What's the case against the idea that this kind of thing is incredibly dumb? The multi-million dollar valuations of art pieces and other collectables is already pretty dubious on a utilitarian...
What's the case against the idea that this kind of thing is incredibly dumb?
The multi-million dollar valuations of art pieces and other collectables is already pretty dubious on a utilitarian view, and once you get into online media, which is literally just information, the whole thing appears farcical to me.
2.5 million to get your name on every news site and promote yourself as a wannabe elon musk. The 2m bidder has spent more on similar publicity attempts
Art doesn't serve an exclusively "utilitarian" purpose to us insofar as there is no such thing as objective utility in a world inhabited by individuals with their own unique subjective...
Art doesn't serve an exclusively "utilitarian" purpose to us insofar as there is no such thing as objective utility in a world inhabited by individuals with their own unique subjective experiences—including different perspectives on what constitutes personal value. Even if you define the utility of a particular work as "the meaning it conveys," it is extremely difficult to argue that a piece like this does not carry some amount of cultural significance (i.e. meaning) without resorting to the somewhat outmoded and extremely boring anti-contextual narratives of the New Critics. I appreciate the "democratization of knowledge" that such movements bring in their rejection of the traditions of the academy, but it's sort of unintelligible to try to analyze a work in and of itself when analysis itself is an externally imposed process. The relational or relative value of art is not something that should be dismissed.
The broader aesthetic value of a work of art takes into account the circumstances associated with its creation, distribution, and analysis (and I suppose the "pre-context" of its absence); this necessarily includes, among other things, both 1) a conception of the work as art, and 2) a conception of the work as "non-art" in comparison with that which is conventionally thought to be art. This very supposed lack of artistic value does, at an abstract but still appreciable level, create an emergent semantic quality specific to the work. In other words, the introduction of media traditionally dismissed as non-artistic to the art world is actually a form of artistic protest on the nature of art. In the case of Dorsey's tweet, the inclusion of its metadata suggests that it is being recognized as something noteworthy at least partially because it is digital, and also because it represents the internet as a valid progenitor of artistic meaning. The exact same argument has been had about photography, film, video games, and just about every other form of art under the sun; said argument has been consistently won by those arguing in favor of the inclusive narrative of art to any particular medium.
Naturally, if you define utility in a way that excludes this particular meta-recognition of media as a useful commentary on art as a whole, then the piece serves no utilitarian purpose. But the meaning provided above is just one example in a set of infinite length, either in effect or in reality. You can further exclude all such elements within the set from your definition of utility and try to derive some sort of meaning from the words in the tweet and nothing else, but then you are just analyzing an expression and not a tweet. It's possible to literally do that, and you will get some sort of result, but doing so has a barely appreciable level of utility—if a work has been stripped of everything that makes it relevant to the world it lives in, analyzing that which remains will produce conclusions that are not interesting and certainly not applicable elsewhere. This property is somewhat ironic given that close readings of this nature are done specifically to obtain the most "pure" meaning of a work. But when you're dealing with a base case with no room for interpretation, that removes the subjective component of art from the equation. The conclusion you will draw is something to the effect of "this string of characters is comprised of the concatenation of the symbols j, u, s, t,… and metadata comprised of…," which is not "meaning" per se, just a set of observations. It's reproducible, but it's not valuable. (To be pedantic, even that conclusion relies on a certain linguistic and mathematical context that is very much separate from the work in and of itself.) This reduction, though extreme, should make one question the utility of such frameworks in general.
To summarize, a reading of a work like this that does not take into account its significance within the artistic, cultural, and technological context that it resides is indeed somewhat pointless. But the analytic framework necessary to produce such a conclusion is inherently flawed, and its application in any circumstance will produce an equally meaningless result. One must accept that any analysis of a work in a world obviously external to it requires some amount of external context to be intelligible, but the point at which a given adjacent point of context becomes structurally irrelevant—whether at the linguistic or socio-cultural level, or anywhere in between—is fundamentally arbitrary. I would argue that the most interesting and useful forms of analysis are ones that attempt to highlight the meaning and purpose of a work in a broader sense than "must look pretty" or even "must be trying to look pretty," instead commenting on the "behind-the-scenes" processes that define the work as a newsworthy item to begin with. If we've reached this point, it's already art.
"Just setting up my twttr," the post, sent from Mr Dorsey's account in March 2006, reads.
It will be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) - a unique digital certificate that states who owns a photo, video or other form of online media.
But the post will remain publicly available on Twitter even after it has been auctioned off.
The buyer will receive a certificate, digitally signed and verified by Mr Dorsey, as well as the metadata of the original tweet. The data will include information such as the time the tweet was posted and its text contents.
"Owning any digital content can be a financial investment," it says. "[It can] hold sentimental value. Like an autograph on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator's autograph on the content, making it scarce, unique, and valuable."
What's the case against the idea that this kind of thing is incredibly dumb?
The multi-million dollar valuations of art pieces and other collectables is already pretty dubious on a utilitarian view, and once you get into online media, which is literally just information, the whole thing appears farcical to me.
This is so stupid, but you know what they say about fools and their money.
The best explanation I've seen is that this is a way to easily launder money, the same way the art world works, but with even less required effort.
2.5 million to get your name on every news site and promote yourself as a wannabe elon musk. The 2m bidder has spent more on similar publicity attempts
Art doesn't serve an exclusively "utilitarian" purpose to us insofar as there is no such thing as objective utility in a world inhabited by individuals with their own unique subjective experiences—including different perspectives on what constitutes personal value. Even if you define the utility of a particular work as "the meaning it conveys," it is extremely difficult to argue that a piece like this does not carry some amount of cultural significance (i.e. meaning) without resorting to the somewhat outmoded and extremely boring anti-contextual narratives of the New Critics. I appreciate the "democratization of knowledge" that such movements bring in their rejection of the traditions of the academy, but it's sort of unintelligible to try to analyze a work in and of itself when analysis itself is an externally imposed process. The relational or relative value of art is not something that should be dismissed.
The broader aesthetic value of a work of art takes into account the circumstances associated with its creation, distribution, and analysis (and I suppose the "pre-context" of its absence); this necessarily includes, among other things, both 1) a conception of the work as art, and 2) a conception of the work as "non-art" in comparison with that which is conventionally thought to be art. This very supposed lack of artistic value does, at an abstract but still appreciable level, create an emergent semantic quality specific to the work. In other words, the introduction of media traditionally dismissed as non-artistic to the art world is actually a form of artistic protest on the nature of art. In the case of Dorsey's tweet, the inclusion of its metadata suggests that it is being recognized as something noteworthy at least partially because it is digital, and also because it represents the internet as a valid progenitor of artistic meaning. The exact same argument has been had about photography, film, video games, and just about every other form of art under the sun; said argument has been consistently won by those arguing in favor of the inclusive narrative of art to any particular medium.
Naturally, if you define utility in a way that excludes this particular meta-recognition of media as a useful commentary on art as a whole, then the piece serves no utilitarian purpose. But the meaning provided above is just one example in a set of infinite length, either in effect or in reality. You can further exclude all such elements within the set from your definition of utility and try to derive some sort of meaning from the words in the tweet and nothing else, but then you are just analyzing an expression and not a tweet. It's possible to literally do that, and you will get some sort of result, but doing so has a barely appreciable level of utility—if a work has been stripped of everything that makes it relevant to the world it lives in, analyzing that which remains will produce conclusions that are not interesting and certainly not applicable elsewhere. This property is somewhat ironic given that close readings of this nature are done specifically to obtain the most "pure" meaning of a work. But when you're dealing with a base case with no room for interpretation, that removes the subjective component of art from the equation. The conclusion you will draw is something to the effect of "this string of characters is comprised of the concatenation of the symbols j, u, s, t,… and metadata comprised of…," which is not "meaning" per se, just a set of observations. It's reproducible, but it's not valuable. (To be pedantic, even that conclusion relies on a certain linguistic and mathematical context that is very much separate from the work in and of itself.) This reduction, though extreme, should make one question the utility of such frameworks in general.
To summarize, a reading of a work like this that does not take into account its significance within the artistic, cultural, and technological context that it resides is indeed somewhat pointless. But the analytic framework necessary to produce such a conclusion is inherently flawed, and its application in any circumstance will produce an equally meaningless result. One must accept that any analysis of a work in a world obviously external to it requires some amount of external context to be intelligible, but the point at which a given adjacent point of context becomes structurally irrelevant—whether at the linguistic or socio-cultural level, or anywhere in between—is fundamentally arbitrary. I would argue that the most interesting and useful forms of analysis are ones that attempt to highlight the meaning and purpose of a work in a broader sense than "must look pretty" or even "must be trying to look pretty," instead commenting on the "behind-the-scenes" processes that define the work as a newsworthy item to begin with. If we've reached this point, it's already art.
This reminds me of the million dollar homepage
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