I refer to Benson and Weixiong's article, "Art is subjective", dated 11th July 2003, and Teo Pau Lin's article, "You call that art?", dated 6th July 2003. In my personal opinion, art, is a semantic word. What art is depends a lot of what one defines as art. Someone looking at a piece of abstract art such as Harmony I & II outside Ngee Ann City along Orchard Road, may understand what the sculptor is trying to say and the sculpture may invoke deep feelings in him. However, someone else looking at the same piece of art may think that it is just another sculpture along Orchard Road, nothing spectacular. Another person might even question whether it really is art because it looks to him like "some stupid sculpture by some eccentric artist". I feel that art can be anything, as long as it expresses the thoughts and feelings of its artist. Art should not be scorned even if its viewer does not understand what it means. It might mean anything, but the artist had a purpose when he did the piece of art. Scorning a piece of art is also showing disrespect to the artist. We will be ignorant fools if we scorned at something we did not understand. That piece of art that we scorned might mean a lot to its artist. Take the videos through the eyes of a dog as an example. Teo Pau Lin obviously did not understand what the videos meant. However, the videos might have meant that our lives are too good and that we do not appreciate what we have, and are always moaning and groaning for something else better. The shooting of the video through a dog's eyes is also significant as we all compare a life of poverty and hardship to a dog's life. Like Pocahontas said, "if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you"ll learn things you never knew". The artist probably felt that we, humans had too good a life and needed to climb down from our perch to experience hardship once in a while so that we do not take what we have for granted.
