Art

What is art?
What is the value of art?


As a visual arts student and a musician, I have to confront these questions often. There is a large gap between the aesthetics and the purpose of fine arts and contemporary art, as well as how people define art. I think of art as something human created, which often includes the process of interpreting something. Something interpreted by a person is already human created, thus how the person expresses it becomes art.
This is the conclusion I reach when I think about how art has only existed in human societies, and not in other living beings.
However this thought changes when I am interpreting a piece on a violin, and when I listen to a song on the radio. These two are completely different cultures and ways of thinking. A piece by Mozart would be immensely offended if it were told to be art of equal value to "Friday" by Rebecca Black. There seems to be "good art" and "bad art" which depends from person to person, and often "bad art" is said to not be a "proper piece of art" ie. not worth being called art.
Still, I draw the boundaries of what art is as something that is human created.

An interesting example of what I still call art is what was shown in a presentation a few weeks back: Mandelbrots set, a fractal pattern created by an equation plotted on the complex plane. Although it is on its boundary of being an art, the pattern made by this equation is a discovery, which could only be plotted by the creation of computers. It is like doing an observational painting an apple: we did not create the apple, we are discovering its form, and we are able to depict the apple using the paint brush.
I think the Mandelbrots set image along the same principles, that it is still an art because of how it is created.

There are different criterion by which we judge and place the value on art:
-Aesthetic
-Its statement
which in its sub categories has:
-Political
-Historical
-Sentimental
-Religious

From an exercise we have done in class, which spend 150CHF freely on a set of paintings, we saw that the way we judge art depends greatly on who we are. When I  buy art, I buy it because it has the "I want to put it in my living room" factor. Some people enjoy the meaning of the art much more, and others like the impact of the statement the art makes.

John Carlin- journalist, author

"John Carlin (born 12 May 1956)^[1] is a journalist and author, dealing with both sports and politics. His book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation about former South African president Nelson Mandela is the basis for the 2009 film Invictus." - Wikipedia.com


"Journalism is the pass to extraordinary events, people, and parts of the world" 
In this talk, John Carlin revealed to us the nature of journalism. Journalism is a medium in our media, which plays a strong role in our perception of the world. It is our source of information, which creates and shapes our opinions and perception. 

In this talk, Carlin told us anecdotes and messages he had picked up from his experiences. His far most memorable and cherished were his encounters with Nelson Mandela, whom he described to have a charisma and confidence of a hero. Carlin's first encounter with this great man was at his release after 27 years of imprisonment; when he stepped out, surrounded by media including Carlin, ready to change the country. Working for the Independent at the time, Carlin had felt, and known, that this was a great moment in history, and to be witnessing it was one of the privileges of a journalist. 


Mandela's challenge after becoming president was going to be to negotiate on opposition arms. In an interview, Carlin asked him what his formula was going to be. Mandela answered he was going to reconcile black aspirations and white fears: "Respect" for one another is one of the most important social qualities, and in order to reach an understanding and gain respect, he had to know his enemy better. This Mandela had done by learning Afrikaans during his imprisonment, and getting to know the culture and individual personalities of the brutish white prison guards. 


This helped Mandela, as he won over the respect of the prison guards, later the Chief of "In"justice, the head of Secret Intelligence, and even the leader of a white opposition group that emerged, who was an ex-general, ambitious to oppose. By respecting this leader greatly, Mandela was able to convince the 'terrorist' to abandon the group and participate in elections. "I was told I was a coward to talk to the opposition leader. They were wrong: I managed to obtain peace."(Mandela). The respect for the white culture also included the aim that even in the newly reformed country, there had to be a sense of belonging for everyone. When the new government was deciding upon an national anthem, Mandela was wise and made the decision to have both the black and white anthems, so there would not be a feeling of separation and black dominance over the country. Mandela had great political leadership: the power to bend people to your will. He invested a lot of immense respect and trust in people for this, but instead, when he felt betrayed, he was implacable. 


So what was Carlin's view on the nature of journalism? What he had recounted for us showed this: it was a witness account of Carlin's experiences, where he tried to be accurate as possible about the events and the atmosphere, yet there was also messages within this story. "Objectivity in journalism is impossible", and all people have a bias. Carlin stated that "objectivity is a myth", but at least he tried to be as truthful as possible in what he wrote. 
Thus Carlin commented that the reliability of articles were that they were "only approximations of the truth". Some journalists will have more elements of inventions, with ulterior motives. Carlin himself said he was a mercenary, writing articles on various subjects because he was asked to. Nonetheless journalism is normally the best attempts at the truth, by the journalist.