Art is the intersection of intention and experience. Maybe.
Artist: Use of a given medium with the intention of communicating a message eliciting emotional response.
I see now that I need to be sure my definition excludes ENTERTAINMENT! I think the first part is accurate but does not exclude entertainment. Hmm maybe the issue is in ‘communicating a message’ or it’s in the ‘emotional response’ part. I originally said “active interpretation” instead of emotional response. This would be different perhaps than entertainment which has been defined in the following distinctive terms:
“Entertainment gives you a predictable pleasure… Art leads to transformation.
OR
Entertainment’s job is to pass away the hours; art should make profound, eloquent and affecting statements about the human condition.”
I think it could be argued that pleasure and joy or comfort are emotional responses. On the other hand, I dont think that involves much ACTIVE interpreting or engagement. Perhaps my first definition made more sense and yet it was in the example of a game being played for entertainment that I thought the active interpretation had to occur but not an emotional response. So which does entertainment require? It’s that the specific reaction/response is meant to be comfort/joy/or at least reassurance of a predictable nature. Whereas the emotional response from the art is meant to be more than the comfort/joy/predictable reassurance of entertainment. Why would you want to make art that just made people smile and then move on? That’s entertaining, but conceivably you are conveying a more complex message that after interpretation will stick with the viewer. Something about _lasting_ hence they use words like transformative or impactful or affecting or profound.
Without both artist intention and audience interpretation/response, you have either some chance things interpreted and profoundly emotionally inspiring, but in fact the sole artist was the participant, or you have some intended things that are never interpreted with profound emotional response and the sole participant is the artist. And I said artist and participant can be one and the same, so you only need one side to be true and thus FOUND OBJECTS CAN BE ART! And AI can create art!
Art [via artist]: Use of a given medium with the intention of communicating a message eliciting profound emotional response.