Image from Anders Sandberg |
All of them appeared at once both human and inhuman, even the most monstrous of forms. A serpentine beast, as long as a sea freighter and as thick as a man is tall, coiled and curved within the confines of the passageway's northern wall. Facing it from the other were numerous specimens of similarly unholy creation: a thing like a giant squid, a yeti, something with the face of a man, but with a body wholly indescribable by any human tongue. Standing free about the place, cast in glass cubes, stood smaller creatures. Some as large as a dog, some as small as a mouse. Each exhibited a chilling, beautiful strangeness. Each marked a place on that narrow boundary between the living and the bizarre. Only a scarce few embodied anything like the quality of beauty we humans might look for in a thing ... but all were beautiful in some sense. Even if only made beautiful by the purity of the horror their deathless stares engendered. As had been told in stories handed down through generations, it was the wont of the Flesh Sculptors to pursue expression of their artistry in a variety of emotional mediums -- from admiration through apprehension, hatred to pity, simmering lust to stark terror, and the strange sense of preternatural unease that gripped me now. The things I saw on that short walk evoked all these emotions in me, along with others I could never hope to attach names to if I lived a thousand years longer...A term coined on pre-industrial age Earth as an attempt to break the hold on art by the elitists of that time. The term 'fine' has little to do with the quality of the work but refers more to the purity of its discipline. The title of 'fine art' originally referred to certain visual arts, specifically those categories concerned with aesthetics or beauty. In that earlier time it was strictly used to refer to sculpture, painting and printmaking. Later in the post industrial age, as culture and technology changed, it came to include such things as architecture, the performing arts (dance, theater and opera) and certain types of photography, film, music, multimedia and poetry. Still today we are seeing changes as further additions have made their way into the fine art category including perfect art and the virtual gardens.
From "In the Hall of the Flesh Sculptors"