The Nebulous Kingdom

What will become of art?

12/29/2011

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Sometimes I have an idea and it’s intriguing but I wait to put pen to paper.  In part because ideas take time to unfold, and in part because sometimes I can’t stand to put pen to paper and be disappointed at the chasm between what I thought and what I wrote.  It’s like being in an enchantingly wondrous landscape and taking a snap to capture the moment, only to discover later that the picture is common and banal.  And worse, to have other people be in the presence of this disappointment, even if they don’t see it as I do.

I had an idea today when I was playing with Adobe Elements, photo-editing software which came with a gift of the VisTablet Muse.  I’ll try to put pen to paper now but you'll have to forgive me if the sunset looks like any other.  

These days, the photo effects in Adobe Elements aren’t that extraordinary – watercolor, film grain, pencil – you could do something similar with an iPhone and a 99-cent app.  But if I put my 1995 hat on, it’s almost magical what you can do with a wave of the – thumb? index finger?  I’m not an art major, I didn’t study art history, and really I’m not attuned to the nuances of the thing.  It’s not my business, at least not anymore (though long ago I did briefly manage a series of Topanga Canyon salons for a well-connected local artist).  But I have to wonder as a layman, and a member of the masses, what is art then when you can produce something so technically intricate and so complex – so easily.  And what does what is happening in technology today mean for the future of art?

Is art about the thing itself – or about the person who made the thing?  If it’s easy to do, is it really art?  If the Mona Lisa was easy to accomplish and not the laborious work of hours, days and weeks, would we look at it with the same awe in the Louvre?  We certainly wouldn’t pay the same amount of money.  We pay that kind of money because it is scarce, and was hard to make.  If there were a thousand, on the same canvas and with the same brushstrokes, it wouldn’t be the same to us at all.

We live in a world of science, and yet leave art in this realm of the ambiguous.  In a way, we love the mystery of it.  If we looked too close, the magic would dissipate. 

And in a way, this is true.  If art is fundamentally intended to make us feel – feel something, feel anything, think because we feel – then it operates in its own market, the market for attention and poignancy and heartbreak and inspiration.  More accurately, it operates in 7 billion markets, each consisting of a single individual.  And if each individual looks too hard at art, we start thinking, and some point when we think too hard, we stop feeling.

Art’s realm – its area of competitive advantage, if you will – is outside of order and logic and our existing vocabulary.  Conceptually I can carve out what art is not, but I can’t define what art is.  I know it’s not brushwork or technical skill or the ability to craft an enigmatic half-smile.  Because if I see a hundred enigmatic half-smiles – or the same one a hundred times – I don’t feel the same way as I did the first time I saw it when there was this fresh and intriguing story behind it, the story of the artist, his subject and his time.

And if art is that which is designed and makes the audience feel, then it can’t possibly be objective.  I don’t respond to the same things that you do.  But to me, it is objective - when I hear a song or watch a movie, and it calls to me, my response is objective and chemical.  It’s not some soft unmeasurable reaction – it may be unmeasured but not unmeasurable. Not to hedge on the age-old question but it seems whether something can be called art is actually subjectively objective.

If I see a pattern, ten boy-meets-girl movies in a row, my reaction changes over that time, even if the tenth was precisely as cheesy as the first.  Perhaps that’s why we value originality so much in art.  I don’t necessarily believe that novelty has intrinsic value beyond its role as an experiment – in the same way that in science, even failed experiments have value.  But in truth, I do happen to believe there is value in novelty beyond its role as an experiment, because art must have an element of originality for each person in order for them to notice.  And we must notice before we can feel (though, one caveat, even novelty itself can tire over time, as we become shell-shocked and battle-weary).

So what does this all mean for art, going forward?  The “art world” used to be a gated community, a place where rich people spent exorbitant amounts of money and traded those numbers for status.  It was populated by collectors, curators, gallery owners, and a lucky chosen few artists.  It developed its own vocabulary to keep other people out, its own subculture of values, and everyone would play the game to get a chance to make money doing what they loved.  No longer.  In some ways, it’s a fait accompli.  Art is streaming into the world like all hell, forking into an almost infinite number of applications, with the masses taking the tools for creation, distribution and communication into their own hands.  What remains and what we call art will fall into three main channels:  (1) art as great stories, (2) art as the journey of the artist in their time, and (3) art as an epic endeavor.

Great stories never go out of fashion because we are narcissists and we are human beings, and stories allow us to step into the shoes of others and learn through that empathy.  Stories are about people (or some entities we have imbued with human qualities).  The impossibility of ever really being someone else offers a challenge to artists – how to bring their audience as asymptotically near as possible to the experience of another human being.  Technology also continues to offer us new and harder ways to tell these stories – 3D movies like Hugo, epic-scale television series like Game of Thrones, interactive games like Ico, media mash-ups like Storify– and we have only brushed the water with our toes.  Some of the new genres require large cross-functional teams, adding another layer of complexity to the already not-easy task of bringing something novel into being that makes someone else – and ideally many someone elses, to be commercially viable – feel.

The artist as his or her own story will continue to be compelling as art.  The tragedy of the artist, the story of their work, the phases over time as they develop as people, the loves and scandals – we’re always interested in people, especially people who live different lives than our own.  It was Van Gogh with his amputated ear, then Andy Warhol as the quintessential artist-as-art installation, and it has continued to this day with the outrageous Damien Hirst of Golden Calf fame and Jeff Koons with his porn star-cum-Italian politician now ex-wife.  They get excoriated at times but they get noticed.  The role of the critic will increasingly be to tell the story of the artist, their work and journey in the context of their times and history, and perhaps the critic’s own parallel journey  as well  – or else be marginalized as elitist out-of-touch academicians.

Lastly, there will remain a kind of art that calls to us because it is of immense proportions or extraordinary difficulty – the epic endeavor.  In some ways, it is a spinoff of the artist-as-art except that the art itself stands independent of its creators.  You may not know the story of it but you know by just looking at the scale of the thing – and I use the term “scale” loosely, to incorporate Willard Wigan’s diminutive micro-sculptures and Margaret Wertheim’s knit coral reefs and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates – you know that it is remarkable, even if you hate it. 

And finally, perhaps what we call great art - when we choose to pin that descriptor on - great art will be the sort that binds us altogether, that calls us all individually and so we come in our own way to this place where we look upon it and feel with and for each other.

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All the things we probably don't know (and think we do)

12/25/2011

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Let's start with some of the things we thought we knew (and didn't):

Field:  Development Psychology
Long-held idea:  Babies six months or younger have no sense of “object permanence,” the belief that an object still exists even when it is out of sight
Recent discovery:   Infants may not remember what they saw, but they remember that they saw something (1991, 2011)
Reference:  http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/babies-remember-inklings-not-objects/

Field:  Medicine
Long-held idea:  Stress and lifestyle cause ulcers
Recent discovery:  H. pylori bacterium causes more than 90% of duodenal (intestinal) ulcers and up to 80% of gastric (stomach) ulcers, and can be cured through a course of antibiotics (1982)
Reference:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4304290.stm

Field:  Astronomy
Long-held idea:  There are 9 planets in our solar system
Recent discovery:  Pluto is not a planet after all, bringing the count to 8 (2006)
Reference:  http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2098150,00.html 


Field:  Physics
Long-held idea:  Time travel is not possible
Recent discovery:  Particles were clocked at going faster than the speed of light, making time travel possible (2011)
Reference:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/science/space/neutrino-finding-is-confirmed-in-second-experiment-opera-scientists-say.html

Field:  Technology
Long-held idea:  The limit on battery technology has nearly been reached
Recent discovery:  We may soon be able to store 8 times more energy than conventional designs thanks to a new conducting material (2011)
Reference:  http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/23/7923474-battery-tech-improving-as-demand-soars   

Field:  Economics
Long-held idea:  Laissez-faire capitalism is the system that optimizes for the greatest good for all
Recent discoveries:  There may be ways to improve upon laissez-faire capitalism, e.g. choice architecture a la Nudge, focused regulation that solves for externalities and other market failures, the Nordic model, institutional / infrastructure investment, etc. (approx. 1980-present)
References:  Many.

Field:  Education 
Long-held idea:  Classroom size is one of the main drivers of academic outcomes
Recent discovery:  Teacher quality is more important than classroom size (i.e. classroom size only matters because the great-teacher-per-student ratio matters) (2006-2011)
Reference:  http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~jon/Econ230C/HanushekRivkin.pdf 

Field:  History 
Long-held idea:  King Tut was murdered
Recent discovery:  King Tut died from complications from a broken foot and malaria (2010)
Reference:  http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0217/King-Tut-The-science-behind-the-discovery 

Field:  Energy
Long-held idea:  Solar is fundamentally too inefficient to ever achieve grid parity wide-scale
Recent discovery:   Costs are plummeting and breakthroughs in solar are happening at a breakneck pace
Reference:  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/03/16/smaller-cheaper-faster-does-moores-law-apply-to-solar-cells/ ; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215141617.htm 


Now consider, if we were wrong about all these things for years if not decades, what we continue to be wrong about but just don't know yet.
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Emotions vs. principles as a basis for trust-building

12/24/2011

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I ran across this really fascinating post on Quora:
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-flaws-of-logical-thinking (first post)

The best bits:

"The real solution to the prisoner's dilemma is not to be illogical, but
to play with an illogical person."
 
"Emotions are a signal for strategic irrationality.  What is anger anyway? It is a signal to the other person, "I am going to start acting illogically now. You had better rethink your strategy because I'm about to disregard my own interest and thereby become really dangerous....How do you really win the prisoner's dilemma? Play with someone for whom you feel mutual, wild, illogical love. How do you keep people from challenging your authority or trying to steal your stuff? Go into flights of periodic, self-detrimental rage to let them know you won't take their shit. How do you believe in Santa forever? Develop an overpowering illogical emotion called "faith".
 
"As generations go by, there is an emotionality arms race. On one side,
there are fakers getting better and better at signalling a false emotional
states. On the other, there are emotional people getting better and better at
making their emotional tells into subtle, subconscious cues, and also getting better at picking up on them. People who fall behind in this "emotional intelligence" battle wind up penalized in all their interactions throughout life."


Assuming you buy it, it suggests a strategic logic (and perhaps evolutionary rationale) for emotions.  It also puts into words this discomfort I've always had with people who take a very narrow view of rationality - it just doesn't seem to produce optimal outcomes, despite its stated mission of doing just that.  It also presents a hypothesis to explain why John Kay's theory of obliquity - that sometimes it's better to come at a goal indirectly - might be right. 

Emotions seem like a somewhat primitive tool, though, for building confidence and trust in others.  Emotions are not fully controllable and largely chemical in effect.  They also tend to be ephemeral.  I may love you today but how will you know if I will love you tomorrow?  Nature was kind enough to give everyone this basic toolkit but I think we can do it one better.

I propose that the answer might be principles or values embodied as identity - which is in essence the synthesis of conscious decisions that were shaped by our emotional responses, and then held relatively stable by the interplay between our willed commitment and our emotional attachment to our identity.  "I choose to love you because I couldn't help loving you, and I continue to love you because I made that choice and I am the kind of person who keeps my commitments."  It is a hybrid of choice and emotion, and with potentially the robustness that comes with hybrid vigor. 
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In a world of complex systems

12/19/2011

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http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_causation/all/1

I saw this article right after I checked my 23andme health updates based on my genome scan.  The juxtaposition of the two was striking.

Excerpts:
"There was a vast amount of research behind Kindler’s bold proclamations. The  cholesterol pathway is one of the best-understood biological feedback systems in the human body...Furthermore, torcetrapib had already undergone a small clinical trial, which showed that the drug could  increase HDL and decrease LDL. Kindler told his investors that, by the second half of 2007, Pfizer would begin applying for approval from the FDA. The success of the drug seemed like a sure thing.

 And then, just two days later, on December 2, 2006, Pfizer issued a stunning announcement: The torcetrapib Phase III clinical trial was being terminated. Although the compound was supposed to prevent heart disease, it was actually triggering higher rates of chest pain and heart failure and a 60 percent increase in overall mortality. The drug appeared to be killing people.

 That week, Pfizer’s value plummeted by $21 billion."

"This assumption—that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system—is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information, by our ceaseless accumulation of facts. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism. By breaking down a process, we can see how everything fits together"

"The problem with this assumption, however, is that causes are a strange kind of knowledge. This was first pointed out by David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher. Hume realized that, although people talk about causes as if they are real facts—tangible things that can be discovered—they’re actually not at all factual. Instead, Hume said, every cause is just a slippery story, a catchy conjecture, a “lively conception produced by habit"...a cause is not a fact—it’s a fiction that helps us make sense of facts"

"Though scientists constantly remind themselves that mere correlation is
not causation, if a correlation is clear and consistent, then they typically assume a cause has been found—that there really is some invisible association between the measurements."


It is interesting how we seem to know things - like "correlation does not imply causation" or "past performance is not an indication of future results" - and ignore them so often and readily within the disciplines that own these mantras.  It's at the same time silly and understandable - we don't have any better tools to make sense of the world.  But at least we should admit that to ourselves.

--

So I checked my 23andme updates today - I get regular messages from the company with new information on my genome scan based on new studies.  Most disease risk lines come back with typical odds - I'm depressingly normal.

Today I have a red line for Primary Biliary Cirrhosis.  It seems I have a 1.72x higher risk of contracting this form of cirrhosis than the average person, based on established research (meaning multiple studies with 750+ participants).  Nearly twice the risk - that's not good, right? 

Well, it turns out that it's not good but it's not really that bad either.  Apparently the average person has a 0.3% risk while I have a 0.6% risk.  It's not going to rock my life in any meaningful way, at least pre-diagnosis.

It does beg the question - is more information always better?  I have tended to think yes in the past but the outcomes aren't always better when you know more.  But then again, if information is available and curated, then someone needs to play curator.  I don't know if I trust anyone else to play curator for me, and playing curator for myself obviates the question.  And if we believe that more information tends to converge to the truth, perhaps we should just figure out how to deal with the information we receive rather than avoid it altogether.

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TEDxConstitutionDrive - Jan 21. Registration open!

12/14/2011

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Picture

The  theme of last year's event was Trust, this year will be Identity! We're excited about the possibilities of this theme  to go beyond just the digital space and into the heart of what makes human beings tick. Again, we're gathering amazing speakers to talk on this topic from diverse angles - - last year we had eminent neuroscientist Paul Zak, the founder of Cantaloupe Systems, venture capitalist  Paige Craig, and the co-founder of Match.com, among others. 

Our speakers this year:
 
Freddy Clarke, magical and humorous composer and guitarist (with 9 friends from all over the world)

 Duleesha Kulasooriya, head of research at the big-thinking Center for the
Edge

 Douglas Kenrick, renowned psychologist speaking on why we all suffer from
multiple personality disorder

 Beau Lewis, producer of American Hipster

 Kaliya Hamlin, known as “Identity Woman” and co-founder of the Internet Identity Workshop

 Luke Griswold-Tergis, producer of documentary Smokin' Fish and maker of
smoked fish

 Buff Giurlani, entrepreneur and founder of the unique classic car warehouse and winery Auto-Vino

 Brian Christian, poet and author of best-selling The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive 

 Eric Drooker, painter, graphic novelist, frequent cover artist for The New Yorker, and animation designer for Howl, a film based on the epic Allen Ginsberg poem 

 Martin Steinert, researcher at the Stanford Center for Design Research

 John Murray, director of Cybernetic & Human Systems at SRI International

 Rolf Rando, founder and CEO of ImageChef

 Danil Kozyatnikov, founder of Quest.li and enabler of real-life quests

 Laura Peticolas & Chuck Striplen, researchers in indigenous knowledge and Western science



We try to make this an intimate and low-key event where people who are deeply interested in the topic can engage with each other on a personal level. Please come with an open mind and a sincere desire to connect with the ideas and the other attendees.

Our venue is the phenomenal classic car warehouse and winery (yes, both!) Auto-Vino. If you love  one-of-a-kind fabulous cars and wine-tasting, in addition to great ideas and people, this is the TEDx for you. After we finish the speaker sessions at 4pm,  we will transition to the winery counter for an optional wine-tasting flight (included in your ticket).

TEDxConstitutionDrive is a nonprofit event. Ticket fees will go towards event planning and speaker  expenses. Fees cover speaker sessions, snacks, lunch and one wine-tasting flight.

Learn about last  year's event at:
http://www.tedxconstitutiondrive.com/
http://tedx.posterous.com/tedxconstitutiondrive-2010-an-intimate-event

Register for TEDxConstitutionDrive 2012:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2645937069

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M. Night Shyamalan & The Nuremburg Trial

12/13/2011

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http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2893  

Excerpt:
"Shyamalan: I am an artist whose art form is making cinema for a group of people to watch together. That's what I do for a living. The exploitation of that is unending -- but that isn't [what] I do it for. That's not the artist that I am. Someone who makes TV shows is a different kind of artist. The experience of being in a room with 500 people [is different] -- you literally share points of view when you watch together. 

I once wrote an article about the Nuremburg trial and how these were the worst Nazis in the Nazi organization. These people were animals. And their faces  [were like] ice, except for the moment they showed a movie in the trial. 

When  the lights went down and they showed the footage of the bodies being pushed into  the pits, their expressions changed and they became emotional. They were watching [the events on the screen] through the eyes of everyone in the theater. They were having a joint experience. They were all connected, and they saw the horror, saw [that their victims] were human beings. And they changed."


I used to be a libertarian until I had a revelatory moment about the power we all hold over each other.  Through one particularly powerful lens, we are all socially constructed.  How do you marry the individual freedom that allows us space to live up to our highest potential, and the responsibility packaged with the potent power over others that is our birthright?

Perhaps we come slowly and as individuals to the choice - the choice to love and be subject to each other.


From "War Crimes," The West Wing:

BARTLET:  For other stuff, not for this. You can't just trod out Ephesians,  which he blew, by the way, it has nothing with husbands and wives, it's all of us. Saint Paul begins the passage: "Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ." [passionately] "Be subject to one another." In this day and age of 24-hour cable crap, devoted to feeding the voyeuristic gluttony of the American public, hooked on a bad soap opera that's passing itself off as important, don't you think you might be able to find some relevance in verse 21? How do end the cycle? Be subject to one another!

ABBEY:  So... This is about you.

BARTLET:  No, it's not about me! Well, yes, it is about me, but tomorrow
it'll be about somebody else. We'll watch Larry King and see who. [shouts]
All hacks, off the stage! Right now! That's a national security order.

ABBEY:  I'm going to the Residence. I'm taking a bath; I'm turning on
Sinatra.

BARTLET:  How does Mrs. Sinatra feel about that?

ABBEY:  Peace be with you. [turns to leave]

C.J. comes outside behind Bartlet.

BARTLET:  [sings] You make me egg foo yung...

C.J.:  Good morning, Mr. President.

BARTLET:  [turns to her, sings] You make me feel there are songs to be
sung...

ABBEY:  [to C.J.] He's feisty. Please, don't ask him about church.

C.J.:  [quietly] No, I won't. I'm sorry, Mr. President, Melissa Markey
died.

BARTLET:  [smile fades away] Yeah, okay.



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The Failure of Bitcoins

12/13/2011

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http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1

According to Stefan Brands:  "I think the big problems are ultimately the trust issues,” he says. “There’s  nothing there to back it up. I know the counterargument, that that’s true of  fiat money, too, but that’s completely wrong. There’s a whole trust fabric that’s been established through legal mechanisms."

It ends on a note of irony and pathos:  "It’s not the individuals behind the code who matter, but the code itself. And while people have stolen and cheated and abandoned the bitcoiners, the code has remained true."

When we finally figure out a way to reconcile principles and outcomes, maybe then we'll find peace:

Principles vs. Outcomes Part I
Principles vs. Outcomes Part II

    
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    I'm interested in uncertainty, time, trust, consistency, strategy, economics, empathy, philosophy, education, technology, story-telling, and fractals.
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