Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
Bone to the bad.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


                                           

everyone's a critic

An exploration in the creation of memory & the idea of reality as perception.
  (+18, -5)(+18, -5)
(+18, -5)
  [vote for,
against]

A straightforward match-up game between works of art and their descriptions by critic. I may just do this as a web based quiz; I'm curious about variations to make it more interesting.

Played between 2-4 teams or players.

Three or four different works of art are shown on a screen. The quiz master starts reading from an art critic's article about one of the works. (Such as the quote in the subtitle.) Simultaneously, a point score is running down. Teams buzz in when they think they know which of the art pieces the critic is writing about. If a team guesses right, they get the points, and the round ends. If a team's guess is wrong, the points are subtracted, and reading and countdown continue.

In the bonus round, a piece of pop music is played, and the team tries to identify which of three short paragraphs of criticism is about that piece.

jutta, Feb 13 2007

Where that quote is from. http://www.lincolns...07/oneartsplaza.php
[jutta, Feb 13 2007]

On Kawara http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/kawara/
or on a thursday? [xenzag, Feb 13 2007]

Brian Sewell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Sewell
Art Critic. [DrBob, Feb 15 2007]

[link]






       the article you linked reminds me of a CSI episode where an expert on memory says if you show the victim pictures of wanted criminals, to aid in ID, the memory of those faces will corrupt the actual ID in a lineup.   

       I'd like to play the music version.
dentworth, Feb 13 2007
  

       //variations to make it more interesting.// that would be the inclusion of non-art images. The whole idea is ultra high-brow, and would require both very enlightened panels and audience. Are you sure there is a demand for this level of cultural interrogation?   

       "And the excitement is building - Will the panel correctly identify the third work as a segment of an On Kawara, or will they think it is just a close up of an old calender?" Let's turn on the dripping tap while we wait their answer.......
xenzag, Feb 13 2007
  

       For a master level version, the works should be very similar, like a police lineup. And for music identification, only a single note.
ldischler, Feb 13 2007
  

       A way to do this as a web based quiz would be to dsiplay the 4 artworks, then a sentence from the critic. Also displayed would be points to be won. If the sentence is not enough, the contestant would hit the spacebar and receive another sentence, and the points to be won would decrement as well.   

       I worry that 4 small screen sized squares might not do justice to some works, especially large installations. It would be good to have video for performance pieces.
bungston, Feb 14 2007
  

       This idea went down the tubes before it even got flushed! You can't make a game show out of this type of thing because nobody would want to watch it.
quantum_flux, Feb 14 2007
  

       There are occasionally questions of this type ("Of which work of art was this said by noted art critic Rab McGlinchey: 'It's a pure pile a pish, byrawey' ... I'm going to have to hurry you ... no? It was, of corse, " contemptuous sneer, here, "Dali's Christ of St John on the Cross. Another starter for 10.") on University Challenge, though without the diminishing points element.
calum, Feb 14 2007
  

       I think a bit of Sewell would go down rather well, Here he is talking about a well known residential estate in central London;
"It is the biggest heap of ugliness imaginable--extensive, intrusive, characterless, unfunctional. There are no bricks, but every brick should be metaphorically destroyed. It is a miserably bad complex. The residential part is especially terrible. Because the rooms are so small, the doors have to open outwards. They act as cheese-cutters when you walk past, or suddenly swing open when you are peeing."
zen_tom, Feb 14 2007
  

       What is needed for a good game show then [quantum_flux]? Are non-luck based shows no longer interesting?
hidden truths, Feb 14 2007
  

       I wonder if critics from several hundred years ago could be included?
Ling, Feb 14 2007
  

       I can't believe that an idea entitled "Everyone's a critic" has no fishbones yet.   

       This idea's rubbish. It'll never work. 1 ironic fishbone coming right up!
Jinbish, Feb 14 2007
  

       Very early version with review: "Thag draw on cave wall with stick, subject lack expression, give feeling of ambivalence - is buffalo noble creature or just lunch?"
Canuck, Feb 14 2007
  

       You could start with ideas from the halfbakery and some of the more cryptic comments criticism carping colluding contributing that they attract.
Murdoch, Feb 14 2007
  

       This is like a cross between 'Call My Bluff' and 'Name That Tune', with a BS detector thrown in. I'd watch.
angel, Feb 14 2007
  

       No, just the idea of a critic describing works of art makes it lame. I'm picturing some guy named Jeeves describing Picasso works as being "melodynamic emotionalism" as indicated by the "psuedo-emphatic post-premodernist era brush strokes" and that this represents "the mutantous subculture of the 1800's because the yellow eyes are out of alignment" or some crap like that. You have to be some kind of magical elf wannabe from a Tolkien novel to appreciate that. Sorry for offending anyone who understood whatever Jeeves said in my above example and doesn't wannabe called some kind of magical elf wannabe.
quantum_flux, Feb 15 2007
  

       <Sewell> What we have with this idea is essentially a critique of criticism itself. Although the poster claims that it is a 'straightforward match-up game' this is, of course, an extremely simplistic approach to art criticism which seeks to convey more than just the physical content of a work but to explain the ideas, philosophies and processes which underlay the creative anima. The work itself, whether it be a painting or a sculpture or even one of those dreadful pop songs, is, of course, merely the tip of a creative iceberg. Far from being a simple match-up game, the proposal is more akin to a picture quiz where only a part of the image is shown. In such games, the participants predictably fail to guess what they are looking at and more of the image needs to be shown in order for them to form a coherent idea of what they are seeing. In the same way, merely trying to match the comment to the art work can be little more than a guessing game unless the participants are allowed to see 'more of the picture' and, of course, for this they will need to spend five years doing an art degree at an Oxbridge college and go on extensive tours of continental art galleries at the expense of the BBC license payers. In summary, I'm sure it will amuse the average 'man on the street' but will do little for art and even less for the history of art and for art criticism and will probably end up showing nothing but nudes for the titillation of the common herd. </Sewell>

+ (also see linky)
DrBob, Feb 15 2007
  

       you just aint got the accent, Bob.
po, Feb 15 2007
  

       I would very much like to play this game. [jutta], please take some of your, probably rather precious, time to pitch it to some television executives.
kaz, Jul 29 2011
  

       Variation: remove the names under annos and ID Halfbakers by their criticism style.
Alterother, Jul 29 2011
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle