generative interpretation and other art forms

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!

I saw a comic by Ebbits with some added commentary by Tumblr user shadeddaxion (full credit to them, although I could not find a direct link to any platform) a while ago, and it’s taken me some time to gather my thoughts, but I decided that I’d like to do a small commentary on it here.

This is the comic to which I will be referring throughout the course of this post. You can find the original comic here on the author’s website.

the summary

If you don’t understand any of the more obscure terms here, that’s okay. It took me reading shadeddaxion’s commentary and reflecting on it on my own for a few months to fully grasp the meaning. For your benefit, here’s a short summary. (For the sake of clarify, I’ll refer to the guy with his hands in his pockets as Short Guy and the guy on his computer as Tall Guy.)

Short Guy sees Tall Guy on his computer. A deeper dive into more of Ebbits’ art shows that Short Guy is a painter. He places a lot of emphasis on making things, specifically art. As an artist, he’s disappointed in Tall Guy, who is playing on his computer. He thinks that Tall Guy is just wasting his time. So he asks Tall Guy if he wouldn’t rather be making something instead of just playing games and listening to music.

Tall Guy, however, responds that “interpreting is generative.” Here’s where the language starts to get sticky. What Tall Guy means by this is that just the act of viewing something that someone else has created and creating your own interpretation of it is generating art in its own way.

Short Guy then walks away, complaining that he can’t be an “auteur of [interpretation].” “Auteur” is a French word that literally translates as “author.” It’s a film term that means a filmmaker whose artistic control and personal influence over the film is so great that they’re considered to be the sole author of the movie. Short Guy is upset that he can’t be an auteur of interpretation, that he can’t exercise complete creative control over art because interpretation is so immediate, private, and personal.

Ebbits posted a response to the attention that the comic was getting on Facebook, and his response included a further elaboration on what he personally meant on “I can’t be an auteur of that”:

When we’re inspired to make an object or draw a comic, chances are that the creative choices we make are limited by the conventions of our medium. How can you exercise that discretion over an affective response?! It is much more difficult to be an “author” of an interpretation, because it is by nature more immediate, incoherent, and private.

Originally posted on Facebook

the commentary

Short Guy takes a very traditional view of art. To him, art needs to have a concrete, specific meaning to others. It needs to meet certain criteria in order to be considered art. But who sets those criteria? This comic speaks to this elitism.

(In fact, in the second panel, he specifically points out pop music, to which he shows a certain amount of distaste. With his personality, this shows a further level of elitism. Many artistic elitists look down on pop music for being, well, popular, and criticize people for “following the crowd” and not being unique in taste.)

Turns out, Short Guy doesn’t just want to make art for the sake of making art. He doesn’t want art to be comprehensible to only one person–he doesn’t want his art to be up to interpretation. He wants to make art that’s easily understood, that can be validated and “approved” in order to be considered “really art.” Creation, for him, isn’t for the joy of creating, or for the sake of making something deeply personal. It’s for personal validation and acclaim from others.

Tall Guy recognizes that the act of interpreting is creating art in its own way. Even if he spends his time just doing stuff, consuming content that other people have made, the act of enjoying something is in and of itself creating an experience and an interpretation. Dancing to music or viewing a sculpture or watching a movie with a friend is “making something,” as Short Guy says, and that can be worthwhile and artistic. This is a much more progressive view of art, but not necessarily one that should be dismissed.

Think about it. You are you. No one else has had the same experiences as you, consumed the same things as you, made the same memories as you, felt the same pains and joys as you. Every step you take and breath you breathe, everything you see and smell and hear and taste and touch is shaping you further into you, inching you away from being anyone else. Your perspective is formed these inches.

Say you were to stand next to a stranger in a museum and view the same painting together. You would notice completely different things than the stranger, and your perception of the painting would be colored by your unique experiences as you. You are interpreting that painting based on what makes you you.

Now imagine that you and the stranger both were to somehow express that interpretation of the painting. Your expression of your interpretation and the stranger’s would be maybe not totally different–but there would be substantial differences. Maybe the stranger is more artistically minded than you and created a sculpture based off of the painting, while you’re more logical and you write an essay with textual evidence supporting your points. Even if you both created a sculpture or wrote essays, they would likely turn out completely different, influenced by your perspective and worldview.

You and your stranger have both stood next to each other and viewed the same painting, at the same time, in the same place. You have both formed your interpretation of the painting silently, without ever talking to or even looking at each other. Even if you never sculpt a sculpture or write an essay, you have still created something. And that creation, that something, will continue to impact every other interpretive creation you will ever make.

This is a bold and controversial take. A common rebuttal is “I can see that interpretation is personally generative, but I believe it’s qualitatively different from generating an external object” (quoted from Ebbits’ Facebook post). This is a valid argument and one that, in my opinion, should be left to individual discretion.

There is no right or wrong answer to the question of whether interpretation is an art form. Personally, I believe that the definition of “art form” is subjective. In my opinion, the creation is defined by the interpreter. If someone looks at the Mona Lisa and decides that it’s not art, then to them, it isn’t art. I don’t believe that art should be pinned down in a single definition. It is up to the individual to decide what is art to them.

I also believe that there is no pure consumption that also doesn’t create something in the mind of the consumer. Can that be defined as art? To me, it can. It doesn’t “generat[e] an external object” that can be appreciated and valued by others, but it doesn’t have to.

final thoughts

Once again, there is no right or wrong, black-and-white answer here. The reader should also note that much of the commentary in this post is my own opinion–my own generative interpretation, if you will, shaped by my own experiences and worldviews. None of this claims to be fact. It is merely an art form of its own.

I welcome you to thoughtfully discuss your own opinions in the comments (though please note that I will not tolerate any attacks on personal opinion, and will not hesitate to edit or remove any comments that I feel are unnecessarily hateful). Do you take a more traditional view of art, or do you agree that internal creation is still an art form?

Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you next Wednesday!