Robert Clements:

>Has Jon (or anyone else) every heard of an self-proclaimed experimental
>artist accepting that a work was a failure because the audience judged
>against it? It doesn't happen; which is why i think demonstration is a more
>honest terminology than experimental.  Experimental implies the possibility
>of failure; & artistic experimentation (in its common usage, rather than as
>an Platonic ideal) rejects the concept, generally as a fault in the
>audience.

If I am not mistaken, "experimental" has for a very long time been a
reasonably standard term in the critical language of modernism in the
arts, as, for instance, the "experimental novels" of Joyce and Woolf.
Experimental, in ordinary usage, surely allows for the possibility of
failure, but it (contrary to the Popper talk) need not have anything to
DO with truth values.  An "experimental" musical or literary piece can
"work" or not work, be appealing or not appealing, be critically acclaimed
or not.  In other words, it can be good or not, rather than true or false.
Also, "experimental" can correctly be applied to a process rather than an
outcome, and might refer simply to attempts to produce something new and
different in style.  In science a failed experiment can tell you something,
truth-wise," maybe even something important.  In the arts isn't a failure
simply sent to oblivion? I suspect musicians often know when their works
have failed.  If they blame the audience this may simply be self-deception.
(Of course, audiences may be wrong too.)

Jim Tobin