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Comment by littlekey | Hacker News Reader

Given what Cage said about audience participation and the framing of the piece, I wonder what he would think about playing it outside of the concert hall. If I listen to 4'33" on my headphones in a silent room, does the experience degenerate into meaninglessness, or is there still artistic merit in it?

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Something something sensory deprivation chamber something something art!

Exactly. It's precisely this about art that I find frustrating, not the inability to pin it down but the desire to expand the definition to fit anything someone wants, thus debasing the concept of art.

If art is valuable (and I most definitely believe it is) should be treating it differently I feel; a little less 'precious' and whole lot more discerning.

It's so subjective though. I think more or less people have this feeling with whatever things-other-people-call-art that they find boring/uninteresting/meaningless (as opposed to just bad). Which makes it feel less subjective, because the categorisation still allows for things you don't like to be art, but interesting/uninteresting is still a very subjective judgement.

(for example my subjective view finds explorations of abstract concepts to be a lot more interesting than most fine art, which most people would normally consider safely in the 'is-art' category)

Thanks. It's that very subjectivity that makes me doubt we should classify things as art because other people say so. Perhaps that is the core of it. I don't like going into art galleries and being expected to like a picture because it is 'art' because someone else said it is. I expect to like it because I like it and nothing else, and nobody else needs to like it just because I do.

Which is in turn precisely why I find frustrating - the idea that art is some sort of sacred ‘debase-able’ concept in the first place.

Art is valuable because it is so subjective and malleable, narrowing the definition and limiting people’s experience of art is what devalues it in my view.

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