I guess this could have just been a shower thought as well…
Modern people lack an appreciation for the beauty of existence and the physical world. The most intricate and aesthetically pleasing creative achievements of the human race pale in comparison to the inherent beauty of nature.
Artistic expression is inherent to being human. Our creative achievements are part of the beauty of nature. A painting that can make you smile, a story that can make you laugh, a song that can make you cry, that’s all nature, and it is beautiful. If you haven’t found something that speaks to you yet, I hope you’ll keep looking
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate art more than most. But there’s an exclusionary aspect that exists with art, wherein only some people can truly appreciate various aspects.
In contrast, nature is more universal and primal. Everyone, regardless of language or culture or education, can appreciate natural phenomena. The beauty of nature speaks to us on a fundamental level, whereas the beauty of art requires a certain degree of acculturation and intellectual effort to grasp.
Furthermore, human art is a reflection of nature and indeed a part of the beauty of nature, as you say. However, that inevitably positions it as a subset of the all encompassing beauty of existence as a whole. Artistic works are small mirrors reflecting back aspects of reality in interesting ways. But because they can only ever represent fragments of the greater whole, they are somewhat less awe inspiring.
Often, works of art can prompt us to engage with the beauty of reality, so I’m not condemning them in any way. I’m just saying that the representation can’t be better than the real thing, even if humans wish that it were.
But it’s hard to argue that they could exceed the beauty of the thing that they reflect.
Only if you’re looking for objective value of paint on a canvas, or words on a page. What I think is beautiful about art is the way it makes people feel, and the complexity of the human context that allows that. Just this week, a story caused my fiancée to have a breakthrough in her CPTSD therapy. That’s a unique kind of beauty
Indeed, I agree with you on that.
Nah, thanks to piracy everyone can watch TV and movies for free. If you’re a poor person who grew up in the city nature is a lot less accessible.
Nah, Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is better than nature.
It might partly be that a lot of what is designed for a screen is made deliberately to be maximally appealing to begin with.
For example a film or tv show is shot with various lenses that create pleasing depth of field, color and light is carefully controlled. Same with high fidelity video games. Even the UI of your applications is made to be appealing and clean.
Sports are sort of shot like films too, and often the cameras can resolve much higher detail than our eyes alone can. The way a sports event is shot in high def can be like gaining the visual abilites of a hawk or something. The lens can zoom in close while our eyes can only squint.
because the thing on the screen doesn’t really exist, so when it appears to really exist it feels like magic
As other people said, it’s novelty. Being near-sighted, I get that effect in real-life when I get new glasses. Everything looks incredibly detailed and amazing for a couple days until I get used to it.
I’m terribly nearsighted myself. You’re probably already aware of this, but if you find yourself without your glasses and you need to see something far away, use your phone.
You can see your phone, and your phone can see far away.
Damn…jealous that my phone has better vision than me.
Because most of what you look at in real life is mundane. But go find a nice sunset or a green forest, and you can appreciate it. When you see a scene in HD or 3D on the screen, there is a heavy selection bias to show you pleasant scenes that most people seldom see in real life. If it was super 4k and 3D, but it was just your same living room you see every day, it would be uninteresting. But the same camera showing a living room in a 10 million dollar house would be interesting. (And the natural views outside even more so, most likely.)
The most impressive screens have super-saturated color and images that are shot by professional filmographers/photographers. It’s hard to compose a scene in real life but professionals do it every day and the TV is how many of them showcase their work. If you look hard enough and try hard enough then you too will find some really amazing and beautiful images with your eyes. -Polarizers help, too.
This. My phone camera takes ultra high resolution pictures then algorithmically processes them. They look more beautiful and real than reality.
-
It’s a technological feat and you love to be part of this progress. Remember when graphics were shit, wheels were square and textures were a washed out blob of color, but we were impressed because we knew this was another breakthrough. Now we still find ways to improve graphics even though last week we thought this was as realistic as it gets. When you play games, you also look at it from the perspective of how advanced it is.
-
These days we get to see perfect worlds on screen. Developers make sure that every corner has something to look at, colors pop, everything is neatly arranged, the light perfectly fits the mood. Maybe it rains in-game but you don’t have the annoying real-life effect of getting soaked, so you can simply enjoy how it looks and sounds. You know sometimes in the real world you think, wow this view looks really amazing and you pull out your phone to capture it? In modern games that happens more often and in the right moments. It’s all orchestrated.
-
I guess you’re not taking the time to appreciate the beauty of the real world?
Where I live, it’s all very beautiful. I’ve not had the experience you’re describing, where the detail of the world is mundane.
Color saturation
Novelty is a natural part of human experience. The only way we can exist is if things are not as incredibly mind bending as the first time you see them.
We perceive reality from the moment we open our eyes upon being born. By the time you comprehend what reality is, it’s old hat. This happens to everything, from the first time you see a good movie, to the first time you drive a car on the freeway, eventually everything that we do repeatedly loses its novelty so that the human mind isn’t constantly blown by all the crazy shit going on.
You know the film 300? If you ever play it with the saturation way waay down, it looks mundane as hell. Just a bunch of guys without shirts walking around.
That’s funny, I’ll have to try it. I always wondered what Frank Miller did to achieve those weird camera effects he gets in Sin City and 300
Lighting
Speak for yourself, I think reality is fucking gorgeous. That’s why people try so hard to evoke its appearance in the first place, not only on screen but on canvas and in sculpture and prose.
That’s why my favorite art isn’t realistic at all; if I wanted to see the most beautiful realism around, I could just walk to a lake.
During the third or fourth time I was mad that 3D hadn’t taken off like technicolor, I though “fine! I’ll just look at trees and hallways in real life then!” And yeah, it kinda works.
There’s a lot of beauty in the world if you just, you know, look at it.
Comparison mostly. HD and 3D isn’t impressing you by virtue of it being superior to real life (it isn’t after all), it’s impressing you compared to other examples of the same thing done “worse”. The best portrait artist in the world can not make something look more “real” than the reference material, but it can compared to other attempts at painting.
This is true in other natural things as well. For example, a really big tree surrounded by smaller similar sized trees feels “really impressive” compared to a mountain surrounded by other… similar sized mountains. Or why a particularly colorful plant seems impressive surrounded by a bunch of green and brown plants.
On the other hand, things like OLED screens can be impressive compared to the natural world due to their ability to arrange and display colors rarely found in nature.
In a game, movie, work of literature or theater, your feeling of awe and immersion is maintained by something called the “magic circle”. It is an area of experience that is separated from normal reality by the proverbial 4th wall.
Everything inside the magic circle is filled with artistic purpose, it works (in good works) to drive meaning and communicate themes and ideas of the art work.
Whenever this magic circle is broken, you suspension of disbelief becomes overtaken by cynicism, and the immersion is gone.
Mundane life is full of this cynicism, because we are not conditioned (anymore) to find mundane reality purposeful, outside of really outstanding and dire situations. We take reality with it’s amazing graphics and narrative for granted, not noticing the magic.
