Fun related concept is "auteurial time density"—how many hours/years of *one person's* idiosyncratic creative perspective is represented here? Gaudi, Welles, Klint, Caro, etc
Not fully reliable ofc—doesn't capture the awe in jazz, plein-air painting, etc. But I think the absence of creative time density says something about what's missing in slop. At least in improv arts there's expertise density, which is a different kind of time density.
Thinking about "creative time density": how many person-hrs/yrs went into this specific artifact/place/experience?
It's a reliable awe trigger for me. Performers spending 100s of hours prepping a few minutes of material for a show, a scholar spending a decade on a book, a Ghibli film, cathedrals.
(excerpts from buff.ly/vaXHjb1, which title I can endorse only as a joke)