Left Side: Free As In Freedom
The previous post was inspired by this blog post on Design Observer which describes the process of creating a logo/identity system for a “large, fashion-oriented organization”. I was struck by this observation:
[E]ach time I unveil a new logo proposal to a client, I sense the yearning for that some enchanted evening moment: love at first sight, getting swept off your feet by the never-before-seen stranger across the dance floor. Tell clients don’t worry, you’ll learn to love it and they react like an unwilling bride getting hustled into an unsuitable arranged marriage.
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All of this is compounded by the fact that designers themselves have very little faith in context. We too want the quick hit, the clever idea that will sell itself in the meeting and, even better, jump off the table in design competitions. More than anything, we want to proffer the promise of control: the control of communication, the control of meaning. To admit the truth — that so much is out of our hands — marginalizes our power to the point where it seems positively self-destructive.
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Appreciating the power of context takes patience, humility, and, perhaps in the end, a sense of resignation.
I think that artists generally fixate on their sense of ownership of their work, and ignore or minimize the effect of their influences or the context of the work. When we do good work, we feel good about ourselves, and we dearly want to feel good about ourselves. Taking control over our work maximizes our ability to justify this rationale, because we want to claim that whatever positive responses people have towards the work rightly belongs to Me, which is a profoundly egoic approach to art.
By egoic I mean that it feeds the ego. In popular usage, having a big ego means being arrogant, proud, thinking you are better than others, etc., but I mean to say something much more subtle. Those descriptions of ego are definitely part of it, but what we really mean when we say, “That guy has a big ego,” is that he has a bigger ego that he deserves, and implicitly, that means that some amount of ego is OK. In general, we believe that as long as your ego doesn’t hurt otherwise reasonable people, its fine, even good. This is fair, but for the artist, I think even a reasonably-size ego gets in the way of authentic expression. You can’t be free to express yourself if you are weighed down with how it makes you look; the less concern you have for the impact your work has, the more expressive you will be. To create effectively, you must be free your mind of judgement, and the most effective way of doing that is letting go of our ego’s drive to pursue praise and hide from criticism. This is a paradox — to create individual expression, you have to relinquish your focus on the individual.
This ego-focus is at the root of discussions of intellectual property. With excessive attachment to our ego, we refuse to share, refuse to allow creative reinterpretation and reuse and insist that other people reinforce for us the illusion that we have that our ego is the center of the universe.
Right Side: Free As In Freedom
The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.
— Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
And some music.
Philosophistry Collisions
Every once in a while, a great idea comes along and sweeps away everything in its path — a new age has dawned, a new paradigm has arrived, and the world has changed for the better, etc. But with just as much frequency, there are individuals who still hold on to their previous ways of thinking even while accepting the new vision. The results are always incoherent, because they have fully grasped how the new thinking invalidates the old. For example:
Old Thinking: Man is the center of the universe but separate and special from it. All things exist for his benefit, so we can do what we like with the planet.
New Thinking: Humans are just one species in the great web of life. All things are interconnected, so we must take care of our planet.
Incoherent Mental Collision: Humans are separate and disconnected from life AND we must take care of the planet. Therefore, every impact that humans have on the earth is bad. In fact, it would be better if humanity didn’t exist it all because its so harmful.
This type of thinking happens by combining what used to be accepted wisdom with bits and pieces of the new system. The fact that the new system actually invalidates the old system is no obstacle to the intrepid souls on a quest for incoherency. The next example is somewhat similar, and also related to a previous post:
Old Thinking: Man is divine creature unlike any other. We are noble, virtuous and rational, not like those dirty animals with their base cravings and filthy pathetic lives. Some blood lines are especially virtuous and good, such as European monarchies.
New Thinking: Humans evolved from animals, and we share many traits with related species. Every organism is ultimately descended from the first primitive lifeforms that evolved on the planet. Also, we figured out that its probably not a good idea to sleep with your sister.
Incoherent Mental Collision: Humans are dirty animals, filled with lustful cravings and condemned to their filthy pathetic lives. There’s nothing noble or virtuous about life.
In no way does the new thinking lead us to the conclusion that humans are filthy craven animals. If anything, it encourages us to see how animals and other creatures have their own nobility and virture. Its like people who refuse to believe in evolution because they don’t like to think they are descended from monkeys — what’s wrong with monkeys?
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Podpress
I’m hoping to start using PodPress WP plugin to help manage my podcasts and make them more iTunes-friendly. We’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile, I’ve added a tag cloud. Who doesn’t love tag clouds?
Blogged with Flock
More Thoughts On Mating Minds
I’m reading Miller’s… book “The Mating Mind” now and he proposes… that much of our evolved brainpower and creativity is a refined part of the mating dance…
I have a criticism of this idea that I think is fairly significant.
To review the argument: humans obviously have profound creative abilities beyond most other animals. Presumably, we evolved this ability because it confers some evolutionary advantage, similar to a peacock’s feathers. How did the peacock evolve its feathers? Surely an individual who spend so much energy on something so useless and makes him more visible to predators would be less likely to survive compared to other individuals. The proposed solution is that the reason peacocks evolved tail feathers is to impress the females of the species. Perhaps a grand display of feathers says, “Hey, look at me, I’m so well-off that I can afford to be wasteful!” Basically, a peacock who can afford fancy feathers will surely be able to provide a lavish lifestyle for his offspring. So art, like peacock feathers, are elaborate displays that have no real objective beyond demonstrating an individual’s access to excess resources.
I would be hard-pressed to find an argument more demeaning to artists, that art is useless and only exists to help artists get laid. But does this assumption that art is an impressive but empty display stand up to closer inspection? I think it doesn’t.
A peacock’s feathers and an artist’s work differs in one very important respect: the artist’s work is not a mere aesthetic display, meant to please the eye or ear. The tendency of artists to alienate, challenge and disturb their audience cannot accounted for by the theory outlined above, because art, unlike peacock feathers, is more about personal expression than it is about aesthetics. This is frequently lost on those who confine themselves to Science. The fact that creativity and artistic confers an evolutionary advantage to individuals with the trait is because humans are fundamentally social creatures. Skill at artistic expression indicates that the individual also has a well-developed ability to relate to and connect with other individuals, and this in turn translates into stronger interpersonal bonding between the individual and his or her potential mates, which means a safe and stable environment for child-rearing.
One dimension of what constitutes safety and security for children could be freedom from abuse. Human infants and children are among the most helpless offspring on the planet, and possibly due to our empathetic characteristics, emotionally vulnerable. One consequences of this is that children who are abused often grow up lacking empathy, and don’t do very well in society. Other animals, particularly non-mammals, don’t suffer emotionally, certainly not to the degree that humans do. Arguably, art, and indeed, much of modern life is a sophisticated mechanism to regulate and control the precarious emotional state of the human mind.
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Podcast: Change Is Better
This mix was inspired by John Digweed at Ruby Skye, who was in top form last weekend! I also tried to dig a bit deeper and mix it up with some labels and artists that I wasn’t already really familiar with. This is sometimes quite hard for me to do, because I only do one podcast a month and so many of the name-brands are putting out amazing records that I don’t want to pass up.
- Alex Gopher – Big is Better [Different]
- Band Of Brothers – Tirumvirate [Praesul]
- 16 Bit Lolitas – Destiny [Monofleur]
- John Digweed – Warung Beach (Mashtronic’s White Sands Remix) [Bedrock]
- Plastique Vision – Between Frames [Acute]
- Rick Pier O’Neil – Trippin’ Away (RPO Part2) [Garbage]
- Thomas Penton – Every Thing Is Wrong (Martin H Remix) [Invent]
- Leo Girardi, Max Orian – Just [9]
- Evil Concussion – Change Is Gonna Come (Silvio Marquardt Remix) [Electric Movement]
Download or Listen
[audio:http://altovideo.org/music/Podcast/changeisbetter.mp3]
Audio Therapy
Swedish researchers finally confirm what my own research shows — that dancing is good for your mental health. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I will be attempting to replicate their results in my own carefully designed experiment this Friday at Ruby Skye, with the assistance of one John Q. Digweed, Ph.D. and Alain Octavo, M.D. Results to be published in an upcoming issue of The Very Scientific Journal of Late-Night Clubbing.
An Excuse for a Chat-up
So David Byrne has a blog. There’s an intersection between society, the internet and art, and if you’re into that sort of thing, I suggest you subscribe, because David Byrne seems to be there too.
I did, and here’s what I found out:
“Content is just a means to an end, so there’s something to talk about.” Or so says Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate, mobile phone gaming entrepreneur. I think I’m being reasonable to say that this statement is probably the most offensive thing that can be said to a creative person. Might not the artists and programmers employed by Mr. Hawkins read this statement and throw a chair through a company window? I say they might. I admit that this is a very true statement, if we adopt the narrow perspective of a business person whose chief concern is with something so crass as ‘monetizing content’. David B. continues with a question:
Does that mean everything we create — every book, painting, song — is simply (or complexly) an excuse for a chat up, some networking, or for establishing and sorting out a social hierarchy?… I’m reading Miller’s (mentioned above) book “The Mating Mind” now and he proposes something similar — that much of our evolved brainpower and creativity is a refined part of the mating dance…
This might be true, but Tony Hawkins’ statement says nothing about this. He’s talking about consumers of content, not creators, and in any case, he has a financial stake in that statement being true. I once interviewed with a large mobile phone manufacturer headquartered in Finland, and they seemed very interested in multiplayer mobile phone gaming — anything, really, to get people signing up for data plans for $10 or $20 a month. You can only sell content to someone once, after all. In any case, I’m convinced that Tony Hawkins and his ilk will fail, because consumers want to buy from a company that cares about what they care about. I’m convinced that this explains Apple’s success. Other companies have tried and failed the same game because they telegraph in a million tiny ways that they are ignorant of their customers passions, or worse, disdainful of them. This can’t be remedied by hiring a hip marketing agency, because consumers have very sophisticated bullshit detectors — they can tell when your ‘customer-centric’ cart-wheelings are shallow.
Let’s go back to the point about reducing creativity and brainpower to mere mating rituals. If a man thinks his wife is beautiful, does he really think she is beautiful, or is it simply an illusion to encourage him to mate? In some way, these are nonsense questions, because there’s no reason to prioritize the purposes of evolution or the species over the subjective and inter-subjective reality we spend most of our time in. To put it another way, I drink a glass of water because I experience thirst. Except maybe extraordinary circumstances, it never occurs to me that the survival of the species depends upon it, even though from a very narrow point of view, its not completely wrong to say so.
In any case, why not turn the argument on its head and say that the purpose of evolution is so that we can experience subjective reality.