Since modern art everything can be art.

My favorite work of art is two people sitting in front of each other, one reading the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000 and the other reading the numbers from 1,000,000 to 1. Brilliant.

Eberts actual statement was that video games would never be -HIGH- art.

I still think anybody who says there is HIGH art and just art is a fucking pretentious fuckwad.

Art is the expression of ones ideas and opinions

Case fucking closed.

hahahah nice

You seem to be forgetting about the very Earth itself when relating to art, which is why I think your argument is moot (read my cloud explanation below).

Art is the expression of an idea or an opinion in any way shape or form.

Its the reason I listen to certain music and say "I don't like that at all, it provokes no response in me and it sounds horrible to listen to" but if I showed that same music to somebody else who likes rnb music, they might very well love it.

Its not that I am wrong and they are right, its just that the music is expressing an idea/opinion that I do not like/agree with. His repetitive beats and shallow lyrics do nothing for me, but the person next to me might think the beats are solid and his lyrics reflect the kind of person he has grown in to from living in the ghetto (or whatever), which is what they like. Who knows.

Another example is a post I made a while ago on clouds and how I love the shit out of them, and still do. I think clouds are amazingly brilliant in design and aesthetic appeal, and when I see a cloud I don't just see a white fluff ball, I see expanding and contracting ice particles speeding across the sky at beak neck speeds, I see a canvas in the sky being constantly painted on, clouds calm me and make me think of all that is good in the world, the way the Earth all works together and how much I love life; to me, they are art. They are the expression of my ideas and opinions. To someone else, they are just big fluffy vats of water.

Roger Ebert seems to think that he can differentiate between what is considered "high art" and what is just "art", the difference between a scribble on a bit of paper and The Scream; when in actual fact there is no difference at all, the change lies within the viewer.

You should not give a shit about Roger Ebert or his opinion on anything. He is a hypocritical, self righteous, dingbat who needs to constantly secure his position as one of the most pompous asses on the entire planet, because that is all he has amounted to, if his opinion isn't right, then what has he been doing for all of these years? He HAS to be right, otherwise his life is nothing.

I'm going to disagree with you there Skribble. Sometimes the expression of an idea is just statement. Like scientific papers or pie charts. These things can be art but are not necessarily art.

I've always believed art to be based in the reasoning behind the act, not the act itself. If someone just wants to take a photograph of a sunset, is that art? If, on the other hand, someone wanted to capture the beauty of a sunset in a photograph, that's art.

That's the only definition I've come up with which pleases me that I can communicate to others.

I 'learned' years ago that for an object to become Art, that it must be made so. Whether built from scratch or merely molded, an 'artist' has to act upon something. As Glipe said, though, the mere fact that an 'artist' is the one acting isn't enough to actually make the product a piece of art. The artist has to, in some way, directly or indirectly (but nonetheless intentionally) declare their action a work of artistry. Thus, "Art is the intention of art." Or so the idea goes.

This concept, however, would suggest that all that it takes to distinguish a piece of art from an, um, non-piece is the influence and consequential declaration of purpose by an artist -- which could raise another question entirely about what actually makes one an 'artist', or when this characterization can actually occur. Here, the awful collage made in Home-Ec gets put in the same category as the masterpiece painting that took forty years to perfect, which would really seem to belittle the title of 'being Art'. So, there's an obvious problem, and one that the distinction of 'High Art' is probably supposed to relieve, if only partially.

My reply to this back then (huff huff huff -- finally, I know) was that often times Art is characterized as such without the action of an artist. The examples that come to mind are the products of tradespeople -- well-refined tools, parts of buildings, and inventions that when beheld are recognized for their artistic nature, but weren't meant as such originally. And if Art is mere symbolic representation (as another definition would suggest), then even the most blatant acts of shaping color, by visionary cavemen or finger-painting toddlers are themselves without so-called artistic intention, and would have to be likewise ignored.

It would seem that, according to this conceptualization of Art as intention rather than interpretation, that the only ingredient that could have any positive effect on a piece's standing is the degree of pretentiousness the actor/maker/artist is willing to be.

How this relates to video game media? Who would have right to argue with developers if they themselves were the ones declaring their work as Art?

Maybe by the time we're old, and there have been people raised on games ten times more advanced than what we have now, the definition of art as related to games will be completely different from anything we could ever imagine.

I'm still of the opinion that games don't need to conform to the definition of art, the definition of art needs to be changed to make sure it can include games, which are obviously an art form.

I think I blogged about this very thing....*digs out old blogs*

There it is! Something about tomatoes... fucked if I know what I was on about.

Video games aren't art. They COULD be art. Everything has the capacity to be art.