Because I have children, I tend to find objects in random places and positions around the house. If I like the resulting tableau, I take a photo of them on my phone.
After a while I started putting them in their own folder, labelled ‘accidental art’, and playing around with them on Picasa.
My house is full of stuff like this.
At this point I started wondering about the definition of ‘art’ in this particular case. My personal definition of art is “life, deliberately rearranged”. But how did that fit with the process where my daughters played with toys and left them around, and I took pictures of them? They had created the arrangements, but (mostly) not intentionally. Was that art? Or had I created art by taking the photographs, or by editing the photos?
Or was none of this art? I am not a photographer or an artist, after all. If my dad – who is both – had taken the pictures instead, would that have made them art?
I realise it doesn’t especially matter. But I like the idea of life being turned into art in stages, even though each stage isn’t in itself art.
Anyway, the one thing I did know was that I wanted to put the pictures up here and call it the Almost Art Project. So here they are, with commentary (and mouseover text).
