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The Cybertruck is not brutalist

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Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#111

Post by admax88q »

claudiawerner wrote: post #80
keiferski wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aestheticians don’t frame the question as “objective vs. subjective” so I wouldn’t use that as a goal or a starting point. There are various approaches and none is more “objective”, just as the X political philosophy is not more objective than Y political philosophy. They are constructed of arguments, evidence, worldviews, and other things that have nothing to do with arriving at some standard of “objectively better.…

How is the question framed, then? Either everyone's aesthetic judgement is equally valid, or there are some judgments that are better than others. I'm interested in the defense of the latter position. By what reasoning can an aesthetician convince me that Bach is better (in some, in any way) than Harry Potter? Or if that's not the right question either: by what reasoning can an aesthetician argue that a particular in…

Let's say there's two books in front of us. A and B. I have read both you have only read A. I argue that B is better because the plot was more intricate. You argue that A is better because you think the cover of book B is bad.

Do you think these two judgements have equal value?

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#113

Post by ethbro »

coldtea wrote: post #87
claudiawerner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's up to each person to make the effort to grow their understanding, which requires study and self-development. That's true, but it's falling into the same problem I was trying to tease out of GP, which is whether an argument can be produced that study and self-development will lead to one appreciating Bach over Harry Potter. We say that spherical earth theories are superior to flat earth ones not because individu…

> That's true, but it's falling into the same problem I was trying to tease out of GP, which is whether an argument can be produced that study and self-development will lead to one appreciating Bach over Harry Potter. An historical/statistical argument can surely be made. You seldom see people who have studied aesthetics, music, literature, etc, preferring Harry Potter over Bach. You'll see many more who seldom read…

> The same way a 13-year old pop music fan doesn't have the same refinement as a 20-year old music fan, who has studied the genres, their history, interplay, who did what, techniques, cultural impact, etc, and even less than a 30 year old music critic.

There are two pressures at play here, that get commingled in actuality.

(1) No one (in Western culture) likes to admit to ignorance. Ergo, they will always project rejection of an idea of which they are ignorant onto any alternate, available rationale. (E.g. "I don't like Bach because..." rather than "I don't understand music theory enough to appreciate what Bach's doing.")

(2) Academic or isolated artists fundamentally under-recognize the fact that their audience approaches the piece with varying levels of knowledge. Consequently, there is often a communication problem. (E.g. I compose an excellent poem in Navajo, then bemoan the fact that Europeans don't understand my work)

Of these, I think (1) is a frequent but less interesting distraction. (2) is the more fascinating to me.

Because it doesn't argue for subjectivity... but rather self-reflective objectivity. In that "To the person I am, with my training and knowledge, this is what the piece is."

Which is why I find popular arts so fascinating (e.g. auto styling, music, film). They seem to encourage artist-engineers, in that their practitioners are simultaneously trained in the medium, but also willfully optimizing for the environment as-is, not for themselves. And that's a skill I can respect.

I imagine Taylor Swift frequently has an idea and rejects / simplifies it, in light of what would resonate with her fans.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#115

Post by ctdonath »

endorphone wrote: post #79
keiferski wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but everyone has equal legitimacy in their opinion on this. Why is everyone's opinion equal? When building a bridge, is the opinion of a civil engineer equal to that of a cook? No, clearly not - but we only recognize this because the effects of building faulty bridges are obvious and immediately noticeable, whereas the effects of cultural ignorance are far more subtle and wide-reaching. The fields of art and aesthe…

"Why is everyone's opinion equal? When building a bridge, is the opinion of a civil engineer equal to that of a cook?" Engineering is objective . It is provable. It yields foundational precepts that, if you annihilated society and it grew again, would recur in the same form. Aesthetics/art has gone through countless cycles -- often completely contradictory states -- and at any one time you can find any number of adhe…

the disastrous CyberTruck, though, which subjectively almost everyone hates

Your hate for it is subjective.

Whether almost everyone shares your opinion is objective.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#116

Post by Dylan16807 »

FisDugthop wrote: post #11
spectramax wrote: post #7

I disagree. If one definition of Brutalism is to be honest about materials - then Cybertruck nails that. Unpainted stainless steel is as brutalist as it gets. We can argue about the design intent of the way it looks and whether that’s Brutalism. Aesthetics is only one aspect of Brutalism. Another aspect of Brutalism is to expose innards without guilt - If Cybertruck doesn’t have non-structural decorations, farings, e…

I'm not sure whether a covered car can be brutalist, to be honest. When I think of a brutalist car design, I think of go-karts. Other features of brutalist design: * By exposing the skeleton, the object shows itself as a platform that can be built upon. However, the Cybertruck's convex hull and covered, armored plating do not lend themselves to confident self-expression, but instead drown out any attempt at customiza…

A lot of those points are iffy, and the politics one is dumb, but the last one strikes me as just flat-out wrong. Brutalist buildings aren't festooned with exposed connectors either. It's all buried inside the concrete.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#117

Post by egdod »

ken wrote: post #76
sintaxi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people didn't see vehicles as a net positive compared to the alternative they wouldn't own them.

Not really. I see them as a necessary evil. Everyone else has one and expects me to be able to get around, so I have one too. If public transit were decent, I wouldn’t own a car.

necessary evil == net positive compared to the alternative

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#118

Post by geomark »

endorphone wrote: post #35
loa_in_ wrote: post #8

As a person with personal interest in visual arts I never have seen the appeal of appearance of many popular "great looking" cars of today's variety. Even muscle cars and luxury models. Cars up to 70's and 80's were really nice and aesthetically pleasing, and I find the Elon Musk's vision to be really nice and refreshing. It might be that I'm partial to science fiction in general, but I really would like to see this…

"As a person with personal interest in visual arts" With all due respects, isn't this an entirely meaningless saying? Everyone has an interest in aesthetics and visual appeal, and has a subjective opinion on what they find appealing. We are a social species so invariably people infect each other's opinion so we have trends and movements towards/from opinions, but everyone has equal legitimacy in their opinion on this…

Yeah, it's funny to argue over opinions about what is beautiful. It always annoyed me immensely and I never knew how to avoid it until I found a hero in Dan Gelbart when he talked about prototyping and how including adornments opens you up to arguing about if it is beautiful or not, but "If it is 100% functional, then it is beautiful."

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#120

Post by roenxi »

claudiawerner wrote: post #85
coldtea wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When someone can think up an argument to convince a Harry Potter fan that they should really judge Bach's music as more beautiful, pleasing, of higher artistic value etc. than Harry Potter, then I'm curious. Such matters are not decided by arguments, the same way flat earth society members are not won by arguments (they heard them all anyway). It's up to each person to make the effort to grow their understanding, w…

>It's up to each person to make the effort to grow their understanding, which requires study and self-development. That's true, but it's falling into the same problem I was trying to tease out of GP, which is whether an argument can be produced that study and self-development will lead to one appreciating Bach over Harry Potter. We say that spherical earth theories are superior to flat earth ones not because individu…

Popularity can be said to be independent of the quality of the work - popularity is linked to fashions. Quintessential concept of large followings not being so concerned about what they follow.

So the Bach v Potter argument is really arguing about whether a typical Harry Potter fan is more motivated by fashion or intrinsic interest. We know Bach isn't fashionable because the music has survived something like 300 years of musical fashions ebbing and flowing.

On a purely technical ground, the great works are usually interesting examples of a particular ... something ... and often capture the culture in a unique way. Eg, Don Quixote still gets read because it introduced a tonne of literary techniques with style and really hits a note at the peak of the Spanish empire. Shakespeare defined a big portion of the English lexicon. Jane Austin is an exemplary example of concise, relevant and interesting storytelling (she packs a lot into a sentence). Tolkien tied together cultures through their languages while setting the standard for what high fantasy worlds should look like with an unreasonable amount of worldbuilding. The Harry Potter series is certainly well written and a really good example of a certain genre, but it isn't obvious if that is enough to compete with all the other well written books out there. It certainly isn't the first of its kind and it isn't clear it showcases any literary tricks. It is a hard argument to say it captures anything about the culture of the day. It looks like one of a very large number of good books that will struggle to be remembered with the passing of time.

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