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Right on. In my experience across different art fields, I’d say the only generalizable facet of ‘good’ art/music/etc is the “it sits just outside of what we exp
by ScotterC 2mo ago
Right on. In my experience across different art fields, I’d say the only generalizable facet of ‘good’ art/music/etc is the “it sits just outside of what we expect”.
These days I liken it more to the idea of ‘surprise’ in information entropy which denotes an informative signal then to revealing any sort of objective truth.
- klik99 2mo agoYou might like the book Emotion and Meaning in Music - it starts from some outdated psychological ideas (that emotions are only intensity and that we assign positive/negative valence post-hoc) but ties that to early information theory and makes a really compelling theory of music that's all about the interplay between expectation and surprise, across both the physical harmonic ratio stuff this paper talks about and the cultural associations too.
- ScotterC 2mo agoFantastic! I think you've read me right in terms of interests. I'll check it out. Thank you!
- rebolek 2mo agoWhile I agree that "good" art "sits just outside of what we expect", I must play devil's advocate here and say that the uncanny valley of CGI/AI/... also "sits just outside of what we expect". So there must be more to it.
- BoingBoomTschak 2mo agoEh, turning that uncanny valley to 11 can be an artform in itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190
- rebolek 2mo agoBy human? I don't doubt that.
- ScotterC 2mo agoYes, there's certainly more to it. Just to jump on the uncanny valley vector, I'd argue that the artist having a coherent message they're trying to get across and the viewer having some affordance primed for receiving that message is critical.