Which ever definition of energy one uses, I think the answer is mostly, but not 100%, no.
Whether it is the biological energy we produce by metabolism, or the artificial energy we produce via technology, energy is a part of the means for producing art, not the art itself.
So it helps to define art.
I see it as what happens when humans manipulate the material world for purposes of aesthetics and meaning. That definition is debatable, but I think I could prove it even with types of art which offend aesthetic sensibility or which appear meaningless. So we manipulate sound to make music or poetry, ink or digital media to make literature, pigments to make paintings, materials to makes sculptures, bodily movements for dance, and so on.
If we eliminate all the earth's resources used to make art, we are left with almost no means to make art - but some remain - all forms created by the human body - song, spoken narrative and poetry, dance, theatre, and performance - all without props, instruments, or artificially built venues. But these forms come via the use of human energy. They are not the energy itself.
In order to manipulate pure energy into an art form, we would have to be able to at least partially control it and make it sensible (visible, audible or tangible) without being killed. Can we imagine controlling a lightening strike sufficiently to predict its shape and cause it to convey meaning?
Some artists have come close to doing this - as in Walter de Maria's "The Lightening Field." Is it aesthetic? It induces us to re-evaluate the appearance of the technological landscape - to consider it. The perception of beauty or ugliness is relative to values and conditioned tastes. Does it have meaning? It can wake us up to the charges in the atmosphere that mostly go unseen, and show us an aspect of our relationship to nature and energy, so yes, I think it has meaning.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at November 30, 2016 6:35 AM MST
@Hartfire, thank you for a most thoughtful answer to this perplexing question. I saw this question on an art critic's tweet. He was going to have a podcast on it. It sounded like something I wanted to learn about. I am always like you, always wondering what art is. In today's techological world, art is again being defined. I usually use James Whistler's definition: If the artist says "It's art", it's art!
As as far as this question, I agree with you. Thanks!
If you come across the reference for the podcast, I would be interested to access that critic's thoughts.
When I try to think about art, I try to include all art across the globe and back through to the earliest artifacts found by archeologists: I want a definition which comes as close as possible to defining the whole of art, not just whatever happens to be the current the Western zeitgeist.
After reading Tom Woolf's "The Painted Word" about 36 years ago, I went on to read the writings of each critic he mentioned. In John MacDonald, I found the most successful challenge to Modernism. Then, when I got back to Australia, I found the avant guard was dead. The "artworld" had become the arts industry and had adopted New York's passion for Post-Modernism. Suddenly everyone was discussing Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva, Faucault etc, and doing it in jargon which, when analysed, was often framed in nonsensical syntax. The game had become all about being obscure. I did my best to penetrate English translations of the original texts, but found myself biased from the start and never able to accept more than about 10% of the ideas as valid from my sense of values. I was relieved when post-modern relativism began to be challenged and successful arguments against it proposed.
But one good thing Post-Modernism did achieve was to remove the "fundamental aperture" (Woolf's phrase) down which art was disappearing, to make it okay for art to be meaningful again, and to cross reference inspiration from any source. It created a re-birth. I wonder now what the next cultural developments will reveal?
Among other topics, artists are increasingly responding to the global threats to the environment. How will it be received by galleries, collectors, and critics?
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at December 1, 2016 3:34 AM MST
Benedict Arnold 