Quite interesting also from your source article that we may soon be seeing hybrid polar/grizzlies!

Thanks for reading and commenting, I appreciate it.

You’re completely right, I should’ve included something else for scale here. I was just looking at the relationship in size between the 4, but it would’ve been better to include a ruler or my hand or something to show you big these claws are. The Kodiak claw is a bit longer than my middle finger, but quite a bit more intimidating.

Cheers

Carl

Thanks for sharing this!

Thank you, appreciated.

Hey Ron,

Thanks – and I agree – Grosbeaks are beautiful birds and rarely get the love they deserve. I said the same thing about my blanket when I was curled up underneath it and the temperature sank to minus 50˚F.

Actually, what I needed here was simply to string the wire on which the blanket was hanging a little higher.

Cheers

Carl

I don’t think art ‘implies a conscious intent to create’, no. In this sense art, as creating, might be likened to sex – I suspect that most of the creatures walking, swimming, squirming, flying, etc, on this planet are not the result of a ‘conscious intent to create’. Here’s perhaps a better example:

Have you ever watched a good telemark skier run turns down a slope of fresh, untracked powder? In their wake might lie an awesome line down the mountain, perfectly symmetrical curves running from summit to the valley floor. It’s beautiful art. But the conscious intent to create is not requisite at all – the goal is to ski. The product of that is a sweet line down the mountain.

Playing guitar can be the very same thing – I pick up my instrument and play – just play. I don’t, usually, consciously intend to create’ .. I intend to play. Sometimes what comes out is gibberish, and sometimes it’s beautiful.

“Can a non-sentient entity make art?”

Sure (though I’m not sure exactly what is ‘non-sentient’) .. Gaia, baby.

Cheers

Carl

Thanks for your comments.

I think we live in a world that places more and more emphasis on living life as spectator, instead of a participant. We watch the Olympics, we read books, we go to exhibitions, we listen to recorded music. In other times and other places, people play games, they tells tories, paint and draw, sing and dance. We’ve been conditioned that such things are best left to experts, the ‘professionals’, those whose deft fine motor skills and diligence have given them an edge over the rest of us.

I think it’s unfortunate – the real joy is in participating. The world doesn’t need more spectators.

Cheers

Carl

Your point is probably valid – “not all communication is art” (but I’m not entirely clear why not). But why do you imagine ants consider there mounds to be anything ‘less’ than how we view our own productions? I’d wager the beaver thinks his lodge every bit as beautiful and grand as we do our architectural achievements. If you ever watched a video of any of the Birds of Paradise, it’s pretty hard to argue that they don’t a rather grandiose sense of their own beauty, no?

I think it’s too easy to construct a system of measurement that is is completely humancentric, and then claim we’re the only ‘makers of art’. “Humans may appreciate both as beauty in sight and sound (beauty alone is not art), but we have no way of knowing how a bird or bee considers them beyond being just communication”. For example, one could just as easily say that that birds or bees have no way of knowing whether we consider our art as anything more than ‘just communication’ either.

Why draw up parameters that always resolve to humans being the center of everything? If we’re to be the sole judge, then the outcome is foregone. People make and appreciate art in a very humanistic way; as one would expect. I’d submit that wolves and caribou and rivers to it in similarly unique ways. I’d take it further to say that the interplay of wolves and caribous and rivers is art unto itself .. a universal creative expression. This relates to Peter’s questions about “sentience”.

On the subject of ‘more art’, I think you might need to clarify a little what you mean by ‘more’. If you mean simply the “amount of ‘impact’ (if we might actually be able ever measure such a thing), then I think you miss the value of creating. The product of creating is something that strokes our ego, but is really of little consequence. That’s why most artists aren’t sitting around pointing at the the photo they took back in 72, but are out making photos today. Eric Clapton is what, 65 years old, yet he’s working on a new album – artists make art, not merely ‘hit records’.

Secondly, measuring “impact” is simply a function of drawing arbitrary standards. Your comments seem to imply measuring merely by the number of witnesses or spectators. Millions of people might see a particular episode of American Idol, but by the following week, they’ve moved on from last week’s performance. What of a single person whose life was turned around, completely, upon hearing a particular performance or reading a particular essay/poem/etc? Isn’t that a ‘greater impact’? Perhaps touching one person, if only the artist themselves, is more profound and greater impact than reaching a pre-determined audience threshold.

Cheers

Carl