about art and creativity
“For taste governs every free - as opposed to rote - human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly.
... See moremany people “do not want to think critically about the things they consume” and feel that “if they absorb any criticism about the things they consume it will magically ruin their enjoyment of them.” When we chatted about the role of criticism on a (fun, lightly gossipy) video call this month, she added that saying a piece of art is bad isn’t saying... See more
“I picked a bad time to become a critic” – Elizabeth Goodspeed on the collapse of design critique
“All jokes aside, if you don’t fuck around, you’ll never actually find out.”
Harry Bennett • One philosophy underpins designer Ji Park’s eclectic practice – “fuck around and find out”
But the Taste Guy is just the Idea Guy reinvented for the attention age. It’s trading meaning-making for trend-hopping and cosplaying success instead of earning it. It’s posting slick prototypes for Twitter views instead of real products for DAUs and cash. It’s the fantasy of a post-AGI world where you don’t need to learn to code or write or sell... See more
Jasmine • are you high-agency or an NPC?
“At the same time, art cannot be understood in terms of purpose. As the sculptor Charles Ray has said, art is “for absolutely nothing.” To make, or experience, art is to enter a kind of free zone; it slows us down, places us in some epistemological estuary, takes us into the wild. We make art from our flaws, fragilities, perversities, from our need
... See moreThe goal of art isn’t to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are. And how we see the world. Artists allow us to see what we are unable to see, but somehow already know. It may be a view of the world singularly different from our own. Or one so close, it seems miraculous, as if the artist is looking through our own eyes. In either case,
... See moreRick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being
The challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. We do not want to make ourselves dependent on a plan that is threatened by the unexpected, like a new idea, discovery – or insight.