What Is The Difference?

What is the difference between a selfie taken by a teenager and a selfie taken by a monkee in the forest?

These are the things that keep me up at night!

One is more random than the other. lol

Intent.

But viewers may not notice, or care about, the difference.

Ron,

You are a monkey's uncle!!

Dave

Kissing cousin Dave.

Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.


Must be the wrong hat size.

Dave

You all are a trip, that includes you Wendy! I guess it depends on the gallery it hangs in as to whether the viewers notice!

I do love the beautiful bright colors in your painting Ronald - that wasn't painted by any monkey's uncle!

The elephant and chimpanzee will take the critique and comparison much better...

An elephant and chimp cannot create a clever title for the abstract and embellish it with deep philosophical mission statements designed to sell to trend-following new money.

An elephant and chimp do not give a #@&! about copyright. (That was for Dan T.'s entertainment)

An elephant and chimp cannot create Borg avatars to use as marketing tools. (That was for Mike S.'s entertainment)

An elephant and chimp are operating on pure reflex, while a human can NEVER reach this level of pure reflex with anything called "ART".

The chimp would probably lose interest before the elephant. The elephant would be all like: "Hey - I didn't know I could paint wildebeests!"

At which the wildebeest would probably take a look and sneer derisively "Aardvark. That's an aardvark."

The aardvark, for his part, would probably be too busy munching on ants.

And then the chimp would reappear and see what the elephant has been up to and offer him a chance to display at his new gallery. But the elephant has to pay for the wine, cheese and crackers up front, just in case.

The elephant who is new to the art business agrees, but isn't aware that getting people to come and see his work is entirely up to him.

They ate a lot of cheese and crackers, and drank a lot of wine that day

i'd say the copyright transference. that's it.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

oh and an elephant works for peanuts.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Dang Mark, they sound very human!

FYI, this question came out of a book on aesthetics. Just thought it would be fun to bat about a bit.

I wonder - if you hung them in a gallery - say three from each animal, chimp, elephant, human - and didn't label who done what - would anyone know?

what is the difference between a human and a chimpanzee?
what is the difference between an artistic, expressive human's art and a non-expressive, artisitc human's art?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i wonder then which abstract the monkey would choose to pee on?

David, that bit from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show went like this:

Rocky: And now….
Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.
Rocky: But that trick never works.
Bullwinkle: This time for sure. Nothing up my sleeve….PRESTO! (Bullwinkle pulls Rocket J. Squirrel out of his hat.) Well, I’m getting close.
Rocky: Now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like.

The difference between an elephant or chimp applying a random series of colorful blotches to a canvas - which is all that either one is capable of producing - and a human being making an abstract painting is the fact that humans are the only animals with an innate capacity for being creative, and by that, I mean 'being creative' in this sense: Creativity is not simply a matter of chance. Serious creative achievement relies on knowledge, control of materials and command of ideas, all of which are quite foreign to chimps and elephants, as is the uniquely human ability to draw from his/her imagination and to use it in the process of being creative.

Human creativity is best thought of, not as a single power, which you either have or you don't, but as multidimensional: Creative processes involve many different mental functions that are way outside the reach of primates and pachyderms because their prefrontal lobes simply have no capacity for it. Many animals are creative when it comes to problem-solving, but none can engage in creativity at a multidimensional level the way we humans can.

Marlene? You dont know the difference between a human and a chimp by now?

No bananas for you today!!

Dave

Thank you Patrick, the voice of reason! I was beginning to worry, I'm glad SOMEONE can make some sense out of this!

David, there you go again! I think we have some of those artists here!!! lol Thank you Marlene, you hit the nail on the head with your incisive view! I knew there was a problem, I just didn't know how to say it. Just kidding of course to all artists, including myself! David, would you like a banana?!!

It is impossible for an elephant or chimpanzee to make an abstraction. The issue is not what you see but how it is conceived.

The elephant works for peanuts. Oh wait that's not a difference.

Humans have a monopoly on creativity? Check out the Bowerbird: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140723-are-we-the-only-creative-species

"At first glance, the Vogelkop Gardener bowerbird is pretty boring. Its drab olive-brown plumage makes it hard to spot against the dirt on which it lives. However, a closer look reveals that this otherwise dull bird has a secret: the males build some of the most elaborate, aesthetically-pleasing objects of any bird.

Bowers are decorated structures that the males build to woo females. In some places they're tall towers made of sticks resting upon a round mat of dead black moss, decorated with snail shells, acorns, and stones. In other places, they're woven towers built upon a platform of green moss, adorned with fruits, flowers, and severed butterfly wings. Individual Vogelkop bowerbirds have their own tastes, preferring certain colours to others. The males place each item in their bowers with great precision; if the objects are moved, the birds return them to the original arrangement.

"Decorating decisions are not automatic but involved trials and 'changes of mind,'" wrote UCLA physiologist Jared Diamond, one of the first researchers to intensively study the birds' complex bowers. Diamond discovered that bower building was not innate, at least not entirely. The younger birds had to learn how to build the best bowers, either through trial and error, or by watching more experienced birds, or both.

Diamond concluded that bower building was a culturally transmitted creative process where each bird had his or her own individual tastes and preferences, and where each decision was made with intention and care. Bowerbirds, in other words, are animal artists – at least in sense that they take care in producing unique works that humans and birds alike find aesthetically pleasing.

Patrick....are you suggesting that humans who just throw paint on a canvas, with nothing substantial behind that expression, are nothing more than monkeys????
AMEN!


:::hugging the Eds of this thread:::::::

Ms Suzanne Powers,

I have had breakfast, thank you.

Dave

The best response so far is that the elephant works for peanuts.

... and I will add,... while a human works with the hope of making big bucks.

The elephant, thus, is the greater realist.

The monkey, on the other hand, will eventually degrade into shock art by slinging its on feces onto the abstract work. The elephant frowns in disapproval.

The elephant and the chimpanzee are more likely to be behind bars when they painted while the human most likely would be free.

No elephants have 9 to 5 jobs. I dont see elephants are realists.

I see elephants as over sized and under paid.

Elephants unite!!

Chimps? They are copycats.

Dave

My favorite:
Q1. Why do ducks have flat feet? A1. For stamping out forest fires.
Q2. Why do elephants have flat feet. A2. For stamping out flaming ducks.

I think this was the first example I ever knew of "conceptual performance art".

Intent, meaning, repeatable style, knowledge, passion would all be missing. Art is the language of the HUMAN mind, so it follows it has to come from humans to make sense.
-- mary ellen anderson

Gregory Scott,

What is a fish without an eye?

FSH

Dave

Another one for Gregory,

Q1 - How do you get four elephants into a mini?
A1 - Two in the front and two in the back.

Q2 - How do you know there's an elephant in the fridge?
A2 - Footprints in the butter.

Q3 - How do you know there are four elephants in the fridge?
A3 - You see a mini parked outside.

Just for fun, I will take issue with Patrick A. P., who wrote:
Creativity is not simply a matter of chance. Serious creative achievement relies on knowledge, control of materials and command of ideas,

Creativity CAN be LARGELY a matter of chance. It need not rely on strict control of materials, and it certainly need not rely on command of ideas DURING THE PROCESS of making art. Often such knowledge, illusion of control, and command of ideas emerge AFTER the fact, during the act of REFLECTING on what has been done. This ability to REFLECT, then, would seem to be the dividing line between elephant abstracts and human abstracts.

Most of my abstracts RELY on chance. The difference is that I know this, and an elephant probably does not.

Chance too is a human concept. The universe has no idea what chance is, and neither does the elephant. It is merely an idea that humans through up to describe their mortal inability to control events.

Robert,

Discussing elephant know how is a bit premature. We
are only now becoming aware that elephants have
extensive language skills. We still can not understand what they
are saying, but in time we will find a huge culture or cultures in elephant
tribes.

Dave

Absolutely nothing if I'm the human with a brush theirs is probably better, though.

The humans may have BAs while the chimps may have BAnanas.

Another one for Jane.

Q1 How do you get four Elephants into a Mini?
A1 Two in the front and two in the back.

Q2 How do you get four Chimps into a Mini?
A2 You can't. It's full of Elephants.

Q1 What's worse then trying to get an Elephant into a volkswagen?
A1 Trying to get an Elephant pregnant in a Volkswagen....

Definition of Abstract... Just monkeying around :-))

Just kidding.... no that's a baby goat.

What was the question?

Cheers, Barbara

its a matter of..about yourself on how to feel about whether whom created it...

One difference is according to copyright law art must be created by a human being to meet copyright eligibility.

There will be no signature or title on it.

Joseph, LOL!

@patrick, never read so much ethnocentric crap in my life. Not only are all animals creative, they are a lot more intelligent than the majority of people in this forum!!! Time for a reality check...

Bump

The difference is that I will get to feel good while creating and then beat myself up after I am done. :) Where the monkey and Elephant won't care.

May I pause to point out that all are responding to this question as artists. If one walked into a room and saw a work of art, regardless of who or what created it, it would be judged merely by your own reaction to that particular work. Nothing more and nothing less.

Everything is art. Nothing is art-Kevin Callahan 2014