"Art" and the Dada Movement

I thought what we went over in class today was very interesting. The whole idea of what is art and what isn't art is always a big argument, one in which I'm not quite sure upon which side I stand at times. I see the idea of the urinal sculpture as "art" to be true, because (to link it to our homework) he was taking something familiar and placing it in an unfamiliar setting. This piece of art causes the viewer to see something in a way they usually don't (such as seeing this urinal as a "mini-waterfall producing machine"), and it promotes the viewer to think - a very key aspect, in my opinion, that practically all art contains. However, the paintings where it looks like someone took three paint cans and threw them at the canvas, well, I'm going to need some convincing to see that as art.
Another thing I found really interesting was related to our readings. The movements, like the Dada movement, created some very cool rules for poets to follow. The "N+7" type of poem was a neat idea, and with dictionaries sometimes containing different words, it makes the poem like a puzzle. However, while the idea behind it is cool, they sure are difficult to read and sometimes not too enjoyable. The "exquisite corpse" game was a fun way to learn about another interesting technique to creating poetry, and as with all the exercises we've been doing in class, there were definitely some unique results.