Arts and Crafts

[nolly]

I'm mostly posting this so I have the written out version to reference later, but feel free to comment on my definitions.

Scrapbooking is a pseudocraft. If it won't be a useful skill after the fall of civilization, it's not a Real Craft. If it still takes skill, talent, and creativity, it might be Art. Things that can be done with materials that will still be around after the fall (like, say, pretty rocks or natural pigments) and require skill/talent/imagination but do not have direct survival value are Art. Things that require at least skill or talent and can create items with survival value are Crafts. Some things can be both -- cooking from an existing recipe or crocheting/sewing/knitting from an existing pattern is craft, creating your own recipes/patterns is art.

Comments

[baxil.livejournal.com]

The metric you're using still raises questions, perhaps not easily answerable. Maybe I should just pose this conundrum -- Without programmers and programming, our overburdened and overly complex information society would degenerate rapidly into the sort of chaos you talk about. And yet the instant that chaos does occur, programming skills will be next to worthless.

Doesn't that seem a little self-fulfilling to you, to call programming worthless because it's eventually going to be worthless? Similarly, the ability to use complicated ultrasound equipment to diagnose a cancerous tumor may be unimportant by that metric, but I doubt someone whose life was saved by the procedure would agree. People place a lot of value on the use of technology today, and I don't think that's without good reason.

Moving back to art in specific -- I do disagree with your assessment of photoshopping as the creativity-less act of "moving a few heads around." This spends more time as my background wallpaper than the copious pieces of Art littering my machine's hard drive. Granted, not all photoshoppers aspire to that level of muse release. But then, neither do all painters.

I do see the rationale behind your differentiation. It's hard to argue with except on general principle: that, as suggested above, assigning an inherent negative value to technology is going to dismiss many things which otherwise would seem (common-sense or instinctually) to be worthwhile. I.e., there are people who make Art with whatever is around them, and I don't think they should be penalized just because "whatever's around them" happens to be high-tech.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Clarifications:
-- When did I say anything was worthless?
-- I was attempting to describe a spectrum of activity under the digital image manipulation umbrella, with "head-swapping" at the low end and braindump to blank canvas at the high end. I was not intending to tar it all with one brush.
-- "Must be done with technology" was the determining factor, not "can be done with technology". Those who would be making things regardless, but happen to be using tech are not what I had in mind. First, I was classifying activities, not people. I have a second, but I'm not quite finding the words for it. It has something to do with attitude and motivation, and whether the activity is driven by desire to create or by marketing, but that's not entirely it. Dependent on Big Business versus made easier by Big Business, but possible without. Martha Stewart vs. self-sufficiency.

The more I think about it, there are two axes here. Art/Craft and helpful after the fall/not helpful after the fall. Which suggests 4 categories:

Art with survival value[1]: painting, music, traditional poetry (the sort that makes things easier to remember, ala traveling minstrels and newsbearers and other oral traditions.), recipe creation, pattern creation
Art without survival value: programming, digital imagery, photography (unless film and the other necessary supplies are easier to make than i think they are)
Craft with survival value: sewing, knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, cooking, carpentry
Craft without survival value: Hrm...cross stitch? Plastic canvas. Paint by numbers? Plastic lace lanyard making?

[1] survival after the fall of civilization, not survival now, throughout

[baxil.livejournal.com]

You didn't say anything was worthless; I was trying to extrapolate so that I could make my argument-on-general-principle. 'Tis possible I overstated my case.

One way or another -- it was the distinction between "art without survival value" and "craft without survival value" that I was not previously seeing in your classifications. I'm happier now that AwoSV has a place in the scheme.