What is art? I’ve heard so much on this subject, most of it, to my ears anyway, a load of bull. Is it art? The proverbial question, the answer according to me is yeah sure, why not? I’m not being sarchastic or anything when I say that–by my definition if you have a need to create, be it pencil on paper, paint on canvas, chipping away at stone, or pushing pixes in Photoshop, your result is art, period. Where I think where people have the problem is when they don’t like a particular piece. They probably are thinking, “How can this piece of crap possibly be art, it’s ugly!” Don’t even get me started on art historians who feel it is their place to determine whether something is art or what was going through the mind of the artist while they painted a particular piece. Meaning is meaningless…but I digress.
What I’m building up to is an art movement that I’ve become a part of on Spymac. The 1/5 Art, or 1 out of 5 Art, movement. The site is a Macintosh users’ comminity, they have forums and a gallery where members can upload pictures to a personal gallery and have people comment on them and rate the on a scale from 1 to 5. These pics get displayed on a main gallery page, 12 of the latest uploads, and then 12 random images from the whole gallery. Well, a few weeks back, I started noticing these art pieces in the gallery. The gallery usually contained personal pics, computer pics, cars and various mac stuff, so these pieces piqued my interest, so I would check them out and read the comments. It seemed that Spymac was full of art critics (and not the good kind mind you 
) ands they would give a rating of 1/5 and usually post some king of jab at the poster.
A little later I started noticing that the posters took the 1/5 rating as the name of the art genre. Then, it seemed to me they were making seemingly random/weird pieces, as if they were trying to get people to give a low rating. So, then the “idea” of what 1/5 Art is was coming to me–My take on what was going on is that the work becomes a kind of performance art, the artist submits a piece and then people’s replies become part of the whole art piece experience. People in the 1/5 group would give a good rating (5/5) and add a little poetic comment. So I started doing this to the posted art and eventually got into making and posting my pieces, first off just some randomness, then coming up with some sort of concept (the sillier the better in my opinion) and then adding a poem to the description field in the post. I’ve found this to be kind of therapeutic, helps my stress level to be able to create freely, without all the confines of my job as a graphic designer.
Here is a link to a 1/5 search in the spymac gallery.
Here are links to some of my 1/5 works, in the order I created them, enjoy:
They are still in the gallery, in their intended viewing medium.
peace,
_mix
