Preliminary version of an essay on art.

What constitues art? Even among pieces by the great artists, there are many examples of craft that may fail to meet any but the most simplistic definition. Art should be more, for example, than mere reproduction. Painting a red barn in a meadow at a foggy dusk is craft; evoking the sleepy evening, the weariness and emptiness of the crumbling wreck, making the observer feel the scene, qualities of this nature seem fundamental to the classification of an objet d'art. Craft alone cannot be considered art.

We now face a flood of work that frequently lacks even the most basic elements of craft. Far from democratizing art, user-generated content has instead increased the amount of sludge hiding the gems. My guess is that the lack of critical neutral feedback is causing this. A writer, an artist, a musician, these people receive real, tactile responses to their work if they publish/show/perform it in meatspace. Their relationship with their creation is personal, they touch it themselves, they *see* it. The echo-chamber of the open content portion of the web allows for very little of this. Pieces seem to gain popularity for novelty, or shock, or unintentional humor. The lack of craft displayed in the creation of these videos and songs is dismaying, and the end results are frequently appalling. All voices are not created equal. The screaming, self-centered cesspool of the internet hasn't diluted the value of the dedicated artist, it has enhanced it. People who possess the special gift to see things from awkward angles, and the skill to express that vision in ways that evoke and surprise are rare. The Frankenstein progeny of the webcam, while occasionally amusing and often titillating, serve to demonstrate how rare artists actually are. There isn't much more cream, but the milk stretches down to ocean depth.

It is not a failure of the new tools, at least to nowhere the extent that one might believe at first glance. It has never been easier, in the whole breadth of human history, to create and distribute crafted work. To be sure, access to these tools has spurred the rise of many artists in all media who perhaps never would have even begun without them, but alongside this newly empowered, growing community has arisen a furious, self-reinforcing, loud, and relentless howl of trivia, inanity, and bad taste.