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Modality, Individuation, and the Ontology of Art1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Carl Matheson  and
Ben Caplan
Carl Matheson
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MBR3T 2M8
Ben Caplan
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH43210, USA
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Extract

In 1988, Michael Nyman composed the score for Peter Greenaway's film Drowning by Numbers (or did something that we would ordinarily think of as composing that score). We can think of Nyman's compositional activity as a ‘generative performance’ and of the sound structure that Nyman indicated (or of some other abstract object that is appropriately related to that sound structure) as the product generated by that performance (ix). According to one view, Nyman's score for Drowning by Numbers — the musical work — is the product generated by Nyman's compositional activity (namely, an abstract object) and, more generally, artworks are identified with the products generated by compositional or other creative activities. Let's call this view The Product Theory. By contrast, according to another view, Nyman's score for Drowning by Numbers is the generative performance itself (namely, Nyman's compositional activity) and, more generally, artworks are identified with generative performances themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 491 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008

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