Semi-related: "Arrival" was a terrific movie adaptation of "Story of Your Life", an even better short story by Ted Chiang, featuring attempts at communication with advanced alien intelligence. Highest recommendation for both.

"Terrific" is not the word I'd use to describe the adaptation. Arrival was entertaining and had, to me, impressive visual and auditory direction, but it completely missed the point of "Story of Your Life" in the way it changed the ending.

fair point; shouldve worded it "terrific movie, based on the even better book"

That story is not about aliens at all. It's about the subconscious.

We're all home (probably), but that [1] is NSFW! (it wasn't totally obvious to me before clicking, I thought it would be a text description)

There is a less know man with stingray(?) version of this from the same era.

Incorrect. It's erotic art, but art nonetheless. Otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it.

Maybe I have a only a loose grasp of how those words are defined but in my interpretation 'art' and 'smut' are not mutually exclusive

Fair enough. In my understanding "smut" is typically a synonym for pornography, and pornography is generally only valued for its ability to arouse or titillate.

Also a good description of most art.

Can we please talk about NoSQL Databases now?

I've never quibbled,

If it was ribald.

When correctly viewed,

Everything is lewd.

Rhetorical question to make you think: where do we draw the line between smut and art?

That's something for parents to do for their children, and for me to not care about.

smut is gratituous and without meaning and has a singular purpose. It is pretty easy to tell apart.

It's not so clear; not only is there porn that has meaning or even a message(think some fanfiction, or certain hentai manga), but erotic art sits in a strange position. Philosophers still argue about whether 'erotic art' is art, or whether it can be delineated from porn at all. Not to mention, there are contemporary (last five years) arguments for and against porn itself being art. You can make a reasonable case (i.e. one taken seriously by experts in the field) either way.

Then this is art.

MAIDEN: You hateful octopus! Your sucking at the mouth of my womb makes me gasp for breath! Aah! yes… it’s…there!!! With the sucker, the sucker!! Inside, squiggle, squiggle, oooh! Oooh, good, oooh good! There, there! Theeeeere! Goood! Whew! Aah! Good, good, aaaaaaaaaah! Not yet! Until now it was I that men called an octopus! An octopus! Ooh! Whew! How are you able…!? Ooh! “yoyoyooh, saa… hicha hicha gucha gucha, yuchyuu chyu guzu guzu suu suuu….”

(Art ∨ smut)? At least it's consensual, unlike Dr. Hill's trysting with a bubble headed coed.

I don't see any hectocotyli so it's possible The Fisherman's Wife passes the Bechdel test.

NOVA's Kings of Camouflage is another great doc - on cuttlefish

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/kings-of-camouflage/

I have spent many an idle day swimming around a reef, playing with an Octopus like a puppy.

They are delightful, inquisitive, smart creatures who seem to really enjoy engaging with these huge ungainly creatures from the land that occasionally stop by. I made acquaintance with one octopus on my local reef by introducing it to gold goins - they can't seem to resist shiny gold things, and indeed in this case, I gave the coin to the octopus and it swam off to its hidden midden (which I was able to find after a while), where it had also collected bottles-caps and lost fishing tackle.

Another time, I watched a smaller octopus playfully baiting whitefish by dangling an empty crayfish husk out of its hole .. just idly floating it in the current until a dumb whitefish came along for a nibble, and then BAM out came another tentacle from the hole, and the world was less one dumb whitefish.

To these I'd add the classic Vampyroteuthis infernalis by Vilém Flusser and Louis Bec.

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/vampyroteuthi...

I absolutely love love love love 'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife'...I saw it for the first time online almost twenty years ago and even then without knowing what it meant or the language, i just knew that it would be the most erotic thing that I will ever see.. two decades since, I still stand by that assessment.