The Guardian for this meeting was Bruce Mowbray (standing in for Aphrodite.) The comments are by Bruce Mowbray.

Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Kori.
Bruce Mowbray: Haven't seen you in a while.
Korel Laloix: Oisyo Bruce...
Korel Laloix: wow lag.
Bruce Mowbray: It happens.
Korel Laloix: Been logged in Sl a lot recently, but not really on. Mostly from work.
Bruce Mowbray: How is your work going?
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Qt.
Korel Laloix: Just different and later hours.. which actually works out as Sama's schedule is similar.
Qt Core: Hi Bruce , Korel
Qt Core: wow, extreme chat lag
Bruce Mowbray: Kori is having trouble with her connection . . . lots of lag and instability
Bruce Mowbray: oh, you're having it too, Qt?
Qt Core: only chat lag, but seems to be better now
Bruce Mowbray: wb, Kori. Qt also reports that he is experiencing lag in the chat box, but apparently it's getting better.
Korel Laloix: That was odd.
Korel Laloix: I hope so.
Qt Core: i need to be elsewere in SL for a sec, brb
Bruce Mowbray: kk, np.
Korel Laloix: Bring back chocolate please.
Bruce Mowbray: :)
Korel Laloix: What you been up to Bruce?
Bruce Mowbray: May no lags separate us from our chocolate.
Korel Laloix: I like that charm... smiles
Bruce Mowbray: well, I've sort of been investigating Heidegger...
Bruce Mowbray: trying to figure out what he means by his terminology -- which, to say the very least, is weird (to me, anyway)
Bruce Mowbray: I've also been thinking about what happens when we observe anything... -- but especially when we observe art.
Bruce Mowbray: and have been walking 2 miles every day, between daily rains.
Korel Laloix: I have heard of the name, but not much past that.
Korel Laloix: So what are your thoughts on the ‘art’ subject?
Bruce Mowbray: well, I've been thinking a lot about that "art" thing....

Bruce Mowbray: especially from the viewpoint of the art "object" itself....
Korel Laloix: I am down to running 6 miles a day.. my doctor is happy.
 Bruce Mowbray: only 6 miles a day?
Korel Laloix: lol
Bruce Mowbray: Methinks your doctor doesn't want you to lose any more weight.
Korel Laloix: I was doing 8 for like the last 15 years.
Korel Laloix: More a joints issue really.
Bruce Mowbray: right. May be too much of a good thing?
Korel Laloix: Have you been tanking with her?...
Korel Laloix: lol
Korel Laloix: That is her quote...
Bruce Mowbray: Tanking?
Bruce Mowbray: Oh, you mean talking!
Korel Laloix: talking
Korel Laloix: Please ignore my typing today.
Bruce Mowbray: mine toooooo!
Bruce Mowbray: well, every time you run, obviously, you're putting extra stress on your joints...
Korel Laloix: I am rather pessimistic about art in a lot of ways...
Bruce Mowbray: oh really? Please say more
Korel Laloix: I see it more as an industry, not an expression.
Bruce Mowbray: . So, as a saleable commodity?
Korel Laloix: And anything we really get out of it is because of us, not the work, relatively speaking.
Korel Laloix: Yes.
Bruce Mowbray: I just finished reading a book titled "The Object Stares Back"
Bruce Mowbray: (by James Elkins)
Bruce Mowbray: and he takes a very Heideggerian approach....
Bruce Mowbray: which is why I'm reading Heidegger! -- Or trying to.
Korel Laloix: Please say more.
Bruce Mowbray: Well, there's this whole phenomenological thing --- this exchange, between subject and object. . . and something happening in the middle...
--BELL--
Zon Kwan: heya
Zon Kwan: shhh
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Zon.
Bruce Mowbray: . . . and how we are ‘possessed' by art , if I may use that expression; how art "grabs us" -- or, to use the expression that Elkins uses,  “How the object looks back (stares) at us...."
Bruce Mowbray: I guess the point is that seeing is not a mechanical act -- it is a metamorphosis, a process... 
Bruce Mowbray: and interaction.  Perhaps even a dissolution of self.
Korel Laloix: I don't think I agree with that.
Bruce Mowbray: and through my reading of Heidegger, I'm getting the idea that there are both authentic and inauthentic ways to "see"
Zon Kwan: seeing..responding..nods
Korel Laloix: I think you have a transaction with the artist, not the thing.
Bruce Mowbray: welcome back, Qt.
Bruce Mowbray: please say more, Kori. what you disagree with?
Zon Kwan: hi Qt
Korel Laloix: 10 second delay.
Qt Core: hi Zon
Bruce Mowbray: nods, Sorry about that lag thing.
Korel Laloix: I am sure it is your fault Bruce.. smiles
Bruce Mowbray: Are you saying that when I look at a Jackson Pollock, or a Rembrandt, or even a cave painting, that I am interacting more with the person who made that piece than I am with the art itself?
Korel Laloix: Yes.
Zon Kwan: i think you are sharing his idea
Korel Laloix: 14 second lag... lol
Bruce Mowbray: and, to extend your point, you may be suggesting that also happens with literature, and perhaps with anything that has been made?
Bruce Mowbray wonders if that would include things made by machines…
Qt Core: isn't it unidirectional if the artist can't receive a reaction (especially if he/she is dead ?)
Zon Kwan: if i am listening to Bach i am sharing his experience
Korel Laloix: But art is so artificial... in the "western" world, it is the arena of privileged people and now the hobby of the ultra wealthy. While in a lot of other places, art is more functional and the product of the not so well off or connected...
Bruce Mowbray: Zon says that in seeing art we are sharing the ideas of the artist . . . maybe also sharing the moods and perceptions of the artist...
Bruce Mowbray: (and also with listening to music).
Qt Core: whatever great or horrible form art takes there surely some message we are handed -- Our getting it is another story
Bruce Mowbray: if we are sharing the experience of the artist -- however that happens -- then there is a qualitative relationship happening, right?
Zon Kwan: nods
Bruce Mowbray: and that relationship could be authentic or inauthentic...
Zon Kwan: how inauthentic?
Bruce Mowbray: I think Kori is suggesting that most contemporary art puts us in an inauthentic relationship...
Korel Laloix: And I heard this once.. no reference to back it up, but almost 2/3s of the art in the Smithsonian was produced by white men.
Bruce Mowbray: I have little doubt that that is true, Kori.... except I think the percentage is probably far higher than that.
Qt Core: even more in Louvre or Uffizi
Bruce Mowbray: indeed.
Bruce Mowbray: the Louvre and the Uffizi are, of course, European.
Korel Laloix: So even if you do have a connection, what you tend to connect to is very narrow.
Zon Kwan: what is inauthentic relationship?
Bruce Mowbray: excellent question, Zon.
Zon Kwan: art may be bad, but connection can still be authentic
Bruce Mowbray: I would say, for example, that if the artist is simply trying to be "cool" -- to make a saleable piece of ‘something’ because it conforms to customs or the popular taste, then that artist is being inauthentic.
Korel Laloix: Why is wanting a paycheck being inauthentic?
Zon Kwan: that’s the quality of art then, not the connection you make with his art
Korel Laloix: brb.. relogging
Qt Core: what is the difference between artist and... interior decorator ?
Bruce Mowbray: in some cultures, and I'm thinking of America right now, the paycheck has become the bottom line for assessing value. . . .
Bruce Mowbray: good question, QT.
Bruce Mowbray: I guess that part of my criteria for "quality" in art is that it has the quality of reaching out to me, and in some cases even "possessing" me.
Bruce Mowbray: in any case, the art needs to be something I can relate to subjectively.... identify with on some level

--BELL—

Bruce Mowbray: and I even need, in some sense, to be transformed by it.
Zon Kwan: agrees
Bruce Mowbray: (that's why I said earlier that seeing is not just "mechanical" but is also metamorphosis... or maybe seeing is always a metamorphosis. Maybe there is no such thing as "just seeing."
Zon Kwan: not in quantum physics either...
Bruce Mowbray: quantum physics is an excellent example.
Bruce Mowbray: but I think that principle of the observer actually changing the object under observation is true perhaps with every observation -- whether on a quantum level or any other level of seeing.  But quantum physics and art appreciation involve participation in a “field” – so art is, in a way, a sort of ‘field theory’
Zon Kwan: nods, must go, waves
Qt Core: bye Zon
Bruce Mowbray: bye, Zon.
Korel Laloix: Well, there are some works I have seen that I would like to change... like with spray-paint or other covering... smiles
Bruce Mowbray: would that be an art “act” then? I mean would you have transformed it into your own art by spray-painting it?
Bruce Mowbray: in a way I think that's what all seeing does . . . seeing spray paints whatever is seen.
Korel Laloix: I don't think so, it would be charity, not art... smiles.. doing a good deed for the rest of humanity..
Bruce Mowbray: it sounds like you have some sort of objective criteria for what constitutes good and bad art, Kori.
Korel Laloix: OH no.. very very subjective...
Korel Laloix smiles
Bruce Mowbray: okay, subjective, but through acting on your subjective responses to so-called art, you objectified those feelings -- and anyone who comes after you can see that objectification in the spray painted picture object.
Korel Laloix: And I don't think there is actually anything that is actually "bad art".. because if it is not good, it may not rise to the label art.
Qt Core: i absolutely claim the right to say that whatever is ugly or not ;-)
Qt Core: (for me, that is)
Korel Laloix: I don’t mind ugly, i just have subjective standards on what is worth looking at.
Bruce Mowbray: do either of you feel that aesthetics is a worthy subject for philosophy? or should ‘beauty’ simply be left to the subjective beholder -- and we let it go at that?
Bruce Mowbray: But somehow, doesn't there need to be some criteria for what gets bought with public money and placed in public art museums?
Qt Core: unsure, to me it mostly seems to (have to) be a statistical science, let see what is liked by most
Korel Laloix: I really think philosophy would damage aesthetics.. but then again, I consider philosophy to be just as marginalized as art.
Bruce Mowbray: so art appreciation should be a democratically decided thing?
Korel Laloix: The criteria that seems to be used on public art is which politician is buying support.
Qt Core: but then new currents, ideas, even disturbing but poignant one would have problems coming out
Korel Laloix: You can find many instances where the public is very displeased with governmental are purchases.
Qt Core: and even with just the idea of spending public money on art before beating hunger and such
Korel Laloix: I think there should be a public referendum on any art buying.
Korel Laloix: brb
Bruce Mowbray: what worries me about your proposed democratization of purchasing art, Kori is that it could turn into whatever is "cool" or fashionable...

--BELL—

Qt Core: so art that depicts people as sheep...
Bruce Mowbray: I mean, we might end up with art galleries filled with Norman Rockwell paintings . . . which are in their own right meaningful and beautiful, but I'm guessing they might be more appropriate on magazine covers.
Bruce Mowbray: there's also a danger of politics playing a major role....
Bruce Mowbray: The National Socialists, for example politicized art to an extreme degree in furthering their ideology...
Bruce Mowbray: and anything that didn't forward the ideology of national socialism was considered "decadent"
Bruce Mowbray: there needs to be room for the innovative, I agree with QT on that.
Qt Core: art as subliminal brainwashing ?
Bruce Mowbray: I would hope not.
Bruce Mowbray: but I think it's noteworthy that every act of seeing also includes blindness....
Bruce Mowbray: In fact we cannot see anything without being blind to most of the visual field.
Bruce Mowbray: and, as the saying goes, "All a pickpocket sees of saints are their pockets." We see the world as we are . . . but that doesn't mean we cannot also be transformed by the things we see.
Bruce Mowbray: and I think that's one of the functions of art: to change the observer.
Korel Laloix: Vs whatever person a politician wants to pay off at the moment?
Bruce Mowbray: well tell that to starving artists!
Korel Laloix: lol.. starving artists are not picked up for museums.. the prices they pay are way up in the thousands.
Bruce Mowbray: most actual artists, the ones I've known anyway, do not work for pay or for the approval of politicians..
Korel Laloix: Again, please ignore my typing today.
Bruce Mowbray: they make art because they "have to"
Bruce Mowbray: np.
Bruce Mowbray: there seems to be some almost spiritual drivenness
Korel Laloix: And an elitist and corrupt layer on top of that.
Bruce Mowbray: do you have personal experience with this, Kori?
Korel Laloix: Just being on school campuses for years, looking at the stuff that was put on display.
Bruce Mowbray: nods.
Korel Laloix: And most of us angry that our school costs were wasted on such stuff.
Korel Laloix: When the library has to cut its hours, and the sidewalks are dangerous, and there are not panic phones in the parking garages.
Bruce Mowbray: did those objects of so-called art say "Look at me!" -- Or were they indifferent to their observers?
Korel Laloix: Anger at the waste seemed to be the primary response.
Qt Core: even car crashes on the highway scream “Look at me,,,”
Bruce Mowbray: Kori reminds me of the time that I visited the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York City. . .
Bruce Mowbray: the top floor included a wonderful exhibit of Georgia O'Keeffe's work;
Bruce Mowbray: but the three floors below that were utterly wasted on me...

--BELL—

Bruce Mowbray: yet, I thoroughly enjoyed my day at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) --
Korel Laloix: It is funny though, Sama and I have this argument regularly... lol
Bruce Mowbray: So, apparently something different was happening in me -- or in the museum itself -- to account for the difference between the two.
Bruce Mowbray: and both museums specialize in modern art.
Bruce Mowbray: well, perhaps I can get back into my Heidegger and figure out what authenticity in art might mean . . . or maybe not!
Bruce Mowbray: but, nonetheless, I do need to go and scrape up some supper.
Bruce Mowbray: thank you both.
Qt Core: Bye Bruce, enjoy
Bruce Mowbray: Would it be totally meaningless to say that I wish you both a day filled with beauty? or is there even such a thing as beauty? hmmm. I will contemplate that with the Heidegger.
Bruce Mowbray: be well!
Qt Core: :-)
Korel Laloix: ciao
Korel Laloix: Take care.. back to that darn RL.
Qt Core: bye