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Comment by erikschoster | Hacker News Reader

Okay. So great, because capitalism has absorbed artistic practice in some way into its structure, now artistic practice is capitalistic.

This makes little sense. It's funny to see that capitalist aping of artistic practice is now being regarded as a new era in artistic practice by this guy though.

Art has had a fascinating relationship to capital well before capitalism, but to confuse its continuing ability to survive with some kind of fundamental transformation of the practice is kinda silly.

Yes, okay: what is art?

The answer isn't: commerce. No need to go so far back, but just look to cave paintings to discover that these ideas of economy and capital are only sidelines and contextual footnotes to the practice of art.

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Art has no utility but it exists in a world where the people that make it need food, water, warmth and shelter and those have always had a cost.

I think his thesis stands up pretty well. Artists gotta fucking eat and that's going to have a big impact on what and how things are made.

Does the fact that engineers have to eat change the nature of engineering fundamentally if the way they are able to eat changes?

The fact that engineers have to eat changes the nature of what kind of things get engineered.

Can't reply to your comment williamcotton, but what you suggest doesn't change the nature of the practice, just its practical focus.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "the nature of the practice" and "practical focus" and how these ideas are separate from each other.

That nature of engineering is practical application.

What engineers are focusing on is what they will build. If they're at work building iOS apps for commercial purposes they aren't going to be building and publishing as many open-source libraries or tools. This affects the entire ecosystem of engineering. It affects what kinds of tools and libraries get built. Tools and libraries are "the nature of the practice". You don't program in an object-oriented manner without having an object-oriented programming environment.

As for art, if you're not getting anyone to pay you for what you're making, you're gonna have to get another job. This is gonna have a big affect on what and how you make things. You might respond by working as little as possible and using cheaper materials. You might work a bit more but have a less time consuming process. You might be able to find commercial work that utilizes and promotes your artistic skills. No matter what, your process and therefor the kind of art that you make is gonna change.

engineers don't normally build whatever they think the best thing to build would be. they build what someone pays them to build, with some exceptions.

The author wants all artists to be like Elon Musk, in how freely they can pursue their craft.

"Art has no utility" except that I like it

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