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This article got me wondering...can anything be considered as art? What is ur opinion?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/14/entertainment-us-australia-shock-museum-idUSBRE84D00G20120514
Smelling excrement may not be everyone's idea of fun, but for those who like to push
the boundaries, Australia's most controversial new museum may be just what they are looking for.
Dubbed "the subversive adult Disneyland", the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is located in Tasmania and features around 400 works of art from Egyptian mummies to Young British Artists including Chris Ofili and Jenny Saville.
But the most talked-about piece is the Cloaca Professional, labeled the "poo-machine." It was built by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye to mimic the actions of the human digestive system.
A series of glass receptacles hang in a row with the machine being "fed" twice a day on one end. The food is ground up "naturally," the way it is in the human body, and the device produces feces on the clock at 2 pm at the other end.
The smell is so powerful that not many visitors can take it.
"It put me off because of the overwhelming assault on the senses," said Diane Malnic, a Sydney-based accountant.
Yet this was her second visit in five months, following a family holiday in Tasmania earlier in the year. This time, she flew without her husband and children just to have another look at the collection, interested in Delvoye's other pieces.
She took great care to avoid the "smelly" parts and still talked vividly about the "vomit room" which was part of an earlier exhibit no longer on display.
"I wouldn't go back to see them," she said, laughing.
The Cloaca is part of a series of at least five similar machines built by the artist, another of which will soon be exhibited at the Louvre. It is the most hated piece in the museum but also the most visited.
The museum, which opened in January 2011, is owned by eccentric and philanthropist David Walsh, who made his fortune as a professional gambler, and features one of the largest private art collections in the world with an estimated value of around A$100 million.
Its motto is to shock, offend, inform and entertain.
"It definitely challenges your interpretation of what art is," said Malnic.
Pieces include Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary, which features elephant dung and porn-magazine cutouts of genitals. It caused controversy in 1996, with then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reportedly describing Ofili's work as "sick".
Another much-talked-about piece is the Matrix by Jenny Saville, a full-frontal large painting of a naked transgender man with his modified genitals exposed.
"It's confronting," said Margarita Silva, a Melbourne-based dentist making during her third trip to the MONA.
Detractors argue that some of the pieces don't belong to a museum, which is also what Malnic initially thought. But upon reflection, she said the Cloaca machine opened her mind and argued that perhaps it was the future of art.
For Silva, her favorites were a soundproof room of 30 Madonna fans who were individually filmed singing a capella the artist's Immaculate Collection album. The other was a waterfall with droplets spelling out a series of words.
Keeping with the MONA's sensibility, none of its art work is grouped or chronological, leaving viewers to walk at random.
"Overall, it's a fantastic experience," said Silva.
The museum charges A$20 ($20) for entry and has drawn around 389,000 visitors in its first year ($1 = 0.9887 Australian dollars)
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In this case, yes. The Cloaca poop machine is not only a well-designed, researched piece of biomimicry, but a hilarious subversion/satirization of the value and meaning of contemporary art, and what an artist 'produces'.
The question it raises isn't just whether or not mass-produced, 'real' fake shit can be art, but rather if too much art is mass-produced, 'real' fake shit.
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People can do whatever they want in their own place but if they are gaining serious money from this kinda of bs i don't wanna live in this planet anymore...
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Art is art.
If you ever skew,you then admit you think your opinion of expression is worth more than others.
It's all just human expression.
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Anything can be considered art, I think it would be difficult finding something created by a human that isn't art (excluding Uwe Boll's movies)
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
Oh man, I'm too pooped out to give a shit.
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On May 18 2012 06:14 TheGlassface wrote:
Art is art.
If you ever skew,you then admit you think your opinion of expression is worth more than others.
It's all just human expression.
If my opinion is scientific and well thought then i can claim that opinion is worth more than others.
Poo, vomit these are part of human body or it's actions. But they doesn't have to be artistic in many ways, we can understand them but i don't see any reason to admire them. It's just a complex system's output. I don't claim my view is scientific enough though i can't grasp the idea behind this kind of stuff no matter how much i try to do it objectively or not.
And one of the comments to the article: "Well, if that’s art, then stand back because I just had Taco Bell and I’m about to blow a freakin’ Picasso."
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This is pretty sick man.
But honestly, pieces of crap can certainly still be a piece.
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I seem to remember an artist I once knew saying that what is or isn't considered art these days is entirely subjective. I tend to agree.
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Let me stool about this a little longer.
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I think we can all agree to flush this thread down the toilet.
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He made a machine that shits itself. That's pretty impressive.
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Instead of hipsters and pretenders presenting their shitty art as the real 'art', they are now presenting their actual shit as art.
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This thread is excretiatingly painful to read.
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On May 18 2012 06:12 Aelfric wrote:
People can do whatever they want in their own place but if they are gaining serious money from this kinda of bs i don't wanna live in this planet anymore...
Funny that you would say that on a website dedicated to professional gaming. Perspective much ?
on topic : i don't know if it's art, but it's a cool and funny idea that makes you think twice and it's all i need to say i like it/would go see it if i went there. 
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On May 18 2012 06:14 TheGlassface wrote:
Art is art.
If you ever skew,you then admit you think your opinion of expression is worth more than others.
It's all just human expression.
I agree with this! What a great insight.
My opinion of expression IS worth more than others.
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Anything that expresses something is basically art. Simple as that  so shit can be art yes. My granddad has a 40 year old toiletpaper with shit stain on it in a frame lol
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Hell yeah, Belgian poop-machines FTW.
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I gave my 900th post to this thread....
In any case, yes I consider it art, for the same reason TheGlassface does.
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Yes, I don't see why not.
Also, this specific piece of art is hilarious as fuck. XD
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Modern art.. It's one thing to look at a Picasso, Frida Kahlo or Isaac Grünewald. In their paintings you can always read something out of the artist, and you can always look at the paintings in a fresh perspective. This is of course to a large degree dependant on the eras and the mindset at the time, just like we are going through a phase right now with the modern art. But seriously.. i wish we could fast forward just to get past the modern day art.
I went to visit the "modern museum" in Stockholm here in Sweden. And one thing that caught my eye was the figure of a goat, standing with a tennisball on top of its head. The museum guide told me that the ball stood for the artist's lost childhood. My mind was blown. "WHAT THE HELL!?" "Seriously!?" Where did all the good stuff go? Another major upset recently here in sweden was when the minister of culture visited the museum. Here they all had cake. The upset was that the cake was formed as a human being, a woman. When you cut the cake, the woman screamed and cried, to represent the genital mutilation that girls go through in Africa for example. Let's just say that the people didn't enjoy it all too much after it aired on national television.
It seems that today art is only about chocking, enraging and upsetting. None of it ever makes you want to stop and think, and admire it anymore. It truly is a sad time to be alive, compared to say the 1800-1900's. Art-wise that is
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On May 18 2012 07:10 Ohyra wrote:Modern art.. It's one thing to look at a Picasso, Frida Kahlo or Isaac Grünewald. In their paintings you can always read something out of the artist, and you can always look at the paintings in a fresh perspective. This is of course to a large degree dependant on the eras and the mindset at the time, just like we are going through a phase right now with the modern art. But seriously.. i wish we could fast forward just to get past the modern day art. I went to visit the "modern museum" in Stockholm here in Sweden. And one thing that caught my eye was the figure of a goat, standing with a tennisball on top of its head. The museum guide told me that the ball stood for the artist's lost childhood. My mind was blown. "WHAT THE HELL!?" "Seriously!?" Where did all the good stuff go? Another major upset recently here in sweden was when the minister of culture visited the museum. Here they all had cake. The upset was that the cake was formed as a human being, a woman. When you cut the cake, the woman screamed and cried, to represent the genital mutilation that girls go through in Africa for example. Let's just say that the people didn't enjoy it all too much after it aired on national television. It seems that today art is only about chocking, enraging and upsetting. None of it ever makes you want to stop and think, and admire it anymore. It truly is a sad time to be alive, compared to say the 1800-1900's. Art-wise that is
Art since 200 years or even more has always been about choking.
Nothing new here.
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On May 18 2012 07:17 dafunk wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2012 07:10 Ohyra wrote:Modern art.. It's one thing to look at a Picasso, Frida Kahlo or Isaac Grünewald. In their paintings you can always read something out of the artist, and you can always look at the paintings in a fresh perspective. This is of course to a large degree dependant on the eras and the mindset at the time, just like we are going through a phase right now with the modern art. But seriously.. i wish we could fast forward just to get past the modern day art. I went to visit the "modern museum" in Stockholm here in Sweden. And one thing that caught my eye was the figure of a goat, standing with a tennisball on top of its head. The museum guide told me that the ball stood for the artist's lost childhood. My mind was blown. "WHAT THE HELL!?" "Seriously!?" Where did all the good stuff go? Another major upset recently here in sweden was when the minister of culture visited the museum. Here they all had cake. The upset was that the cake was formed as a human being, a woman. When you cut the cake, the woman screamed and cried, to represent the genital mutilation that girls go through in Africa for example. Let's just say that the people didn't enjoy it all too much after it aired on national television. It seems that today art is only about chocking, enraging and upsetting. None of it ever makes you want to stop and think, and admire it anymore. It truly is a sad time to be alive, compared to say the 1800-1900's. Art-wise that is Art since 200 years or even more has always been about choking. Nothing new here.
No agreement there. Sure, if you look towards Dali i guess. For the mindset at the time, yeah. Things may have stirred shit up. But i don't think that the level of eccentricity from 200 years ago (except for maybe Dali) can match the ones of today.
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On May 18 2012 06:54 LazinCajun wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2012 06:14 TheGlassface wrote:
Art is art.
If you ever skew,you then admit you think your opinion of expression is worth more than others.
It's all just human expression.
I agree with this! What a great insight. My opinion of expression IS worth more than others.
What this piece of art is saying is that ALL human expression is essentially a waste by-product of being alive, and ultimately has little to no value.
Basically, we shouldn't get too hung up out how we or other express ourselves because we're all just pointless shit machines and everything is bullshit anyways.
Have a great day!
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If the description is accurate the "art" doesn't really seem to be the fake feces it is more about the machine that simulates the digestive process and creates it am I correct? If so this seems kinda cool. The smell does seem extremely off putting however.
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On May 18 2012 07:09 Holgerius wrote:
Yes, I don't see why not.
Also, this specific piece of art is hilarious as shit. XD
Fixed that for you.
Man, I wanted this to become a pun thread and now there's no puns. 
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Man, the australian dollar IS doing well!
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Anything is art as long as someone is willing to pay for it, if not its just a hobby. That is what it has degraded into.
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what they allow for threads these days...
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Silly Tasmanians. At least this kind of thing isn't actually on the Australian continent ^_^
Interesting, anyway...seeming as I don't actually understand what constitutes art and what doesn't in the first place, this doesn't really push the boundaries
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I want to stay far away from poop art though <_<
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gunna wipe this one from my memory
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I just hope this kind of art doesn't get too poopular.
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this thread does not go down well with me...
maybe people are used to poop more down under?
lets be glad he just fed the machine glass or whatever, imagine feeding it a large bean burrito...
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The thread title isn't directly correlated to the article in it. Can poop be considered art? Yes it can, every artifact can be presented embedded in a layer of meaning that makes it relevant as a piece of art. Is this particular piece an art piece? That's a question of what thoughts does this object raises that makes it relevant as a piece of art.
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I walked on some art today
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Don't we already have a Modern Art thread? Shouldn't this go in there?
Anyway, when it comes to shock art, the best thing to do is not be angry about it but just ignore it. Getting a reaction is exactly what the "artist" wants.
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I stopped giving a shit....so I made this machine that does it for me.
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On May 18 2012 06:23 Aelfric wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2012 06:14 TheGlassface wrote:
Art is art.
If you ever skew,you then admit you think your opinion of expression is worth more than others.
It's all just human expression.
If my opinion is scientific and well thought then i can claim that opinion is worth more than others. Poo, vomit these are part of human body or it's actions. But they doesn't have to be artistic in many ways, we can understand them but i don't see any reason to admire them. It's just a complex system's output. I don't claim my view is scientific enough though i can't grasp the idea behind this kind of stuff no matter how much i try to do it objectively or not. And one of the comments to the article: "Well, if that’s art, then stand back because I just had Taco Bell and I’m about to blow a freakin’ Picasso."
Science has absolutely nothing to do with art. Your opinion will never be "scientific"
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what is art? art is the rapresentation of something: thus, poop is art yes, anything is art as long as you know what you are doing. What about Andy warhol? someone without any type of artistic knowledge, would interpret that as stupid, but he had a CLEAR idea of what he was doing. Things in the artistic world need to be consedered in their proper context.
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The Physical Certainty of Poo in the Ass of Someone Living
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I make art everyday! Yay! Sometimes twice or three times! (depending on fiber intake) if I was only a robot I would be worth a lot...
I guess the artist was taking a shit one day and had a great idea.
Sometimes i dont get art.. but then i wait about 20 mins after eating a big meal and it all makes sense... The hardest part for me is signing my name on it afterward...
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I wish TL would remove the general forums.
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It is to an extent, anything can be art* (*restrictions still apply) but how much it appeals to people is all that matters. People say that making love is an art form, but its not captured in a timeless peice either. So i guess its all on whether or not you want a lasting image or not.
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This type of art is the shit!
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Relevant:
![[image loading]](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20030312-2.gif)
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I took a huge art this morning.
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i once walked into an an open gallery by chance, vernissage of some sort here in berlin. all those fancy artsy people standing around drinking their fancy drinks. the walls were covered with dozens of oil paintings which all showed one theme and one only: human anuses. a great variety at that too.
*edit* yay im a zergling!
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On May 18 2012 07:10 Ohyra wrote:Modern art.. It's one thing to look at a Picasso, Frida Kahlo or Isaac Grünewald. In their paintings you can always read something out of the artist, and you can always look at the paintings in a fresh perspective. This is of course to a large degree dependant on the eras and the mindset at the time, just like we are going through a phase right now with the modern art. But seriously.. i wish we could fast forward just to get past the modern day art. I went to visit the "modern museum" in Stockholm here in Sweden. And one thing that caught my eye was the figure of a goat, standing with a tennisball on top of its head. The museum guide told me that the ball stood for the artist's lost childhood. My mind was blown. "WHAT THE HELL!?" "Seriously!?" Where did all the good stuff go? Another major upset recently here in sweden was when the minister of culture visited the museum. Here they all had cake. The upset was that the cake was formed as a human being, a woman. When you cut the cake, the woman screamed and cried, to represent the genital mutilation that girls go through in Africa for example. Let's just say that the people didn't enjoy it all too much after it aired on national television. It seems that today art is only about chocking, enraging and upsetting. None of it ever makes you want to stop and think, and admire it anymore. It truly is a sad time to be alive, compared to say the 1800-1900's. Art-wise that is
You sure do have an oustanding amount of time on your hands if you managed to have access to and somehow evaulate ALL art on this planet. "that today art is only about..." Please tell me how you managed to understand what all of today's art is.
What I bolded is you using anecdotal evidence to describe social trends.
It's incredibly lazy thinking and also offers absolutely 0 validity.
What the museum guide said to you is also silly. It's his choice to show you that and it's your interpretation that matters. Nothing else.
Your jump to the iconic choices for comparison leads me to believe you're trying to be an amateur critic here and that too is just silly. What you think of one piece, a billion others think another or felt something different. A billion more might think the same. See how we can't differentiate between "good" and "bad" art yet?
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In all seriousness, of course shit isn't art.
A well-engineered machine that accurately mimics a complex human biological process, only to mass-produce shit?
That's actually funny, interesting and provocative.
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If I beat my dick on a drum, it's art.
When I write music, I write almost completely for myself. It's not to play in front of other people for them to enjoy, or to express a message in some way. It's all about me and what I want in the song. I have no desire to write for anyone else but myself. Despite this attitude, a lot of people still like my music but I couldn't give a shit if they did like it because I didn't write it for them.
The thing about art is that you can literally do anything, and SOMEONE somewhere will like it. This is because art is all about YOUR interpretation on the matter. When you listen to a song, you don't like it because someone told you to like it - you like it for whatever personal reasons you have. Maybe it's because it's attached to a good memory you have, or you know theory, and enjoy 5/4 time signatures.
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Oh well, shit happens =/
but isn't this unhealthy? ._.
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Well 90% of modern art is shit anyways....
Yeah I guess it's art, but it's not good art. (for me at least. I know some of you guys see deep meaning in the collection of cardboardboxes and crayons and thats fine)
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On May 18 2012 10:04 1Eris1 wrote:
Well 90% of modern art is shit anyways....
Yeah I guess it's art, but it's not good art. (for me at least. I know some of you guys see deep meaning in the collection of cardboardboxes and crayons and thats fine)
It takes a lot more vision, creativity, hardwork, problem solving and commitment to invent a machine that replicates the human digestive system than it does to paint a Zergling in photoshop ... or whatever it is that passes for 'art' and 'creativity' on Team Liquid.
No offense. It's just that there is A LOT worse contemporary art than this. The Shit Machine is actually kind of badass.
Unless you have an intermediate understanding of Art History and how it has evolved in the past 100 years AND you're extremely open-minded, contemporary art just isn't very comprehensible, let alone appealing.
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I clicked on this thread because I knew there would be poop pun comments. I was not disappointed.
OT: If it can be molded and used as any other medium, it can be considered art. I don't know why someone would want to use fecal matter as art, but I suppose technically monkeys are artists and their dodgeball victims are their canvases.
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only classical art is real art. This is just shit.
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LOL! yes yes definitely. poop is definitely art. I want to go to the poop museum oh man
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This reminds me of some of Alex Grey's old performance art stuff...also of the famous "Piss Christ" by Andres Serrano.
Boo at all of the poop jokes also...LoL.
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On May 18 2012 07:34 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2012 06:54 LazinCajun wrote:On May 18 2012 06:14 TheGlassface wrote:
Art is art.
If you ever skew,you then admit you think your opinion of expression is worth more than others.
It's all just human expression.
I agree with this! What a great insight. My opinion of expression IS worth more than others. What this piece of art is saying is that ALL human expression is essentially a waste by-product of being alive, and ultimately has little to no value. Basically, we shouldn't get too hung up out how we or other express ourselves because we're all just pointless shit machines and everything is bullshit anyways. Have a great day!
At first glance I read your name as "Defecator," no joke.
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It's art because art is loosely defined in such a way that the word loses all its meaning.
Spend a lot of time doing something weird, call it art, and if a big name picks it up or you manage to market your garbage, you'll be able to get fame and money because people hold "shock value" on a pedestal rather than talent or beauty, even when there's nothing really shocking about feces considering that people have been doing all kinds of crazy BS in the name of art, going from just beams of metal arranged in a weird way to a "performance art" of this girl masturbating in front of her classmates in art school or whatever.
Overall, if they want to say it's art, then it is. It's not good.
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I really thought this was a thread about ME3's ending.
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Anything can be art, even what we're all saying. We are in no position to say something is or isn't art; at least, that's what my dad was taught when he took up Fine Arts in the University of the Philippines, and that point of view rubbed on me.
The only real distinction to be made is if a piece of art is "good" or "bad" art, and even then, it is still pretty subjective.
Plus, there's this gem of a quote (and I forgot who said this): art isn't supposed to make you comfortable (or something like that).
In the case of poop, well, it sure can be disgusting. But hell, the thinking (both creatively and scientifically) that went into the process of creating the piece is most certainly outstanding. I mean, it takes a very, very unconventional (maybe even tilted) frame of mind to even think of making a piece of art based on literal shit; then, there's the process in actually making it so that it accurately reflects the human digestive system (an incredible feat on its own).
Just as Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (a urinal on a pedestal) was hard to accept during its time as art, but is now universally agreed upon as art, this "poop machine" (to crudely name it) is hard to accept for many now, but I'm betting a few decades from now, people will look back and accept it universally as art.
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On May 18 2012 06:17 Telcontar wrote:
Oh man, I'm too pooped out to give a shit.
On May 18 2012 06:20 Zeke50100 wrote:
I think it's just crap.
omg i shat so hard when i read these xD
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i don't understand art at all..
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_shit
This is showcased near my hovetown. Basically it is shit in a can (Meaning that canned food = shit AFAIK).
People were discussing whether or not there was shit in the 3 cans. Until one of them broke open :D
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art is an opinion, nothing else. Usually used to give credit or to categorize something.
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This is old news I heard about this machine at least 5+ year ago and I don't follow modern art. Either way it proves you can sell shit (literally) as art since he sells the resulting product of the machine in plastic bags. Hard to say if these kind of guys are good artists or just great bs artists..
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People can read meanings into almost anything, therefore art is effectively a meaningless word.
After seeing this, I wonder if photocopying a book like "a tale of two cities" and then putting my name on the cover could be considered art. I read a satirical review on pitchfork media for a band called "jet" - where one person was talking to an artsy dude who thought everything was art. On that point (asking whether xeroxing a famous novel can be considered art), he said "leave me alone" and the review ended.
Now I wonder whether he should have just said yes. Is there really no limit? Literally anything can be art now? Isn't that kind of ridiculous? What's to stop someone from literally taking a poo on stage, and charging people for admittance? I'm sure there are dozens of artistic interpretations of that. Like how most entertainment is crap, etc.
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Considering the sort of crap I've seen hanging on the walls of museums, yes, poop can be art.
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Defacer's original response is pretty dead on, imop.
I would llike to add what Dr. John Perry taught me about what art is.
Dr. Perry would say Art is anything that shows zeitgeist and skilled execution.
that seems to apply in this case.
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On May 18 2012 22:23 radscorpion9 wrote:
People can read meanings into almost anything, therefore art is effectively a meaningless word.
After seeing this, I wonder if photocopying a book like "a tale of two cities" and then putting my name on the cover could be considered art. I read a satirical review on pitchfork media for a band called "jet" - where one person was talking to an artsy dude who thought everything was art. On that point (asking whether xeroxing a famous novel can be considered art), he said "leave me alone" and the review ended.
Now I wonder whether he should have just said yes. Is there really no limit? Literally anything can be art now? Isn't that kind of ridiculous? What's to stop someone from literally taking a poo on stage, and charging people for admittance? I'm sure there are dozens of artistic interpretations of that. Like how most entertainment is crap, etc.
Why is that ridiculous?
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On May 18 2012 09:03 StormShield24 wrote:
I wish TL would remove the general forums.
You can remove them yourself, by changing your account settings.
Anyway, you traditional f-artists need to get over yourself, shit happens.
You may think it h-anus, but I sphink-ter not! Butt I must assk you something, and that is to not get too anal about this (ass)whole thing. Just flush it out of your mind.
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EPT
