Skip to content
Home/ What Art Does: Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art
What Art Does: Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art

What Art Does: Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art

by Wittingslow, Ryan Mitchell
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9781538183441

We derive a great deal of cognitive pleasure from asking what artworks mean. And yet, despite the seriousness with which we approach these questions, they all too often rely on theories of art that fail to adequately explain how art conveys meaning.

This book proposes a new theory. In contrast to more conventional definitions of art, What Art Does defends the claim that artworks constitute a class of tool. Like other tools, artworks are objects that have functions and that furnish affordances. However, thanks to the particular social and material facts that underpin the creation of artworks, the functions that artworks have and the affordances they furnish are special.

It is thanks to these special functions and affordances that artworks obtain their privileged character and status. Because artworks do things that other tools cannot, we take artworks to be meaning-making objects with something to say.

About the author

Product details

Pub dateAug 20, 2026
ISBN-101538183447
ISBN-139781538183441
LanguageEnglish
Last updated 2026-08-21 19:46
$46.45
In stock — ships in 24 hours with free tracking
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Criticism & Theory
See all
Beechwood Airship Interviews (UK)
Richards, Dan
$16.56
Imaginary Museum Lib/E: A Personal Tour of Contemporary Art Featuring Ghosts, Nudity, and Disagreeme
<p>Join the art critic Ben Eastham on a private tour of an extraordinary museum. Let him walk you through a building constructed from memory and filled with a series of bewildering art works, while he delivers a guide comprised of personal experience, professional expertise and sympathy.</p><p>In this stunningly original audiobook, an introduction to contemporary art is combined with the author's own memories and reflections on what art means. With the help of a cast of interfering security guards, pretentious curators, skeptical visitors, angry protestors, and elusive ghosts, Eastham proposes that the art of today offers a way of understanding our increasingly strange and complex times.</p><p>Eastham doesn't ask you to like the artworks in his imaginary museum, but offers the tools for you to formulate and express your own opinion of them. He argues that art should be judged by the feelings it provokes and the conversations it generates: in talking about art, we learn to talk about ourselves and the world in which we live.</p>
$32.06
Imaginary Museum: A Personal Tour of Contemporary Art Featuring Ghosts, Nudity, and Disagreements
<p>Join the art critic Ben Eastham on a private tour of an extraordinary museum. Let him walk you through a building constructed from memory and filled with a series of bewildering art works, while he delivers a guide comprised of personal experience, professional expertise and sympathy.</p><p>In this stunningly original audiobook, an introduction to contemporary art is combined with the author's own memories and reflections on what art means. With the help of a cast of interfering security guards, pretentious curators, skeptical visitors, angry protestors, and elusive ghosts, Eastham proposes that the art of today offers a way of understanding our increasingly strange and complex times.</p><p>Eastham doesn't ask you to like the artworks in his imaginary museum, but offers the tools for you to formulate and express your own opinion of them. He argues that art should be judged by the feelings it provokes and the conversations it generates: in talking about art, we learn to talk about ourselves and the world in which we live.</p>
$19.36
Imaginary Museum: A Personal Tour of Contemporary Art Featuring Ghosts, Nudity, and Disagreements
<p>Join the art critic Ben Eastham on a private tour of an extraordinary museum. Let him walk you through a building constructed from memory and filled with a series of bewildering art works, while he delivers a guide comprised of personal experience, professional expertise and sympathy.</p><p>In this stunningly original audiobook, an introduction to contemporary art is combined with the author's own memories and reflections on what art means. With the help of a cast of interfering security guards, pretentious curators, skeptical visitors, angry protestors, and elusive ghosts, Eastham proposes that the art of today offers a way of understanding our increasingly strange and complex times.</p><p>Eastham doesn't ask you to like the artworks in his imaginary museum, but offers the tools for you to formulate and express your own opinion of them. He argues that art should be judged by the feelings it provokes and the conversations it generates: in talking about art, we learn to talk about ourselves and the world in which we live.</p>
$29.49
Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light
Shlain, Leonard
$14.16
Studies In Iconology: Humanistic Themes In The Art Of The Renaissance (Revised)
Panofsky, Erwin
$99.05