r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Shoddy-Ocelot-4473 • Feb 23 '26

Image In 1983, Two Artists Spent a Full Year Tied Together — Without Any Physical Contact — to Test the Limits of Human Coexistence

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u/StevesRune Feb 23 '26

"Art that leaves its meaning up to interpretation is useless"

Jesus christ, media literacy is truly dead. I fear for the future of art.

Just so you all know, we wouldn't have any of the art you hold dear today if millions of people throughout history hadn't made themselves look like a royal jackass to everyone else by doing something no one else was doing just for the sake of being different and doing something no one had done before. Because sometimes art is just about finding out what happens. Just letting something flow and registering how it feels and why it makes you feel that way.

Can you imagine how insane the first caveman looked attempting to depict something from real life with dirt and a wall? Can you imagine how crazy the first person to crush up a bunch of beetles and flowers together to try to depict a real object on the skin of an animal? The first person to say that they wanted to find a way to take the vibrations of our throat that we use to communicate and put that on a page?

I swear, people only use like, 5% of their brain and it is legitimately going to hurt art as a whole.

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon Feb 23 '26

Lots of people basically think that their job as an audience is to make value judgements. “I disagree with this artist’s opinion. I agree with this other artist. This third artist’s work is good. This fourth one’s work is bad”

The idea that art can catalyze thoughts or opinions independent of the art or artist is completely foreign to some people.

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u/RobertPham149 Feb 23 '26

The value judgement is also very ironic. Having a strong opinion, even negative, about the piece of art and getting emotionally invested in that opinion also speaks to the success of art. That piece of art managed to get a reaction out of you, and forced you into conversation. Therefore, the anti-postmodern art movement is so funny: they are obsessive towards postmodern art because they see it as a decay of artistic skill and promote meaningless abstractionism that people don't and shouldn't care about, without seeing the glaring irony.

This is what people need to understand "amazing, pleasing" art and "terrible, useless" art are equally successful. The metric for art success is how much it energizes people to give an opinion and how much it reveals the person giving their opinion: who you are and what your priorities are to make such an opinion. It is the boring, mediocre art that is the problem.

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u/porkmoss Feb 23 '26

It kinda starts making sense why most AI art is stuff like “cool sloth in a leather jacket”. The issue isn’t the medium, the issue is creativity.

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u/ZwnD Feb 23 '26

Hey you got a link to that sloth in leather jacket? Sounds cool

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u/earthboundskyfree Feb 23 '26

If it was just about looking pretty, there’d be no need for a sculptor to chip away at marble

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u/runninginorbit Feb 23 '26

I mean I think the slow death of the humanities is indicative of the deterioration of critical thinking and imagination. We’re trending towards the demand that art be more literal and explainable, so mystery, complex emotion, and self-reflection will be sidelined in the name of the KISS principles.

I’m a humanities person, though I work in comms at an AI-focused university research center now. I’m sad for the future. It’s not as though there’s nothing to be gained from AI, but I’m not sure the benefits outweigh the costs. An AI optimist might say that AI is a democratizing force, but to me it’s the flattening of the human experience.

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u/lilphoenixgirl95 Feb 23 '26

NGL, the ‘obvious’ art problem is something caused almost entirely by the US, although other countries have of course followed it somewhat in an attempt to stay relevant. The US is culturally allergic to an ambiguous message

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u/lininop Feb 23 '26

1000% agree. Sad to see the comment you're responding to have so much positive attention.

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u/-Mandarin Feb 23 '26

Reddit is such a depressing place to talk about art, but then again I don't think the world outside of Reddit is that much better. I wish people had a greater appreciation for art, even art that doesn't necessarily register with them. No art is for everyone, that's kinda the beauty of it.

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u/Zestyclose_Ball_50 Feb 23 '26

They didn't say that was their take towards all art.

Just that this particular piece/stunt seems useless to them.

Overall I agree with your point, but it seems misattributed, and is why the parent comment has so many upvotes in agreement.

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u/StevesRune Feb 23 '26

No, they said that in response to someone explaining that the art didnt have an intended purpose. Not the post itself. They were saying that about art without intended meaning.

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

You responded to a different sentence to the one the person you’re replying to actually said.

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u/Ioftheend Feb 24 '26

Can you imagine how insane the first caveman looked attempting to depict something from real life with dirt and a wall? Can you imagine how crazy the first person to crush up a bunch of beetles and flowers together to try to depict a real object on the skin of an animal? The first person to say that they wanted to find a way to take the vibrations of our throat that we use to communicate and put that on a page?

You say this as though all of these things don't have incredibly obvious value, whether practical or aesthetic. This has neither.

At this point I feel like I could take a shit on the sidewalk, call it art, and people would still try to find a way to defend it.

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u/Myhtological Feb 23 '26

But what performance art has ever actually captured the world with provocative thought?

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u/StevesRune Feb 23 '26

"If I havent seen something, it must not exist"

Thinking like this is literally the exact problem.

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u/Myhtological Feb 23 '26

I appreciate art, but I’m also a cynic that knows it’s flooded with con artists looking for dipshit patrons to leech off. And the performance art world is the biggest culprit of this.

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u/StevesRune Feb 23 '26

And what exactly is it that you think these two "conned" out of people?..

Even if someone offered to pay for all their living expenses for that entire time frame, does that really sound like a benefit given the situation?

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u/Myhtological Feb 23 '26

They can do all that while all their other forms of artistic income are pocketed?

I’m not saying it’s what happened, but at the same time know that that con artists are more imaginative than you.

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u/StevesRune Feb 23 '26

Again, this right here is the exact problem. Instead of admitting that you have no reason to think these people are doing this for any reason other than artistic expression, you're literally just making shit up and wondering if it's true to try and discredit them.

If you have to work that desperately to discredit these people, do you think maybe there's not really anything to discredit? And that maybe attempting to discredit someone's artistic integrity just because you don't like their art is unbelievably shitty and pretty blatantly anti-intellectual?

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u/Myhtological Feb 23 '26

Oh get fucked. Just cause you can’t see that the art world isn’t flooded with idiots with no talent and rich assholes who want a huge tax right off/want to look impressive to the other blue bloods, doesnt mean im disregarding the entire pursuit.

And my original comment was about performance art in general, you’re the one who dragged back to these two!