Dave's Ponderblog

Yet again we ask: Is it art?

2009-09-09T15:02:00.006+12:00

When I was a young musician I moved to Palmerston North, attracted by the strong community of original and alternative music. However I soon realised that "alternative" was a euphemism for "talentless". Seriously, the whole scene was dominated by wannabes who couldn't be bothered actually learning an instrument. They simply found an easier way - buy a nasty cheap amp, get wasted and see what strange noises can be produced. Fun, but not music.

I see much the same in contemporary art. The latest example comes courtesy of nearby Waikato Museum which recently awarded top prize in an art competition to a pile of rubbish. Artist Dane Mitchell couldn't be at the competition to enter himself so he left instructions to museum staff: Pilfer rubbish from other contestants and lay it on the floor. That effort netted him $15,000 first prize.

My first surprise was that anyone could think of a pile of rubbish as worthy art. Not because it's rubbish, but because the concept is so hackneyed. Google "rubbish as art" and wade through the ten million results. There's a whole sub-genre of artistic rubbish which may or may not have merit but one thing's for sure - Mitchell's work isn't in any way original. It's a totally weak imitation of far more interesting works dating back years.

While we're discussing tired old cliches, how long are we supposed to wear the argument "It generates discussion and that's the point of art, so we're happy". Really? Even if the discussion is all about what a joke art has become? Art curators must be the only people in the world able to interpret widespread derision as a good result. Face it - this argument is nothing more than a last defense when you've been caught out.

Competition judge Charlotte Huddleston said she was impressed at how Mitchell "responded to his situation" (i.e. being absent and making someone else create the entry). Hmmm. Let's say I want to enter a running race but I can't be there in person to do the actual running part. Should I be allowed to nominate another person to do it for me? I could leave specific instructions: "Go really fast and see if you can get to the end first". Perhaps this isn't a completely fair analogy but it illustrates a fair point - shouldn't the artist who enters a piece actually have made it?

In my opinion Mitchell "responded to his situation" by cheating. He couldn't be there so he found a loophole. Not only is this cheating, it makes it quite clear that there's no real artistic merit in the work. He didn't invent this work to make a statement, he invented it because he needed a convenient way to make a proxy entry. He quite literally asked someone else to scrounge up the leftovers, dump it in a pile and call it art.

I'm suspicious that the title is often the most important feature of an artwork. In this case it's called "Collateral". Ooh, how incisive. Yawn.

The art world is widely believed to consist of self-serving tossers rorting the public purse. This kind of debacle is exactly why. I say it's time people in the art world started laughing at the naked emperor. This crap isn't art. Spare me the snooty BS, just deal with it. Start teaching people how to paint and sculpt instead of selling snake oil.

What happens to your pet after the Rapture?

2009-08-28T08:37:00.004+12:00

"The Rapture" is the time when Christian believers will all be raised to Heaven and everyone else gets left behind. The Rapture doesn't get a lot of discussion time in New Zealand but it's quite big in the US where fundamentalist Christian beliefs are more popular.

Yesterday I came across a fascinating business idea called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets which may (or may not) appeal to you if you believe in the Rapture. Business partners Brad and Bart are atheists so they won't be joining you for the ascent to Heaven. Neither will your pets since animals aren't invited. It does seem a bit unfair that your faithful companions will have to fend for themselves in a chaotic post-rapture world but now you don't have to worry — for a modest fee you can arrange to have animal-loving atheists rescue and care for your pets within 24 hours of the Rapture.

I was intrigued so I wrote to Brad and asked a few questions. Here's the situation:
Yes, the business is completely serious and legitimate.
Reactions from the public have been mixed - some think it's a joke while others take it seriously.
Some Christians appreciate the service and have subscribed. Some Christians are openly hostile and can be quite nasty. Says Brad: "We often ask if they kiss Jesus with their filthy mouths."

We don't have a lot of conflict between faiths in NZ and atheism is pretty much the default philosophy. It can be hard to imagine what it's like to live in an area where atheists are seen as evil and anti-Christian. Judging by what I've seen in many "fundy" forums, I'm sure there are plenty of people who see Eternal Earth-Bound Pets as wicked. I just think it's wickedly funny.

Italian Cashier Hypnotized

2008-03-26T12:22:00.005+13:00

Quirky news story of the week is the case of the Italian supermarket checkout operator who was hypnotized by a cunning criminal into handing over a wad of cash. Apparently she didn't realise what had happened until her till didn't balance at the end of the shift.

Interestingly I haven't see any news stories tackle the question of whether this is a plausible story. I suspect we'll hear more, but allow me to pre-empt the result with my guess...

First of all, you can't just approach someone and hypnotise them instantly to do your bidding. Many people are immune altogether, and only the most suggestive are likely to be controllable in the reported fashion. The thief would probably want to select and groom the victim before the main event, just to make sure she was going to react as needed.

Hypnotism can't make you do anything that you consider morally wrong. If the girl was genuinely hypnotized, the criminal must have been even more cunning than most people would think. Perhaps he could have suggested that the money was for a worthy cause, or that he had been given permission to take it. However it does smell fishy - the ease of the apparent hypnotism makes me suspicious.

I have no strong gut feeling either way, but if I had to put money on it, I'd bet that the cashier was an accomplice. I wouldn't convict her without hard evidence of course, but I'd certainly be looking at her closely if I was on the investigative team.

I must emphasize this: I do believe that the hypnotism reported in this story is unlikely but certainly possible. "Innocent until proven guilty" and all that. Let's see what happens.

Is Religion a Natural Human Behaviour?

2008-02-25T17:35:00.007+13:00

I've just noticed an interesting project being undertaken at Oxford University, attractively titled 'Empirical Expansion in Cognitive Science of Religion and Theology'.

The £1.9 million project aims to figure out whether religion is a natural human behaviour, and if so, whether this fact supports or contradicts theological and paranormal propositions.

Sounds like fun. Someone remind me about this in a couple of years - I want to know if anything useful results. More than anything I'm interested in whether they come up with an investigative methodology that would be acceptable to both scientists and religious leaders. I doubt it because, like most paranormal propositions, religion has built-in escape clauses to evade such scrutiny. Still I like to imagine some simple test that would indisputably answer the question "Does God exist or did someone just make Him up?"

Of course no such test is possible but even if it was, people like Brian Tamaki could just say it was the Devil confounding our minds. Religious people think atheists are deluded and vice versa. So shall it always be.

Here's the project details.

Is Cruel Cool?

2008-02-22T14:57:00.008+13:00

Yesterday I posted a very harsh criticism of an auction being run by someone called "nottiger" at sitepoint.com. After I posted it, I looked back and thought "Man, that is rough. Is it really cool to diss someone's idea so brutally, no matter how silly it seems or how much it smells like a scam? What if it turns out that nottiger is a really nice person, but depressed, and this idea was his big attempt at restoring self-esteem? What if he reads my blog and it's the final straw that breaks his back - how would I live with myself if he topped himself over this whole thing?"

Unlikely, but what if? It certainly wouldn't help my own self-esteem much.

Well it turns out nottiger did read my blog and he contacted me this morning to respond. As an aside, he's a Kiwi (like me), or at least I assume so from the content of his message.

Fortunately nottiger doesn't seem depressed and he handled my criticism well. He did stoop to having a dig at my home town but I'll let that go.

Back to the question "Is it okay to be so harsh?". It's not normally my style because I have seen the effect such criticism can have on people.

The situation is quite similar to working in TV production when you're faced with the "personal harm vs public good vs entertainment value" dilemma. Sometimes you decide to cause potential harm to a small group of people in order to benefit the wider community. If you lack ethics (which many TV producers do) you might be comfortable harming people simply to increase entertainment value. Personally I use what I think is a fair balance between public good and personal danger, but I'd never want to hurt someone just for kicks or ratings.

And that's what made me uncomfortable about yesterday's post. Was I doing it for the public good or for ratings? There is certainly a public good aspect - I feel that the product being auctioned is worthless and so falls into the consumer protection category. You could argue that no one is being forced to bid in the auction but consider this:
- It's highly unlikely that nottiger will commit suicide over my blog post but it's such a bad outcome that it's worth talking into account.
- In the same way, it's highly unlikely that a naive person would unwittingly waste $750,000 on a worthless idea, but the outcome is bad enough that it's worth trying to prevent. Just look at Randi.org to see how plentiful suckers are.

In retrospect I could have had the same effect without being so cruel. I'd probably do it differently now but I'll stop short of an apology because the seller's auction was so public, so expensive, and so inviting of a strong response. He's certainly getting a response at the auction and reddit - the poor bugger is getting flayed alive.

If you're reading this nottiger, I meant what I said about calling in for a coffee or beer. I've become good friends with people who I didn't initially get on with. I like your creativity and tenacity. We might be a fiery mix but you never know - we might have some interesting conversations over a lager.

What the hell is this?

2008-02-09T17:41:00.009+13:00

You may be wondering what this blog is about and whether or not I'm a nutcase. To learn the truth you'll need to give up 120 seconds of your life, so think fast about whether you want it that bad.

I like to do stuff. Mostly I prefer stuff that doesn't involve too much physical exertion but that's not really the point — I like doing anything that makes me happy and/or makes other people happy. Sometimes it does involve running around until I puff, which is fine in small doses, but usually it involves sitting and working the keyboard until I fall asleep.

I also like making money and that is at least part of the point of this blog.

I have a collection of projects that I work on, mostly involving the internet in some way. Since 1997 I've developed a bunch of websites on various topics that I'm interested in. I try to make money from all of them, although some are run as a public service and won't ever be profitable.

Although my projects exist largely to satiate my hunger for cash, in a strange way I also see them as a representation of my greater "life's work". Just about everything I think about, care for, believe in or enjoy criticising is covered in one of my sites somewhere.

But back to the money, I do like making it. Over the years my projects have slowly gathered enough momentum to feed and clothe my family, so in 2007 I quit my last part-time job and dumped most of my business clients. Even the clients that weren't much work were too demanding for the lifestyle I envisaged. My new life devoted entirely to family and fun projects was unfolding before my gleeful eyes. Since then it's continued like a good plan and I'm loving it.

So anyway, this blog serves several purposes:

It's a good way to provide RSS feeds for people interested in my projects. For example, if you use one of my products you might want to be kept informed of upgrades. It's also a good way for me to organise my projects and remind myself what I need to work on.
It's a case-study for the "Internet Publisher" business model. I make good money doing this and I'm happy to share my methodology. I'm also keen to promote "white hat" strategies and help fight the nasty old black-hats.
It's a vehicle for me to ramble and pontificate, much like every other wannabe in the blogosphere.
It's a family blog for those few people who give a toss about my personal life.
It makes me money. Did I mention that I like money and I want more of it?

So there you have it. That's me and my blog. What's your verdict?

Done

2008-02-07T23:37:00.000+13:00

Whew, that was hard work. My shiny new blog is less than 24 hours old and I've posted nine messages. Let's see how long that lasts.

I had to publish all those posts in order to set up the label/subscription system for the different projects. Each post is a quick introduction to the relevant project. Now that it's done you can subscribe to just the topics that interest you and ignore the rest. For example, if you're only here for the MC Media Player updates you don't need to get all the irrelevant posts.

I'm still finding my way around the blogger.com system but it looks like fun.

New Blog

2008-02-07T00:31:00.000+13:00

Yet again I find myself trying out a new blog system. Maybe it's like the old "geographic solution" - when your life isn't working out you move somewhere new in the hope that a different location will fix everything.

I've decided to give blogger.com a try, largely because it fits in well with Google Accounts that I use already. I'm going to try and consolidate my blogs from different projects into this one - maybe it will be more manageable like that. I'm setting up different topics (labels) so you can choose which topics or projects to subscribe to. I don't know how user-friendly it will be but let's give it a try.

The "Ponderblog" topic is my own personal stuff, i.e. anything not directly related to one of the projects. I don't know how this will unfold yet. It could be a continuation of my previous blog where I commented on current events, but to be honest I'm not convinced I can be bothered with the flak I get (more about that in a later post). We'll see. I'll certainly post occasional chit-chat about me and the family, and just maybe I'll think about getting back into some meaning-of-life discussions. They are hard work though aren't they?