Monday, February 23, 2004
Bad Timing
The following is a response to this line of questioning at Charles's site:
Time and space are really nothing more than theoretical constructs and as such do not have economic costs, per se. The four dimensions (along with all the classical thermodynamic quantities like mass, entropy, internal engergy, etc. and the complex number system, as examples) are reductive analytical tools for performing thought experiments that map loosely onto real objects existing in some event sequence. Basically, these constructs are mental proxies for the real thing -- a smearing over of discrete empirical observations into beautiful, simple continuums that behave nicely on paper and obey the rules of Calculus. Empirical objects and events may have economic opportunity costs attached to them, but the fake continuum stage that man has conveniently rigged for them do not.
So, in other words: Arley and Charles and Cote are all right, you're just confusing a theoretical concept (time) with empirical reality (stuff happening in sequence). What gets lost in translation is the finite/infinite dichotomy, and with it, opportunity cost. Cote is focused on "existence," or rather his life's sequence of events and all the objects he needs to survive, all of which cost him something, as they are clearly finite with opportunity costs. Charles is perhaps thinking about the fake, infinite clotheslines of time and space themselves upon which all these costly objects and events can be thought to hang and thinks: "Goddamn, no one is charging me for these clotheslines!"
Animals and rocks and space aliens may not share with humans our agreed-on theoretical model of time. They all probably have to deal with objects and sequences of events, but whether they set up the weird finite/infinite duality between their empirical and theoretical domains is, to me at least, unknown.
To the holdouts, ask yourselves this: how would you measure the cost of a given interval of time? You first have to measure time itself, which can only be "approximated" (Ha!) by the sequence of discrete physical events (gears turning, atoms decaying, whatever). And how am I to charge wholesale (as it were) for the concepts of time or space, given that they are defined as infinite? I mean, how can I have an opportunity cost for something that's unlimited? No, the _concept_ or construct of time itself has no cost, but the stuff happening within (your existence, my existence, the rock sitting there on the ground) does.
From an existential point of view, as a human, you may as well ditch the whole fake simplistic concept of time as a continuum and just "time" your life by the passing of significant events. That's where the real opportunities come and go, anyway, where you write that big mortgage check and breathe that expensive air-conditioned air and devour that plate of shitake enchiladas at Mother's Kitchen.
I think, in practice, that's where most of us end up, really. We tend to purchase homes with square footage and block out chunks of time based on what we think we can accomplish with them. That living room is large enough to hold a sofa, a loveseat, and five really good friends. Two hours should be enough time to drink beers and play some disc with Cote at Pease. A 40hr/week job at X dollars a year should allow me to do and acquire all these things. And so on.
By the way, isn't it bizarre that we as a species -- a collection of microscopic cellular events -- can even conceive of the concept of a continuum? It just seems so outside of our system of existence. Perhaps that's why we're only able to grasp it (when learning Calculus, for example) in terms of a collection of discrete distances and events taken in the limit of an impossibly collapsed infinitesimal.
Now, particle-wave duality (enter Herr Heisenberg) suggests that neither a discrete nor a continuous view of nature cuts it in terms of modeling observable reality (at least, not at the microscopic level). I guess there's a Zen thing too along those lines. So I admit that my parsing of the “time” question along these lines doesn’t elegantly “nail it” the way a nice one-line physics equation would. But at least it gets me thinking, which is more than half the battle.
I think.
:-)
posted 6:33 PM | 0 comments
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Austin Photos from Winter 2003
Here are the eagerly-anticipated photos I took while in Austin over the Winter Holidays. Enjoy.
posted 4:26 AM | 0 comments
Monday, February 16, 2004
Photoeye
Kremlin, 1961 by Burt Glinn
Check out the galleries at Photoeye. This is one of the better images I stumbled across.
posted 3:26 AM | 0 comments
Friday, February 13, 2004
Avedon v. Newman
Avedon's Self Portrait Newman's portrait of Truman Capote
I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the "yes." I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us.
Richard Avedon, 1994
He's one of my favorite portrait photographers (and now The New Yorker's first-ever Staff Photographer), along with his opposite, Arnold Newman. Avedon always works with a white background so as to draw our (and apparently his) attention to the inner nature of his subjects. Newman, in contrast, is an environmental portraitmaker whose theory is that a person's inner nature is best communicated when shown in the context of their own little corner of the universe, often lit and composed carefully and expressionistically.
Check them out. Avedon's website is here (and isn't the young Richard, old Richard thing cool?). Arnold Newman doesn't have his own site, but here's a nice collection of some of his more famous portraits.
posted 2:01 AM | 0 comments
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Atom Feed
It's been hiding at Neuromatix for quite some time now, but now you can find it via my new link on the masthead ... the snazzy Atom XML feed! Aggregate away!
posted 3:04 PM | 0 comments
Michael Bolton Email
With the miracle of email forwarding, I can now be reached at michael.bolton AT hp.com.
eCarl - now with a dash of bad pop.
posted 4:04 AM | 0 comments
Monday, February 09, 2004
Office Space
According to the new nametags put up in my team's cubicle sea fiefdom, I am now Michael Bolton from Office Space.
Mmkay?
posted 3:53 PM | 0 comments
Tomorrow
I just realized, on writing an email to someone at work, that I didn't know how to spell "tomorrow." Wanted to use 2 m's instead of 2 r's. Had to look it up in Webster's. Roughly tripled the composition time.
Damn.
posted 3:48 PM | 0 comments
David Mullen Appreciated
The DP I interviewed last August, David Mullen, is mentioned in Elvis Mitchell's New York Times Survey of Cinematography in 2003:
The art of providing an appropriately compelling look for little money seemed to be the order of the day among the independents in 2003. The Polish brothers' grim magic-realism tale, "Northfork," was another case in point. It has a weathered, distressed appearance, but its cinematographer, M. David Mullen, also gave the picture a dense clarity, a visual counterpart to the mystical bent of the narrative.
The wizardly Mr. Mullen has attended to all of the Polish brothers' movies, conjuring a specific visual style for each. The nearly pointillist vibrancy of their on-the-road karaoke story, "Jackpot," grew out of his masterly command of the digital video camera and his willingness to use it for its own strengths.
Still trying to get the damn thing published. Was just turned down by the Believer, but I have some other places to try before I give up.
Go David!
posted 3:32 AM | 0 comments
Sunday, February 08, 2004
The Dreaded Lightleak
Just got a medium format rig the other day on eBay for cheap (roughly quarter-price - it's amazing what deals you can find now that everyone's going digital). Took some test shots and discovered that the film back is -- gasp -- leaking light on the crank side. (Look in the lower left-hand corner of the frame for a washed out area.)
Time to call Hasselblad for that $7.50 seal replacement kit.
Anyway, can't wait to get it fixed and start blowing the negatives from this baby up. Should look spectacular in mural-size proportions. To give you some idea of the resolution of 6x6 film, it's roughly equivalent to 100 megapixels. For $1.99 plus $12.00 per roll for film, processing & proofing, I'm in business.
Once I get the light leak fixed.
posted 3:34 PM | 0 comments
Coming Soon
Stay tuned for some more nifty Austin Pix from the Winter holidays.
posted 2:19 PM | 0 comments
Friday, February 06, 2004
Giving it Up
Years ago, I believe around the mid-80's through early-90's, there was a Volkswagen repair shop on the corner of Duvall and 45th in Austin. Once a week, usually around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, from age 6 until 16, I would ride past it, one of my parents behind the wheel of our old Chrysler station wagon, on our way to my violin lesson at UT. The light at that intersection is a long one, and I remember staring out my window, sometimes for a full minute or more, at the small corner lot jam-packed with old Beetles, Rabbits, and fluorescent Vanagons, some of them piled two-high.
There was never anyone there. This was not a creation of man; it was a natural habitat, a co-op for cars. Oozing from its tiny lot was a mysterious life force, a sense of Volkswagons come alive, the long-abandoned Texaco gas station their home. There was some kind of presence, you could tell, because every week the cars would re-arrange themselves into new positions, rotating front guard duty for kitchen patrol in back. What a marvelous place this was, suspended in a miraculous split-second from the Sixties. In my mind, 45th and Duvall was the center of Cool in the universe.
The mysteries of Duvall Volkswagon gradually gave themselves up, one at a time, over the course of my college career. I think the first crack in the veneer of my VW commune construct appeared when the Chronicle ran a brief interview with the shop's owner and sole mechanic (thankfully, there was no photograph inset to the text). "So, the joint is human after all!" I remember thinking. Later, I had a customer at Audio Systems who was neighbors with the guy, adding to my fact list an address and a list of peculiar life/work habits. Before I knew it, the sweet vapor-dreams of place had given way to unremarkeable reality.
The final wrecking ball of my fantasy swung when, carousing about town in one of my many and varied afternoon drives, I saw a guy working inside the station's garage (which had never been open before). He was in there. Turning a wrench under the hood of a Jetta in broad daylight. And we all know that there ain't no mojo or juju goin' on while the sun still shines.
Like a lover whose backstory has run dry, Duvall Volkswagon, its secrets exhausted, lost all its radiance and charm. The more I learned about it, the less my imagination had to fill in. With each new fact, the place seemed incrementally more ordinary and pedestrian. Sure, there were still outward quirks, but there was a rational, earthbound explanation for every last one of them. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, you know?
Reading Josh's recent post about the mysteries of a subway sticker triggered this memory, long since dormant and probably never really articulated. And of course, what do I do but try and Google my way to the end of Josh's great mystery. And damned if I didn't get somewhere: I found out what all the flap was about, just stopping shy of identifying the specifc perps. After the thrill of the chase, however, I was left with a miniature version of my own Duvall Volkswagon myth deconstruction fiasco. If I'd just let things stay all film-noir mist and shadows, I'd have a big fat Chandler farrago on my hands instead of a two-page url fact pamphlet.
In the trendier neighborhoods of San Diego, I've lately seen spray-painted insignia on the sidewalks: a stenciled silhouette of Baby Bush with the caption "One-term-president." What is that? An emo punk band? A political activist group? A wry jokester armed with a can of Krylon and good metalshop skills? Like the NYC subway sticker, perhaps it's best to toss that question into the mystery pile of Hillcrest, a fertile composting loam for the imagination.
Last year, it was the "THINK DUSTIN" sticker, with the 'S' printed as a dollar-sign, that was all the rage here, plastered on every transformer box, stopsign, and utility pole imaginable. No one has a clue as to what it means or who put them up. And most of the stickers are faded and tattered now. What's happened to Dustin? Did he just fade and tatter away, too?
I like these little ornaments of the urban environment. They add a dimension of humanism to an otherwise sterile grid of stainless steel and poured concrete, artifacts of anonymous ghosts comprising a larger organic whole: the city as living, breathing superman. Such are the faceless forces that smear into an impressionistic blur of place, a city's cultish mystique. Who'd thought anonymity, that blessing of large urban areas, could be so atmospheric?
Josh, I hope you never find the sticker creator's url (if they even have one). It would just suck away a little more mystery away from NYC, which, unlike Duvall Volkswagon, is admittedly pretty much limitless. Great institutions, like lovers, should never give up their secrets too easily. With the thrill of mystery, our imaginations can run wild and conjure up distractive and creative fantasies shielding us from the blah of suburbia and the 40-hour workweek. Your mystery did just that for me tonight, even if my detective instincts got the better of it. May you dream of adbusters and revolutionaries in underground tunnels armed with rolls of Avery 2" label stock. I'll send my own Vanagon around if it'll help the effort any. Watch for that.
posted 12:48 AM | 0 comments
