There was no need for a message because the medium was the message.
If that is the point, there is no need to have a podcast/show where it's talked about a film, since the film IS the message. My man is often joking about the fact that if you have the medium itself, why talk about it?
Same with authors. If you have a book why explaining its contents since if one is interested, he may read the book. LoL
Since we have both writers and other artists, and since we have book reviewers and movie critics, it's what people do, they express what they think of a piece of art. People are both interested in being given a message and give one themselves. The "critical drinker", for example, is a huge youtube-channel I regularly watch.
You've got the huge middle ground and the freedom of interpreting as the viewer, and you've got the freedom on the artists side to have a main message be absent. Same counts for having a main message in mind.
It's alright both ways. If I have a clear intent, I may say so. If I haven't one, I may leave it. But where ever I place myself into the open, I can reckon with being questioned. And, why not?
I like to be wowed by a piece of art ;) The artist, who achieved to wow me can do nothing about it when I did not get his personal message and he cannot demand that I ought to get it. He can wish for it.
If I see a great movie whom others see as well, and if we have a common sense of its message, it might be impossible to nail it down but that doesn't diminish the possibility that it's the main aspects of greatness towards what we applaud.
'The medium is the message' is a famous quote by Canadian media thinker Marshall Mcluhan. Interesting guy. Look up the quote to get a better sense of what he meant by that. Film is an old medium for art, so your points make sense in that context, but there are new technologies for art in which your points are no longer valid. As I mentioned, it's difficult to penetrarte the mind of any artist, but working with them challenged my own assumptions about the meaning of art in general.
Cann you tell me in your words?
How would you know?
Which are? You talking about AI?
Do you talk to me as an artist (like a story teller)? Or do you talk to me from a non artist perspective?
I distinguish between to penetrate the mind of an artist and his work. I may never be able to talk to the artist myself, only to see his art. Being it the former, and I would be interested, I would ask him what was on his mind when he produced his art. Being it the later, I may talk about his art, or not.
What were your assumptions? "Art in general", what do you mean by that?
Art is produced in many ways and through many mediums. There is always art which is considered to be classic and always art which is being seen as new. There is no one superior or inferior, how I see it.
Art is not just creating something expressive but added to that to be able to understand the rules of composition, perspective, proportion, as well as skillful use of the tools.
Me: Look up the quote to get a better sense of what he meant by that
You: Can you tell me in your words?
Copilot:
People are mediums themselves. If they are not aware that they are, they are like fish in the water, which are not aware of the water. So, it depends on the question "is one aware of the water"?
One may say that it is impossible to find out in asking this question directly since the person being asked might not understand what you mean.
Art is one form of expressing what modern people perceive as being projected onto them through the power of high speed connection and algorithms. Movies and stories are one form of making that the subject of the plot: humans as mere projection and reflection surfaces of what message the Internet highway represents. Since it itself is the message, meaning that it's irrelevant what you and I think ourselves.
This begs the question, for example, of whether the medium serves us or whether we are the medium's servants. I think this is decided at the moment when two fish enter into a dialogue, including the goal that both part in order to have understood each other well. If you are only connected to each other to satisfy the "need" of the "water to learn", you might as well leave any dialogue and swim past each other. For any dialogue is pointless, and the water having been taught now becomes the great teacher?
I very much miss that you didn't give me your own wording.
Good point. One corollary consequence of the assertion that the medium is the message is that if you want to change the message, then you change the medium.
I'm not in favour of or against any ideas in regards to art. I like to explore all options myself. In the environment that I used to be, members emphasized practice over theory. There was a lot of theory at the higher level, but the focus was the actual development of the "art". Oftentimes, theory would just collapse in the face of a broken wire, buggy code, or misbehaving sensor. There's also the issue of human nature. Some art required human participation and humans can be unpredictable. So far no theory can help us predict what they will do. A recent art installation proved this very point, as you can see in the following video.
LoL, the video. :D
I think it's very predictable that if you do an installation like this, there will always be people who are provocative about it, those who find it fun, those who see it as an observation station, in other words; all kinds of reactions. Expecting everyone to like it is pretty unrealistic. Conversely, it would be extremely creepy if everyone behaved the same way, I think.
HaHa! Yes, I have been in event management for a while myself. We've been working with artists and it was great fun. Of course, nothing runs perfect and one has to put up with all kinds of accidents and unforeseeable things. That makes good stories.
McLuhans theory - investigated from people who wanted to check the correctness of it - revealed contained contradictions and paradoxes. Quite an interesting read (the academic paper is over 100 pages long, it's German so I spare to give you the link). He had many good points as well as bad ones, to put it simply.
The interesting thing is that he was writing this stuff in the 60s, before our current mass media society. So, when his ideas are seen in that context, they're very innovative for their time.