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Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression.
— Oscar Wilde

Talking on what art IS, Oscar Wilde - although not one of my more celebrated writers - was correct to a point¹. Art is useless. Unlike the machines that we built to serve information across the world at lighting speeds, art has no sole purpose, goal, or pursuit. Art floats in purgatory between the two paradoxical ideas of serving no utility and encompassing the entire human experience and all that can be expressed. But please do not misunderstand though, when it comes to art and utility, neither of these attributes, in real-world application, are mutually exclusive.

There is art in the way unfathomable amounts of data moves around this world with such breath and ease. The protocols, algorithms, and systems all hold an artistic air that, when all combined into this great web called the internet, gives a feeling of astonishment to how very large the human race is and humbles us in the face of its size. The internet, although seeded in extremely strict and abrasive logic which would place it far outside the old definitions of art, holds artistic attributes when we view art not as a simple object (i.e a painting or a musical piece), but the raw emotions that that object invokes.

Footnotes

1. anti-semitic views pervaded the land at the time. ↩