"total art" to me has no function. I see this as functional art. The stuff does matter, but not so much.
I was with a client yesterday and they have some very cool composite parts (the kind that go on fighters). They found a way to medal plate composite. I commented I wish I could have that done with all the carbon fibre stuff for cycling. Anyway later in the parking lot the chief engineer comes by, gets called over to see the bike stuff I happened to have in the trunk and back seat (from a bike fitting). He calls over the product manager over and VP sales. I showed them the Extralite stem (they have $50M in CNC machines) and they just passed it around each seeing how they did that. I told them about the one piece RECON cassettes and they want to see it next visit. So parts got me several C level guys chit chatting about cycling and cool parts, and me more business.
Anyway - parts matter, especially light ones.