Is it art? It makes me smile.
The topic came up during a discussion of venture capitalists and the kind of things they were investing in.
Looking into the list of projects funded by one firm, it appeared that there hadn’t been any activity for about three years and quite frankly, we couldn’t see how some of the funded projects had any potential for income. They were, essentially, art projects.
In my mind, if you are investing, you are not just giving away money.
But is giving money to art projects valuable in other ways? Is art just a waste of time?
I spend a lot of my time on arty things. I make things, I arrange my old MetroMint bottles into a rainbow of delight – clearly I value art.
I think it makes life better.
But some people are convinced it is a waste of time because it isn’t useful.
If I think about it, that might just be rooted in how one defines art.
I consider art to be just about anything that one approaches with intent rather than brute force, where thought makes the outcome something more elegant than it would have been.
Elegant doesn’t have to be pretty. Art can reveal ugly things. It can also be hidden from sight: a better way of coding a solution in software.
Is art a waste of time? No. It is a way of spending time more mindfully.