07.28.08
Care about what other people think
The very optimum of independence, as often declared and advised by the shallow rich and/or famous: “Don’t care what other people think.” In our society ‘being rich’ is often confused with ‘being successful’, and being successful must mean that you are also intelligent. So, we tend to take people that have a lot of money more seriously (just look at the biography section in any bookstore), even though there is actually no reason in doing so. And there’s not much harm in that. Just be sure not to sculpt your life after the ideas of some schmuck that just got lucky and doesn’t even realise it. Like your parents.
What do parents of teenage kids tell their offspring when they’re getting teased at school about their clothes, their hair or their complete personality? Exactly: Don’t care about what other people think, you’re special.” Those parents mean well, but they are only half right. For the other half, I’d go with the opinion of the teenager: it matters what other people think. It’s in our nature. We may want to believe that we have evolved so far from our prehistoric roots that we can be independent enough not to care about how other perceive us, but this is just a lie we keep telling to others and ourselves. The people that genuinely have no interest in the way he or she is perceived by others are in urgent need of some counselling.
Caring about what others think of you is healthy. Deeply embedded in your genes is the urge to want to be regarded favorably by your peers. How this is to be achieved (by wearing designer clothing, covering yourself in elephant piss, or pushing thorns through your tongue, or whatever) is the cultural part. Not only does this need help you function in society, it also helps you to…erm… ‘mate’, and thus, reproduce.
So, if you’re that teased kid in high school and you desperately want to believe that your parents and those celebrities on tv and those businessmen in the books are right about ‘you shouldn’t care about what other people think.’ What can you do? First of all, it would help if people would stop telling you that it’s your own fault that you feel bad (since you’re the dumb one that actually cares about what other people think.) Stop feeling bad about feeling bad. Anyone would.
The second step is more difficult; ‘caring about what others think’, is something different than ‘becoming the same as other people’. Others feel you don’t fit in with them and they tease you for it. Even though the teasing bit may be wrong, they may be right about ‘you not fitting in’ part. Not necessarily a bad thing. As the French say: ‘vive la difference’. You should stop seeking approval from the ones that are not your peers and find out which people you feel comfortable with. The only way species can survive in the long run is by diversification. Our species have done quite well the last couple of thousands years. One of the reasons for that is the fact that we care about how others feel about us.
07.22.08
Disclaimer confusion
There may be some among you that have ever sent an actual letter (which is sort of like a printed e-mail). What I remember from letters is that you’d never write at the bottom that you couldn’t be held responsible for the contents of the letter et cetera. As a matter of fact; I never end a telephone conversation with anything like that either. The disclaimer is typical for e-mails. It’s understandable that such a statement is needed, but it is quite bizarre at the same time.
Today, I received an e-mail from someone working at one of our government offices and a sentence from our official governmental disclaimer caught my eye:
“The State accepts no liability for damage of any kind resulting from the risks inherent in the electronic transmission of messages.“
And I find this highly intriguing. Until now, I was never really that aware of the fact that that are inherent risks involved in electronically transmitting messages. Fortunately the State has brought this to my attention. I think I will take precautions of some kind. That’s important, since it’s also made very clear to me that, when damage occurs, of any kind I might add, as a result of one of these inherent risks, I may try to hold the State accountable, but it will accept no liability. None. Not even the tiniest piece of liability will be accepted when I encounter any sort of damage, no matter what the nature of that damage may be, when it result from the inherent risks in electronically transmitting messages.
If you are extremely offended by this posting and suffer emotionally, I must point out that this is considered a message, that is being electronically transmitted to you and, given that there are inherent risks to reading electronically transmitted messages, my State will no accept any liability whatsoever for it. Well, they’re not a part of this small electronic communiqé, so I’m guessing you don’t really mind. You’ll just hold me accountable.
Are the contents of these ‘electronically transmitted messaged’, also inherent risks from which damages may result? I mean, there are always inherent risks to any form of communication of ‘message transmitting’ , electronic transmission included. In other words, is the focus of the disclaimer on ‘transmission’, ‘messages‘ or ‘electronic’ or is it spread out over the three equally?
Even though I guess I understand what the disclaimer means to say, but it could mean so many things that I am actually thoroughly confused. I will spare you the more bizarre questions flying through my head right now, but I think I need to lie down for a minute. It wonder if the State will accept liability for emotional damages caused by the electronic transmission of disclaimers..
07.21.08
No sport is more beautiful… Le Tour.
With the spring-classics behind us and the big multistage events coming up, starting with the Giro d’Italia, I get a lot of the following question again: “Why would you want to waste your time on watching that drug-infested display of EPO cyclism?” But I don’t get tired of explaining. I am great fan of cycling. I love watching races and especially the Tour de France. Unfortunately, since in no other sport there is so strict drug-testing as in cycling, there are more cyclists testing positive on stimulants than in most others. And people that do not enjoy watching Le Tour feel strengthened in their opinion that the greatest annual sporting event of the year is better missed because of it.
Check your cynism at the door please.
There are many arguments why people who state that the Tour de France is not worth watching because every cyclist is a athletic drug-addict are wrong, but I don’t want to waste my time on cynics here (even though I recommend reading this article). What I would like to do, is explain my love for cycling races. And hopefully some of you out there will also see that the Tour de France is a masterpiece of sports. With Lance returning to the peloton, cycling is becoming even more of an artform as you can read here.
Structure of the peloton
Cycling is more than about two hundred athletes competing in one race (that fact alone would make it more interesting than most other sports); the structure of the peleton adds elegance: several teams consisting of 9 riders with their own specialities and one or two leaders per team. This makes cycling both an individual as a teamsport. Strategies and tactics are involved. At what point do what riders of a team try to escape the peleton? What riders will be a the leaders of the pack? What team is best a working together, thus giving their leader the extra edge?
Tradition
To further complicate matters, cycling is also a sport with a very long and rich tradition. Riders that don’t like each other, teams that have an old quarrel. It’s like throwing Machiavelli into the mixture. The strongest rider doesn’t always win, often it’s the teams and riders that are better at the political games. The once that ‘read the race’ and interpret the tactics of the competition. You look at small gestures, facial expressions, how much time is spent at the head of the group, what gear someone is driving in… There is an almost endless amount of information you can use to calculate your chances and for a strategy.
Heroism
Machiavelli was an Italian, but in the tour you also see a lot of the great Greek tragedies performed live. The lone hero, taking on the greatest mountains, fighting of the pack of hungry wolves that chase him. Men that have no strength left, fighting their way forward on pure willpower. The perfectly timed jump over the competition to cross the finishline victorious. There is planning and plotting, anger, euphoria and sorrow. Something there for everybody. All set in the beautiful French countryside,
Complexity, not randomness
A lot of sports are quite straightforward. Especially the sports where it’s a matter of one side against the other side. In my humble opinion, these sports become increasingly less interesting to watch when the outcome is more a matter of randomness than of effort and quality. Cycling is very complex, which makes it interesting and the even though the winner is not necessarily the best rider, the winner is very rarely determined by pure randomness. Cycling offers something to both sides of your brain. All you need to invest, is a bit of time.
07.18.08
Wordle coolness
Tagclouds may be revealing and all that, but they’re also quite boring. Visually I mean. Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it with Wordle. IBM programmer Jonathan Feinberg wrote some algorithms for laying out and displaying words. His site reads the content directly from your blog or you can copy and paste text from your site, to make your own, cool wordcloud.
Loads of possibilities with fonts, colourschemes and layouts will make it a lot prettier to look at I tell ya…
Just look at that beautiful CultBlender Blog Wordle… I’m especially happy with the prominent place the word ‘pigeons’has…
07.16.08
Open Radiohead Source
It’s easy to be all ‘2.0′ and ‘open source’ when you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s an entirely different thing if you’re one of the biggest rock bands of our time (and indisputably the most influential band of the fin de siècle of the 20th century). I’m talking about Radiohead here. After they let their fans download their newest album directly form their website for free (paying was optional) and their innovative idea of selling the several separate tracks to their single ‘nude’, they’ve now put the source code of their new video ‘house of cards‘ online for all the vid-techie-fans out there to manipulate. (I’m a BIG sucker for ‘making of’ films, so that site’s an absolute treat for me…)
When I bought the DVD of the brilliant David Payne film ‘About Schmidt’ it included as an extra, some edits of the opening sequence, made by different editors. Very entertaining and inspiring to watch. The various remixes of ‘nude’ mainly proved the brilliance of Radiohead themselves; none of the remixes came close to the original. I still can’t wait to see some of the ‘fan-made’ video version of House of Cards. You may call Radiohead whatever you want, but you cannot deny the fact that their innovative ideas for making their fans experience their music keep revolutionizing the music industry.
07.09.08
Did Skinner answer why we have a thing called religion?
In 1948 the famous Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner did a test on some pigeons (poor things). He kept the pigeons in a box and with a button they could operate a mechanism that provided food. So, not surprisinlgy, the pigeons learned how the system worked: ‘push button, get food’. Lesson: pigeons are capable of learning, no news there. but then Skinner took this test to a different level.
B.F. Skinner
Pigeonrituals
These pigeons did not have the intellectual capabilities of actually understanding what happened when they pushed the button; this button that gave off an electrical signal that set some mechanical device in motion thet released food into the box (or something like that). As far as the pigeons were concerned, this could all just have been magic. What Skinner did, was randomize the dispensing of food in the box. At completely random moments, without any sort of button or switch the pigeons would get food in the box. Skinner then saw that the pigeons started developping all sorts of rituals that -in their minds- preceded getting food. Some pigeons started doing elaborate dances (not unlike a raindance I’d imagine) other started pecking the walls of the box. All of this in anticipation of food, which eventually came. As far as the pigeons were concerned: their rituals worked.
Randomness
The key in this experiment is not the proof that pigeons apparently may learn to operate a button, but are incapable of understanding the mechanism behind a switch; it is that pigeons developped some sort of religious rituals that they believe worked, since they could not grasp the concept of randomness. And, my fellow human beings, neither can we. It is a well known saying that ‘the way to predict the future is to study the past’. But this is also a great misconception.
Pigeons
Divine intervention
If you look back on past random events, our human minds operates in a way that will start seeing patterns, even if they’re not there. Sure, we understand the randomness of the outcome of throwing a pair of dice, but not the randomness in the failure of the crops. For that; there must be a reason. And, if we cannot find this reason; than that must be a case of divine intervention, right? There must be a reason why food drops down your box and the reason is ‘I did this dance’ and if your dance wasn;t followed by food, than you must have done something wrong. And that might just be how religion is born. Religion might just be a way of understanding this very randomised world around us.
Photocredit: Pigeons photo from Melody McFarlands blog.
07.03.08
Did I say suspense? The paintings of Jason Shawn Alexander
In a previous post I briefly mentioned the artwork of Jason Shawn Alexander, whose work is currently exhibited in a group exhibition with, among others, Sarah Folkman. But Alexander is not an artist one can briefly mention without giving him your full attention, even if this is only for one blogposting.
Alexander’s work is a lot of things, but ‘cheerful’ is not one of them. As he puts it himself, on his website: “The subject is suspended in moments of pain or sorrow.” A description like that could point in the direction of adolescent paintings, filled with gore, but it could also describe the paintings of brilliant artists like Francis Bacon. Fortunately, Alexander’s paintings have a lot more in common with the latter. That is; had Bacon been employed by Stan Lee to do a comics version of his paintings. Alexander, who is also a very gifted illustrator, is a virtuoso with the brush.
Alexander does not overdo it with all the pain and suffering. He leaves his audience room to come up for air; “The ultimate expression, however, is one of survival, if not hope.” And he doesn’t overdo it with the realism either; even though his talent as comics artist shines through, on closer inspection the undeniable personality of the brush is there. It’s not work that would have looked just as good, had it been a pen and ink image.
Perhaps it’s not the sort of stuff you’d take your mother to go and see on a sunday morning (not that I know your mom’s taste), but that can be said for many works. To me, the paintings feel true and the images sincere.
Works by Jason Shawn Alexendar were recently in a group exhibition in the Corey Hertford Gallery. After taking a quick peek at his blog, I guess the results were pleasing to the artist. And as a fan of great painting, I can only agree to that,
07.01.08
Deep Screen – art @ SMCS Amsterdam
“The increasing digitalization of our culture has consequences for art.” Not a very strong opening for a press release for the show ‘Deep Screen – Art in Digital Culture’at the Stedelijk Museum CS in Amsterdam. It actually made me yawn with utter boredom instead of filling me with energizing anticipation of information to come. It also made me doubt whether or not to go see it. When a show is promoted with one of the most commonplace clichés, what does that say about the quality of what’s to see? Will it provide me with anything new and exciting, or just more annoyance?
The Deep Screen hosts works by some ‘big names’, such as Geert Mul or internet-art pioneers JODI , as well as artist who I had not yet heard of like Meiya Lin -part of her video can be seen on youtube (below)- and Marnix de Nijs & Edwin van der Heide (a video of their installation ‘Spatial Sounds’ can be seen above). The works of the more senior artists seems to have focused on the digitalization itself. What does that digitalization mean for our culture? The younger ones, some of which will barely have a memory left of a non-digitalized society. used the technology as a given. for them it’s just another way to express themselves of their message and a medium for their art. In most reviews I’ve read, the journalist seems to feel that the second form is the superior one. They suffer from the ‘been there, done that’ syndrome. As if everyone is already aware of every aspect and finesse that is influenced by this digitalization after the ‘The Matrix’ trilogy. However, I feel that there is still a lot to be said for art that takes a step back and makes us aware of what this digitalization really means for our culture, but also for other matters such as world politics and science. In that sense, the digital medium means a bit more than a painting and makes for far more interesting research into the medium.
A more interesting question is, does digital art still have a place in a museum? Isn’t; the most interesting digital art to be found outside of museum and gallery walls? What does the SMCS building add to seeing an animation instead of watching it online somewhere? That question, unfortunately, still remains unanswered by Deep Screen.
