Recently, I defended the art-status of certain fairground attractions. I couldn’t begin to explain the likes of the Dutch’ De Efteling’s Villa Volta. I won’t. I also argued abundantly that perception is a bodily event, not a mere brain-event. I was thinking of J.J. Gibson’s ecological approach. And I argued that works of art seem…

It was on the news a couple of days ago: someone is poisoning pet animals, somewhere up in the north (of the Netherlands). What I think about that? (You ask because I said some nasty things about dogs–in fact I never fulminate against dogs, but against their owners: humans!) …Noone should be livinglike that… I…

Photographs used to be proof of the reality of their subject: what was on them proved to have existed. [Roland Barthes wrote an interesting booklet about this]. This evidential capacity distinguished photographs from their intentional counterparts, paintings. [Roger Scruton (1983) wrote a convincing article on this distinction.] Due to digitalization all this has changed thoroughly,…

1. All sorts of them. Let me sum up some types of discrepancies between originals and their copies. Some of these should tell us something about our concepts of ‘art’, ‘the authentic’, ‘forgery’, ‘representation’, and ‘reproduction’. A scene and its photographic representation; A scene and its painted representation; A scene and its description; A painting…

Whom should I hold responsible for the big dog’s turd below my window? Certainly not my neighbour: he will readily wash his hands in innocence, for he walks blocks away from his and my house to satisfy his dog’s physical needs.Yeah, sure.What is implied is that the culprit of the turd must be sought two…