This guy needs to lay off the hash pipe.

Running around is art? I see this at the track everyday.

And what if the runners accidently do bump into people? Or somebody trips them, or there's a wet floor, and other potential hazards? What if this encourages kids and other people to partake in running around a museum?

I don't think it's art. I think it's ridiculous.

Ah, similar is the argument that Duchamp's Fountain is not art. Or that Jean-Claude & Christo's work is not art. Simply because you can see this anywhere, doesn't exclude it from being art. With the internet, nearly anyone can see any painting at any momment. So because I can see the Mona Lisa in a couple clicks, does that no longer make it art? And yes, it maay be or cause a hazzard, but how does that make it not art? Much of James Turrell's work has caused people to lean on what they thought were walls, but were optical illusions and thus injure themselves. Did that make his work not art?

I don't think that it's just the running around that's important, otherwise he probably would've just run video of people running on an endless loop (a much easier, less expensive, and less hazzardous option). But having a runner, dressed in athletic apparell, sprinting through the Tate is somewhat out of place and definitely accents the ideas. You really notice this. Much of the rest of the art you can glance at and walk past and immediately forget.

I like this.

Ecological art, hm. There's a new concept. Instead of art for art's sake, it's art for ecology's sake?

While I'd prefer that the winner of this competition do some kind of piece that exemplifies the state of the world, rather than just the least strain on the environment, I have to agree with the above poster that anything can be art.

Art is in the interpretation of the thing. Thus, anything can be an example of fine art, particularly in the post-modern age. If you're unsure of this phenomenon, look at the aluminum balloon animals of Jeff Koons, or the lard and chocolate sculptures of Janine Antoni (my favorite pieces). The pieces themselves may look comical or even every day, but art lies in the intent, both the artist's and his/her patrons.

At any rate, I would hope that someone could come up with a performance piece that is both low on environmental cost and has insight on the crisis of man & nature.

"His last piece (a winner) consisted of a light being switched on and off in a gallery, all day long."

Not quote accurate: it's "the lights going on and off", and the fact that it was more than one light was quite important to the experience. It drove the whole lighting system for the room, which was a mixture of incandescent and fluorescent, and the slight delay between the former and the latter meant that the gallery went through several different lighting conditions, each with their own set of shadows. More importantly, the gallery also had skylights, so the effect varied throughout the day and depending upon the weather. As the gallery wasn't a pure white cube, but had an unusual semi-pyramidal ceiling, all the variation in light brought one's attention to parts of the gallery that are usually ignored or minimised, as well as the role of light in art and architecture through the years.

Actually, when I saw it, the unexpected complexity detracted somewhat from the pure minimal conceptualism of the piece. A single light going on & off in a simple room would have been a stronger meditation on our digital world (where "anything" can be represented by a string of ons and offs), the binary basis of traditional logic, the opposition of life & death etc. None of this is explicit in the work, but if you engage with such art as the springboard for thought rather than dismissing it as being ridiculous, then conceptual works can be very compelling.

All I can say is that this was an extremely surprising and confusing to experience. Very out of place. Here I was looking at the Turners, and then wooosh! I find the argument over art and not art is very tedious. I will just say that personally I prefer art that has the "oh, wow..." reaction, and not so much the "woah!" kind of art (as in woah I almost just got run over!). Kind of fun though.