A friend recently pointed me to this article by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. In it he expresses concern about Wikipedia’s lack of authority. In response to this he started Citizendium. Citizendium is very similar to Wikipedia except that it has some form of “expert oversight” for the content it displays. At the moment Citizendium has an awful lot of links to Wikipedia content.
Citizendium contains a lot of articles but some are “approved” and others aren’t. It would have been interesting to compare the definition of art in Citizendium with that of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Citizendium has no definition of art, approved or otherwise.
Even so, Sanger makes some interesting comments. If you have any response to his assertions I'd love to hear them.
Two words and some meta-information in a note blow a recent post by Franklin Einspruch caught my attention.
The words were “attention economy” and the link led to an article called “Attention Shoppers!” by Michael H. Goldhaber. Goldhaber, according to a footnote on the article is “completing a book on the attention economy.” Read the article if you want to know more about this topic.
The idea is that we are not in an information economy. (Information abounds to the extent that it would be equally valid to say that we are in an oxygen economy.) Instead, we exchange attention with one another.
The discussion question is this—are we indeed in an information economy and if we are, how does that affect art? What does a move toward an attention economy mean for the art world? What will change? What will go unchanged?
Salvador Dali, “proud owner of one of the world's pointiest moustaches” (From), was as well known for his bizarre lifestyle as he was for his art. Whether this distraction from his painted works is appropriate or not will likely be debated ad infinitum.
Dali brings up a good question. Is it reasonable, appropriate, or effective to consider biographical information about an artist in the process of interpreting their work? Is the artist’s life part of his body of work or should works of art stand on their own?
This is the first aesthesis discussion and I’ll post apt responses to aesthesis on 31-May-2004.
Responses should be clear and concise (less than 1000 words) and may include examples of specific art works. You can submit them by e-mailing them to me or by responding to this entry.