Response to Denise's Question

"What do we lose by avoiding the experience of "bad" art?"
How can one learn to appreciate the good, without also experiencing the bad?
Using these appointed critics influences society towards what they consider to be good art, which creates a trend of people selectively looking at just what the critics consider good. This jades society to the art, until a very elitist trend has been started, only the best of that art field is viewed, and what was once 'good' is now viewed as bad. This puts once popular artists out of work, and while it improves the overall quality of the field, while drastically decreasing the number of artists in that field. The influence of the critics also creates a trend towards their personal tastes, making other fields wither and struggle, though this is typically balanced by the diversity of critics.
Following this train of reasoning, do you think it could be said that it is the critics who control the trends and direction of the arts, rather than the artists themselves?

Sightless Dreams

How do the sightless dream?
Do they dream in sound?
Do they dream in scent?
Do they dream in touch?
Or do they dream in something else entirely?
Scientific studies say that dreaming is the result of random synapse firing in the visual cortex, as well as memory, and other sensory regions of the brain during REM sleep, at least in humans, which suggests that the sightless still dream in visual means primarily. But then there are those who have either an impaired visual cortex, or it has atrophied due to disuse. If that is the case, then logically one would assume that they dream in all senses but sight.

What do you think?