nature art,

also done or sought art: “recording what happens naturally,” with the authors choice limited to scope, span, viewpoint; photography, fractals, cloud art are examples. May not be about nature at all: misrecited poetry or quotation blur, random ephemera, even core Knowledge bits can be art if seen as “done” and “found” — unprepared, unedited; mostly, however, it is “watching the grass grow” — sniffing in visual feeds, raw data, math spaces, simulated complexities. Purists allow no setup or postprocessing ever, a laxer stance admits such copyedits as might conceivably have occurred on their own; most would simply label a snapshot “nature” when they cant or wont develop it into anything original. Others reject the very premise — “the unnatural naturality hunt”: “frantically chasing a falling leaf vs. its clinging to your cheek by a blow of wind.”  ■    Feelery preselection blurs the boundary but what marks off nature art is its once-doneness, conscious undo of any embellishing or evolving of the recording (whats being recorded may have naturally evolved, of course). Sample, filter, snap — but never joggle your catch; this is, some claim, “the only honest form of art,” everything else contaminated by conformism, exploitation, self-gratification, fake livedness. Upon the traditional “wrought” art, the “sought” genres — momentary shots, condensed video, poetic oneliners — encroach from the short-form side: stretching nature beyond a first glimpse quickly loses steam. From the invention of writing onward, our recording capacities have grown in sophistication, totality: the past may be too vivid now — too tempting to return to, overfertile with revivals and remakes; vogue oscillates between declaring pastless nature snapshots the epitome of art — and recoiling into longer, elaborater, heavy-past (so feelery-prone) forms and media.

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