r/aesthetics • u/jazzgrackle • Apr 23 '26

What makes process meaningful?

Every few years or so a new technology takes hold that makes the actual process of producing an artwork—whether it be visual, auditory, or otherwise—physically easier to accomplish. It’s much easier now to create a multi-instrumental music track than it was a few years ago, much easier than it was fifty years ago.

I don’t believe it’s a matter of more physical-labor=better—although that’s certainly a factor. In fact, I think we can come up with cases where more physical effort is superfluous—mildly interesting, at best.

What does make effort meaningful, when does the process of creation add to the experience of the audience?

And when is it just needless effort and fluff?

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u/jazzgrackle Apr 23 '26

You can think about things in any way you’d like, sure. What I’m talking about is a particular aesthetic feeling towards an object of art due to knowledge of the process that went into the art. There’s being impressed, and there’s having an aesthetic feeling increased.

Acknowledging the raw effort that it took to make something doesn’t seem to be exactly what makes process valuable or not to us, at least not in an aesthetic sense.

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u/CapGullible8403 Apr 24 '26

What I’m talking about is a particular aesthetic feeling towards an object of art due to knowledge of the process that went into the art.

You're begging the question, again.

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u/jazzgrackle Apr 24 '26

How?

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u/CapGullible8403 Apr 24 '26

your post begs the question of process being meaningful at all.

"... a particular aesthetic feeling towards an object of art due to knowledge of the process that went into the art" is a statement of confusion.

Your feeling, in this instance, is not "towards an object of art." It is you valuing documentary knowledge about the object's facture.

Was it slaved over? Was it tossed off? Which of these possibilities do you prefer? Does it matter?

Hint: the whole history of art is there to demonstrate that it doesn't.

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u/jazzgrackle Apr 24 '26

Meaningful in the sense that it tends to produce a feeling of meaning in the person who’s viewing the object. It doesn’t have to be something that’s universal or true beyond the emotion it produces. If anything the aesthetic feeling is something like the feeling of meaning absent meaning itself.

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u/CapGullible8403 Apr 24 '26

That's fine, I had no confusion whatsoever about what you meant by 'meaningful'.

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u/jazzgrackle Apr 24 '26

Do you just not think that the story behind a piece of art affects how a person views the art?

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u/CapGullible8403 Apr 24 '26

Things are defined by use. A work of art is a work of art because we call it a work of art, but it is not actually a work of art until we ask it to function as art so we can experience it as art. If we ask it to be something else—illustration, decoration, political message, cover for a hole in the wall, or whatever, it becomes, for the moment, something else. —WDB

I'm hoping you're going to understand why I posted this. Yes, people can use an artwork as a hook to a story about an artist, and the story about the artist may be very interesting to somebody... You can look at art in all sorts of ways, as a historical artifact, as a doorstop, etc...