Cherry Picking is the Enemy of Soul
Matt over at 37Signals recently used this title for one of his postings. I really liked his point on art and design. The premise:
In “A Talking Head Dreams of a Perfect City,” David Byrne describes what he loves in different cities.
There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this — mainly because a city’s qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place’s cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.
Byrne’s article is fascinating, but so is this inital warning about singling out individual elements — the idea that cherry picking is a pipe dream. Qualities cannot thrive out of context. Everything is interwoven.
He goes on to say:
The sum is often greater than the parts
In today’s isolate then cut-and-paste world, it can be tempting to go around trying to single out just the best parts of things. Think of the “show three comps” method of delivering designs to a client. Inevitably the same thing happens: The client picks a few elements from design #1, a couple from #2, and a few others from #3. Then the designer(s) try to frankenstein these pieces together into a “perfect” hybrid — which turns out to be quite imperfect. All that cherry picking destroys any sense of cohesiveness. The end product looks like a collage instead of something unified.
When you cherry pick, you lose integrity. You lose the below-the-surface aspects of what makes something great. You cut the invisible strings that hold the whole thing together. You wind up with a mash-up instead of something that’s got soul.
Of course, the entire identity of post-modernism is this cherry picking and self-referencing. This is why so much post-modernist work fails to stand on its own - until you get what it’s referencing, it is difficult to see its value. At one extreme of music sampling, this is the case as well. The sample is often not chosen because of its inherent beauty but because the musician is interested in the collage of cultures. Unless you get this, a sampled bar of music looped over and over again seems sterile.
As pointed out on another blog, I really love the idea of generative identity. In this case - a distinct and compelling shape that can take on many different personalities but remain essentially itself.
In urban areas such as Melbourne or Chicago, if you walk a mile you’ll see many different faces of the same city. So why should city identities be staid and uncompromising?
Stephen King via 37signals.com
The art of storytelling and it’s impact. Just as Welles was able to rile a nation, so is Glenn Beck. For better or for worse, his stories (and that’s what they are) resonate with millions of Americans.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
![The Sound of Saturn (continued)
This is an FFT of the previously posted radio wave emissions. The downward slope and uneven stroke demonstrates the gesture of shimmering, falling pitches that you hear.
[Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Iowa]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kov4rnmzGt1qzzio5o1_500.jpg)
The Sound of Saturn (continued)
This is an FFT of the previously posted radio wave emissions. The downward slope and uneven stroke demonstrates the gesture of shimmering, falling pitches that you hear.
[Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Iowa]
The Sound of Saturn
Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras and the radio spectrum they produce are similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region.
Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44.
[Text and Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Iowa. Edited from the original source.]
The Midwest
The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia ed. by Cayton, Sisson and Zacher claims that Sam Shepard, author of Chicago (1966) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Buried Child (1978), often “employs quintessentially midwestern tropes of growth, decay and rebirth through cyclical nature.”
The question I have is not if Sam Shepard actually engages these themes but whether or not the tropes actually exist as quintessentially midwest. As a filmmaker I’ve considered the west coast but I would sorely miss the four distinct seasons that the region offers. The humidity makes the summers hotter, the geographic location makes the winters colder. The intermittent fall and spring provides remarkable beauty; beauty that is not only inherent in the seasons themselves but also in the wide recognition from strangers and friends alike that this world is indeed remarkable. Change itself makes people recognize the amazing in the every day landscape instead of taking it for granted.
So - are the cycles of growth and decay typical of quintessential midwestern art, literature and thought?
![Fire escapes are part of the functional facade. Brown buildings and a sky so overcast that there isn’t a single break in gray atmosphere. This is the pedestrian living of eighty years ago fading away.
Chicago, Illinois.
[Digital Photo]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/dv0V1E7y8qspecwz84eSUj4Zo1_500.jpg)
Fire escapes are part of the functional facade. Brown buildings and a sky so overcast that there isn’t a single break in gray atmosphere. This is the pedestrian living of eighty years ago fading away.
Chicago, Illinois.
[Digital Photo]
Perspective
“Pleasure need not be less keen because there will be centuries of springs to come, their blossom unseen by human eyes, the walls will crumble, the trees die and rot, the gardens revert to weeds and grass, because all beauty will outlive the human intelligence which records, enjoys and celebrates it.”
The Children of Men by P.D. James
emphasis and source Tyler Knott
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“I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does… My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model drawn to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings, and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits.”
Frank Ramsey
emphasis mine
Manfred Schroeder
Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws
For those wondering about coincidence and serendipity….
