hi community,
i'm carlie. i'm an undergrad at carnegie mellon u. and i'm majoring in art and environmental policy. i'm currently taking a concept studio, and my prof. asked us to personally define art, in written form, at the beginning of the semester. he's now asking us to refine that definition based on how our understandings have changed since then and to throw it into "the world of cyberspace" in the hopes of getting feedback. so, here's my artist's statement. please someone make like an artist and ReAct! especially appreciated are posts from where-ever the opposite of pittsburgh, PA is, geographically, mentally, or otherwise. thank you!

inital definition: Art is a source of social evolution, a cause of discourse.

the masterpiece thus far:

Art is one of the most visible sources of social evolution. To begin with, it has always succeeded at developing into an institution, over whatever length of time and in whatever society, and any dimension of society that succeeds at institutionalizing itself is automatically granted legitimacy in the minds of the populace. So art, as an institution, gives creative exploration for its own sake a good name and allows people to feel more confident about acting on new ideas. Moving beyond art in the context of the institution, the ideas mentioned above are the impetus for much of the evolution that society undergoes. They may not actually fall into the realm of traditional or even experimental art (especially as many current ideas are channeled into the exploding creation of new scientifically oriented technology), but the idea is that they are derived from an amorphous space existing somewhere between an individual and his/her conception of society, and this space is where art finds its niche. Art seems to me to be the one facet of society that addresses the intuitive before moving on to the cerebral or the practical. If an artist is able to perceive and is convinced of his/her importance to society, then her responsibility as an artist seems clear: to be on a perpetual lookout for fresh perspectives that, first, are personally motivating and, second, promise to either to excite the audience’s perception of the-way-things-are, or to enact more direct and tangible change within society in the sense that a given environment becomes the means by which this change is possible. Also, ideally, artists should try to make their art accessible to the broadest audience possible, and this often requires moving beyond the gallery space.