freelance paradigm

For a long time I was trying to figure out what makes the difference between styles or genres in art. I'm not talking about different domains of art (like music, painting, photography...), I'm talking about differences within genres of those domains. For example; what makes the difference between classical and rock music. Or, what makes the difference between renaissance or impressionism painting.

For a long time I thought that different genres have different rules. They don't. It's not about the rules. It's about the values!

There is exactly the same set of rules that governs fashion or press photography, however different they might seem. It is just that different values apply, that is to say; different aspects of the work are recognized as important. Fashion might value beauty over truth, while photojournalism values truth a lot more than visual pleasantness of the photograph. But both are a result of more or less the same process. Rules don't define genres, rules define domain.

For example pseudocode for photography might go:

use a photosensitive medium
expose it with projected light to create 2-dimensional pattern

These are all the rules you need to create a photograph. The variety of different styles and approaches comes from the differences in what people value the most while applying those rules to their work. An other set of rules (or pseudocode) will produce music, literature or painting, but it is not hard too understand now that even though the rules are different, certain periods or certain people will have a tendency to apply the same set of values across different domains of art. That is why baroque music "sounds" very much the same as baroque architecture "looks" like. It's the shared values, not the rules that make that sameness.