Is Art Limited?

[Hoofhurr]

Hmm. Interesting points. Could music make a person who has no sad experiences in life feel sad? Or is music's capacity to evoke emotion intimately linked to a person's range of prior emotional experiences and their body chemistry?

I think I still disagree with you that we've run the well dry on original music. I agree that mathematically there are only so many combinations of notes, timing, and rhythm, but I think how you present the music and how you play it can contribute to what I call 'originality' and it's very hard to quantify emotional response to music. Let's face it, two completely different artists could play a minor chord progression and evoke a wide range of intense responses that one might call sadness. What your equation doesn't take into account are things like the timbre and harmonics that are unique to every voice and instrument.

Let's move to comedy as an artform. The way a person tells a joke is 99% of what makes us laugh, imo. So is the originality in the 1% that is the scripted sequence of words or is it in the 99% that is the interpretation and delivery?