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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wrecan" data-source="post: 5644375" data-attributes="member: 64825">No, I'm insisting that a person who uses such definitions should be able to explain why he is using them in a specific way.  What, exactly, must be intended to form an intent to create art?  You never explain this.  You simply pronounce that the intent needed to play D&D is not the intent to create art.  When pushed you retreat behind other people's defintiions, which don't discuss whether D&D should or should not be included.Okay...Here are some definitions from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" target="_blank">wiki article</a> you linked:"Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol" target="_blank">symbolic</a> significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senses" target="_blank">senses</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions" target="_blank">emotions</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellect" target="_blank">intellect</a>."D&D is a process of deliberately arranging items of symbolic significance in a wa that influences the players' senses, emotions, and intellect.  Under this definition, D&D is art."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy" target="_blank">Leo Tolstoy</a> identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another"Under this definition, D&D -- a game of shared storytelling -- is certainly art."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedetto_Croce" target="_blank">Benedetto Croce</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.G._Collingwood" target="_blank">R.G. Collingwood</a> advanced the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism" target="_blank">idealist</a> view that art expresses emotions"Under this definition, D&D is art."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica#Optical_disc.2C_online.2C_and_mobile_versions" target="_blank">Britannica Online</a> defines art  as 'the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic  objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.'"Under this definition, D&D is art.Under all the definitions provided in the wiki article to which you linked, D&D qualifies as art.  The only definition under which it does not qualify is the one you've provided, which relies on the "intent to create art", a requirement that is not found in the Wiki article at all.If we go to the wiki on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Theories_of_art_classification" target="_blank">Theories of art classification</a>, we see four theories:Undefinable: Art cannot be defined, so anything can be art.  It's just subjective.  You don't appear to adhere to this view, as you categorically deny D&D is art.Institutional: Anything that the "art world" accepts as art is art.  Under this definition, D&D is not art, but there's nothing preventing it from eventually being recognized as art.  (Under this definition, I don't know that improvisational theater is considered art either.)Functionalist: Any creative activity that emotionally affects the audience is art.  (This is closest to the definition I use.)  D&D is certainly art under this definition.Proceduralist: The intent of the putative artist determines whether something is art.  This appears to the the definition you use.  However, if it is, you're not using it in the way that other proceduralists use it.  Thomas Dewey, who first coined this definition, required only that the artist be aesthetically satisfied with the activity.  So if a man writes words thinking it to be poetic, then it is art, even if the same man could write those same words simply as notes to remind him of stuff he needs to do today.  In the former, the words are emotionally resonant with him -- it is poetry, and thus art.  In the latter, they are clinical and solely practical.  there is no emotional connection with the creator, and thus, not art.  Even under the proceduralist definition, then, D&D is art as long as the creators (DM and players) are emotionally engaged in the process.I can't find any basis in any of the wiki articles on art for your definition (or the definition you claim to have borrowed from others), which requires the "artist" to intend his creation "to be art".  The closest I can get is this paragraph:The second, more narrow, more recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_art" target="_blank">fine art</a>.”  Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artist’s  creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities. Often,  if the skill is being used in a lowbrow or practical way, people will  consider it as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft" target="_blank">craft</a> rather than art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it will be considered <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design" target="_blank">design</a> instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_art" target="_blank">applied art</a>.  Some thinkers have argued that the difference between fine art and  applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than  any clear definitional difference (Novitz, 1992).However, even under this definition, D&D is a creative art.  It does express the DM and players' creativity and engages their aesthetic sensibilities.  It's not practical (though it might be "lowbrow).  It's neither commercial nor industrial.  It's not an applied art.  So, at worst, it is a "craft" (also known as "folk art" or "arts and crafts"), but it just as easily fits in the category of creative art.I have.  I remember all these debates from my own art history classes in college.  And I still do not see where you get the notion that either 1) an intent to create art is a necessary component of art, and 2) the intent to create art cannot include the intent to play D&D.No, you need to read the link, as your insistence that D&D is not art closely resembles the arguments of those who insisted that Duchamp's Fountain could not be art.</blockquote>

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