When this semester began, my definition of what art is was relatively strict. Most people on that discussion thread believed that literally anything can be art — it’s simply up to the person, or “the eye of the beholder”. I believed art was art as long as the artist believes what he created is art. I said this because I believed that art requires some level of work, inspiration, and creativity from an actual person to finally be called art. This definition means that things that people haven’t created intentionally aren’t art. For example, the view of freshly snow capped mountains may be beautiful and astonishing to anybody, but it’s not art because no one put their artist vision and hard work into it. Over the course of the semester, my point of view hasn’t exactly changed much because I gained more evidence proving that my definition fits for what I think about art. For example, nature’s beauties — the snow capped mountains, the blue oceans, and the rolling hills — as beautiful as it is isn’t art. However, that view, when captured in a painting, a photo, or a video edit, can definitely become art because the artist decided to capture that particular moment in time. In my example from my first post, I said a piece of trash floating in the wind can’t be art; however, if a person captures a photo of it to raise awareness for environmental issues or to use it as a piece in their exhibit, it’s art. After a semester of art, to honor my slightly different interpretation of art, I’ll rephrase my definition. Currently, I believe art can indeed be anything as long as someone created it.
Different aspects of art can definitely be used in my field of computer science. Computer science as a major that focuses on learning how to code and especially important concepts and theories that are imperative in the field. As a computer science major, my current goal is to become an android developer to create android apps in Kotlin or Java. In this area of computer science, art is definitely viable in the app creation process. Art in the field is simply the creation of the user interface or UI. Designing UI to be user friendly and appealing to the eyes is definitely an art related thing in the field of computer science. This isn’t limited to my particular area of computer science. A lot of other areas of computer science such as web developers need to focus on their graphic interface and create a well-designed and visually appealing website. It’s especially important for web developers because if a website doesn’t look good, then it doesn’t look good for their company. On the topic of art in my career, I think art can be enriching in my future life as well. For example, I enjoy film and photography, so I will definitely enjoy viewing and creating these things. By engaging with art pieces in my area of interest, I believe it will complete me as a human being by giving a section of my life — the creative side of me — more meaning and value. Without art, life would be a lot more plain because I won’t have anything to do to stimulate my creative side which is important to keeping life interesting and fun.
Consequently, art definitely does matter. Assuming every single artist and art disappeared all at once, things would be very, very stale. Imagine having no movies, no photography, no comics, no paintings, no ads, no YouTube videos, and much more. A lot of things around us can be considered art; consequently, a lot of things will disappear from this world, leaving nothing but plain text left to look at. Websites will look dull because they only have plain text on them. All the game designers are all gone which results in the disappearance of all the beautiful games like the Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and the Legend of Zelda. A world with art is what makes life so exciting and intriguing for all people of any age.
With this thought process, I disagree with the quote, “a great nation deserves great art” by the National Endowment for the Arts. Since art is so universal and so important to several different aspects of their lives, any nation deserves great art. Simply imagining how boring life is without art makes me not want others to experience the same feeling. Rather, I feel everybody deserves great art. Not every nation is “great”, but that doesn’t mean their citizens aren’t all great. As a result, art should be indiscriminate and be available for everybody.
Overall, this semester was truly a new, interesting experience. I feel like all art classes have a quirky teacher and this one certainly did — in a good way. I genuinely enjoyed the random side conversation and activities that Glenn has come up with over the course of the semester. At the beginning, I was in disagreement with having to take a GE class in arts, but that changed around week 6. I really hated the assignments where I had to get in with my hands and draw and colors, but when we shifted to activities with more digital art and intermedia art, I started to enjoy this art class vastly more. For example, on my intermedia project, I put a lot of work into my mini android app that notifies you to wear a mask when you leave your house and to wash your hands when you come back. As simple as it is, I enjoyed doing it. Similarly, I had fun creating the videos for one of the later projects. Overall, this art class grew on me and I found it being something cool to do rather than a chore or a homework assignment. With this experience, I will surely invest more time with arts, especially photography and film.
