But are tomatoes video games?

I’ve never understood the leap from “I don’t like X” or “X is simplistic” to “X is not art.” There is a _lot_ of terrible art. There’s a lot of simple art.

If some people stopped substituting the word "art" with "an absolute masterpiece" in their heads, they would find life much more enjoyable

*Strength* is being able to crush a Tomato in your hand. *Dexterity* is being able to dodge a thrown tomato. *Intelligence* is knowing a Tomato is a Fruit. *Wisdom* is knowing to not put a Tomato in a fruit salad. *Charisma* is being able to sell a Tomato based fruit salad. *Constitution* is being able to not throw up after eating a Tomato based fruit salad. D&D stats simplified.

“This is not a tomato, this is a metaphor” are you sure, it resembles a tomato pretty well

The biggest three letter word in the English language is “big”

"Nothing can't be art" I chuckle to myself as I begin drawing the word nothing onto a canvas.

It ain't art until it's started a flame war.

For the purposes of this essay I am speaking a little reductively about a few things. Technically, mathematics is a bit more cultural than we often let on, and the definition of "fruit" is even more complex then I allude to. Please don't think these are points you need to "correct." By all means, expand on the conversation in comments, but let's try not to be smart-asses about it.

Art is subjective. Vegetables are subjective. I think I'm having an existential crisis

I like Brian Eno's definition of art: "art is anything you don't have to do" He elaborates saying things like we have to speak, we don't have to write poetry; we have to move but we don't have to dance- etc. etc.

Small brain: it's a vegetable Big brain: it's a fruit! Ascended brain: it's a metaphor.

One idea modern art challenged is that the "is it art" question is tied to systems of power and status. Like how people would rather look at the Mona Lisa than a photograph of the Mona Lisa. This applies to games too - there's prestige and status on the line.

The point at the end about _caring_ about the subject in a definitional argument, when you're not an expert, brings it all home. Especially in the internet age. So many people - without doing the remotest research - are willing to argue into the ground about a definition just to feel validated in thinking they've proved someone else wrong.

Yeah there is this phenomenon when a surface argument ("is Gone Home/Proteus/etc really a game?") is really hiding a second argument ("This game I bought was not what I expected and I feel like I was tricked") that is what the people *truly* care about. Like an argument by proxy, to make the problem seem less subjective, and larger than being only their personal experience.

Growing up I always really really hated the culinary definition of "fruit" because I deeply despised essentially all fruit, and that included fruit usually classified as vegetables. Hated tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, pumpkin, all of it. Loved vegetables, but hated fruit, savory or not. And it would always really frustrate me, because people would try to argue with me that things like squash or peppers were vegetables, not fruit, and that I should like them. It made no sense to me, they were so obviously fruit, but everyone else looked at me like I was crazy. So now I'm in my 20s, and bitter, and post KZfaq comments on videos that aren't really about food or cooking, to write angry posts about the culinary definition of fruit.

This is a really good video and - while not specifically saying it - is a very good explanation of a concept in linguistics called Prototype Theory. Let me use the example you used in the video: tomatoes. In our heads we have a series of criteria which we base definitions on. For example, a fruit might have the catagories of, say, "sweetness", "ability to be made into a dessert", grows on trees" etc. All of these things come together, and in our minds create a construct known as the prototypical "fruit" - if you know Plato's allegory of the cave, it's the idealised fruit. All of our definitions of what is or isn't a fruit work from this prototype i.e. an apple is a pretty prototypical fruit because it is sweet, grows on trees, and it can be made into delicious pies, tarts, cakes, and other things. This is like the thing in the video about "this book is sci-fi, like star trek" - we use Star Trek as a reference point, something close to the prototype. However, a tomato isn't a prototypical fruit because it's not sweet and can't be made into a dessert - but it grows on a plant and has the botanical properties of a fruit - so while it /is/ a fruit, it's not really a prototypical one. If someone asked you to name a fruit, tomato isn't the first you'd reach for. This is the same as how if someone asked you to name a bird, you might immediately think of chicken, pigeon, or eagle - but not say penguin, emu, or hummingbird. The features of the latter three are outside the norm of the "bird" prototype.

Great video, but I must nitpick 6:29 is Charon, Pluto's moon, not Pluto.

0:00 - 0:03 Wait, wait. You lost me there.

it’s been 5 years and this is still one of the best video essays ever. there’s such a clear and nuanced point you’re making, and you take careful, logical steps to get there, so that it feels like we (the audience) are arriving at the conclusion at the same time you are. nothing feels extraneous or irrelevant; every moment feels essential to your argument! truly a video “essay” & a great one at that. this really shaped how i think abt art and the world in general

You are seriously convincing me I need to just starting writing out my thoughts about games and other such things and upload them. Who knows where it could lead, right?

"Good art is what you like, bad art is the province of snobs." - Robt. Williams

See, in England, we pronounce them tom-art-oh. I really hope you saw what I did there.

The dinner table: "Is a hotdog a sandwich?" Ian: *deep breath*

this conversation gets a lot stickier when discussing something like gender, because gender fits somewhere between a "soft" definition and an "extra soft" definition, and yet most people still agree that it has a rigid definition defined by "biology" (in reality the biology surrounding sex is extremely complex compared to what people think it is, with regards to genitals, karyotype, etc). I bring this up because I've used basically the same line of logic for discussions on gender as it applies to something like trans people for a long time now, basically boiling down to "you are confusing something that we've made up in order to describe our best understanding of biology, with immutable facts of nature." It's not very effective mostly because people *really don't care if they're wrong* and I fear that the same would be true of people discussing art. Also I love tomatoes how dare you!!!

Love this! Being an animator, hearing the discussion on what is 'art' often devolves into considering commercial mediums as being 'not art' vs art you view in gallery. And meeting people in the more 'classic' art communities have trouble wrapping their heads around such a objective thing. Very nice discussion of 'The Treachery of Images' by René Magritte. I'm glad to see it being applied to other subjects too such as games.

The idea about the debates over the definition of art being proxies for taste is interesting in that it reminds me of how the debate over "Is this a video game," actually seems to be more about the aesthetics as a part of the general nerd culture fear of "avant-guarde"/"arthouse" aesthetics "invading" their medium and demoting their aesthetics to being considered "lowbrow," with games being a battleground for various historical reasons. I could ramble all day on taht one if you'd like...

I'll never forget starting History of Art in college and being assigned an essay begging the question, "What is art?". I was no less than PISSED that I got a C, and I, 11+ years later, have NO idea what I was meant to say to get an A. That teacher made me unfairly resent landscape artists for a long time lol. Great content, by the way!! ^_^

Really interesting video! I think this also applies strongly to our conception of gender and the "debate" over what makes someone a woman/man. "Man" and "woman" don't really have rigid social definitions, they're like sci-fi; based on a frame of reference. When you see someone in the street you don't need to run through a rigid checklist of what defines a woman or man, you make a snap classification without thinking based on your prior frame of reference - people in your life who have been either of those categories. What's more, like art, these categories are socially constructed and change between cultures and over time; a hundred years ago people may have assumed anyone they saw walking down the street with short hair and trousers was a man, these days it's more complicated. So when someone thinks they're being smart by reciting what they learned in high school biology to a trans person as a way to try and invalidate their identity, they're doing the same thing as that kid at the dinner table saying tomatoes are botanically fruits. They're creating a debate where none need exist, because they're conflating what someone biologically *is* with what that *means*. Trans people are well aware what our biology *is*. What we physically are is obvious; we live with it every day, and many of us have studied the science of it, hell, some are even trained biologists. As a tomato is a seed bearing part of a fruiting plant, humans each have a certain set of chromosomes that often line up with one of two usual types, we usually have a certain set of genitals that fall somewhere on the spectrum between what's classified as "vagina" and "penis", we have certain level of sex hormones, our brain is structured in a certain way, etc. and most of these things can even change over time. That's what we *are*, physically. What that *means* is a whole different story, and varies hugely across time and culture, and isn't even rigidly defined at any given point, and when you get right down to it has little to do with the base biological classifications. When's the last time you had to perform a genetic test on someone in the street to make a pretty good assumption of whether they're a man or woman? Most of it will be cultural; how they dress, speak and carry themselves. What woman/man and male/female *means* is vastly more relevant and useful in everyday life than what someone biologically *is*, just as the culinary definition of a vegetable is vastly more relevant and useful for a chef than strict botanical classifications. What makes this more dangerous than the usual dinnertime debates is that as it's such a loaded topic, those who conflate biological classifications of what someone *is* with what that *means* rigidly invest themselves so much in that, that they often believe people who *don't* do that are somehow mentally deficient or delusional. When, as stated, we are fully lucid and aware of the way things *are*, but view what that *means* differently to them. In other words, to a certain type of person, thinking of tomatoes as vegetables for culinary purposes despite their botanical definition is a mental illness and deserves hospitalisation and/or derision. What a strange world we live in. EDIT: Looks like other people have also noticed this parallel. Great minds think alike/fools seldom differ. :)

This reminds me of the "is water wet" thing. It depends on your own understanding of water and wetness.

I just wanna say I don't think I've found a channel that analyzes and discusses different subjects so beautifully. I subscribed as soon as I watched your character analysis on Kenny, and I am speeding through all of your videos with increasing appreciation. In short, you're fucking brilliant and I am so happy I found your channel!

Your father installs stark, primal fear within me that a mortal could do that

I just saw your above comment, so hopefully I don't sound like a smart-ass by pointing this out, but the definition of prime numbers actually DID change to make it more useful. 1 used to be considered prime because it is a number that is only divisible by 1 and itself, but in most contexts where we talk about the properties of prime numbers, we would have to say "x is a property of all prime numbers except for 1." We didn't want to keep saying "except for 1" all the time, so we changed the definition of prime number to just not include 1. Source: Numberphile. I'm not a mathematician. Although there is something about mathematical definitions that does seem "harder" than definitions of art or planets. Perhaps "hardness" is a gradient, rather than a binary property of a definition?

As an artist I always say "art is whatever you think it is because it doesnt really exist" as in, the ketchup I spilled on the floor is not art, its ketchup, and the painting I did is not art, its paper with dried paint on it, I think my painting is art, but you might think it is shit and that my ketchup stain is art. Thats why it is pointless to really seriously argue about anything so subjective, its all beyond single deffinitions or descriptions.

You're a brilliant communicator, and I never fail to be blown away at how you can distil a complex idea to its base form so well. I've enjoyed all your work so far - thank you for them, and keep up the good work mate :)

one of my favorite art historical subjects is the search for the ideal, particularly 18th century academicism, like the royal academy, british institution, etc. and how the 'best' art and its definitions changed over time. for example initially the art of nicolas poussin was seen as the ideal (mixing elements of raphael and michelangelo), but then that changed and developed. this whole conversation is then made even more interesting and complex when the dada movement comes in and the concept of antiart (duchamp, as mentioned) begins to develop. i think something which is particularly interesting in this is hans arp's piece 'according to the laws of chance'. the piece brings up the conversation about the artist as a craftsman, the importance of concept, etc. its a fascinating subject and i recommend reading about dada if anyones interested in the definition of art. modernism in general makes some incredibly interesting arguments about the nature of art throughout its many movements.

Seems I'm late to the game, but I'll pitch my 2 cents anyways... an art historian (and former professor) told my class that "Art is the zeitgeist in visual form. Therefore it lives and changes as time passes, but always connects to recurring themes in history." This definition seems pretty legit to me.

That picture of "Pluto" you showed is actually Charon, Pluto's moon.

This video essay is so well structured performed and produced that I often find myself coming back to it time and time again. It just feels good to listen to after having not listened to for a while

I am very happy and thankful that Dan of Extra Credits pointed this channel out to me. From this one video I am loving this already. Excellent video and content and subbed.

Amazing as always Mr. Studios!

Hey Ian. I'm a PhD student wrestling against poststructuralism. I loved your three part taxonomy of the-universe-creates-it-the-universe-defines-it, the-universe-creates-it-but-humans-define-it, and humans-create-it-and-humans-define-it. Did you come up with it yourself, or did you source it from somewhere?

this is the second video of yours that I watch and I already love your channel thank you very much

The only problem I have with this video is the rigidity ascribed to scientific definitions. I think it's a good idea to emphasize that botanists did not "discover" that tomatos are fruits, but rather that tomatoes happen to be distinguished from other similar types of things consistent with a particular schema that botanists have, collectively, *decided* to use to categorize a subset of stuff in the world. The schema, while not arbitrary, is not absolute or natural, and it could be, and presumably has been, different. It's fine to think of tomatos, and everything else, as having essential properties independent of human observation and classification, but it's important to remember that what humans, even very professional, sciency humans, identify as features of distinction, and indeed as features at all, is contingent. For this reason, I wouldn't say that scientific definitions are any more rigid or indisputable than cultural definitions. It's just that disputing them is less likely to be practical or attractive in the context of scientific study. This idea comes out a lot better in the discussion of pluto, but I felt like putting a bow on it because there's a tendency to take clarity and lack of controversy in science as implying that whatever we're talking about is indisputable. Ironically, in reckless defiance of science itself. What is a tomato today could be aether tomorrow. (Not that that's super likely, but in principle.)

God, I love this channel. It makes me fucking THINK. It also has the added bonus of video games and hating tomatoes.

Now this is a video I will link to a lot of people :p

Really glad to see you're making these again :)

Love your videos man, very interesting. Keep up the good work.

This reminds me of when in the museum across the street from me an art installation was destroyed by cleaning staff, basically the entire internet went "lol this ain't art" Still makes me sad.

I'm going to be a smart-ass here. 5:58 I think a slightly better definition would be: "A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself." From the definition you gave ("prime number [prahym nuhm-ber] noun. a number divisible by only itself and one."), 953 could be interpreted as not being "prime" since it would be divisible by 953, 1, -953, and -1 {negative numbers can be divisors}.

This was amazing. You said all the right things. You voiced super complex ideas so structured and .. ugh. Great watch. Thank you.

Seriously dude, you are the most interesting man on youtube. Keep doing those essays.

Great video, good metaphor. I'll have to remember this next time I get into one of those videogames-as-art discussions.

This is a rather complicated way of saying, "who gives a fuck"

Man, your videos are always really well thought out and, even if I don't quite agree with you, I can sit and listen to the whole thing. Thank you for doing these.

Just discovered your channel an hour ago; buddy, you're honestly one of the smartest channels I've ever seen. Keep it up, man. Love your content.

that ending was perfect

"When some snotty 14 year old says over dinner 'A tomato is a fruit, actually' he's creating a debate when one wasn't necessary." *Looks in the mirror.* ...shit.

Great stuff man, I hope I can see more parallels between the art world, gaming and vegetables from you !

It's so good to see you again.

“What is art” is a question my professors liked to ask at the start of that years classes all the time. I have been thinking about it for a long time, and personally I think the definition of art is a non-linear form of communicating basic emotion or thought. Every art piece you make whether you want to believe it or not, says something about you, the artist. You are communicating your own unique view and feelings on whatever subject matter you have chosen, and at the root, it’s not about the subject, it’s about expressing yourself about the subject. What you have done, how you have chosen to communicate. This is why everything can be art, because art is a tool of expression, an abstract tool to communicate complex views and feelings that can be received subjectively. Because the purpose of artistic communication isn’t to exchange linear knowledge but to trigger conceptual thought based on specific subject matter. To simplify it, art is cultural communication.

The next time my smartass friend says tomato is a fruit I’m gonna hit em with a long definition of culinary.

Good to have u back, man. :)

I've never subscribed to a channel after just one video. Until today. This is really good.

_"Ceci n'est pas une Aphex Twin"_

My perspective on the term "art" is slightly different. I remember in school, I asked my art teacher "what is art?". After some waffling, she came up with "art is what sells", which I found somewhat unhelpful. (Tomatoes sell. Does that make them art? What about stuff that *might* sell, but isn't offered for sale? And so on.) Over the following years (this was still before the Interwebs), I tried repeatedly to get some (to me) useful definition, but I wasn't successful (as in, no two people came up with the same idea). So I then decided that "art" simply had no useful definition, and it was a useless word. I do care about some things that may or may not be art, and do not care about others - but to this day, "art" to me is still a sound without meaning. I know people who say "art" have some meaning in mind, but without asking each and every one, I have no way of knowing what that meaning is. I don't think your video did more that explain why this is such a train wreck of a word. The purpose of words is to communicate meanings. If people don't agree on the definition of a word, then that word fails to communicate meaning (or worse, it communicates unintended meaning). I hate this kind of word. (Incidentally, science fiction - a topic I *am* interested in - has some of the same problems, and it's not just academic: it influences, for example, under what category I might find a book in a bookstore. If it doesn't fit neatly in one category, it might be in any number of places, and thus I might not find it. This is bad.)

i still appreciate your love for delany. just started reading nova!!

This is a fucking incredible video. Kudos to you. I will be referring people to here when this conversation arises. You put many of my feelings and thoughts and just laid them out so well and informatively. 10/10 bud.

idk about the artist's intention, but i always thought that urinal was funny because people have gotten so pissy about it not being true art. one could say it takes the piss.

I like this video AND I like tomatoes and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

Ian, your channel is amazing. Keep doing you, and I'll keep watching.

A great piece of food for thought, that actually makes feel bad I'm not donating to your Patreon. Please keep on the good work, you truly make some of the best content on the platform :)

Frank Zappa had a pretty neato definition: "Art is whatever is inside the frame". Meaning that something is art because we said its art and (critically) we can deliniate where the art stops and the non art begins. Which of course meant that after hearing this definition, I spent the next few years in university trying to concoct art that was *outside* the frame. art that other people would think is real. The best idea we could come up with was making giant inflatable UFOs , letting them loose over the city and barking out to the CBD on megaphones to find their nearest shelter until the government say its OK to come out. Thankfully we never actually did this, or I'd likely be spending my time carving toothbrushes into prison shanks as "art" in casurina prison.

Perhaps art does not lie in the construct itself, but applies retroactively through perception. For example: you can see a great painting as a child and it's artistic value would be completely lost on you. You can then perhaps reflect upon the painting at a later date and see that you would deem it as art.

All of your videos are good. What the heck. They're all so good! What the heck?!?!

Nice video! I love the Aphex Twin outro too!

def applying this to gender identity and stuff. i honestly assumed you'd be talking about gender identity up until you explicitly stated it's about art. absolutely wonderful video essay tho, huge sucker for literary/philosophical stuff like this, incredible :]

To me, there is “art”, and there is “art-I-am-not-interested-in-why-are-you-making-me-look-at-this”

hey this is like a metaphor for about any argument! i was kind of thinking to myself at one point "what do all arguments have in common?" and the answer i eventually got was "one subjective definition at its core" and since definitions seem so grounded in fact, its easy to think it is fact, and so you stay stubbornly to your side

The best video I've ever seen. Wonderful job!

Do you really hate tomatoes?

Art loosely means "a strive for perfection". This makes a bit more sense in the context in phrases like "State of the art", "Art of war", "Martial Arts", and others. Nothing needs to be created for art to happen. What's created is an "art work" or "piece of art", a by-product of the strive.

Very interesting video, I'm glad whenever I find something that broadens my understanding of how art is defined and how to approach the question whether something is art. (:

An excellent video! I really like the metaphor, it shows very well your point.

The problem with defining art is because we are trying to apply logic to an emotional matter. It's like trying to eat soup with a fork.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who eats tomatoes like apples

One, I was a little trepidatious upon seeing this in my feed, but this both went in a direction I wasn't expecting and was highly enjoyable. Two, I am really glad you brought up Scott McCloud's definition of art, because I only very recently came across it and instantly started using that definition (I haven't really had any other vaguely concrete definition given to me and had been grasping at straws up until that point). Three, I understand the metaphor you're using at the end, but since I genuinely hate tomatoes as a physical food, that ending had me cracking up.

Please make more videos, they're great

This smells like the ratatouille arguement and im down for that!

👏 Tomatoes 👏 are 👏 a 👏 social 👏 construct 👏

new to your content, I expected (from the title) a decent, artsy fartsy statement. instead you layed a deep, well based and all together fascinating video. the metaphor is excellent, this video is brilliant, and I think I'll keep these notions in my head, thanks ^^

+Innuendo Studios I fuckin' love your videos, man.

But is this video art?

I don't like it when people posit that renaissance paintings and the like are somehow more arty or close to the "true definition of art" than modern art. Because usually what they're trying to say is that renaissance paintings look more visually pleasing to them than modern art. And thats annoying to me because I personally find classical oil paintings boring, I think they all look the same. Also there is an idea that the more photo-realistic the painting is the better it is, if I wanted the most photo realistic painting I would get a camera. that was probably a comment that missed the point but after a while travelling around art museums with your family you get bored

Another terrific talk. Keep up the excellent work my dude. -F

this was so information-dense and needed so much following along I felt like I was back in school... feels good.

This feels like a great response to the "what is a woman" question aswell

no one talks about this but a vegetable is actually just any part of a plant that is edible, so therefore i believe a fruit can also be considered a vegetable

This was excellent. I’ll definitely be sharing this, and subscribing. Thanks H. Bomber for sending me here.

I have had this infuriating conversation 2 billion times and somehow I still I really like the way you went about it, and at the end I think you helped me understand something new about the subject. And I really liked the choice of ending music, very appropriate :)