Luke Burgis interviews Patrick Collison on aesthetics

It was very fun talking to @patrickc  about New Aesthetics at the @ClunyInstitute ‘s conference last month.

We talked about:

—The origin story of the New Aesthetics grants — and why he and Tyler Cowen disagree on almost everything aesthetic (1:00)

—Why culture is “stuck”: a 1926 Bauhaus building could pass for last year’s (2:30)

—Modernism’s explicit, stated mission to tear down beauty — “they weren’t hiding it” (3:30) —Solzhenitsyn: you can fake goodness and truth, but beauty “bears within it its own verification” (6:30)

—Is beauty objective? Why everyone visits Toledo, Spain and no one visits Toledo, Ohio (7:30)

—Detroit was rich for ~25 years and built the DIA. Silicon Valley’s been rich for 50. “We could do the Silicon Valley art tour in a coffee break” (14:30)

—Was Y Combinator secretly modeled on the art atelier? (18:30)

—The highest-leverage point for aesthetic renewal used to be churches. What is it now? (27:00)

—The sacred as an “endangered species”

— and Patrick’s alternative theory of WTF happened in 1971: we lost the sacred, so we can’t have nice things (28:30)

—I asked him about Vatican II and technological stagnation. He (wisely?) passed. I didn’t. (34:30)

—”Can anyone name a work of art made with AI?” Silence. (37:30)

—Why Germany is preeminent in music, literature, and philosophy — and its food is so bad. (A demand-side problem.) (41:30)

—”Biology is so ugly, man.” Physics is beautiful; biology is a tower of hacks (43:30)

—The “anti-beauty conspiracy” of the last century — and the massive latent demand waiting to be uncorked (52:30)

—Patrick reacts live to beeswax art (56:30)

Here is the link.  And on YouTube, Brian Eno intro.