A Perfect Defect

Robert Rauschenberg is dead

2008-05-14T16:03:00.013-04:00

He was (and is) a giant in the world of art, and I feel very privileged that I got to spend some time with him.

I became infatuated with the art of Robert Rauschenberg in the early 70's, after the first of my many pilgrimages to the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art. He was a huge influence on my early work as an artist. I just couldn't get enough of Bob. I purchased the German-made Talking Heads album Speaking in Tongues (Robert Rauschenberg Limited Edition) as soon as it was available at my local record store. Rauschenberg won a 1984 Grammy Award for best album package for this transparent plastic case with credits printed on movable circular transparent collages. To this day, the disc has never been removed from the packaging. I had already bought the regular release of the record to listen to. Not only was I a big fan of the musical group (I own all of the Talking Heads' albums), but at the time I was also lucky enough to be working with Bob at Graphicstudio in Tampa. I was one of four guys that printed an edition of Rauschenberg's 100 foot photograph Chinese Summerhall and all of the photographic studies for it. It was one of the first works that was produced for the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (ROCI).

My first experience of Bob was when he was visiting the workshop at Graphicstudio, before the project started. I was a student at the University of South Florida, and eager to meet the man I placed on such a tall pedestal. As he entered the building, the first things I noticed was the smile and this huge Texas-style belt buckle that he was wearing. There was a photographic image in the center of it that I couldn't quite discern at the distance I was standing. Based on the expressions of the other Graphicstudio employees in the room, they had noticed it too. Bob encouraged everyone to get on their knees in order to get a closer look. The picture was of two men engaged in mutual oral sex (position 69).

Yeah, Bob was a joker. He laughed a lot. He also drank a lot while I was around him (I've seen him down half a bottle of "Jack Black" by himself) and occasionally he sounded like Buddha. He never seemed drunk and he spoke in koans and riddles that made you think he was the smartest man alive.

In my eyes, over the course of a decade, Bob went from being a god to being a complicated and troubled man, then back to practically being an art deity.

So, I've kept this album wrapped in a plastic bag, inside an archival box since Bob removed the original shrink-wrap to sign the clear plastic cover with his metallic silver marker in 1984. Produced in a limited edition of 50,000 clear vinyl copies, I'm betting that this signed copy is very unique, if not one of a kind. I don't think I've ever seen another piece of art that Rauschenberg signed and included his first name "Bob."

Fortunately for you, I've got a mortgage to pay and not much money coming in these days... so, you can now own it! Check it out at eBay! But, you better hurry... the bidding ends in just a few days!

The Flaw Advantage

2008-05-06T22:08:00.021-04:00

In my heart and mind, I'm a traveler: wanting to get a glimpse at other worlds, always interested in how other people live and what their daily experience is like. But, because I can't afford to fly wherever or whenever my heart desires, I feed my curiosity by surfing the Internet or picking up and reading the oddest magazine on the pile when killing time in a waiting room.

The current world of online gaming is, for the most part, still a mystery to me. Sure, I've seen the TV commercials and even skimmed through a few "gamer" magazines, but I haven't actually played a video game for decades. The first generation of Stargate, Donkey Kong, The Mario Brothers and Ms. Pacman were all the rage when I was in college, and I dropped lots of quarters in the slots at arcades back then. After a while, the novelty wore off, the quarters got more valuable, and I realized that my hand/eye coordination didn't need to be tested regularly.

LEFT: Purple Gang II/The Herald's Blend/Bobby, 1994, enamel, varnish and gold leaf on carved wood, 13-1/2" x 11-1/2" x 1"

And, while I have been known to indulge in the occasional cinematic Potteresque fantasy, Sci-Fi flick or an Arthurian legend themed movie, I really don't know anything about the Dungeons and Dragons culture either. So when I recently stumbled upon Castlevania: Disharmony, I was captivated. The game is "owned and operated by" (dare I say misogynist) "fragrahamSPAMTHISBITCH@gmail[dot]com (remove caps letters to email)" who describes it this way (his words, spelling and punctuation):

"Step into the darkness, the Hell house of madness, that consumes the mind and soul. Castlevania: Disharmony is a text based, diceless, logic based, multiplayer, online, role playing game. If that sounds like a mouthfull, in short it's a game you play by writing..."

The fact that there's no joystick or buttons to punch in order to play is not what originally caught my interest - it was this game's instructions in the section on Character Creation. Again, I directly quote the game's owner/operator:

"To create a character you will need to give him/her the following information and post it in the character aps area of the forum. In order to register for the forum please complete the registration form, found there and also send an email with the name you have registered and a brief statement, in English, declaring your intention to join CVD as a player."

You are then asked to provide your character's Name, Gender, Age, Species ("Dampiel, Man Beast, Half-Beast, Wildman, Lycanthrope, or of course Human"), Character Alignment ("Hero, Dark or Neutral"), Religion, Job, Class, Sub-class ("...your character's passing interest or hobby"), Appearance, and Weapon of choice (this section is very long - but, needless to say, "Your weapon can't be enchanted initially... starting bullets or arrows may NOT be made of silver").

Now, here's where the fabrication of your avatar at Castlevania turns really fascinating...

"Flaw: (optional) This step is not necessary but some of you may wish to make a character more interesting by making them less than perfect. This can be most anything you imagin be it a physical dissabillity, social stigma, phobia, mental disorder, or even something as simple as being old or short. Be creative. The more your flaw inhibbits you the better the benefit you can trade it for. You may also create numerous weak flaws for one good flaw or one major flaw for numerous weak benefits. Innate personality traits do not qualify as flaws, nor drawbacks to your class which already exist. Extra Benefit: (optional) If you list a flaw you can add a little extra power to your character. A unique trait that lets your character do their job a bit better than an ordinary person. Please be proportionate to the severity of your flaw and connect it somehow to your existing classes. The most powerful benefits require the harshest flaws to balance them. If you change your mind about your flaws you may update your flaws any time between when your bio is aproved and when it goes up on the main site. Once your bio has gone up on the site you may change your flaws once per quest. Please stay consistant with your story when doing so."

Then, the character creation section continues on (and on) by posting the many rules concerning "Backstory," and eventually ends with the following paragraph:

"Bios are accepted on a basis of conforming with rules, historical accuracy, and accuracy to Castlevania canon. Quality in writing, spelling, and grammar will also play into your bio. Please do not write your bio in first person (unless this is a major part of your presentation), or use abreviations and internet slang. These will result in an immediate rejection. Exceptionally well written bios will be rewarded."

I know that there's something to learn about human beings (or, I'm assuming, teenage boys) from all of this... I just haven't figured out what that is yet, other than they seem to have a lot of energy.

But then, traveling for me is like going to the zoo. You don't necessarily have to understand what's going on in the head of the species you are visiting, just be able to observe with an open mind, learn a little something and appreciate the differences.

And speaking of differences, have you looked at this month's Tiger Beat Magazine?

404 File not found

2008-04-30T08:18:00.007-04:00

You wanted what? Oh, I'm Sorry, but there was an error encountered trying to produce a page for you. Perhaps you made a mistake in your spelling? Perhaps you didn't click the correct link? Perhaps you didn't click hard enough? Please click harder! Oops... still can't figure out why the page cannot be f**king displayed? Maybe the page is being currently displayed! Welcome to the magical land of error 404. Yes, that's right, 4***0***4! While you may be thinking that you have arrived at your destination, the fact of the matter is that your page cannot be found. Did I say Not Found - wait, yes it is... As confusing as this might seem, this is what many people are actually searching for! They live for good 404 error info, they actively hunt the creative HTTP Error 404, have huge collections of page not found, and sometimes even make elaborate animated audio/visual art projects out of creating the perfect 404 File not found. Now, you're wondering "What the Dickens? Why would anybody desire an Error 404 Page?" Well, I can't tell you why a requested document not found is so attractive. But, I will say that if you click on all the links in this post, you'll get a pretty good sampling of the File not found 404's that I have encountered recently. Some read like a Haiku 404, and others are overtly political, like the infamous Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction. And, just in case you learn that you enjoy error messages too, there's a 404 Research Lab that can provide everything you'd want to know on the subject and has hundreds of other 404 to see. Enjoy the errors!

1955 Doubled Die Lincoln 'The Perfect Error'

2008-04-28T16:02:00.004-04:00

By Paul M. Green, Numismatic News
April 23, 2008

How a 1955 Lincoln cent with distinct doubling of the date and lettering on the obverse can qualify as the perfect error requires a little thought. First, the doubling on the obverse is very clear. Another dealer once suggested to me that if you need magnification to see the error it will never be important. While some might want to dispute that idea, the fact is that if an average non-collector cannot look at the coin and see that something is not right the error will never get much broader attention.

The 1955 doubled die obverse had more going for it: very good timing. Back in 1955 the United States was a nation of Lincoln cent collectors. The "baby boom" was just being felt in the hobby and a nearly endless stream of youngsters began appearing at the nation's coin shops, nearly all of them collecting Lincoln cents.

Also, the entire hobby was alive with interest as 1955 was supposed to be the final year of coin production at the San Francisco Mint. That would later turn out to not be true, but in 1955 everyone thought they were seeing their last new S-mint coins.

It had not been all that common for collectors and dealers to check new issues for errors, but back in 1955 people were checking for everything. The 1955 doubled die obverse did not last long in circulation before it was discovered, and the news spread like wildfire.

Perhaps the most important element was that the 1955 doubled die obverse seemed to have a nearly perfect mintage.We aren't sure what the exact mintage was, but the best guess is about 20,000. It was not found with any regularity, but there were enough that periodically another would turn up. The frenzy of the time gripped everyone.

In many cases speculation results in a coin going up and then down or perhaps nowhere in price. Certainly there was some speculation in the case of the 1955 doubled die obverse, but it has known only one price direction and that is up.

In 1998 it listed for $515 in XF-40, and today it's listing in XF-40 is $1,450. In MS-65 the 1955 doubled die obverse was $14,500 in 1998, and today it is up to $38,500. Those are not normal increases for Lincoln cents of the period - they are far better than the average Lincoln.

The 1955 doubled die obverse, by continuing to be a coin with enormous demand, has made an enormous difference not just in Lincoln cent collecting but especially in how we view errors. Before the 1950s there was not that much interest in errors except on the part of a few specialists. The idea of a nationally popular error was unknown, but the 1955 double die obverse changed everything. It's price today suggest it remains the perfect error.

Infinite Monkey Theorem

2008-04-27T11:53:00.009-04:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey; rather, it is a metaphor for an abstract device that produces a random sequence of letters ad infinitum. The theorem illustrates the perils of reasoning about infinity by imagining a vast but finite number, and vice versa. The probability of a monkey typing a given string of text as long as, say, Hamlet, is so tiny that, were the experiment conducted, the chance of it actually occurring during a span of time of the order of the age of the universe is minuscule but not zero.

ABOVE: Shakespeare, 1998, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 23" x 46"

Direct proof

There is a straightforward proof of this theorem. If two events are statistically independent, (i.e. neither affects the outcome of the other), then the probability of both happening equals the product of the probabilities of each one happening independently. E.g. if the chance of rain in Sydney on a particular day is 0.3 and the chance of an earthquake in San Francisco on that day is 0.008, then the chance of both happening on that same day is 0.3 × 0.008 = 0.0024.

Suppose the typewriter has 50 keys, and the word to be typed is "banana". Typing at random, the chance that the first letter typed is b is 1/50, and the chance that the second letter typed is a is also 1/50, and so on, because events are independent. So the chance of the first six letters matching banana is:

(1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) = (1/50)⁶.

For the same reason, the chance that the next 6 letters match banana is also (1/50)⁶, and so on.

From the above, the chance of not typing banana in a given block of 6 letters is 1 − (1/50)⁶. Because each block is typed independently, the chance X_n of not typing banana in any of the first n blocks of 6 letters is:

As n grows, X_n gets smaller. For an n of a million, X_n is 99.99%, but for an n of 10 billion X_n is 53% and for an n of 100 billion it is 0.17%. As n approaches infinity, the probability X_n approaches zero; that is, by making n large enough, X_n can be made as small as one likes.^[1]^[2]

The same argument shows why at least one of infinitely many monkeys will (almost surely) produce a text as quickly as it would be produced by a perfectly accurate human typist copying it from the original. In this case X_n = (1 − (1/50)⁶)ⁿ where X_n represents the probability that none of the first n monkeys types banana correctly on their first try. When we consider 100 billion monkeys, the probability falls to 0.17%, and as the number of monkeys n increases to infinity the value of X_n — the probability of the monkeys failing to reproduce the given text — decreases to zero. This is equivalent to stating that the probability that one or more of an infinite number of monkeys will produce a given text on the first try is 100%, or that it is almost certain they will do so.

Today, popular interest in the typing monkeys is sustained by numerous appearances in literature, television and radio, music, and the Internet. In 2003, a humorous experiment was performed with six Celebes Crested Macaques, but their literary contribution was five pages consisting largely of the letter S.

To read the entire definition/listing of the infinite monkey theorem at Wikipedia, including: origin, history and variants of the theorem, infinite strings and probabilities, statistical mechanics, notes and references, etc., click here.

World's Largest Windows Error Message

2008-04-22T14:45:00.019-04:00

Regardless if it's man or the tools human beings create, when they (or it) slips on the proverbial banana peel (even when it's the electronic version), it brings a kind of joy to onlookers around the world... and as Ant Scott says, this is a "BLOG OF ERROR." So in keeping with that brief but accurate description of this site, I couldn't pass up on posting these humorous photos (and the accompanying story about them).

Originally from a February 2006 Networkworld.com submission, the pics were taken by Adam Gaffin, the Executive Editor, Online, of Network World. The following is his description of the events leading to the discovery and capture of these monumental errors:

"We went down to New York for the long weekend. Despite the 16-degree weather, we walked down to Times Square - all the bright lights lured us the ten blocks from our hotel. When we got there, we stood like, well, tourists, gaping at all the electronic billboards. And then, across the square, I saw it: the world's largest Windows error message - on a two-story high e-billboard (I guess everything really is bigger in New York). It was the only billboard in the entire square with absolutely no movement - since the PC running it had obviously frozen.

A clearer view of the message [is pictured below] for you error-message geeks."

Accidental Discoveries

2008-04-20T12:51:00.012-04:00

In a 1996 paper titled: Three Principles of Serendip: Insight, Chance, and Discovery in Qualitative Research, authors Gary Fine and James Deegan state:

"Part of serendipity derives from those unplanned happenings that stem from one's own hands. This involves the powerful role of mistakes leading to insight: a messiness that stems from the investigator. At one point there was something faintly embarrassing in talking about one's errors. Increasingly, however, in confessional ethnography's descriptions of learning from mistakes have been incorporated in qualitative research reports, perhaps glorifying the research role by demonstrating the power to persevere and overcome. Mistakes may be treated not only as unavoidable errors, but as events that uncover the preconceptions and choices of the researcher."

In the paper's Conclusion, they continue their point by saying:

"... we need to embrace the chance component of research as being central to the collection and interpretation of data. Chance has quite a different meaning in this conceptualization. Unplanned does not suggest that anything is possible, only that a range of things are. What is previously unexplained may be a result of contingencies that are not fully comprehended; exposing oneself to the unplanned may uncover these previously hidden contingencies. Examining the unexamined mix of contingencies produces the recognition of coincidences as meaningful."

ABOVE: Chebyshev's Paradise, 1999, enamel, ink and varnish on birch plywood, 36" x 46"

The following list of discoveries born from mistakes has been appropriated from: WIRED (Issue 14.03: START) March 2006.

Viagra: Men being treated for erectile dysfunction should salute the working stiffs of Merthyr Tydfil, the Welsh hamlet where, in 1992 trials, the gravity-defying side effects of a new angina drug first popped up. Previously, the blue-collar town was known for producing a different kind of iron.

LSD: Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann took the world's first acid hit in 1943, when he touched a smidge of lysergic acid diethylamide, a chemical he had researched for inducing childbirth. He later tried a bigger dose and made another discovery: the bad trip.

X-rays: Several 19th-century scientists toyed with the penetrating rays emitted when electrons strike a metal target. But the x-ray wasn't discovered until 1895, when German egghead Wilhelm Rontgen tried sticking various objects in front of the radiation - and saw the bones of his hand projected on a wall.

Penicillin: Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming was researching the flu in 1928 when he noticed that a blue-green mold had infected one of his petri dishes - and killed the staphylococcus bacteria growing in it. All hail sloppy lab work!

Artificial sweeteners: Speaking of botched lab jobs, three leading pseudo-sugars reached human lips only because scientists forgot to wash their hands. Cyclamate (1937) and aspartame (1965) are byproducts of medical research, and saccharin (1879) appeared during a project on coal tar derivatives. Yummy.

Microwave ovens: Microwave emitters (or magnetrons) powered Allied radar in WWII. The leap from detecting Nazis to nuking nachos came in 1946, after a magnetron melted a candy bar in Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer's pocket.

Brandy: Medieval wine merchants used to boil the H20 out of wine so their delicate cargo would keep better and take up less space at sea. Before long, some intrepid soul - our money's on a sailor - decided to bypass the reconstitution stage, and brandy was born. Pass the Courvoisier!

Vulcanized rubber: Rubber rots badly and smells worse, unless it's vulcanized. Ancient Mesoamericans had their own version of the process, but Charles Goodyear rediscovered it in 1839 when he unintentionally (well, at least according to most accounts) dropped a rubber-sulfur compound onto a hot stove.

Silly Putty: In the early 1940's, General Electric scientist James Wright was working on artificial rubber for the war effort when he mixed boric acid and silicon oil. V-J Day didn't come any sooner, but comic strip image-stretching practically became a national pastime.

Potato chips: Chef George Crum concocted the perfect sandwich complement in 1853 when - to spite a customer who complained that his fries were cut too thick - he sliced a potato paper-thin and fried it to a crisp. Needless to say, the diner couldn't eat just one.

- Compiled by Lucas Graves

Perfectionism: The Dark Side of the Force

2008-04-17T13:34:00.017-04:00

Nobody's Perfect

I have a confession to make...
I'm a perfectionist, but I'm not a freak about it. I strive for excellence and am constantly planning in order to do my best. I've lived by the credo: "Any job worth doing is worth doing right... hopefully the first time." I pride myself on my organizational abilities, prioritizing, analytical problem solving and goal setting skills. I'm constantly seeking more efficient ways of doing anything. People like me push themselves to meet very high standards in everything they do, be it in the workplace or their personal lives, and are high achievers. Normal perfectionism is usually a good trait whether you're a pilot, banker, athlete, actor or builder, because it makes you good at what you do.

LEFT: Taking Forever, 1998, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 23" x 31"

But there's a dark side of perfectionism that comes into play when a person loses their ability to be flexible about their standards. Perfectionists need to stay on guard that they don't slip into the neurotic category. Neurotic perfectionists never feel that they have done their job well enough. They are very intolerant of mistakes and extremely self-critical. They put themselves at risk from psychological and physical disorders including:

Depression
Alcoholism
Social phobia
Coronary Heart Disease
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)
Suicide
Anorexia nervosa
Writer's block

Six Dimensions of Perfectionism

Dr. Randy Frost of Smith College, Massachusetts has developed a 35-item questionnaire, or scale, designed to measure perfectionism. The scale recognizes six different aspects of perfectionism.

Concern over mistakes

Neurotic perfectionists get more upset over mistakes than other people because they are scared that others will think badly of them. As a result, these extreme perfectionists are less likely to seek help in rectifying errors, and have a stronger urge to cover up mistakes. Excessive concerns over mistakes can put people at risk of phobias and mood disorders.

Personal standards

Setting high standards that you feel compelled to meet is a common trait of both normal and neurotic perfectionists. But, taken to the extreme, the setting of high personal standards is thought to contribute to the eating disorder anorexia nervosa.

Parent expectations

Trying hard to live up to your parents' expectations of you is a common feature of perfectionism. This could be because they grow up in households where parents give their children love on condition that they meet their expectations. These children try to do everything perfectly to avoid being rejected by their parents.

Parental criticism

Seeking to appease your parents is often accompanied by the worry that your mother and father will criticise your achievements. As children, these people may have been punished for making mistakes. Consequently, they also develop the sense that they will never meet their parents' high standards.

Doubting of actions

Feeling uncertain when a job is finished is a common feature of neurotic perfectionism. As a result, these people are often reluctant to give up on tasks and sometimes need to be told to 'leave it alone now.' Doubting can also make extreme perfectionists very indecisive.

Organization

Perfectionists tend to be fussy and exacting about whatever they do. They also have a preoccupation with making everything neat and tidy. This is not a direct cause of perfectionism, but does affect how perfectionists try to achieve their high standards.

"The maxim Nothing avails but perfection may be spelled: Paralysis."
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Vancouver Psychologist Paul Hewitt, at University of British Columbia's Perfectionism and Psychopathology Lab, is studying perfectionists in the hope of finding ways to help them control their compulsions.

Hewitt, who has studied perfectionists for the past 14 years, says they fall into three main categories:

Self-oriented perfectionists, who believe they must be perfect.
Other-oriented perfectionists, who want others to be flawless.
Socially prescribed perfectionists, who feel they must be perfect because someone might be watching.

"These individuals don't have a real high regard for themselves," Hewitt says. "People who strive for excellence tend to experience satisfaction; people who strive for perfection tend not to."

Links to related sites:

Firstborn people prone to heart disease, April 2001, NewScientist.com news service ...The family context frequently orients firstborns along a perfectionist path, giving them a determined, winning and aggressive attitude - aspects frequently observed in subjects with a type-A personality, also known as coronary-prone...

It's a Pain to be Perfect, February 2007, UBC Reports (University of British Columbia) ...When an adolescent girl had to be hospitalized for headaches because of her relentless drive to get straight A+s in school, something was wrong. That something may be perfectionism...

Lab Probes Perfectionism for Links with Depression, January 2002, UBC Reports (University of British Columbia) ...UBC lab involved in more than 25 research projects including perfectionism's possible link to suicide...

What price perfection? Study aims to find out, January 1999, CNN/TECHNOLOGY ...Some people are never satisfied with anything -- including themselves. What makes them impossible to please? That's what researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada, are trying to find out...

Pixel Perfect

2008-04-07T13:56:00.014-04:00

A friend of mine brought to my attention the following paper from the Canadian Journal of Communication (1999), which so eloquently delves into one of the primary concepts ruminated in this blog. Titled: Pixel Perfect: Towards a Political Economy of Digital Fidelity, the author, Gary McCarron (Simon Fraser University), begins by describing his document in a brief abstract:

This paper examines the idea of perfection as a social construct which, while irrefutably marked with the trace of an original theistic impulse, operates concurrently as the objective of a technical project which aims at removing the stain of humanity from production. From the perspective of digital capitalism, perfection, despite the presence of a moral imperative rooted in religious inclinations, is an anti-human ideal. Hence the paper considers the manner in which contemporary references to perfect copies, perfect replicas, and perfect images are inflected with a political economic longing for the eradication of the human dimension from production.

The following is an excerpt (about a page) from this interesting 13 page paper. As usual, a link is provided at the end of this blog entry to bring you to Mr. McCarron's paper in its entirety.

LEFT: Alberto's Web I, 1998, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 14" x 10-3/4"

... Progress is an ecological, not merely an additive, concept (Postman, 1992). It is a description of how innovation improves the balance sheet, not a prescription for worker satisfaction or social amelioration. If "better" systems lead to extensive layoffs, then labour's sacrifice is the price of progress.

And herein lies an important political economic link to claims of digital perfection. The perfect copy of digital duplication is endowed with a peculiar form of use value in advance of its dissemination. The copy's use value, generally understood in relation to the project of producing yet more copies, is confounded by the radical homogeneity digital concepts of perfection entail. This is not simply a question of the eradication of aura, as Benjamin (1969) might suggest. Rather, something else is involved here as well, a confusion of aesthetics -- the artistic component of the images, for instance -- with the annihilation of the aesthetic dimension digital duplication permits. To be able to make perfect copies -- and here we cannot ignore the obvious connection with genetic cloning -- is itself a valued technical achievement. To be sure, the products of such endeavours will, for a limited time at least, enjoy an exchange value commensurate with the public's limited access to the necessary hardware. But when each of us is able to produce our own perfect copies, what, if any, use value will survive?

To question the value of the perfect copy -- and thereby, apparently, to express preference for that which is imperfect -- is taken to be either a sign of pathology or of willful disregard for the laws of progress. Absolutist terms like perfection, confident and impenetrable in their logical armor, defy all attempts at critical interrogation. To ask why the perfect copy is better, to the ear of the digital enthusiast, is much like asking why water is wet. Who could rationally question why the perfect copy is superior to its imperfect counterpart? Indeed, the very term "perfection" establishes a binary relation with the non-digital domain in a move neatly calculated to bolster the perfect copy's claim to superiority. Thus to express scepticism in the face of the many digital boasts to which we have grown accustomed -- that the virtual landscape will replace tourism, that chat-rooms will replace face-to-face communication, that the online classroom will replace teachers -- is viewed as a posture of heresy. It is not so much a matter of needing to argue the economic necessity of perfect, virtual experiences, but of wanting to deny that they are embedded in that unseemly discourse at all.

LEFT: Alberto's Web II, 1998, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 14" x 10-3/4"

Questions of perfect, pixelated images also articulate with arguments debating the status of simulacra in the domain of popular culture. The simulacrum is one of perfection's dominant icons in the everyday language by which social relations of production are erased from public view. In particular, the marketing of perfection as a valued aspect of consumer desire is usually carried out with the expectation that perfect things will be insulated from critical investigation on the strength of perfection's self-enclosed value. If something is perfect, what could be better? One example of how this promotional strategy works makes this point clearly.

A recent Chrysler advertising campaign boasted that the design of a new minivan had made use of the latest developments in virtual reality. The vehicle had been subjected to a "virtual landscape," for example, to test out its suspension system. The design process, from start to finish, had been carried out in the ethereality of the virtual domain -- or at least so the advertising campaign declared. The result, the television narrator intoned, was a vehicle that is "virtually perfect."

Putting aside the oxymoronic construction of the tag line, the latent implication of this promotion is that the new Chrysler minivan is superior to conventionally designed vehicles because it has transcended the ordinary pitfalls (and potholes) of reality. In this particular promotion, perfection is conceptualized in terms of its value for consumers even as aspects of the larger economic process are erased in the traces of perfection's quasi-theological language. The vehicle's perfection, in other words, is bespoken in the immateriality of the virtual; the (real) material drawing boards of engineers, apparently, are rife with the contaminants of human perspiration, uncertainty, and miscalculation. Remove the human designer and the computer will achieve perfection.

Similarly, the virtual landscape on which the vehicle was tested is characterized not as a diminished testing ground, but as one that exceeds the asphalt tracks of the real. How the virtual track exceeds reality is explained in the way that virtually provides opportunities for absolute control over factors that might contaminate the testing process. These contaminations, of course, include human agency. Chrysler's virtually perfect vehicle is one that no human agent has corrupted, a vehicle untouched by the (metaphorically) greasy hands of labour.

LEFT: Alberto's Web III, 1998, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 14" x 10-3/4"

At the level of the advertising campaign, the vehicle is virtually perfect because of the benefits the consumer will enjoy; at the point of industrial development, a significant (though socially invisible) part of its perfection is discovered in the fact that management has moved one step closer to eliminating its labour force through automated production.

When workers become the central problem in design, implementation, and production, virtuality can step in to inoculate consumers against the virus of human error. In the virtual land of cyberthings, the proximity of the human other is invested with new meanings, and most of these negative in their consequences. An automotive design program separated from the influence of human designers is promoted as capable of producing the virtually perfect vehicle precisely because it is emptied of direct human involvement. Curiously, the claim appears to require no justification. Perfection is an economic panacea, a turning away from the flesh, and the annihilation of all traces of the human. Perfection, like an obverse fetish, is the deanimation of the human spirit.

(...)

To read Pixel Perfect: Towards a Political Economy of Digital Fidelity by Gary McCarron in its entirety, click here.

Paradox (Polarity)/Logic

2008-04-04T13:51:00.013-04:00

Organizational leaders are perpetually faced with a series of questions. In this major change effort I want to initiate, can the change be driven from the top down or must it have bottom up leadership? How do I make sure my organization is constantly innovating and at the same time delivering a standardized level of service? How do I encourage my top management group to work as a team and at the same time not lose my star performers? What these three questions all have in common is that they cannot be answered using solely logical methods. Yet, one of the bedrock principles of science is the universal applicability of logic. Recently, though, a number of organizational scholars have suggested that an understanding and a facility with paradoxes is as important, if not more important than understanding logic.

LEFT: Hojo, 1999, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 18" x 23"

Complexity science suggests that paradoxes are not problematic. Rather, they "create a tension from which creative solutions emerge" (Regine and Lewin, 2000). This realization can shake someone at the core of his being. Charles Handy (1994) for example, writes that "the important message for me was that there are never any simple or right answers in any part of life. I used to think that there were, or could be. I now see paradoxes everywhere I look. Every coin, I now realize, has at least two sides." Others see the concept of paradox as so important that they now define leadership as essentially the management of paradoxes (Lewin and Regine, 2000; Farson, 1996). Paradoxes are defined as simultaneous or interdependent opposites. The terminology in literature is not yet consistent. Sometimes the same phenomenon is described as a polarity (Johnson, 1992) or a dilemma.

Although leadership is defined above as the management of paradoxes, paradoxes are not managed in the way that problems are. Paradoxes have to be constantly managed, for they are never "solved" like problems. Handy's (1994) words are again instructive:

I used to think that paradoxes were the visible signs of an imperfect world, a world which would one day, be better understood and better organized... I no longer believe in A Theory of Everything, or in the possibility of perfection. Paradox I now see to be inevitable, endemic, and perpetual.

Perhaps, surprisingly, some see the role of paradox critical to concepts such as integrity. Peck (1987) asserts that:

If a concept is paradoxical, that itself should suggest that it smacks of integrity, that it gives off the ring of truth. Conversely, if a concept is not in the least paradoxical, you should be suspicious of it and suspect that it has failed to integrate some aspect of the whole.

(...)

The following was excerpted from: Systems Theory and Practice in the Knowledge Age. Edited by Gillian Ragsdell, Daune West and Jennifer Wilby. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2002.

To purchase or learn more about the publication cited above, click here.

Article: Business/Thinking About Mistakes

2008-03-20T10:50:00.020-04:00

The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes

... consider how we are taught to think of mistakes in our society.

"I think it's a very difficult subject," said Paul J. H. Schoemaker, chairman of Decision Strategies International and teaches marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "There's a lot of ambivalence around making mistakes."

On one hand, as children we're taught that everyone makes mistakes and that the great thinkers and inventors embraced them. Thomas Edison's famous guote is often inscribed in schools and children's museums: "I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

On the other hand, good grades are usually a reward for doing things right, not making errors. Compliments are given for having the correct answer and, in fact, the wrong one may elicit scorn from classmates.

We grow up with a mixed message: making mistakes is a necessary learning tool, but we should avoid them.

Carol S. Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has studied this and related issues for decades.

"Studies with children and adults show that a large percentage cannot tolerate mistakes or setbacks," she said. In particular, those who believe that intelligence is fixed and cannot change tend to avoid taking chances that may lead to errors.

Often parents and teachers unwittingly encourage this mind-set by praising children for being smart rather than for trying hard or struggling with the process.

For example, in a study that Professor Dweck and her researchers did with 400 fifth graders, half were randomly praised as being "really smart" for doing well on a test; the others were praised for their effort.

Then they were given two tasks to choose from: an easy one that they would learn little from but do well, or a more challenging one that might be more interesting but induce more mistates.

The majority of those praised for being smart chose the simple task, while 90 percent of those commended for trying hard selected the more difficult one.

The difference was surprising, Professor Dweck said, especially because it came from one sentence of praise.

They were then given another test, above their grade level, on which many performed poorly. Afterward, they were asked to write anonymously about their experience to another school and report their scores. Thirty-seven percent of those who were told they were smart lied about their scores, while only 13 percent of the other group did.

"One thing I've learned is that kids are exquisitely attuned to the real message, and the real message is, 'Be smart,'" Professor Dweck said. "It's not, 'We love it when you struggle, or when you learn and make mistakes.'"

LEFT: Dancing Star, 1999, enamel, ink and varnish on birch plywood, 59" x 72"

As we get older, many of us invest a great deal in being right. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, we focus on flagellating ourselves, blaming someone else or covering it up. Or we rationalize it by saying others make even more mistakes.

What we do not want to do, most of the time, is learn from the experience.

Professor Dweck, who wrote a book on the subject called "Mindset" (Random House, 2006), proved this point in another study, this one of college students. They were divided into two camps: those who did readings about how intelligence is fixed, and those who learned that intelligence could grow and develop if you worked at it.

The students then took a very tough test on which most did badly. They were given the option of bolstering their self-esteem in two ways: looking at scores and strategies of those who did worse or those who did better.

Those in the fixed mind-set chose to compare themselves with students who had performed worse, as opposed to those Professor Dweck refers to as in "the growth mind-set," who more frequently chose to learn by looking at those who had performed better.

Mr. Schoemaker would agree. He was the co-author of a June 2006 article for the Harvard Business Review called "The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes." Among it's theories is that there is too much focus on outcome rather than on process.

If businesses and people are not making a certain number of mistakes, "they're playing it too safe," he said.

The resistance to making mistakes runs deep, he writes, but it is necessary for the following reasons, which he outlined in the article:

We are overconfident. "Inexperienced managers make many mistakes and learn from them. Experienced managers may become so good at the game they're used to playing that they no longer see ways to improve significantly. They may need to make deliberate mistakes to test the limits of their knowledge."

We are risk-averse because "our personal and professional pride is tied up in being right. Employees are rewarded for good decisions and penalized for failures, so they spend a great deal of time and energy trying not to make mistakes."

We tend to favor data that confirms our beliefs.

We assume feedback is reliable, although in reality it is often lacking or misleading. We don't often look outside tested channels.

Of course, there are mistakes and then there are mistakes.

"With children, you want them to make mistakes, but not end up in prison or in a wheelchair," Mr. Schoemaker said. One also has to weigh the consequences. We want people who run nuclear power plants or fly planes to avoid mistakes as much as possible.

But most of us are not holding people's lives in our hands and can stand to take a few more chances.

"Unfortunately, the people who most need to make mistakes are the ones least likely to admit it, and the same is true of companies," Mr. Schoemaker wrote.

Of course, there are stupid mistakes, or what Stanley M. Gully, associate professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, called "unintelligent failures."

After all, nobody wants a worker who keeps making the same mistake, and "if we fail and don't learn from it, it's not an intelligent failure," he said.

Professor Gully and other researchers have looked at ways of training people to do complex tasks and found that in some cases encouraging them to make mistakes works better than teaching them to avoid them.

Those who were good at processing information, open to learning and not overly conscientious were more effectively trained if they were persuaded to make mistakes.

"We get fixated on achievement," he said, but "everyone is talking about the need to innovate. If you already know the answer, it's not learning. In most personal and business contexts, if you avoid the error, you avoid the learning process."

(...)

Perfect: The Word/Our Language

2008-03-14T10:17:00.006-04:00

I found the following information in: The Random House Thesaurus, College Edition. Edited by Jess Stein and Stuart Berg Flexner. Copyright 1984 by Random House, Inc.

perfect adj. 1 Can you draw a perfect circle?: exact, accurate, precise, true, pure, correct in every detail, flawless, unerring, strict, scrupulous, faithful. 2 The athlete was in perfect health. The child has been a perfect angel all day: faultless, flawless, without defect, unblemished, unimpaired, undamaged, complete, whole, entire, unbroken, finished, absolute, thorough, pure, consummate, unqualified, unmitigated, impeccable, matchless, unequaled, unrivaled, ideal, supreme, peerless, superlative, sublime; blameless, untainted, immaculate. -v. 3 The scientist perfected a method of desalting seawater: bring to perfection, develop, complete, achieve, accomplish, effect, realize, evolve, fulfill, consummate.
Ant. 1, 2 imperfect. 2 faulty, flawed, defective, blemished, impaired, ruined, spoiled, damaged, incomplete, deficient, unfinished; partial, mixed, impure, qualified; inferior, poor, bad, worthless, Informal awful, Slang lousy.

Did you know that if something (or someone) is not perfect, then it is (or they are) "ruined, spoiled, impure, bad or worthless"? What does this information say about the culture that produced it, and how would this culture's perceptions/decisions be affected by the judgements innately linked to this word/concept?

An Open Letter: Glitch Aesthetics

2008-03-10T23:49:00.014-04:00

While I do not think it appropriate to reprint Iman Moradi's lengthy dissertation on "Glitch Aesthetics" on this blog site, I would encourage everyone interested in the perfect defect paradox to follow the link to his site and give it a read. It's fascinating information, and he should be complemented for compiling and organizing a lot of probing data that he personally collected (conversations, blog entries, forum posts, etc.) on a subject that hasn't been formally written about in any comprehensive way.

I offer the following thoughts, now - after reading it in its entirety, and I look forward to a beautiful book on the subject, coming out in the Fall, that he and Ant Scott are co-producing.

My thoughts about Glitch Aesthetics: an open letter to Iman Moradi and Ant Scott

A matter of control...
Everything seems to me to revolve around man's desire to strive for perfection, yet be attracted to/empathic towards defect.

Perhaps a component of what's happening here, a sudden growing interest in all things glitch, is not necessarily just a fetishisation of technology, but rather a fetishisation of glitch itself! Perhaps when glitch is re-purposed into a symbol it can represent not just "a digital art aesthetic or a component of the creative process," but the nature of man and the universe as a whole. It can become a comforting sign reminding us that we (and all that we create) are flawed; that perfection is an abstract concept with no real meaning since it doesn't actually exist anywhere.

Are the differences between "pure glitch" and "glitch alike" just a matter of imposed control? Perhaps there should be sub-categories of 'techno' and 'bio' glitch? In many of my paintings from the Perfect/Defect Suite, and the subsequent P/D2, a portion of the symbols and patterns are re-purposed pure glitch (accidental, coincidental, appropriated, found, real). By being very process driven (a human copying machine) and layering glitched information in such a way that I was not absolutely sure how they would interact with previous (and subsequent) layers, I was providing an opportunity for chance, like Jackson Pollock, to create a "happy accident." Would this single process be described as pure glitch becoming glitch alike (through the act of being translated into a different medium) and then reverting back to purity by virtue of the minimal controls used in moderating how it interacts/communicates with a new environment? And then there's the matter of human interaction (which is less than precise) in rendering these images, adding another layer of (let's call it) bio-glitch.

LEFT: E-Sync, 1999, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 23" x 18".

My understanding of the process of evolution is that it's 100% tied to glitch, or as it's usually referred to: mutation. Every species will occasionally produce a member with a mutation (glitch/defect/mistake) in its genetic code. If this mutation provides that entity with an ability that enhances its ability to survive and flourish in a competitive, opportunistic world, it's more likely to have offspring that will possess this same mutation, and eventually overcome similar species without the advantage... The defect becomes a perfection! [I now think of the very rare folks who are unfortunately visually perceived to be glitched (Stephen Hawking) yet are able to make huge mental leaps to advance man's perception of his/her universe, and/or have savant abilities (autism) way beyond what 'the norms' can do].

Perhaps, the perception of defect (glitch/mutation/mistake) jumps out at our senses (I'm guessing advertisers know about this hard-wired gut reaction) because of a subconscious filter in our heads (evolution working again) which tells us: There are differences here that you don't understand ... you do not have control of your situation ... PAY ATTENTION!

Article: Science/Genetics

2008-03-06T08:25:00.011-05:00

What Price Perfection?

Designer children, designing parents.

by Michael J. Sandel
02138 Magazine, May/June 2007

"Egg donor needed: Large Financial Incentive" read an ad in the Harvard Crimson a few years ago. The donor had to be at least five feet, 10 inches tall; athletic; without major family medical problems; and have a combined SAT score of 1400 or above. The price offered for this premium egg: $50,000.

Perhaps the parents were seeking a child who resembled them. Or perhaps they were hoping to trade up. Whatever the case, their extraordinary offer raised a hard moral question: Isn't there something troubling about parents ordering up a child with certain genetic traits?

LEFT: Biotechnofetishist, 2001, enamel and varnish on birch plywood, 18" x 23".

Today's prospective parents have the tools to be just as picky about the male contribution. It's no accident that California Cryobank, one of the world's leading sperm banks, has offices in Cambridge, between Harvard and MIT, and in Palo Alto, near Stanford. Cryobank advertises for donors in the Crimson and other college newspapers, and accepts only one to two percent of the donors who apply.

Of course, neither designer eggs nor Ivy League sperm guarantee that the resulting child will land a place in the freshman class. (Would he or she qualify for consideration as a "legacy" admit?) But recent advances in biotechnology are giving parents new ways of engineering the genetic traits of their children. It is now possible, for example, to choose whether to have a boy or a girl, through the same technique used to screen embryos for certain genetic diseases. For a fee of $18,480, a for-profit fertility clinic in Los Angeles advertises "sex selection with 99.9% guarantee of chosen gender." Another clinic, in Fairfax, Va., offers a sperm-sorting technique that makes it possible to choose the sex of your child before it is conceived. The clinic licensed the trademarked process (quaintly called MicroSort), which separates X- and Y- chromosome-bearing sperm by size, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which had developed it for breeding cattle.

Why should this worry us?

One reason is that sex selection can be an instrument of discrimination, typically against girls, as illustrated by the chilling gender ratios in parts of Asia. Some speculate that societies with substantially more men than women will be less stable, more violent, more prone to crime or war. The sperm-sorting company cleverly fends off such worries by offering MicroSort only to couples who want to use it for family balancing. Those with more sons than daughters can choose a girl, and vice-versa. But customers may not use the technology to stock up on children of the same sex, nor even to choose the sex of their first-born child.

The case of MicroSort, therefore, helps isolate the hardest moral question: Imagine that sperm-sorting technologies were employed in a society that did not favor boys over girls, and that wound up with a balanced sex ratio. Would sex selection under those conditions be unobjectionable? What if it became possible to select not only for sex but also for height, eye color, and skin color? What about sexual orientation, IQ, musical ability, and athletic prowess?

Even if we could engineer the genetic traits of our children without medical risk, and without skewing the sex ratio, it would still be morally troubling. Here's why: The quest for designer children is at odds with a norm that is central to parenting -- the ideal of unconditional love, an ideal that requires us to accept certain limits on our impulse for mastery and control.

To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design, products of our will, or instruments of our ambition. Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes a child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents can not be held wholly responsible for the kind of children they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what theologian William F. May calls an "openness to the unbidden": a humility and enlarged human sympathy. The hubris involved in a quest for "perfect" designer children is at odds with these important traits.

Some argue that improving children through genetic engineering is really no different than the heavily managed, high-pressure child-rearing practices that have become common these days -- the crazed competition for admission to elite nursery schools, soccer practise from dawn till dusk, SAT prep courses, etc. But this similarity does not vindicate genetic engineering; instead, it gives us reason to question the low-tech hyper-parenting familiar in our time. This hyper-parenting represents the same anxious excess of mastery and control that leads to the quest for designer kids.

In a social world that prizes mastery and control, parenthood is a school for humility. That we care deeply about our children, and yet can not choose the kind we have, teaches parents to be open to the unbidden. Such openness is disposition worth affirming, not only within families, but in the wider world as well. It invites us to abide by the unexpected, to live with dissonance, to reign in the impulse to control.

Adapted from The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, by Michael J. Sandel, with permission of the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. All rights reserved.