2/11/2013: WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics

This is this week's only WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics post - sorry folks, busy weekend full of work and a major announcement coming up Monday am.

A NY Times article that resonates on ALL levels with what I have to say about the modern state of intellectual inquiry and our society's willingness to face the truth: ideas, thoughts, words, creativity, innovation, insight - these things are not free. They require effort, input, dedication. And if you value them - you should be prepared to pay for them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/slaves-of-the-internet-unite.html?_r=0

The deeper issue here is whether the 'free' nature of these goods in the age of internet is destroying the quality of these goods being supplied? I don't have an answer to this, but I can tell you that I have never had a free lunch that I actually enjoyed. If something has a value, it is never free. If something is free, it has no value.

Many of you have noticed that I significantly cut back on commenting in the media and focused on only such 'free' activities which grant me the power to enjoy real freedom to express myself (this blog, for example) and/or which allow me to do real good (non-profit IMHO work). The reason for this is that I no longer find much satisfaction in what I do.

So can 'free' (or exposure-focused) work be of value?


But that is too close to economics, to be here in a WLASze post, so let's backtrack into arts and sciences…

Those who follow my weekend posts know that I am a bit of a fan of space-defining private Japanese architecture. And here's another example, from a public building, but still on human (private) scale:
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/10/29/the-sea-library-in-awashima-by-etat-arkitekter/
Two images: the table first

and then a wonderful counter-point of the wave-faced reflecting wall:

This is a seamless integration of space (room and framed gardens beyond the window), object (table, wall), subject (wave: water to light), light (window to wall or table), personal (constrained space) to total (open-ended reflection in the wall merging with all dimensions of the space around it)… It is an infinite within the finite… Brodskovian:

"Я обнял эти плечи и взглянул
на то, что оказалось за спиною,
и увидал, что выдвинутый стул
сливался с освещенною стеною.
Был в лампочке повышенный накал,
невыгодный для мебели истертой,
и потому диван в углу сверкал
коричневою кожей, словно желтой.
Стол пустовал. Поблескивал паркет.
Темнела печка. В раме запыленной
застыл пейзаж. И лишь один буфет
казался мне тогда одушевленным.

Но мотылек по комнате кружил,
и он мой взгляд с недвижимости сдвинул.
И если призрак здесь когда-то жил,
то он покинул этот дом. Покинул."

Or in english version:

I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing
at what emerged behind that back,
and saw a chair pushed slightly forward,
merging now with the lighted wall.
The lamp glared too bright to show
the shabby furniture to some advantage,
and that is why sofa of brown leather
shone a sort of yellow in a corner.
The table looked bare, the parquet glossy,
the stove quite dark, and in a dusty frame
a landscape did not stir. Only the sideboard
seemed to me to have some animation.
But a moth flitted round the room,
causing my arrested glance to shift;
and if at any time a ghost had lived here,
he now was gone, abandoning this house.


And while we are on 'spaces' and architecture and imagery, here are the images from the Open House Dublin 2013 photography competition: http://www.flickr.com/photos/irish_architecture_foundation/galleries/72157636936238606/


And to round off, on science side, two posts on AI and the role it plays and might play in the future…

Via BusinessInsider, the story how use of computers in chess training is shifting the nature of the game when played by humans. Now, loads of good stuff here, but the key to me is the point that grandmasters now have to be more creative in their plays, since computerised training of their opponents assigns disadvantage to predictable opening moves and strategies. In other words, indirectly, computer-assisted training leads to increased creativity...
http://www.businessinsider.com/anand-on-how-computers-have-changed-chess-2013-11
This is a classic example of what I termed computer-enabled innovation and creativity - not a system that operates by design, but a system that generates, promotes, advances human innovation.

As computer-assisted cooking does as well, except in this case, it is computer-generated creativity… http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672444/try-a-recipe-devised-by-ibms-supercomputer-chef
I had a pleasure engaging with IBM few years ago in developing new ideas for using Watson's capabilities in finance and insurance, but I never could have imagined that the most powerful AI system can be used to write new recipes for the kitchen…


Enjoy. I will be cooking Uzbeki Plov tomorrow for the family… Computer un-assisted cooking and a recipe that is centuries old...

22/9/2013: WLASze Part 2: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and Zero Economics

This the second part of WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics (part 1 is linked here). Enjoy!


Financial crises tend to have profound and long-run impacts on the societies they visit. This much should be pretty clear to the readers of this blog (from economics side of my musings). However, no man is an island and, thus, no art is an island either… What about financial crises impact on arts? Did gloom-n-doom of the Great Depression result in the darkening abstraction in arts, ultimately leading to the emergence of urbanist photography and design, as well as early abstract expressionism? Motherwell's Spanish Republic studies (http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79007) as culmination of darkness and pain?

Or Kline's torn dynamism?

Although all of these post-date the war, they are hardly infused by the giddy optimism of the 1950s and experimentation of the 1960s, instead carrying the pre-Vietnam fear and memory of the past, foreboding the replay of the previously experienced or at least a threat instead of foretelling a new era…Or more immediate deepening of German expressionism? The sombre consolidation of Bauhaus outside Weimar?

Enough of the argument here… Instead, back to the current events. Here's an interesting post based on Franco “Bifo” Berardi talk at Pratt Institute on his book The Uprising: Poetry and Finance, "which considers poetry as a salve in the wake of the international financial crisis. Or, as reviewer David Cunningham puts it now in considering the book for the UK’s Radical Philosophy journal, the book “posits a parallel between ‘the deterritorialization effect’ which has, on the one hand, ‘separated words from their semiotic referents’ and, on the other, separated ‘money from economic goods.’” Read and judge for yourself:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/11/audio-now-online-from-franco-berardi-talk-on-the-uprising-on-poetry-and-finance/?woo


On a brighter side of things, crises teach us (or attempt to teach us) to distill things more to the basics, to the necessary, striking out the superfluous. This can be a torturous process, but it can also be a path to beauty. Modern Japanese architecture, having faced the demons of severe constraints, often shows the emergence of angels of beauty out of the challenge of pushing organic spaces into contained sites. Two brilliant examples:

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/16/house-in-fujizakura-by-case-design-studio/
Cool, tranquil, beautiful and, yet, too individualistic for being inhabitable - a shell for a hermit crab of sorts…

And via deezen.com another example - this one a perfect balance of view, space, light and yet jigsawed into a challenging site…

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/11/alley-house-by-apollo-architects-associates/

There is a fundamental difference between 'compressed' European architecture and Japanese architecture. This difference arises from two distinct drivers for challenges of space. In European context, some (not all) of the spacial challenge rests on the basis of desire to appear to be 'environmentally conscious' - in other words, we often tend to build rural houses on micro scale to pretend that this 'helps the environment'. This gives our small rural houses architecture a forced, fake dimension. In the case of Japan, physical space constraints generate organic, unforced, organic effort to design spaces on intimate scale. End result, even urban architecture in Japan is often truly a balance of space, design, liveability, tradition and subtle, even modest distinction.


The testaments to the 'fake' constraints in the Western World are abandoned spaces - which in my view (aside from presenting a challenge as to why we need severe spatial constraints of design in the firs place) carry almost intrinsic artistic beauty in and by themselves. I wrote about this before in previous WLASze posts… so here are few more links documenting abandonment:
http://www.boredpanda.com/abandoned-places/

H/T for the above to @nicolematthews1

and more: http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2013/01/30-of-the-most-beautiful-abandoned-places-and-modern-ruins-ive-ever-seen/


Abandonment is no threat, however to the greats of European art. Grand Palais in Paris is hosting the first in 40 years retrospective of George Braque. To me, Braque is ahead of the other great, associated closely with him - Picasso, especially in the context of defining fauvism and cubism.
http://www.france24.com/en/20130920-rare-braque-exhibition-opens-grand-palais-paris-picasso

Picasso and Braque... and Mark Tansey's take on their dual significance:

And from cubism (a quasi-scientific approach to space, light and positioning in painting) to physical positioning in a stream of light. Here's a massively important paper:
"By Bernoulli’s law, an increase in the relative speed of a fluid around a body is accompanies by a decrease in the pressure. Therefore, a rotating body in a fluid stream experiences a force perpendicular to the motion of the fluid because of the unequal relative speed of the fluid across its surface. It is well known that light has a constant speed irrespective of the relative motion. Does a rotating body immersed in a stream of photons experience a Bernoulli-like force? We show that, indeed, a rotating dielectric cylinder experiences such a lateral force from an electromagnetic wave." In other words, light has the same properties as air and water in their ability to create, for example, support drag that holds airplanes in the air...

Here's a popular link: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519471/optical-bernoulli-forces-could-steer-objects-bathed-in-light-say-theorists/

From the authors: "The forces obtained here are only a fraction of the incident radiation pressure and seem to require infeasible rotation rates, but we expect that they can be resonantly enhanced by techniques similar to those that have been used by other authors to enhance scattered power for a given particle diameter. Mie resonances are already visible in Fig. 4, but much stronger resonant phenomena can be designed… Material dispersion will contribute an additional source of lateral force… Such enhancement mechanism, …may permit the future experimental observation and exploitation of optical “Bernoulli” forces.

We are far away from 'flying on light' but we know that theoretically it is feasible… And more… can light create 'vacuum' as a flow of water does?.. Injection pump for light anyone?..


And to conclude, a splash of hydraulic / fluid dynamics art from the Science Gallery (Trinity College), this time in Canada: http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/4117146-big-splash/ Surface Tension, watery exhibition from @ScienceGallery opened in @THEMUSEUM in Kitchener, Ontario. Congrats to all involved! Great to see SG spreading its wings around the globe. Note, I covered SG latest exploits in Dublin here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/08/382013-wlasze-part-1-weekend-links-on.html.