I almost p*ssed myself with laughter!:-)

maybe we could all meet up one day when we are all finished and have the PGF bonfire in trafalgar square by burning the evil theses. We could dance around it citing the seminal articles in our field.

Right, here's my tupenth worth: I think art is having an identity crisis because it has become basically redundant since the rise of tv, film, video games as the prime communicators of visual culture that have any depth of meaning. I think it's trying to fit into different roles, like religion, design, marketing, but can't find a place. This whole idea of the found object as art was intended as, quite literalkly, a piss take on the part of Marcel Duchamp, who got fed up of art's fake b******* at the start of the 20th century, turned a urinal upside down, signed it and the called it art, becuase he is an artist: the whole thing was meant to be a giant PISS TAKE. But then loads of people took it seriously! And now every art school in the world teaches it as gospel.

Cinema is the great art form of our age and does the job painting used to do: it illustrates our collective concerns in a poetic and beautiful manner. IMO future art historians will look at cinema as the great art of our time and Damien Hurst et al as evidence of a crisis of identity and opportunist marketing bonanza.

There you go, my opinion; it could change very quickly though, it usually does.

agree with the cinema - although video games are amazing too. I'm quite looking forward to this avatar film, altough I know its not on the intellectual plane of your films eska!

You may paint a picture of a castle with acrylics, and if you're really good, perhaps capture something of the life that buzzed in and around it hundreds of years ago.

Or, you could model it in 3d, put archers on the towers, sword-wielding guards at the gates, and peasants with their markets and chickens, perhaps even a well-guarded king in a regal chamber. Then make it all into a video game, and give the user a character who can walk around the place, hear the conversations and sounds, perhaps even provoke the guards and pursue the king, whose extravagant feasts have perhaps rendered not so fleet-of-foot!

I was thinking this as I played 'Assassin's Creed', and figured art today can potentially evoke so much more emotion and thought than traditional arts.

Of course I'm a biologist so probably sound like a blabbering idiot talking in an art thread! What I'm getting at though is that I'd probably come away more thrilled from E3, or the cinema, than Tate. Agree with Eska really! An appreciation for art is perhaps more vigorous today than it has ever been -- when we include cinema and video games, billboards and adverts at bus-stops etc., it seems we're often consuming and enjoying art without realizing it. The BBC for example has those short video sequences in-between programmes; right now there's one of people wearing colourful pants/shoes/stripey leggings and dancing about; they also had those people doing capoeira on a roof which looked way cool -- if this isn't art I don't know what is!

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I got into modern art after the Sensation exhibition (like everyone else!), but my interest waned when it became all about huge price tags and publicity stunts rather than art. Hirst admitted not so long ago that the money and art were 'easy'.

I never liked Emin's messy bed either (except when the performance artists jumped on it and Emin was mortified).

Basically, if I need to read some blurb or watch a documentary on an artist's life to gain any appreciation or meaningful interpretation of the work, then for me it's 'bad' art. Some modern art is visually stunting though, but I'm not going to appreciate pile of bricks or an old TV in an otherwise empty room.

I'm not quite as bad as this (yet): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkunQmpvkh0

Clogs - my other half plays assassins creed non-stop at the mo. It is rather beautiful, but he seems to think that because I have watched him play he has actually 'taken me to florence'. Poor thing - he keeps getting stuck on the cryptic puzzles.

I wish I had the time to do this kind of thing - maybe after the PhD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a12e3iKzqlw&feature=PlayList&p=EA85E843361FF972&index=1

While we're on the topic of art, here are some video's which I think rock!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46eaeAfeqw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhf3OvRXKg

I liked the first one, the second one was a bit 'can you guess what it is yet?'

The PGF has become arty!!!

(sprout)(sprout)(sprout)(sprout)(sprout)
(turkey)(turkey)(turkey)(turkey)(turkey)
(sprout)(sprout)(sprout)(sprout)(sprout)

The sand one was really cool. Did you see the western spaghetti video? Freaked me out a bit.

A teeny bit unrelated, but for any tetris lovers out there, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LtUX_6IXY

I'm not really a computer game fan, but I thought this was really cool.

Oh by the way sneaks, I watched the vid - great graphics on that game!

oh I could watch that all day. Although now I have the tetris song in my head.. doo dee do de doo doo

at around about 3mins 39 there is a tree - not brill, but quite cool. Quite funny really, seeing as we used this as an example earlier, but I think this paper mache one is better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKgjmrqmRI&feature=channel

actually about 3 mins 13