Aesthetics: January 2007 Archive Page

We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree's behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy's crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court's decree. --J.H. Gillis, Judge --Fisher v. Lowe, 1999 (Letter of the Law)

Laws are weighed by fools like him.
He's gone too far out on this limb.

It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.--T.S. Eliot --Tradition and the Individual Talent (Bartleby.com)

A student in one of my classes said that she had always been taught that poetry is an expression of emotion, and she's having trouble assimilating some of T.S. Eliot's claims.

One of my favorite TV shows is Babylon 5. While the creator openly calls himself an agnostic, one of the reasons I like the show is that most of the characters (humans and aliens) have religious motives. One show featured a young monk who dies under horrible circumstances, but who likens his own suffering to the suffering of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Later, the monk's abbot forgives the murderer. The TV show's lead character is shocked that the abbot would be so forgiving, and sort of ashamed that he can't be that forgiving himself.

Fans of the show chatted on the internet... did this show mean that the show's creator, an agnostic, had some sort of religious conversion? Was he starting to believe in the faith he had rejected?

The creator of the show, who also wrote the episode, answered the fans... as an experienced writer, he can create characters who have faith, and he can tell a good story that hinges on that faith, without necessarily believing in that faith. He had told equally powerful stories about aliens sacrificing themselves for their own religious beliefs, but he didn't believe in the planets where those characters were supposed to come from.

Certainly, authors write from their own experience, and perhaps this guy had at one time known faith, or he was just a keen enough observer of people around him and stories that he has read that he was able to touch that segment of the audience that appreciated a moving religious story.

But I think it's a popular myth that great authors have to express their inner emotions in order to create great art, or that the greater the emotion, the greater the art.

People with terrible voices can sing "Happy Birthday" to their children, and it will be a meaningful expression of love, even if it is full of technical errors (off-key, off-tempo, the lyrics are wrong, etc.) that would drive from the room anyone else who isn't part of the family.

The same applies to poetry, or any other medium. For example, here's a singing performance, that's an expression of emotion yet is most certainly NOT good music.

Does her (decided lack) of singing ability have anything to do with her patriotism or her political competency? No. Would she ever make it as a lounge singer if she wasn't already a political celebrity? No.

I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind and in whatever degree, from various causes is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will upon the whole be in a state of enjoyment. Now, if Nature be thus cautious in preserving in a state of enjoyment a being thus employed, the Poet ought to profit by the lesson thus held forth to him, and ought especially to take care, that whatever passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if his Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. --William Wordsworth --Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Bartleby.com)

I'm taking a break from responding to an essay written by an "Intro to Literary Study" student who expressed frustration that a composition instructor (not me) who picked apart an essay about the death of the student's grandmother. When students are too close to the emotions that inspire them to write, they don't always see the value in thinking of the poem as a tool in which to re-create those same emotions in the reader.

--[Hand-made Star Wars] (YouTube)

Very dorky, but in a totally awesome, very cool way.

Because of the popularity of audio books, Lowe commissioned Bill Uden, a performing-arts student at Carmarthenshire College in Wales, to record readings from her book in his college's studio. Lowe, who found Uden through a "blogging friend," began releasing the podcasts along with her regular posts this month.

And like many writers who publish their work online, Lowe isn't just angling for a book contract.

"It would be disingenuous for me to say I don't want to be read, so I'd be perfectly amenable to paper and ink, though I'd be adamant about releasing my work online at the same time," Lowe wrote. "At the center of my work is a strong conviction in open culture, freely available to all. --Katie Haegele --The word on technology: A new column on online literature (Philly.com)

The first installment of a bi-weekly column on digital literature.

The ubiquity of the cell phone camera means that every moment in our lives is photographable. One consequence of this is an altered perception of the gravity of our day-to-day routines. We are now more aware of ourselves as observers of "history." When a van catches fire in front of our house, we and our neighbors are now out on the lawn recording. We e-mail this to our friends, who testify to the enormity of the event, and then we all await the next sensation. This impulse can be positive, but it also fuels the increasingly destructive American habit of oversharing. The snapshot speaks with a small voice: I'm alive and I saw this. The cell phone camera picture or video is a shout from the rooftop: Check out this crazy thing that happened to me. --Michael Agger --The Camera Phone: The Gadget that Perverts, Vigilantes, and Celebrity Stalkers Can All Agree On (Slate)

--toxickaty --Pac-Man Bathroom (Flickr | toxickaty)

Awesome.

If you checked out the Newsweek article that I mentioned last time, you were subjected to the above image, with multiple Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks all dolled up in hi-tech mo-cap gear. Here is where Warner Bros' marketing was really banking on the prestige of Hanks getting all dirty, showing that he's willing to go the extra mile to give us, the audience, something worth watching. But, unfortunately, we are given the actual image from the movie from where this performance was captured. A "before and after" scenario, I guess. It's all too telling, if you ask me. Do you see what's happened from Point A to Point B? Somehow they spent millions of dollars to literally take the soul out of an Oscar-winning actor's performance. That's quite a feat!

I sat there just staring at this image, trying to figure out what happened. What exactly is going on here? Why does the image on the top look so engaging, so vibrant, so full of life, but the image on the bottom - which is supposed to be the exact same performance of the actor "captured" by the computer - look so dead and puppet-like? --Ward Jenkins --The Polar Express: A Virtual Train Wreck (conclusion) (Ward O Matic)

An animator re-touches images from The Polar Express, to show how to bring life back into the 3D characters who looked like automatons in the finished film.

What's it actually like? Does it exploit the tragedy for cheap thrills? Or does it actually have artistic merit -- offering a new way to think about Columbine?

Right off the bat, Ledonne tries to put his critics off guard by delivering precisely the opposite of what you'd expect. Nobody will be able to use Super Columbine to live out explicit fantasies of gore or train themselves to shoot up a high school.

That's because it's anything but a graphically sophisticated, blood-soaked shoot-em-up. On the contrary, Super Columbine was designed to look like a clunky Nintendo game from the mid '90s, with low-rez, pixilated characters the size of sugar cubes, and cheesy MIDI music. When you kill someone, the avatar looks like a mashed red blot.

What strikes you, instead, is Ledonne's attention to narrative detail. He painstakingly researched the killers' life stories using publicly released police investigations of the pair, and the game thus includes all manner of detail I never knew. When I started off in Harris' house, I found a box of Luvox, an antidepressant he was on that prevented him getting into the Marines. When I met up with Klebold in a basement, we sat down in front of the VCR to watch the "I've seen the horror" speech from Apocalypse Now, a movie they apparently loved. --Clive Thompson --I, Columbine Killer (Wired)

I've been sick or caring for sick family members for most of the break, so I haven't had the chance to write my thoughts about "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" -- the game, that is, rather than simply the Slamdance controversy.

Thompson is one of the few voices out there who actually played the game, and can thus argue that "It uses the language of games as a way to think about the massacre. Ledonne, like all creators of 'serious games,' uses gameplay as a rhetorical technique."

Whatever one thinks of the game's content, the game went through an extensive judging process and was deemed a finalist by a jury of game experts. To have the game pulled based on either pressure from backers or a fear of liability is to say that independent games do not deserve the same respect and conscientious protection by artistic venues as independent films. Would a difficult, perhaps controversial, film be pulled from the festival under the same circumstances? Of course not -- and it had never happened in the history of the festival. That is the point of having a festival such as Slamdance, to confront those moments when media and sensibility and culture are in conflict. To offer a place where the independent independents can be seen, appreciated, lauded or condemned -- but not hidden or refused.

[...]

[A] festival honoring a "philosophy of design" must be open to more than just beautiful independent games or independent games that make us feel good; and, that those striving to support independent game making must be ready to defend games that are difficult and provocative in terms of their content, as well as games that are challenging and innovative in their game play. We support such games and it is in that spirit that we withdraw our sponsorship. --USC Interactive Media Division Withdraws Slamdance Sponsorship (Ludicidal Tendencies)

The fallout over Slamdance's decision to pull Super Columbine Massacre RPG! continues.

You know something is seriously changing in a genre when a masked serial killer invites you to check out his "blog". Such a gesture is obviously a solicitation of interactive engagement -- a marketing scheme intended to solicit an investment of attention and to mollify a fan base, with the promise of giving a web-savvy audience member "something extra" for free online. --Michael A. Arnzen --Scary New Media (Dissections)

A little later in the article, Arnzen offers a good discussion of new media horror as an expression of anxiety over new media itself.

I don't get cable TV, and it has been so long since I have followed any TV series closely enough to consider this sort of thing. I do remember reading something about a controversy in that the cast of a particular show had agreed to air a certain number of short web-only episodes, but the studio execs refused to pay them extra for their work, so the episodes stopped.

As I understand it, YouTube has recently limited its clip lengths to 10 minutes, which is slightly longer than the average content hole in between the commercial breaks, and about the same length as the amount of film that the old movie cameras could shoot in one stretch.

This is getting off topic, but I'll push on anyway.

Just today, Steve Jobs announced that he was changing the name of Apple Computers to Apple Inc, and he unveiled a new iPhone and a TV appliance that is supposed to sync your video files across your various video appliances. Some observers are predicting that the iPod is pretty much dead, but the new iPhone also looks pretty expensive, to those who don't have executive epxense accounts to finance their toy purchases. At any rate, you can bet that we're going to see a lot of hype for hand-held video. Way back in the dark ages, families used to gather in the living room to watch the same shows. Once you had cable TV, more channels meant it was likely that different family members would watch different things.

Occasionally when our DVD player has been out, I have offered to watch a movie with my wife on my laptop computer, but she rejected the idea. To her, a computer is something you use when you are working. I don't really watch many DVDs on my computer, but I do from time to time. And I'm fortunate enough that I have a job where I can tell myself that watching Blade Runner or playing an IF game is research, which it is.

I'm still more likely to want to build a Half-Life 2 level or program an IF game for relaxation if I can find a few unbroken hours to block out for such activities. (Blogging is typically what I do when I know I'm going to be interrupted, or when I'm too sick to concentrate, which has been the case for the past week.)

There are no lithe leaps, perfect pirouettes or pointed toes here. Most girls cannot walk or stand, much less make a shallow curtsy. Their crutches and walkers lie nearby and their customized ballet slippers are stretched over leg braces. --Corey KilGannon --Given a Chance to Be Little Ballerinas, and Smiling Right Down to Their Toes (NY Times)

Born with a rare syndrome that left him profoundly autistic, seven-year-old Luke was trapped in his own body. But then his dad took him surfing. --Paul Solotaroff --About a boy (Guardian)

I'm sick with a virus, and I can't do much but read. Oh, and try to find out why my division chair can't log into his weblog from Mexico. This was a pleasant diversion.

Humans communicate with each other through voice inflection, timing, and gesture. "Those capabilities are hard-wired into humans," Pausch explains. "You wouldn't put up with a person who makes you learn how to type commands to him; why should you have to talk to computers that way? Ultimately, we'd like to be able to read facial expressions."

But in the meanwhile, Pausch suggests, we have a lot to learn about the medium itself. "The first movies were made by Thomas Edison and other engineers -- and those movies were really bad. In the same way, the field of virtual reality research is in its infancy. This is the first truly three-dimensional electronic medium, and we have absolutely no idea how to use it." --Virtual Reality for Five Dollars a Day (University of Virginia Computer Science)

This is from a newsletter article I wrote as a employee of the U.Va. engineering school's fund-raising foundation, in 1992. That quote about engineers being the first movie-makers has lodged deep in my brain.

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
[...] --The horror, the horror of Iraq, in poetry (SF Gate.com)

Fascinating reading.

--Vintage Mobile Phones

I'd love to see one with a rotary dial... how cool would that be?

The Carnegie Museum of Art's Volcanic Magma: Lava It or Leave It (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Recently the family attended the Tiffany exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art. My wife went on ahead with our preschooler, while I let Peter take in the exhibit at his own pace. I had him read all the display copy out loud. Some of it was unnecessarily flowery and complex, so I supplied him with a simultaneous real-time translation from museum-copy-speak to bright-but-short-attention-span-gradeschool-speak.

I initially noticed this particular passage because of the redundancy of "volcanic magma." Was it really necessary to use the adjective "volcanic"? Perhaps the curators felt that the public wouldn't recognize the word "magma" by itself, but then why not just use "lava"? But then another thought occurred to me.

"Peter," I said. "What's the difference between 'magma' and 'lava'?"

"Magma is volcanic rock beneath the surface. Lava is magma that has burst through to the surface," he says.

"Which is more likely? that Mr. Tiffany saw lava, or that he saw magma?"

"Lava, definitely," says Peter. Then his imagination takes off. "Unless he had some kind of volcanic scuba gear with goggles that lets him see molten rock beneath a volcano. It could have diamond lenses and a super-strong titanium hull!"

After Peter describes Louis Comfort Tiffany putting together an expedition to the volcanic underworld so seek inspiration for stained glass designs (I've got to introduce this boy to steampunk, or at least Jules Verne), I stop a tour guide ask Peter to explain the problem with the sign. She is impressed, and stays to chat for a while.

I enjoyed that so much that I find another employee, and ask Peter a question that sets him off.

"Well, Patrick," Peter begins, reading the employee's nametag, and launching into a very animated (and accurate) description of what's wrong with the sign. He even remembers to say some nice things about the sign first, before offering his suggestions for improvement.

"Good job, Peter," I say.

"You're the one who noticed it," says Peter.

"Yes, but you answered correctly when I asked you about it."

Peter gestures dramatically, his wide-eyed grin conjuring up the image of a cartoon light bulb above his head."Ah! The Socratic method!"

Patrick looks at me, with that "is he for real" expression that I just love to see.

I affect nonchalance. "He's home-schooled."

(See also "Living Room Physics.")