I'm a huge fan of this. There's something magical about receipt printers. I love the idea that there is a long, infinite canvas which can flow from the printer. And part of the allure is the clunky slowness of the printer and the rough analog quality of the print. That rendering of the mountains works very well for the medium!
Sorry for the self promo, this is just too relevant not to share: I created a generative art piece using receipt printers in which the printers "print themselves to death" over a tub of water. Video here: https://vimeo.com/336939272
I understand what you mean, but e.g. Toshiba TCx thermal receipt printer (6145-1TN) prints 406mm/sec (125 lps at 8lpi). I think that is very very fast.
Sometimes I post stuff to HN because I'm interested in how people here react to it - sometimes they've done something similar, sometimes they'll wonder how it's done and come up with a rough outline of an approach that's worth looking at.
I think art like Urinal is dumb, but I wouldn't say it's not art. Trying to define "real art" is a fools' errand. It's "I know it when I see it" that doesn't achieve anything. There's plenty of art that isn't beautiful or timeless that pretty much nobody other than a contrarian would claim isn't art. Having nothing to say is saying something. The only thing that even comes close to defining art is somebody presenting the artwork as such, and you can probably find plenty of counterexamples to that. Avoiding saying that some piece of art lacks value/impact by claiming it's not art is a lazy way people try to avoid others pointing out that their assessment of that art's value/impact may be wrong, and that their gripes with the work are pretty much purely subjective.
Hmm, I’m pretty sure the most general definition of art is exactly the opposite: subjective, immediate, and representing a private communication between the artist and their context/environment.
If anyone external to that communication gets some value from it as well, that’s a nice side benefit!
I don't know about the immediate part. Some works of art I saw didn't trigger anything, until I realized the next day that I kept thinking about them (films or contemporary art usually). It also seems like these specific works tend to have had a more profound effect on me than the immediate ones.
In the end, they maybe triggered some kind of immediate subconscious reaction, but the actual communication was delayed.
Gotta disagree on the beatuful and timeless parts of the definion.
Lots of art is ugly, or makes us face our own ugliness, and I would argue the best art causes some kind of emotional reaction be it calmness, peace, rage or disgust, often that looks messy and not beautiful.
As for timeless, most art exists as a critique of something, so it exists within the context and time that it was created. As the world changes some critiques are no longer relevant (if I made a piece decrying the ottoman empire, it may have been influential a long time ago, likely wouldn't matter today).
I think the difference between an Artist and a Craftsman is similar to the difference between a Scientist and an Engineer. Artist/Scientists are expiramental and pushing boundaries, Craftsman/Engineers use tried and true solutions to make something better in a repeatable way. Liking a piece because of technical talent is closer to craftsmanship than art.
Ironically the more timeless and beautiful it is the less likely it is to have something to say.
Sorry for the self promo, this is just too relevant not to share: I created a generative art piece using receipt printers in which the printers "print themselves to death" over a tub of water. Video here: https://vimeo.com/336939272