Cool Continuum: Make Your Mark in the Arts (opens in new tab)

  The Cool Continuum is a perspective shift, a new lens by which to study art and the artists that make it. Its strength lies in its subjectivity, which means you are invited to contribute your perspective to shape our collective understanding of what it takes to make art.

in other words: i'm spinning the subjectivity and arbitrariness of this crap as a strength not a weakness. this whole article co-written by chatgpt. thanks but no thanks

I'm not sure how I'd use this. I think of someone like Bob Dylan, who has arguably fit into all of those categories at various points in his career. Where would I put him? Does it just depend on what era you're talking about? But there's no concept of evolution within that model, no way to use it to predict whether someone will change categories, or how that could be done.

I'm also not sure what "cool" has to do with artistic contributions. Many great artists aren't cool, as I understand the word, and many cool people aren't artists, as I understand the word. And the thing it's tracking doesn't seem to be coolness, but artistic... prominence... or something along those lines.

Finally, it's not a continuum, it's a set of discrete categories. There's nothing in that model that talks about (for example) being mostly a rebel, shading a little bit into innovator. So the name is confusing as well.

I don't like the idea proposed in this article of labelling artists. Art is too subjective to adhere to these labels. It also pushes a 'us/them' narrative, "The Rest of Us." For better or worse, artists are just regular people. Maybe applying this to pieces of art, like a song, painting, essay, play, video game, etc, could work.

How does this crap make its way to the front page?

This looks more like a dartboard than a continuum.