What I have to say:
For me, I am still tied to the functionality of the thing. Art, language, Dew Cans, they are all aspects of a larger thing. My ideas, are still fundementally unfulfilling until they are shared with someone, through some medium. That is my art. It is infused in every action I take and everything that I do. I am powerless to change what you might think about my art, but all the same it must be made.
The idea for this actually sprang forth from some animation that I once watched. The idea that there is a me inside my very own head and that me is the "real" me. There also is a me inside your head. When I say things, do things, write things, the me inside your head is the me that you precieve doing those things. There is absolutly nothing that I can do to make you understand those things the exact way that I intend them. There is nothing that I can do to directly change the me that is inside your head.
So, although I believe that I can do nothing to MAKE you to understand what I want to convey, my art is grounded in the idea that you MUST understand what I mean. The effectivness of art is the ability to make manifest the reaction that is intended by the artist. The medium and style is paramount to the message and substance. For me personally, the balance is the most important thing. Neither is more important.
That being said, I think that a work of art is not something that cannot be expressed in any other medium. Rather, the effectiveness of a work is very dependent on the medium. I for example apreciate particular presentations more than others. I like shiny things. If you want me to understand you better, then I recomend something that I will be more likely to want to experience.
Maybe it is more a view of art as a rhetoric. Style does not create content, although style can in itself BE content.
Some people are content with creating for themselves. For me humanity is defined by the interaction with other humans. I am very human and that is why I believe that without a communication the debate over weither something is or is not art is immaterial. It can be art all it likes it really doesn't matter to me if it exists in a box.
And a debate about absolutes is rediculous.