Artworks don’t manage knowledge—they channel it. It takes time and attention to understand an artwork’s meaning. Each piece demands a process of reconciliation, and a merging of two contexts: the artwork’s own history and the viewer’s private knowledge network. When it’s placed in a new context, its meaning evolves and expands elastically. It store... See more

The tyranny of the contextualizer online is their constant and immovable presence between the reader and the text, the listener and the music, the viewer and the film. We now reach for context before engaging with the content. When my first interaction with a song is through TikTok reactions, I no longer encounter the work as it is, on my own. It c... See more

The function of art is also clear: Artists propose new ways of doing things and perceiving the world, which if successful, become conventional.

4. Ever wonder about the vast universe of critically acclaimed aesthetic masterworks, most of which you do not really fathom? If you dismiss them, and mistrust the critics, odds are that you are wrong and they are right. You do not have the context to appreciate those works. That is fine, but no reason to dismiss that which you do not understand. T... See more

Artists do not create contexts; they work within them. Context is the web of complex circumstances in which artists work in relation to their physical environment, historical trends and traditions, social movements, cultural values, intellectual perspectives, personal commitments, and more. Art originates from within a context. Likewise, art is rec

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2.6.3 True artists produce works that are novel, complex, and ambiguous.

2.6.4 Novel, complex, and ambiguous artworks can always be simplified to make conventional art forms more stimulating for mainstream audiences.

As the realm of virtual information complexifies, it is increasingly difficult to collectively experience, let alone agree on concrete descriptions of events. The platforms we use to communicate often lack archival affordances, optimizing instead for the nonstop production of new content. So context collapses and signifiers empty their meaning. Whe... See more