(...I will not get sucked into debates about what is art.....I will not get sucked into debates about what is art....)

I haven't read this whole thread, but this general debate has been ongoing over the past 100 years at least and probably much longer (in modern times certainly since Duchamp first plonked that urinal in an art gallery, and remember the dadaists were making collages long before this).

I think one of the problems is that art really defies a concrete objective definition (a work of art can be effective given certain criteria but not others and still be powerful), and we all know how slippery subjective opinion is.

The issue raised here is really one relating to the of appropriation of ready-made elements used to construct a work (similar to collage) and whether this practice somehow intrinsically disqualifies the result from being art. My response would be no, but the result still might fail to qualify based on other criteria - what the image maker chooses to do with those elements etc.

People creating all their own content are bound to add that process as being integral to 'their' definition of what makes a resulting work or render 'art'. As a painter if I grind and mix my own pigments then I'd probably say that this process has some bearing on the final painting, but it doesn't necessarily affect the way I choose my subject or how I compose my painting. Just because I grind and mix my own paint, it doesn't mean the resulting painting will be a work of art. I think the same is most likely true of CG rendering.

 

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