I find that an astounding remark. Especially on a photography forum!
........you may find it extraordinary but the hobby of photography interests different people in different ways.
I work with Motorsports as a day job and love the physics/mechanical engineering of the sport, however cars and driving have absolutely no interest to me whatsoever; so much so that i always say to people that if I won the lottery rather than choose a car I would hire a chauffeur to drive me about.
Physics and mechanical engineering are what excites me; admiring the craftsmanship and working out what makes things work and how they work holds a fascination. I love watches; in their purest sense the watch only tells the time, just like pressing the shutter button records an image, but take the back off a nice mechanical watch and I could sit for hours just staring at it and appreciating what is happening in there and how parts have been designed/engineered to work together to 'tell the time'.
Hmm. Well. Not everyone wants to make pretty postcard pictures.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdaxV2ieZgY
See, to me it was at this point the thread became a complete 'turn off'. In no way is this a criticism of the post/poster as I can clearly see why to others, who are interested in photography, would find it very interesting but I really just don't 'get it'.
Likewise your posts, again I am not being in anyway critical of them and anyone who spends the time to reply in such a thoughtful way should be applauded for their contributions but I really just can't make sense of what you are trying to say/convey - it is, as you say; 'gobbledegook'.
I'm a firm believer that certain people have an 'arty' brain and others have a 'scientific brain' with an overlap in the middle. I remember I was s*** at English Literature at school and hated it; in my 'O Level' exam I distinctly remember a question 'What thoughts do you think the author was trying to convey in this passage and what do you think he was thinking about in writing it?' My reaction was 'what a f*****g stupid question - I don't know, I wasn't there; he could have been thinking about shagging his wife for all I know!' (.........and wrote those exact words on the exam paper - I got an F in that subject).
I don't know......in my brain 2+2 = 4; it either has to be right or wrong. I hate objective answers that are neither right or wrong but the 'feelings' of a person.
Please don't take this the wrong way
@droj - it really isn't meant to be 'having a go at you' - your posts clearly convey to me I haven't got the slightest artistic bone in my body and hence, as long as the final image is well exposed, composed well, and in focus I consider the image to be successful; if I had lots of fun getting to that image then all the more enjoyment for me out of my photography
The main dialogue is about purpose and integrity ...
One problem with 'the art world' that might not endear it to the general public is that a big part or offshoot of it has a commercial intent, even when the art itself might be serious, but the focus on the real meaning of anything gets befuddled. The trouble with commerce is that it's indiscriminate - it's just about selling. An art curator has a job that presumably they'd like to keep, so they're going to talk up what they've got or can get ... and yes a culture of gibberish arises.
You've always got to fight your own way through the defecatory stuff.
To me, if it reads as gobbledegook, it most likely is. But then one person's gobbledegook is another's sense - it depends where your thresholds are.
Trouble with art is that it has no clear boundaries whereas craft does. That's art in the pure sense - In Victorian times, say, art was often a synonym for craft - these days, that's something of a legacy meaning. Craft is a foundation of art, not vice-versa.
To be decorative alone isn't true art - art must have meaning to be worthy of the term. And neither should it be judged by the same criteria as something that's merely decorative. An artist is not an artiste.
As I said, the boundary of what is and what isn't art is diffuse - the edges of the category are blurred, and that's in its nature. I'd say that we largely intuit what is or isn't art, though reason may also be employed. And for a given work, a consensus might arise that supercedes individual subjectivity. Note that you have to have a certain sensibility to be capable of making the judgement though, and the judgement to be valid should also be free of commercial taint.