From the Economist:
"Being an analogy is not the same thing as being the same thing"
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Miranda July
I was completely freaked out the first time I heard a recording by Miranda July ten years ago, and promised myself I'd never subject myself to any of her work again - but since then it seems she's mellowed.
Check out this video where she demonstrates the industrial production process of making buttons:
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1454975012
After seeing this and falling in love with her, I went to her website and found out that she is way too accomplished and productive to pay attention to me. But that's good - it means I can analyze without fear of finding out I didn't do enough research and am completely wrong.
Beyond her excellent production values, notice that she presents within an altered reality, which she unabashedly creates with arbitrary ignorance of object permanence, the impersonality of the internet and the modern art world, and meaning. She envisions pretty clearly - though admittedly with some blank spaces - a world beyond logic: happy, loving, but without all the problems we inherit by believing in science and mathematics.
As long as I'm rapping on attractive California artists who will never know my name, let me mention Audrey Kawasaki, who makes paintings like Mucha but a little updated for the present.
http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/
Check out this video where she demonstrates the industrial production process of making buttons:
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1454975012
After seeing this and falling in love with her, I went to her website and found out that she is way too accomplished and productive to pay attention to me. But that's good - it means I can analyze without fear of finding out I didn't do enough research and am completely wrong.
Beyond her excellent production values, notice that she presents within an altered reality, which she unabashedly creates with arbitrary ignorance of object permanence, the impersonality of the internet and the modern art world, and meaning. She envisions pretty clearly - though admittedly with some blank spaces - a world beyond logic: happy, loving, but without all the problems we inherit by believing in science and mathematics.
As long as I'm rapping on attractive California artists who will never know my name, let me mention Audrey Kawasaki, who makes paintings like Mucha but a little updated for the present.
http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Government Structure
Reading "Sciences of the Artificial" by Herbert Simon a few weeks ago, I was struck by his distinction between normative and descriptive computer models. Basically, normative models explain how things should be, as when we say, "Governments provide the greatest good for the greatest number," in contrast to a descriptive model which would say something like, "Most governments throughout history have been corrupt and have carried out the oppression of the masses."
His point about computer models is that the normative, simplified, idealized sort are easier to make because it's often difficult to find mathematics to describe the very weird and complex things that can happen in reality. But, of course, descriptive models represent reality better and thus - if the logic is sufficiently deeply structured - they are better able to predict the future.
In my mind, any bureaucracy or corporation has the same abstract structure as a computer program, and thus they can also be considered to be models of human behavior. The major difference is that what is written in a corporate charter, the mission statement of an NGO, or the constitution of a country is signed onto and agreed to by a bunch of people, and these people will call the police and put somebody in jail if they don't behave in accordance with the model. We don't tend to punish natural phenomena when they don't abide by Newton's or Einstein's laws (except by ignoring them), and if the stock market doesn't obey the predictions of some wall street quant's models, then it's the model that is considered defective.
This distinction that I see humans as a whole making rests on the understanding that humans are different and separate from nature. If we move towards breaking down that distinction, it brings up the possibility of making our government charters more descriptive, rather than some idealized story about the way things should be. The group who wrote the US Constitution took a large step in this direction by realizing that every individual will tend to seek more power, and then pitting them against each other with checks and balances.
If we look at the US Government today, the largest aspects that aren't accounted for by the Constitution are the lobbyists and the costs of the election process. Without getting too much into how these processes are inefficient, immoral, or whatever, I'd like to merely propose the academic question: what would a more descriptive Constitution look like?
The essential function of lobbyists is to bring information to Congress and to help it form legislation that will help certain groups do their jobs. If the lobbyist is representing a mining company, he or she will probably skew things in ways most individuals find terrifying: increasing the amount of Chromium 6 intake considered to be "healthy," lowering corporate taxes, etc. But if the lobbyist is working on behalf of GreenPeace, most individuals will benefit from a peaceful sense that nature will still be there when next time we get a vacation in 2026 to go stare at it for a couple weeks. When they're working for large, wealthy individuals or organizations, lobbyists also give Congress lots of money.
Essentially, working this into the Constitution would essentially involve a major expansion of the Congressional Research Service. The public policy research arm of the US Congress, its budget last year was about $90 million, compared with approximately $2.8 billion spent on lobbying. Even without adding in normative features like ensuring that somebody is lobbying for public interests, and even if we include currently hidden features like expensive lunches, junkets, and bags of money that indubitably get exchanged, putting this whole process into law would make it obvious to everyone how to come to Washington and participate in the policy debate.
Similarly, codifying the electoral process might carve into stone some pretty annoying and destructive practices, but once they are in stone we can see them clearly and see better whether a candidates act evil because of their personality or because they are simply being warped by the process.
His point about computer models is that the normative, simplified, idealized sort are easier to make because it's often difficult to find mathematics to describe the very weird and complex things that can happen in reality. But, of course, descriptive models represent reality better and thus - if the logic is sufficiently deeply structured - they are better able to predict the future.
In my mind, any bureaucracy or corporation has the same abstract structure as a computer program, and thus they can also be considered to be models of human behavior. The major difference is that what is written in a corporate charter, the mission statement of an NGO, or the constitution of a country is signed onto and agreed to by a bunch of people, and these people will call the police and put somebody in jail if they don't behave in accordance with the model. We don't tend to punish natural phenomena when they don't abide by Newton's or Einstein's laws (except by ignoring them), and if the stock market doesn't obey the predictions of some wall street quant's models, then it's the model that is considered defective.
This distinction that I see humans as a whole making rests on the understanding that humans are different and separate from nature. If we move towards breaking down that distinction, it brings up the possibility of making our government charters more descriptive, rather than some idealized story about the way things should be. The group who wrote the US Constitution took a large step in this direction by realizing that every individual will tend to seek more power, and then pitting them against each other with checks and balances.
If we look at the US Government today, the largest aspects that aren't accounted for by the Constitution are the lobbyists and the costs of the election process. Without getting too much into how these processes are inefficient, immoral, or whatever, I'd like to merely propose the academic question: what would a more descriptive Constitution look like?
The essential function of lobbyists is to bring information to Congress and to help it form legislation that will help certain groups do their jobs. If the lobbyist is representing a mining company, he or she will probably skew things in ways most individuals find terrifying: increasing the amount of Chromium 6 intake considered to be "healthy," lowering corporate taxes, etc. But if the lobbyist is working on behalf of GreenPeace, most individuals will benefit from a peaceful sense that nature will still be there when next time we get a vacation in 2026 to go stare at it for a couple weeks. When they're working for large, wealthy individuals or organizations, lobbyists also give Congress lots of money.
Essentially, working this into the Constitution would essentially involve a major expansion of the Congressional Research Service. The public policy research arm of the US Congress, its budget last year was about $90 million, compared with approximately $2.8 billion spent on lobbying. Even without adding in normative features like ensuring that somebody is lobbying for public interests, and even if we include currently hidden features like expensive lunches, junkets, and bags of money that indubitably get exchanged, putting this whole process into law would make it obvious to everyone how to come to Washington and participate in the policy debate.
Similarly, codifying the electoral process might carve into stone some pretty annoying and destructive practices, but once they are in stone we can see them clearly and see better whether a candidates act evil because of their personality or because they are simply being warped by the process.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Welcome to the New Blog
I went to NYC for spring break this week. I love Manhattan because all over the place there is a level of style and quality that is difficult to come by outside of a global metropolis. Moving on from MySpace blogging is another step for me towards participating in the conversation about what that style and quality is, and what it is becoming. Thanks for reading, and please leave me comments so we can start this conversation in earnest. Here's a rundown of the most interesting stuff I saw: |
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The MOMA has a beautiful new building but the museum is too successful and is unbearably crowded, even on a Wednesday. The show Design and the Elastic Mind is intriguing, but I didn't like the overall scheme of mixing together silly, absurdist ideas with serious, well-thought-out inventions. |
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| The Muji store on lower Broadway is a little cheaper than the paper-goods-only display in the MOMA store, but really it was worth the extra effort to see it just to learn that Muji makes everything for the home. I've heard it described as the Japanese IKEA, which is entirely accurate as they carry everything from forks to beds to clothes and shoes. What's really amazing is that they fit it into a space smaller than an IKEA lobby. |
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The best part of the Whitney Biennial was an annex a few blocks from the museum in the old Park Avenue Armory. This immense building, whose drill hall is one of the largest unobstructed enclosed spaces in all of Manhattan, was decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffanny around 1901 and has the air of a stately, venerated gentleman's club. There are small brass signs over the doorways that give the rooms name such as "Board of Officers' Room" and "Company Room G." While the art was pretty good, it was the beautifully haunting deterioration of the building which really took me in. Although all the fixtures and wall-coverings seem to be present, the place hasn't been maintained in decades and is falling apart. It is the most spectacularly engaging built environment I've seen outside a video game. |
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Walking to an art show in SOHO I chanced to pass by PapaBubble (papabubble.com) and got to taste some hard candy still soft and hot, fresh from - well, I didn't see that part of the process, and I really have no idea how it got to that point. I watched these two craftspeople roll the taffy-like substance into bars and then stick those together to form an image. Later they'll cut it into short chunks. This whole process is exactly like making millifore in glass. I couldn't justify the $7.50 for a bag of candy, but I took these free samples to photograph for you and they are really tasty. |
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| The Guggenheim is under repair again. Frank Lloyd Wright did some amazing things, but his work was not often executed at the highest level of crafstmanship. I only hope that someone will value some of my work enough to spend millions and millions of dollars to preserve it. |
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