stardom (huh huh, Beavis...mesh...meshhhh...sounds like huh huh...'poo willy brain'...huh huh huh...)

No, DAMN you 'artists' and your worthless garbage...how does it feel, now the boot's on the other foot, SLIME..?? Enjoying yr discomfort SOOOO much. The chickens have well and truly come home to roost...

As I said to Torley Linden in 2014 (when ALL of you VEGHEADS were griefing...we see you), art is a commodity that soothes the inadequate. You artists are the enemy of noobs. The disgusting vision of SL you've thrust upon us has stifled all genuine creativity, communication and compassion. Bury your galleries yourselves...we'll not partake in the clean-up effort.

We've gone without grants since day one. Now, damn you for complaining about receiving the same treatment. This is what you wanted instead of socialism. 

What the hell?

[Akane Nacht]

5 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

Mostly the first type is the LEA type, pretentious twaddle that few will ever like or buy. 

The committee and its processes may have been pretentious - I have no idea about that. But, in my opinion, the installations themselves were at worst just boring, at best things that surprised me and gave me something to explore and think about. What irked me more was a rather disorganised presentation - I think they needed to curate the experience of new visitors better. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

Mostly the first type is the LEA type, pretentious twaddle that few will ever like or buy.

Kanry, did you not admit that you've never actually been to a LEA exhibit?

So, you know it's "pretentious twaddle" because . . . how, exactly?

6 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

As to what will make me go and see it....being commercially successful will make me go and see it

I am totally mystified as to what this actually means, particularly in a SL context. What is "commercially successful" art here, exactly?

Can you give me an example?

6 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

I don't think the new LEA will be any different to the old LEA in that respect.

Maybe not. But this discussion, and the work being done by LEA 2.0 to compile ideas is intended, in fact, to ensure that it is different from the "old LEA." That is the entire point of this exercise.

[Aemeth Lysette]

7 hours ago, clivesteel said:

If this is true...and LL really is withdrawing LEA funding...I say...

GOOD RIDDANCE 👍

The LEA charlatans and poseurs have NEVER given one damn about the SL dispossessed...the homeless sandbox dwellers...the civil rights advocates, fighting a mounting tide of nazi filth on these forums...the residents who turned to griefing because insane 'creators' jacked up their prices by 50%+ in their greed-fuelled fantasies of wealth and stardom (huh huh, Beavis...mesh...meshhhh...sounds like huh huh...'poo willy brain'...huh huh huh...)

No, DAMN you 'artists' and your worthless garbage...how does it feel, now the boot's on the other foot, SLIME..?? Enjoying yr discomfort SOOOO much. The chickens have well and truly come home to roost...

As I said to Torley Linden in 2014 (when ALL of you VEGHEADS were griefing...we see you), art is a commodity that soothes the inadequate. You artists are the enemy of noobs. The disgusting vision of SL you've thrust upon us has stifled all genuine creativity, communication and compassion. Bury your galleries yourselves...we'll not partake in the clean-up effort.

We've gone without grants since day one. Now, damn you for complaining about receiving the same treatment. This is what you wanted instead of socialism. 

🅱️RUH. 😀😂👌❤️😍

This post is art. The formatting is perfect. I wanna lick it.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Aemeth Lysette

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, clivesteel said:

If this is true...and LL really is withdrawing LEA funding...I say...

GOOD RIDDANCE 👍

The LEA charlatans and poseurs have NEVER given one damn about the SL dispossessed...the homeless sandbox dwellers...the civil rights advocates, fighting a mounting tide of nazi filth on these forums...the residents who turned to griefing because insane 'creators' jacked up their prices by 50%+ in their greed-fuelled fantasies of wealth and stardom (huh huh, Beavis...mesh...meshhhh...sounds like huh huh...'poo willy brain'...huh huh huh...)

No, DAMN you 'artists' and your worthless garbage...how does it feel, now the boot's on the other foot, SLIME..?? Enjoying yr discomfort SOOOO much. The chickens have well and truly come home to roost...

As I said to Torley Linden in 2014 (when ALL of you VEGHEADS were griefing...we see you), art is a commodity that soothes the inadequate. You artists are the enemy of noobs. The disgusting vision of SL you've thrust upon us has stifled all genuine creativity, communication and compassion. Bury your galleries yourselves...we'll not partake in the clean-up effort.

We've gone without grants since day one. Now, damn you for complaining about receiving the same treatment. This is what you wanted instead of socialism. 

Where can we see your art?

[Aemeth Lysette]

Right?? They need to join r/the_pack on Reddit lol. I can see that superimposed over some skeleton picture that looks angry with flames in the background. I wanna be friends with this person.

[Qie Niangao]

7 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

What *would* be a measure of success? In the real world, artists and galleries have metrics, whether good reviews (or any reviews), number of visitors, number of donations. They might still have "art for art's sake" but there, too, they will have some kind of ideological or aesthetic criteria, and more and more nowadays this is about political correctness. But still, they have a yardstick or some kind. What do you use in SL? Traffic? Donations? Blogs?  It's not quite the same.

Not quite the same, true. But without measures there are no goals, only excuses.

Unexamined devotion to a fixed set of measures is guaranteed to distort those measures as they're more and more "gamed." And any set of measures can need to be augmented when they accidentally advance a limiting local or otherwise inappropriate optimum. Maybe an exhibit on "The Art of the Breedable" brings in record crowds, mostly breedable-fapping furries, and the whole initiative follows that statistical signal of "success" down a spiral of swirling fur and simulated genetics.

So yeah: using metrics to guide decisions is hard. It's almost like... management.

What do we think? s'pose LEA measured even basic flawed statistics? They must have at least tracked traffic to the different exhibits, right? And counted how many page views articles in their own blog generated? I wonder if they ever did anything with those or any other numbers. I wonder if they had a means of fine-tuning their processes to even try to better serve that part of the public that is or can be interested in the arts.

Imagine they were to adopt my proposed goal of increasing awareness of other arts destinations in SL. How hard could it be to track avatar keys from LEA to those destinations, and count the matching rows in the database, comparing timestamps to see who's drawn in which direction? They might decide it's better to offer a direct teleport and a landmark? Or a notecard with an embedded landmark? or a webpage for attendees to bookmark?  Do joint exhibits draw the crowds in both directions? (... or some practical thing a virtual gallery might really want to know, instead of these lame examples concocted by a total outsider.)

[Qie Niangao]

12 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Where can we see your art?

I thought we just did

[KanryDrago]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Kanry, did you not admit that you've never actually been to a LEA exhibit?

So, you know it's "pretentious twaddle" because . . . how, exactly?

 

Nope I have never been, mostly because apart from previous mentions in the forums I would have no idea it even exists. Yes maybe I am being unfair and its not full of art such as Tracy Emins unmade bed. I would be willing however to put money on it mostly being like that

 

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 

I am totally mystified as to what this actually means, particularly in a SL context. What is "commercially successful" art here, exactly?

Can you give me an example?

 

If an artist can support displaying their art in world by the sale of that art then I would class that as commercially sucessful. There are plenty of examples around however one of my favourites is Digital art  cammino e vivo vapovolto. (spelling might be slightly off without checking the landmark).

I also said or recommended to me by friends. None of my friends have ever suggested I would enjoy LEA exhibits to me . They have suggested plenty of other places though. Partly my stance is driven by my rl views. The arts should not be subsidised. Not because I think art is a waste of time or money but purely because the arts that get subsidised are ones that few enjoy and often I suspect even some of those that claim to don't enjoy but its the "done thing" to be seen to enjoy. That is to say it ends up being an elitist thing used to sneer down at the masses that are more honest and look at it and go "well its a bit naff really"

Edited August 4, 2019 by KanryDrago
amending landmark

[Orwar]

12 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Europe is indeed an idea and a continent and remains so. The European Union isn't a "country" but a territorial body that attempts to align its votes at the UN and have unified policies. Are you for Brexit?

   Europe and the European Union are not synonymous. Europe is a continent with several nations, the European Union is a union of most (but not all) of those nations. The EU does not control everything within those countries, they are still sovereign states; whether one thinks that the current amount of centralized power is good or bad is a matter of personal opinion. Britain had a democratic vote about whether to remain in the EU or not, and they voted to leave - whether I am 'for' or 'against' it has absolutely nothing to do with anything, I'm not even from Britain myself.

12 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It's always easy to talk about "plenty of charity, secular and religious" when you are not the fund-raiser or even the giver, but you just have a vague idea.

   What do you base that assumption on, that I just have a vague idea? I have been professionally involved with charity work.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

First off, Kanry, thank you for the LM! The sim is really beautiful, and I'll be returning there to check it out again, and more thoroughly.

9 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

Yes maybe I am being unfair and its not full of art such as Tracy Emins unmade bed. I would be willing however to put money on it mostly being like that

This puzzles me a little, because the Digital Art sim is entirely in line with the kind of thing that LEA did frequently exhibit. It would not look at all out of place there -- in fact, some of the sculptural elements reminded me of things I have seen at LEA.

Of course, not everything at LEA looked like this, or was as good as this, without question. One of the things you'll read about in this thread is the wide-spread concern about the drop in applications for space at LEA, and the resulting lowering of the quality of the exhibits. The problem there, ironically, was not that more and more exhibits were "pretentious twaddle," but rather that more of them were sort of banal, everyday "pretty" or "picturesque" sims of the kind that one runs across in SL all the time.

9 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

If an artist can support displaying their art in world by the sale of that art then I would class that as commercially sucessful. There are plenty of examples around however one of my favourites is Digital art  cammino e vivo vapovolto. (spelling might be slightly off without checking the landmark).

What makes you think that the Digital Arts sim is "commercially successful"? And what do you mean by that -- that it is making a profit? That it earns enough money to be self-sustaining?

I did only get a half hour there this morning, but I didn't even run across a tip jar, yet alone a "commercial" element. I'm sure that there is a tip jar, somewhere --- but do they sell things as well? What do you know about the financial underpinnings of the sim?

9 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

The arts should not be subsidised. Not because I think art is a waste of time or money but purely because the arts that get subsidised are ones that few enjoy and often I suspect even some of those that claim to don't enjoy but its the "done thing" to be seen to enjoy. That is to say it ends up being an elitist thing used to sneer down at the masses that are more honest and look at it and go "well its a bit naff really"

Elitism sucks for sure, and yes, it can be found in the art world (as in most other spheres too, including the commercial and business world which you seem to be holding up as a sort of example).

And that's one of the reasons why I and others in this thread have emphasized that a new version of LEA has to be transparent, and it has to be engaged with the broader culture, and population of SL. It has to be something that speaks to, and makes virtual life better, for a broader range of residents. If it isn't, there's no point to it -- at least, no point to it being subsidized.

I'm going to commit the unpardonable sin of quoting myself, in case you missed it, and so that you can see that we are perhaps not as far apart on this as you may think. What I say here is a view that is, I'm pretty sure, shared by most people who have contributed to this thread.

On 7/31/2019 at 1:14 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I actually don't believe artists are a sort of special breed of people who merit cossetting and special consideration. What is important is what they produce, and how that impacts upon other lives than their own.

So, while I would generally (with reservations) agree with Dekka that art is not "democratic," in the sense that its status or excellence should be subjected to popular vote, I personally don't see any point to a program like this one unless it is impacting upon as broad a range of residents as is possible, and consistent with its status as "art" (whatever we might decide that means). Artists who want to be "nurtured" and allowed to just do their own thing without any interference or evaluation from outside should buy their own sims, or find a tame patron. That's not what this program should be about.

So . . . start from that assumption, that whatever replaces LEA must add measurably to public life in SL.

[KanryDrago]

10 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 

What makes you think that the Digital Arts sim is "commercially successful"? And what do you mean by that -- that it is making a profit? That it earns enough money to be self-sustaining?

I did only get a half hour there this morning, but I didn't even run across a tip jar, yet alone a "commercial" element. I'm sure that there is a tip jar, somewhere --- but do they sell things as well? What do you know about the financial underpinnings of the sim?

 

My fault, the bit you wandered around I think is the swamp top side, the commercial gallery is down a hatch in the landscape

The reason I suspect its commercially successful is I see a lot of the works below in other sims and homes. Of course I havent seen the persons books so cant definitely say its commercially successful 100% but they are doing it without freebies and I know that people do buy the artists stuff. I have 3 or 4 pieces myself and as I said I have seen loads of the stuff from the gallery below scattered in other places

Edited August 4, 2019 by KanryDrago

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

My fault, the bit you wandered around I think is the swamp top side, the commercial gallery is down a hatch in the landscape

I saw the hatch -- the one that uses a TP, right? -- but didn't try it. I'll take a look.

I think it's great that they sell art too. I doubt, however, that the proceeds are sufficient to support the sim, yet alone make a profit. But maybe I'm wrong! I'll check it out.

[Parhelion Palou]

On 8/2/2019 at 1:30 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Creativity in Second Life is in serious trouble. We're in the early to mid stages of the disease, but the symptoms are really troubling and the long term prognosis deeply disturbing. It began with the introduction of mesh, and the concurrent failure to provide an in-world tool to at least do some of that work within SL. This resulted in two related and damaging developments.

First is that almost all parts of the creative process moved off platform. Creators spend vastly more of their "creative" time in Blender and Photoshop than they do in-world. Pretty much all that's left in-world, other than actually plopping imported items down, is scripting.

I'm sure SL's interior decorators, landscapers, etc. would love to know that all they're doing is plopping stuff down. Here are two pictures:

The top one is very current (as of yesterday). It's almost all mesh save a few sculpty trees. It contains mesh items from perhaps a dozen mesh creators. The walkways, some of the waterfall, the pond at the top all come from mesh components from various creators. The second picture is from a few years ago; it's mostly mesh with prims and some sculpties in there somewhere. It's part of a build I did on a homestead that had a fantasy area (part of which is in the picture), tunnels, underground launch pad through a retractable pond, underground Steampunk harbor with sliding stone harbor door, beach, a stormy weather room (also underground) so you could sit in a thunderstorm, and a lot more. It seems to me that creativity was involved in both cases, but the persons involved in creating the top and me in the bottom didn't create any of the mesh. Guess we weren't creative after all. Plop, plop, plop.

Note: Selene took my work creating the park (hill, pond, waterfall, etc.) and made it beautiful. And it's not done yet.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Parhelion Palou
It was necessary.

[Qie Niangao]

5 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

It seems to me that creativity was involved in both cases, but the persons involved in creating the top and me in the bottom didn't create any of the mesh. Guess we weren't creative after all. Plop, plop, plop.

There's an Academy Award for "Production Design" (including set decoration). It's not the award for Best Picture, but it can make or break a film.

That's about making films, of course, but the immersive experience of Second Life shares a lot of that creative complexity. I'm thinking, for example, of Sound Editing and Mixing (potentially richer in SL than in movies), Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, etc.

These are all creative endeavors, certainly at least as creative as winner of Most Artsy Prop Carpentry.

But is it art? 🏆

I don't think I care. I don't think it matters whether a broader definition of "arts" is all fully represented in the next LEA. I do however think that it reveals something about the state of the art in virtual worlds, that we're at the stage where Props are the thing we most celebrate, and everything related to narrative is at most an afterthought.

We're carving fertility totems and mixing pigments to blow on the cave walls. Gotta start somewhere.

[Luna Bliss]

[Luna Bliss]

7 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

I'm sure SL's interior decorators, landscapers, etc. would love to know that all they're doing is plopping stuff down.

It's not what ya got, it's what you do with what you got       Many don't appreciate the design that goes behind it all -- after all you can't really 'grab' a design, it's there, but invisible.

I think though, what Scylla might be getting at is the debate whether there must be an intellectual component (or more of a meaning) in the work for one to call it art:

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2019/07/vr-art-aesthetics-cristina-garcia-lasuen.html#more

https://www.davidmkessler.com/blog/26593/art-emotional-or-intellectual-connection

For me, in this world where nature is being destroyed at an alarming rate, and nature is generally unappreciated, creations depicting nature with skill and demonstrating the beauty of it is art, in fact such art could be called revolutionary.

And, I would never call anything "merely decorative" -- what an insult to call it such just because it appears to have no meaning. All the principles of art are evident (or not), whether or not we ascribe any meaning to the work apart from aesthetic ones (use of space, color, light, novelty, and more).

Edited August 5, 2019 by Luna Bliss

[Zeta Vandyke]

9 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

I'm sure SL's interior decorators, landscapers, etc. would love to know that all they're doing is plopping stuff down.

I think what she says is that creators do their creating outside SL nowadays. Meaning using 3rd party software (3D rendering, photoshop etc.) and that's where they create their "art". All they do in SL is upload the things they created and "plop" it in world, so it's not really SL art anymore, but digital art that is imported in SL.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

I'm sure SL's interior decorators, landscapers, etc. would love to know that all they're doing is plopping stuff down.

I think that, to a very great extent, Qie, Luna, and Zeta have already answered your criticism. With respect, you've pulled a particular word choice (probably an ill-advised one) out of its original context, and implied that I'm somehow dissing design. I'm not.

But I'll own up to the possibility that "plopped" was not a very wise word to use, because it does suggest a hierarchy of value that is not a very relevant component of my argument.

As both Qie and Luna are suggesting, "art" and "design" are unquestionably both creative endeavours, but they are not the same thing. What makes them different -- what Luna refers to as the "intellectual component," and what Qie is alluding to throughout his response, I think, is that art takes its materials and gives them new meanings. Design, on the other hand, is perhaps most accurate described as a way of integrating materials -- in this case, mesh objects such as bridges, or paintings, or other things that may or may not themselves actually be art -- and producing harmonious and aesthetically pleasing effects that, mostly, do not produce new meaning. The bridge in the picture above is beautifully and harmoniously placed in a way that most certainly does signify the exercise of creativity -- but it's still a bridge. It doesn't mean something new. That it's worthwhile, and beautiful, and laudable in its effects isn't at issue: we're talking about a difference in category (design as opposed to art) rather than one of value (i.e., that "art" is more valuable than design).

I'll try to provide an analogy that cuts across these categories to make my point.

I spent a good hour or more yesterday in-world making new outfits from both old and newly-purchased clothing. Producing a "look" based on mix and matching styles of garment, colours, line, pattern, and the external references they make (for instance, an elegant top or dress "alludes" to certain particular cultural contexts, such as "high society," good restaurants, a particular kind of music, and so on) requires, without question, creativity. You need to have an "eye" for how all of these elements work together, and the kinds of effect that they produce. I'm not, frankly, very good at it: a quick perusal of Zeta's photos alongside mine will make it abundantly clear that she is much more creative, and skilled, at producing a "look" than I am.

But, in general, putting together an outfit, as demanding and creative as that process is, is about design rather than art because, mostly, one is alluding to existing meanings, rather than creating new ones. I have outfits that are in folders labelled things like "Edgy clubwear": these are intended to invoke an existing cultural category and associated meanings.

Of course, though, this needn't always be the case. In 1965-1966, Yves Saint Laurent released six dresses that incorporated the abstract "plasticism" of Piet Mondrian into their design:

In one sense, Saint Laurent was of course simply borrowing something produced by an artist: he was "plopping" Mondrian's art onto textiles. But what he was also doing was completely reconfiguring the meanings of both Mondrian's work, and fashion itself, by asserting that fashion could be a form of art. The original art, Mondrian's, becomes something very new, recontextualized as something wearable and even utilitarian, in a way that the original artist could never have foreseen (and quite possibly might not have agreed with). So, Saint Laurent was producing new meanings, producing art. And that was his actual point: that fashion could be art.

So, zip ahead more than 50 years. A few months ago, a good friend gifted me with this dress in SL:

So . . . is this dress -- which might well have been produced in mesh from scratch -- art, or design?

I suppose you might argue -- were it not the case that the main endeavour of most clothing makers in SL is to produce something that is as "realistic" as possible -- that this SL dress recontextualizes both Mondrian and Yves Saint Laurent into a digital context. But I don't think that there is anything in the dress that alludes to that new context: I think we are intended, almost forced, to read this in the light of Saint Laurent's meanings (and the RL 60s culture with which he is associated), rather than new, "digital" ones. I think this is design, rather than art. But it's a really nice dress, well made and attractive, and it does allude to meanings that I wanted to evoke through the wearing of it. It's not "lesser" because it's design rather than art -- it's different.

 

[Zeta Vandyke]

27 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Of course, though, this needn't always be the case. In 1965-1966, Yves Saint Laurent released six dresses that incorporated the abstract "plasticism" of Piet Mondrian into their design:

In one sense, Saint Laurent was of course simply borrowing something produced by an artist: he was "plopping" Mondrian's art onto textiles. But what he was also doing was completely reconfiguring the meanings of both Mondrian's work, and fashion itself, by asserting that fashion could be a form of art. The original art, Mondrian's, becomes something very new, recontextualized as something wearable and even utilitarian, in a way that the original artist could never have foreseen (and quite possibly might not have agreed with). So, Saint Laurent was producing new meanings, producing art. And that was his actual point: that fashion could be art.

 

 

 

Its a bit off topic, but funny how you pick this example that actually for me proves the art and design world gone crazy.

The Mondrian picture of just some colored squares selling for $50 million just because it has his name on it

The Yves Saint Laurent dress selling for nearly $50k just because its a YSL design

The name of the artist/designer is more important than the artistic value of the actual work.

If you give both a skeptical look, and were not familiar with Mondrian or YSL at all, would you still see legendary works of art and design, or just a canvas with some colored squares and a rather plainly design dress?

[Zeta Vandyke]

56 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

As both Qie and Luna are suggesting, "art" and "design" are unquestionably both creative endeavours, but they are not the same thing. What makes them different -- what Luna refers to as the "intellectual component," and what Qie is alluding to throughout his response, I think, is that art takes its materials and gives them new meanings. Design, on the other hand, is perhaps most accurate described as a way of integrating materials -- in this case, mesh objects such as bridges, or paintings, or other things that may or may not themselves actually be art -- and producing harmonious and aesthetically pleasing effects that, mostly, do not produce new meaning. The bridge in the picture above is beautifully and harmoniously placed in a way that most certainly does signify the exercise of creativity -- but it's still a bridge. It doesn't mean something new

But when does "just a bridge" become art? If someone designs it in a 3D program, put on textures and placing it in a wonderful designed sim is it still just a bridge? While when Monet paints just a bridge on canvas, its art? (Monet did not design the bridge either by the way, some Japanese craftsman build it in those gardens, he "just copied" it on canvas)

This is kinda what I meant when I said earlier that the concept of art as it is in RL is outdated in a virtual world like SL. I think someone creating a place like Netherwood for example is an artist. They create a region that is like a painting but you can actually walk around and interact with. They might not have hand created every object in it, but someone did. Its a collaboration of artists.

 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Zeta Vandyke