Hi Arlo, Matt, all, Pirsig always balked at saying anything about art in particular since _everything_ is a matter of aesthetics for him, but I think that his DQ/sq helps distinguish between arts and crafts, between artists and artisans. In art, the point is to astonish. The aim is DQ, but in a craft the point is to make something that has Quality under predetermined standards for what Quality is. It's aim is sq.
That's a simple formulation for getting started but it is more complicated than that actually, since there is generally something of the artist in the good artisan and something of the artisan in the good artist. When I am crafting my homebrews, I don't want someone to taste it and say, what the hell is this stuff? I don't want to astonish to such a degree. I want my IPAs, barley wines, porters, and stouts to appeal to the sensibilities that people with well-developed tastes will recognize as good examples of IPAs, barley wines, porters, and stouts. But what about the dynamic within the static? Such standards are never fixed targets. All brewers participate in creating the standards as they make new examples of particular styles which push the boundaries in one direction or another (or a new direction entirely) for what counts as a good example of a given style of beer. And not all beers need to fit specified styles. They just need to be good. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
