Re: [linux-audio-user] Thesis: Playing and making music

From: Rob <lau@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Mon Dec 11 2006 - 21:42:30 EET

On Monday 11 December 2006 13:51, Cesare Marilungo wrote:
> Actually, the term 'art' has always been used also, and even
> more, in the sense of 'skill' or 'craft' for a long time. The
> art of making bread, for instance, deserves the same respect
> of the art of making music.

First of all, making bread is part of the culinary arts, which
are widely accepted as such (if you doubt it, just attend a wine
tasting and listen to people's critiques. Performing arts
critics can only dream of being so vague and effete.) I would
argue that art and craft are two complementary concepts which
both can be used to describe the same activity, but not all
activities.

A person's skill at a craft can be measured objectively. "Every
loaf of bread he bakes comes out to exactly 500g." "He performs
that Rachmaninov piece exactly the same way every time." And on
the videogame front, "She took out the entire opposing team in 8
seconds with only 2 grenades."

A person's skill at an art can ONLY be measured
subjectively. "His bread is always chewy, but tender and
flavorful." "He makes me cry with his reading of Rachmaninov
every time." And on the videogame front.... what? "She can
play blindfolded?" "She can do a little dance while she frags
people?" On games like DDR you can add a little flair to your
performance because it's meant to be a performance. On games
that people play competitively, like first person shooters....
I'm not so sure what the artistic component would be.

Regardless, DDR's existence demonstrates that there can be an
artistic component to videogame playing. But it's a different
art than music performance (or composition, or arrangement, or
engineering) just as all those musical activities are a
different art than bread baking. Well, maybe music engineering
is pretty close to bread baking.

Rob
Received on Tue Dec 12 00:15:59 2006

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