Enjoyed reading this. I was thinking about this part: “Can we no longer,” the editor Marco Roth lamented, “provide good-faith reasons for our cultural preferences, reasons rooted in private and idiosyncratic experience but articulated in a common language?”
Though I came across Bourdieu only recently, I had noticed that in any ecosystem — no matter the level you zoom in or zoom out — there is a majority/minority way of doing things. In a group of North/South Indians, if there is a majority of North Indians, the cultural references and idioms will tend toward Hindi (the dominant language in India). Within a group of people from the same state, there might be a split along accent lines. Within people from the same school, the split would be among those who watch Mani Ratnam films vs Hari films (High-brow/Low-brow). Even "sophisticated" taste in one group might be useless in another context. Like if a metropolitan filmgoer lands up in a village, his taste and worldview would have very little currency after the novelty wears off. People handle this disparity in different ways. Some adopt the codes and mores of the in-group and assimilate, while others stubbornly preserve their idiosyncracy while finding a way to communicate their taste and sensibility despite the "language gap."
If taste is also a social ability, partially, then an important component might not just be the curation of distinct influences but also the ability to communicate them seamlessly and effectively within the context of that bubble. "Our tastes are how we understand ourselves — and communicating them is how we understand each other." Maybe this constraint is what Camp frees us from temporarily by creating its own bubble with its own rules. But by its very nature, that sort of bubble cannot be mainstream and will remain a novelty until others find ways to assimilate its sensibilities with the mainstream (I'm guessing).
This has given me new ways to think about taste and deconstruct it, thanks for writing.
The Victorian history wedged into the middle of this would benefit from some corrections. "The government's design schools embraced the machine…” — not exactly. The early debates were far more about fine art vs. ornament than craft vs. machine; e.g. the Government School banned study of the human figure and landscapes so that it wouldn’t tread on the toes of the Royal Academy (which had a near monopoly on fine art education). Ewart and others were outraged enough by this to found a rival school in 1838 teaching figure drawing and design together.
“…while the contemporaneous Arts and Crafts movement resisted industrialization” — the government design schools were started in 1837 and the Arts and Crafts movement dates from around the 1880s so 'contemporaneous' isn't accurate here.
The "Morris dream" (fine and decorative arts taught together) wasn't first realised "several decades later" in Weimar but had already been realised in stages in England — Art Workers' Guild (1884), Lethaby's Central School (1896), Arts and Crafts reformers taking over the RCA itself by 1900 — Hermann Muthesius then exported the English movement to Germany, paving the way for the Bauhaus; in the article the abrupt jump to Germany is a bit of a non sequitur.
Very thought provoking! I especially like your opening paragraph about what it’s like to admire a woman with great taste. I feel that people with great taste exude a sort of creative confidence that imbues even their quirkier, less conventional choices with a cool aura. (“It’s cringe if I wear this, but cool if they do”, etc)
These people, through the force of personality, become trendsetters - making new things cool - in a way that LLMs, robotically imitating the trends around them, perhaps cannot
This is a good post except that it never actually delivers what the title promises.
It's a common pitfall in discussions of aesthetics: asserting that a certain point of view is wrong, and then spending 5,000 words moseying through historical examples rather than engaging with its substance.
AI can produce at near-zero marginal cost, then read the aggregate response: clicks, retention, purchases, shares, and feed the successful patterns back into the next generation. The model doesn't need taste. It needs output speed plus access to a selection signal. The selectivity is outsourced to the audience.
This is how mass culture has always worked. Hollywood test screenings, pop A&R, radio rotation.
If the selection signal systematically favors majority preference, AI-mediated production narrows collective taste rather than expanding it.
Enjoyed reading this. I was thinking about this part: “Can we no longer,” the editor Marco Roth lamented, “provide good-faith reasons for our cultural preferences, reasons rooted in private and idiosyncratic experience but articulated in a common language?”
Though I came across Bourdieu only recently, I had noticed that in any ecosystem — no matter the level you zoom in or zoom out — there is a majority/minority way of doing things. In a group of North/South Indians, if there is a majority of North Indians, the cultural references and idioms will tend toward Hindi (the dominant language in India). Within a group of people from the same state, there might be a split along accent lines. Within people from the same school, the split would be among those who watch Mani Ratnam films vs Hari films (High-brow/Low-brow). Even "sophisticated" taste in one group might be useless in another context. Like if a metropolitan filmgoer lands up in a village, his taste and worldview would have very little currency after the novelty wears off. People handle this disparity in different ways. Some adopt the codes and mores of the in-group and assimilate, while others stubbornly preserve their idiosyncracy while finding a way to communicate their taste and sensibility despite the "language gap."
If taste is also a social ability, partially, then an important component might not just be the curation of distinct influences but also the ability to communicate them seamlessly and effectively within the context of that bubble. "Our tastes are how we understand ourselves — and communicating them is how we understand each other." Maybe this constraint is what Camp frees us from temporarily by creating its own bubble with its own rules. But by its very nature, that sort of bubble cannot be mainstream and will remain a novelty until others find ways to assimilate its sensibilities with the mainstream (I'm guessing).
This has given me new ways to think about taste and deconstruct it, thanks for writing.
The Victorian history wedged into the middle of this would benefit from some corrections. "The government's design schools embraced the machine…” — not exactly. The early debates were far more about fine art vs. ornament than craft vs. machine; e.g. the Government School banned study of the human figure and landscapes so that it wouldn’t tread on the toes of the Royal Academy (which had a near monopoly on fine art education). Ewart and others were outraged enough by this to found a rival school in 1838 teaching figure drawing and design together.
“…while the contemporaneous Arts and Crafts movement resisted industrialization” — the government design schools were started in 1837 and the Arts and Crafts movement dates from around the 1880s so 'contemporaneous' isn't accurate here.
The "Morris dream" (fine and decorative arts taught together) wasn't first realised "several decades later" in Weimar but had already been realised in stages in England — Art Workers' Guild (1884), Lethaby's Central School (1896), Arts and Crafts reformers taking over the RCA itself by 1900 — Hermann Muthesius then exported the English movement to Germany, paving the way for the Bauhaus; in the article the abrupt jump to Germany is a bit of a non sequitur.
Relatedly, Henry Cole's 1852 'Chamber of Horrors' — where the state tried to train public taste through an exhibition — may be of interest. https://clemwood.substack.com/p/the-third-gentleman?r=2usf4u&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Very thought provoking! I especially like your opening paragraph about what it’s like to admire a woman with great taste. I feel that people with great taste exude a sort of creative confidence that imbues even their quirkier, less conventional choices with a cool aura. (“It’s cringe if I wear this, but cool if they do”, etc)
These people, through the force of personality, become trendsetters - making new things cool - in a way that LLMs, robotically imitating the trends around them, perhaps cannot
This is a good post except that it never actually delivers what the title promises.
It's a common pitfall in discussions of aesthetics: asserting that a certain point of view is wrong, and then spending 5,000 words moseying through historical examples rather than engaging with its substance.
A similar article that I found quite compelling:
https://806324.us26.myftpupload.com/2022/08/26/how-to-develop-good-taste-pt-1/
AI can produce at near-zero marginal cost, then read the aggregate response: clicks, retention, purchases, shares, and feed the successful patterns back into the next generation. The model doesn't need taste. It needs output speed plus access to a selection signal. The selectivity is outsourced to the audience.
This is how mass culture has always worked. Hollywood test screenings, pop A&R, radio rotation.
If the selection signal systematically favors majority preference, AI-mediated production narrows collective taste rather than expanding it.