It was something about how art is composed of both self expression (which they consider guaranteed when a human creates anything) and the skills of a medium (the skills differ by medium, and different portions of the "idea" are brought forth because of that).

This is far too technical of a definition. Humans don't consciously try to express themselves in things they create. However, you the care someone puts into their work is demonstrable, and if that desire to do good work is an element of self-expression, then so be it. But that doesn't make it actually art. This would include things that are clearly not art, like q-tips, well-written lecture notes, and speed-runs.

When you're only adding skills in the medium, you've now asserted that low skilled people aren't capable of art. That's utter nonsense, and wreaks of artistic intellectualism. "Children's art" becomes a literal impossibility.

They are trying to express that the metaphysical element of the art (the idea) has to be brought forward from the skill of the artist, but this has never been true. It helps to be skilled, but skill is not necessarily part of it. In fact, part of the problem is how you would even begin to try measuring skill in artistry.

It is a natural response to the demand for art-like products, to strip some of that depth. But the common consumer loves the idea that they are consuming art, because art appreciation is sophisticated while product enjoyment is philistine.

I think there's a huge problem between art and design. Graphic Designers are not the same as a Graphic Artist, in my mind. Humans like aesthetics without caring much about art. Technically excellent design is what most consumer's buy: see wolf t-shirts. They look fine, but they actually express nothing metaphysically. They're not designed to. They are just designed to be mildly aesthetically pleasing to someone who likes wolves. This is not art. In fact, it's the lowest possible form of philosophical aesthetics that you can have. But it is graphic design. There is genuine technical sophistication and skill required into making those t-shirts, but there is no aesthetic or metaphysical quality (until you go onto Amazon's review page and see people inserting metaphysical qualities via the reviews)

I think your artist friends were probably being trained as designers in college, and that's how they got to that perception (that and the likelihood of having a Leftist materials underlying philosophy). Art is different.

Intellectual property, I have settled on being largely nonsense, by trying to treat it like property; that one can only own an idea if they never share it with anyone. While I'm not sure if property rights must be inherently exclusive, it makes a lot of sense here, with ideas.

Yeah, to correspond with that, I don't think "intellectual property" is property in and of itself, and it actually relies on the establishment of a regulatory structure to invent the property by recognizing that it exists. Normal property, and property rights, appear to be natural rights that people tend to simply assume. They assume ownership of objects they create, as well as other people understanding the concepts of these assumptions. Other implicitly understand that it's your bowl, certainly while you are eating from it. The fact that the idea hasn't actually been manifested into a material form, means that it's not really a property. That's why the government doesn't just innately accept intellectual property rights and regulate arguments between property owners who's contracts and obligations seem violated. Instead, intellectual property has to be asserted by the state in order for those property rights to exist, meaning that intellectual property is a positive right.

At least when you create a song or something like that, there is an expression that brings the idea into the material world from the metaphysical. The manifestation of ideas into property makes sense to me, but I don't think that ideas themselves are property.