Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Caves" <scaves@...>

Beauty, startling and evocative, in art and artlangs is largely personal and
developed over a long period of studying it.  I prefer some pieces by Satie
over Mozart any day, although Mozart is considered by far the more original
and influential composer.  Because an artlang is primarily a personal
development that will probably never see the light of day outside of our
examination of it here, it can have no real impact on the world that would
deem it a "step forward in knowledge, understanding, and achievement" in the
way engineering does in its potential for application.

Until we can actually SEE a whole conlang, instead of perusing its parts, we
aren't in a position to say whether it is boring or not to us, unless it is
vastly underdeveloped.  We can see a finished painting, we can hear a
finished piece of music, we can't experience a finished artlang in this way
because no artlang will EVER be finished. Only more developed, only more
idiosyncratic.  I share with you the propensity for being bored with a lot
of conlangs.  Maybe I don't peruse them enough.  Maybe I don't prefer to air
that sentiment on a list full of conlangers.

Sally
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "And Rosta" <and.rosta@...>
>
>> IMAO, the lust for novelty in art (i.e. the propensity to endow novelty
>> with aesthetic value) is merely symptomatic of an impoverished
>> sensibility. And if I think of the artlangs I most admire, novelty is not
>> in any way criterial to my admiration. But to engineering, and hence to
>> engelanging, novelty is genuinely of value -- it is a step forward in
>> knowledge and understanding and achievement. I infer from your comments
>> that you have an engelanging-type interest in exploring the limits of how
>> language could work, and in that light, your judgements make perfect
>> sense to me. (And like you, and for broadly similar reasons, I find I
>> have comparatively little interest in the great majority of conlangs,
>> much though I like and esteem their creators.)
>>
>> --And.
>>
>

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