Philosophy

The artist’s creed

I’ve been thinking about the artist’s creed. At least my version of it. This is all just my advice to artists from personal experience. Not that I have that much personal experience or have achieved anything very famous, but still…

For now, there are only three. I might think of some more later on as I go through life and become smarterer and smarterererish…

1. Don’t get excited

OK, you are allowed to get excited. It’s part of human nature. Just be careful that you’re not setting yourself up for later disappointment. Be honest with yourself about why exactly you’re excited. If it’s only your daydreams that are exciting you, recognize that, and make sure they do not become expectations.

The beginning of the creative process is, at least for me, the most exciting part of the creative process. (The second most exciting part is actually finishing something that you feel good about, but that has nothing to do with this rule.) When you get that first seed of an idea, that first inkling of something awesome, it can quickly become an obsession. You daydream about it all night and day. Oh, what wonderful possibilities!

But what is it that’s really exciting? It’s the possibilities. It’s the unknown. The unknown can be very exciting. It’s why movie trailers are exciting: they give just small pieces of info, leading us to wonder what the entire movie will be like. It’s why we wrap presents at Christmas: what could be in there? I can’t wait to find out!

But with the creative process, we work backwards. We daydream the movie trailer moments first, and that gets us all excited. The problem with this is obvious: we have to create the film. We have to fill in the details and make it something absolute instead of just of bunch of vague possibilities.

While the initial excitement can be a great motivator for getting to work, DO NOT mistake that excitement as a judgment of the completed work. You don’t have the completed work yet. You can’t judge it. You can’t even judge its potential. Something that does not yet really exist does not have potential.

I once met someone who was excited about an independent film he was working on, claiming it was bound to make millions … later on, he mentioned he was looking for someone to write the screenplay. Wait a sec. You don’t even have a screenplay?

In a similar manner, don’t get excited about potential success. If someone promises to make you rich, or to buy your work, or to make your screenplay into a film, or whatever, don’t get excited until it’s actually done, until it’s actually set in stone. When there’s a lot of money involved, many things can go wrong, many important people can change their minds. Save yourself from disappointment. Don’t let your expectations be denied by not having high expectations to begin with.

2. Never be satisfied

This rule requires much less description. It’s the age old philosophy of Kaizen. If you find yourself quite pleased with your work, it does not mean you’re a great artist, it means you’re stupid. OK, you can be a little satisfied. I’m not trying to argue you should always be in a state of self-loathing disappointment. But you should always be able to find something to improve upon. No work of art is perfect. Obviously, you must stop working on a project at some point if you ever want to do something else. As they say: “A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.”

3. Don’t be a critic

OK, you can be a critic. In fact, you need to be a critic of some sort to make any sort of creative decisions at all.

What I mean by this rule is: don’t be a critic instead of being creative. As Anton Ego says in Ratatouille: “The bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”

Good critiques, even if subjective, serve the creative process. They help artists make choices. Lame critiques (that is, unasked-for critiques from non-creative people) are worthless. Still, they can make non-creative people feel productive and involved. So they’re not going to disappear anytime soon.

As an artist, do not give lame critiques your time. And don’t create them.

If someone asks for your honest opinion, as a creative person might, be honest, informative, and kind. It is better to say “This part of the story doesn’t work for me because I don’t understand this character’s motivations…” rather than “What the heck?! He can’t just do that! That’s stupid! You should die for writing this crap!”

If someone asks for your dishonest opinion, patronize him; that’s what he wants. “Oh, awesome! That’s very neat! Nice work!” If they need people to lie to them to make them feel good, that’s their problem. And maybe they just want to show you their work and don’t really give a crap what you really think. So be polite and don’t tell them. Unless, of course, you are honestly impressed. If the truth doesn’t hurt, it won’t hurt!

If no one asks for your opinion, why are you wasting your time telling them?

The End

Those are the three rules. As I said, I might think of some more later. For now, I’m going to give these rules their own page and link on the side, which I’ll keep updated as I think of more (or if want to edit these later).

By S P Hannifin, ago

Life lessons… copied from elsewhere

I came across this blog post the other day: Ten Life Lessons from Richard Branson.

I thought I would just repeat the lessons, but give my own explanations for them. Hopefully this will help you have a better life. OK, here goes…

1. “Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more.”

At least, I assume. I mean, they look nice, and you’d probably enjoy yourself while you’re using them, but ultimately they somehow won’t give you happiness. Having those things implies you have a lot of money, and more happiness will come from your bank account and the not-having-to-do-work-you-don’t-want-to part of life, not the big yachts. However, once you have riches like that, it’s not very polite to continuously talk about how happy it makes you.

2. “I enjoy every single minute of my life.”

I just think of what it’ll be like when I’m rich. Once I am rich, I can just remind myself that I’m rich.

3. “But the majority of things that one could get stressed about, they’re not worth getting stressed about.”

Really, the only thing to stress about is losing your money. Everything else is pretty pointless. Don’t worry about stuff that doesn’t involve boat loads of money. If you don’t have boat loads of money, you shouldn’t be worrying about anything at all. Your life is ultimately meaningless.

4. “You can’t be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.”

Nobody wants to follow someone who is mean to them. People like getting praise, so giving it to them is a good way to get power over them. Just don’t go overboard, or they’ll think you’re insincere. Give them just enough to keep wanting more and you will have them on a leash.

5. “There is no one to follow, there is nothing to copy.”

If you want to be a leader and have power over others, you have to make sure no one has power over you, you have to make sure you don’t become one of those mindless followers.

6. “I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off doing nothing.”

You want to make sure you’re rich enough that if the business fails, you’re not dependent on it. Also, if you’re in it just for the money, then I don’t want to compete with you, because you might succeed beyond belief and I don’t want that kind of competition.

7. “I never had any intention of being an entrepreneur.”

That’s a big word with weird spelling. I’m not quite sure what it means.

8. “I made and learned from lots of mistakes.”

Looking before you leap is overrated. If you want to get ahead, it’s better to learn from mistakes than planning research. There’s always a chance you could succeed without thinking, and that’s the best kind of success to have. If you find that you are doing actual work, what’s the point?

9. “If you can indulge in your passion, life will be far more interesting than if you’re just working.”

Like I said, work is for losers. Get your followers to do the work.

10. “Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.”

After all, that involves no work whatsoever, and that’s what makes life awesome.

OK, I hope these tips have helped you. I didn’t really tell you how to make money easily, because that is a secret that must stay closely-guarded. If I want to maintain my power, I have to make you think my life is a whole lot better than yours, and as long as you think I’m always happy and always have been, then I’m happy enough.

By S P Hannifin, ago

What school should be like…

What it shouldn’t be like…

It’s easy to say what school should not be like. A lot of people agree that the current US education system is awful. So we ask: Well, why is it awful? And then we have hundreds of different answers. We don’t agree on what’s really wrong with school, what the purpose of learning truly is, or how a child or teenager should be spending his time. So our agreement that school is awful is almost meaningless. A lot of people think it should be worse than it already is!

A couple days ago I was exploring “democratic education.” (Not schools for democrats… that’s normal schools, considering how many teachers are democrats.) These are schools based on the idea that students should have more, if not the most, power in regards to what they do with their time at school. There is no mandatory curriculum, class times, grades, etc.

I came across this video. I’m not exactly sure when it was made, but I reckon some time in the early 2000’s, as the Lord of the Rings movies are referenced by a student…

(It’s a long film… it’s a documentary, after all…)

Free to Learn: A Radical Experiment in Education from Isaac Graves on Vimeo.

I certainly would have much preferred going to a school like that! But I do not see this as the ideal sort of school.

However, I think they are closer to my ideal school than most schools. A few things they get right: 1) Student directed. 2) No grades. 3) No mandatory curriculum. (Knowledge that you don’t use is useless after all.)

But there are some important things I think the school lacks. The first thing is societal support. That’s not really the school’s fault, it’s society’s, the sort of society that’s surprised and dumbfounded and scared by this sort of education. (It still boggles my mind how so many parents think that their children should be forced to learn things that the parent doesn’t remember. If the parent doesn’t know or remember it, that’s pretty good evidence that you can get along fine without it. But there still seems to be a deep fear that something will go horrible wrong with a student if they don’t learn it anyway, even though they’ll later forget it.) The school would be so much better if it had more resources: a bigger building, more technology, more books, more teachers, etc. As of now, it does seem like a poor run-down place. They need Extreme Makeover: School Edition. Again, this is not really the school’s fault, they’re probably doing the best they can with their financial limits. But it does prevent the school from being my sort of ideal school.

Secondly, I feel there does need to be a wee bit more “discipline.” They don’t need to be nearly as strict as normal schools, but I think the students do need to have some sort of deliverables, some sort of tangible product by the end of the year. They need to choose what to study and stick with it, follow through with it, actually get something concrete done. I think this could work by having the student create their own schedule / guide / list of goals for what they’re going to study and then be somehow forced, or at least highly encouraged, to follow it. As it is now, they run the risk of, you know, not learning anything. If given the chance to play all day, they run the risk of taking it. (Not that play can’t be educational, but it can certainly be less educational.)

Lastly, the “council meetings” feel very odd to me. They could be great for social development (much better than an adult saying “you do this, you do that, and a time-out for you!”), but they also seem somewhat hippy-ish, and could be a major time-waster for students not involved in the main argument.

What it should be like…

I think I agree with everything in this post. Especially what he says about grades:

Grades are demotivating for students. First, they end the learning process. Once an assignment is graded, it is no longer worth improving upon. Second, grades lead naturally to ranking of students, which leads to students self-image being hurt. Nothing is more demoralizing than recognizing that a person of authority thinks you aren’t as worthy as your peers.

Yes, thank you! Finally! Someone who agrees with me! “But then we have no way to assess…” they all say. Not buying it; grades must go.

He’s a bit vague in some parts:

The curriculum itself would be at least 50% self-directed by the students with some essentially skills taught along side completely personalized learning. Our emphasis would be on skills, not content.

I could agree or disagree with that, depending on the finer points of the curriculum. Of course, that’s something that would probably change year to year, as both teachers and students gain experience in using the school. And I think “skills, not content” is a vital point, an awesome point to make. Skills are by their very nature useful. Content may or may not be, and, in our modern schools, usually isn’t. When I say “knowledge that you don’t use is useless” I’m mostly talking about content. Of course, some skills are also more important than others. It would be silly to force all students to have cooking skills, for instance. But critical thinking skills, research skills, project management skills, social skills, etc., these are extremely important, they can be used everyday, and they naturally lead the student to the specific content they need. The Free School mentioned above seems to lack instilling these sorts of skills (at least, from what I could tell).

Again, the finer points would have to be worked out, but I would envision students (and “teachers”) taking on some sort of interesting and useful projects; research projects, science projects, art projects… whatever people are interested in. Working on the project(s) should encourage development of the aforementioned skills. (You cannot do an art project consisting of randomly splashing paint on a canvas. Sorry. You’re really just wasting time.) A student would not be free to play all day, but would have academic freedom in the sense that he could explore the areas that interested him, and ignore the subjects that didn’t (after all, working adults are allowed to do that).

Projects could, of course, be shared among students. That is, you could have a group of students all working on the same project.

Students would have to keep track of and report their project’s progress. The point is not necessarily to reach their goal, but, obviously, to learn. And other students would probably be quite interested in each other’s projects.

Students could of course switch projects, change projects, etc., as their interests shift naturally, or as projects prove to be more difficult than once thought. Projects would be like… amorphous solids… or something.

The big points are: 1) No grades. Progress reports of a sort, perhaps, but no comparable structured grading systems. 2) No mandatory curriculum, at least for the most part, content-wise. You don’t have to learn the phases of the moon or the date George Washington died, etc. And thus 3) no paper quizzes or tests or busy-work. 4) Student directed; students get to decide what particular areas to study. Making them study a little of everything is useless. (Plus it will happen to an extent naturally. A topic is infinitely more interesting if you’re studying it because you want to.) 5) Age mixing. Why do schools so often split students up by age? All ages are capable of working together. That’s what us adults do in the real world anyway. Every kind of mixing, really. 6) Flexible times. It would probably make more sense for most people to start at 10 AM or so and get off later in the evening. Getting up at 6 AM isn’t helping much.

If there existed a school like that, I would desperately want to work there. Except I’ve never been a parent or a teacher or a school administrator and I don’t have a degree in education. Will you still let me in? Heck, I’d even love to be a perpetual student there…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Is education for employment?

masseffect

A blog post I wrote back in September titled The Khan Academy is not that good suddenly made some small rounds on Twitter the past couple days, giving me a couple hundred views, spiking my otherwise modest traffic, woohoo! Many thanks tweeters! It is now the most popular blog post I’ve ever written. Which isn’t saying much, but getting comments and other people’s opinions is always nice. Although, you know, this is about education which, like religion and politics, people naturally have very strong opinions about (myself included).

One guy tweeted something like “I quit reading when he said education was about jobs” (though I’m not sure why you would tweet a link to a post you quit reading). Which is too bad, because that’s a very interesting point… I stated:

The big thing people seem to forget or ignore is that everything ultimately comes down to employment… whether or not you can do a job, and whether or not employers will recognize that you can do a job and hire you.

This is a vital point. That this made at least one person quit reading might be the source of most of our educational problems (here in the US, at least).

Firstly, I’m not sure how this view is wrong. I’m certainly not saying that one cannot pursue topics they are interested in. If the person has an ounce of intelligence, they will probably try to pursue employment in an area that interests them anyway or become a teacher. Ultimately, if you want to live, you need food, and usually shelter. You will have to pay for those. You will have to get the money from somewhere. You will, therefore, have to work for a living. How will you be able to work? You will have to learn. How will you learn? You will go to school. If there are no employment opportunities in an area that interests you, and you do not have the resources to create your own, you will have to convince an employer that you can do some task for them. You need to do this to live. If you don’t do this, you will die. Live or die, make your choice.

So, there’s student directed interest and employment needed to live. What else could education be for? I can’t think of anything else. What else is there?

But then a group of old people sitting around a table say “Hmmm… what should we make kids learn? How about the phases of the moon and the names of the local rivers? Yes. Yes, that seems good. We will be smarter than Japan in no time.”

Um… WHY? If you’re interested in the phases of the moon, you can Google it. If you’re interested in the names of the local rivers, again, Google it, bam, you’re done. (If you’re really interested, you’ll memorize such things on your own without being forced institutionally.) When are you ever going to be in a situation in which you have to know the phases of the moon or the names of the local rivers and have no way to look them up? Why is that so important to prepare kids for? Without interest from the student or a need from employers, that material is not educational. It is useless. It is Hannifin’s Supreme Law of Education: Knowledge that you don’t use is useless.

Secondly, don’t most people already agree that this is what college is for? If someone was able to get a great (and secure) job with a great salary right out of high school, what parents would still recommend going to college? Isn’t good employment the entire reason our culture makes such a huge fuss about having to go to college? About having to get a degree?

Thanks for reading!

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EDIT: I guess I should point out that I’m not trying to imply that employment needs to be thought of as separate from life, as if it has to be some institution you’re trapped in for certain times of the week instead of living your “real life.” And I’m also not trying to imply that you must have a boss. Perhaps instead of using the word “employment” I should say that education ultimately comes down to “a means to live.” And preferably “a means to live well.” Maybe that will make more sense. (Nor am I trying to imply that huge salary is the most important thing. But you will obviously need a salary of some kind.)

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EDIT: I think a lot of traffic came from this particular tweet. The tweeter, David Wees, has many other interesting tweets and an interesting blog which I hope to explore more of at David Wees’s Blog. So a thank you to Mr. Wees for the traffic.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Paradoxes

I was reading a book called Dream, Death, and the Self by J. J. Valberg. (Lately I’ve been enjoying reading rather random selections from random books that look interesting, always wishing I had time to read more.) At the beginning, the book is talking about philosophy, and mentions a list of paradoxes. I knew what some of the paradoxes were, but didn’t recognize all of them, so I done gone went and looked ’em up! So here they all are, for your mind to consider and my mind to remember:

Zeno’s paradox

This could really could refer to a set of similar motion paradoxes, but here’s one:

This ancient paradox reveals how we don’t understand the nature of motion, space, and time. If you walk a mile, you must first walk half a mile. If you walk half a mile, you must first walk a quarter mile. But first a 8th, a 16th, a 32nd, a 64th, on and on… you must pass an infinite number of halfway points! How is it possible to move at all?

(Along the same lines, we might just ask: is it really possible to divide something (time or distance) infinitely? What is an infinitely small distance or moment of time like? Could we give an infinitely small entity a numerical value to let us now where it goes in a sequence? Wouldn’t that be impossible since each infinitely small entity would be sandwiched between an infinite amount of other infinitely small entities on either side? Is it possible to take two thirds of those infinitely small entities, when two thirds and one thirds would both be made up of an infinite amount of entities and thus be equal? And then we could get into the nature of infinity… what is infinity minus infinity? Is infinity times infinity more than it already was? Why does saying “infinity” instantly win any argument? (Yes, it does, infinity.))

The Ravens paradox

You accept that “All Ravens are black.”

You accept that this means “All things that are not black are not ravens.” (And vice versa. These statements imply each other.)

But what if you apply specific examples?

You accept that “My pet Nevermore is a raven, and is black.”

Well, good, this seems to support our first premise that “All ravens are black.”

Finally you accept that “This green thing is an apple.”

Ah, good, and this seems to support our second premise that “All things that are not black are not ravens.” Which then implies our original premise that “All ravens are black.”

Woah, does it really? The sight of a green apple is evidence that all ravens are black? What if our premises said that all ravens were white? It seems the site of a green apple should support that all ravens are any color we want! Ahhhh! Paradox!

This paradox reveals the problem of induction. Does inductive reasoning really lead to knowledge? If all you ever see are white swans, you might conclude that “all swans are white.” But that’s a false assumption; you really can’t assume anything about the swans you have not yet observed. This also applies to many complex (or chaotic) systems, such as how well a movie does, how the stock market works, when terrorist attacks will happen, etc. (That is, you can not find things that hold true for every terrorist attack and then conclude “aha, a terrorist attack happens when such and such happen.” Even though this is what historians love to do in retrospect. Or you can not say “aha, this movie or book did so well because of these few factors… blah blah blah” even though that’s what news anchors and magazine articles like to do all the time.) Check out the book The Black Swan. It is all about this problem of induction. And most people live their whole lives unaware that they’re using this faulty logic daily. It’s natural, after all.

Surprise examination

Or the Unexpected hanging paradox…

Can you really expect the unexpected? If someone tells you that you will have a surprise exam at an unexpected time, or you will be executed at an unexpected time, or the end of the world will occur at the least expected time, won’t that lead you to constantly expect it? And if you constantly expect it, does that mean it will never happen? Or does expecting it lead you to not expect it?

What if there’s even a time limit? Someone says “you will have a surprise exam sometime this week, but on an unexpected day.” OK, if you haven’t had the exam by Friday, you know it has to be Friday, and thus Friday would be expected, so it can’t be Friday. And then can’t you just use the same logic to rule out all the days?

Sorites paradox

How wide can a chair get before it becomes a sofa? How many hairs does a man have to lose before being considered bald? How many grains of sand make a heap? (If you’re pro-choice, how many days of existence in the womb make a human?) The old Sorites paradox deals with the problem that some of our ideas have no defined boundaries; they’re vague. And then we wonder: how do we come to understand such vague ideas so well?

Preface paradox

This paradox basically says: aren’t there situations in which an individual would rationally hold two contradictory beliefs? For instance, in a book’s preface, an author might apologize for mistakes contained in the book, believing that there is likely at least one mistake just due to chance. At the same time, he might’ve fact-checked his book very carefully, and so know that there are no errors. So he believes that there both are and aren’t errors at the same time.

I don’t fully understand this paradox, as I don’t accept the second premise; an author could carefully fact-check his book and still believe it’s likely that he missed something.

Perhaps this paradox can be better illustrated with religious hypocrisy; a believer rationally believes it is right to donate to the poor for instance, but upon leaving his worshiping session he donates nothing. (Or he votes to raise taxes; the wonderful virtue of donating other people’s money!) But even in this case, someone would argue that he is being irrational in at least one belief.

Lottery paradox

This is the paradox you think of when you buy a lottery ticket. The chance of any one certain ticket winning is extremely small. Yet the chance of one ticket somewhere winning is extremely high. So you can safely conclude that your lottery ticket won’t win. Yet someone somewhere must have the winning ticket, and therefore must be wrong.

Russell’s paradox

From good old Bertrand Russell. Basically, we have two kinds of sets: normal and abnormal. Abnormal sets include themselves, normal sets do not. For example, the set of all squares would be a normal set; a set of all squares is not a square. However, a set of all non-squares would be abnormal; a set of non-squares is itself also not a square.

The paradox comes when we ask: is the set of all normal sets normal or abnormal? If the set includes itself, it’s abnormal. But if it doesn’t include itself, it’s normal, and should then include itself. Ahhh!! Paradox!

This is related to the more popular barber paradox: A barber only shaves all gentlemen who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself? If he doesn’t, he should; if he does, he shouldn’t.

The Why paradox

I made this one up, though someone probably philosophized about it before me, and it probably has a more formal name (if you know, I’d love book recommendations on this paradox… Godel maybe?). Basically, if you can always ask “why?” to any statement and then any proceeding answer, where does logic end? If we can’t give reasons for everything, then does that mean we just have to assume certain things? Does that mean all logic is based on illogicalness?

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The main point of all these paradoxes is that they don’t really manifest themselves in the real world; we don’t directly observe anything tangible that makes no sense; we’re not observing magic. As Dream, Death, and the Self says, the generation, analysis, and solution of such a paradox are all purely philosophical. They don’t really create any problems in our everyday life, only problems in how we perceive and understand the world, only inner-conscious problems. (As opposed to, say, an optical illusion, or a limited understanding of some tangible science like physics. Gravity is a paradox, for instance, and not a purely philosophical one. As is the uncertainty principle.)

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In the film Inception, I’m not quite sure how an optical illusion involving a staircase is a paradox… ?? Makes a nice one-liner thought, I suppose.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Creative processes

Here’s another post from Elizabeth King, whose blog I critiqued in an earlier post.  This post is really just a graphic, but it’s still interesting…

Overall, I appreciate (that is, I like) the author’s overall goal of encouraging people to be more creative.  This graphic though seems to suggest that an artist’s creative process involves a lot of consideration for the “rules” of art, and then decisions as to whether or not to follow them: “risk taking,” “innovation,” etc.  This also suggests that an artist is very concious of where his or her artwork fits in the big scheme things.

And I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that, if that’s what the artist wants to think about.  (Though I do think an artist can think he knows more about the role of his and other artists’ work in the big scheme of things than he is actually capable of knowing.  Things like influence are like stock market prices; they’re chaotic systems.  They are not linearly-defined cause-and-effect patterns, even though they can be simplified to look like that, and we humans tend to simplify things into cause-and-effect patterns quite naturally.  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, anyone?)

I don’t think any art is created in a vacuum.  An artist is going to be influenced by all the artwork he’s seen before, especially work that really resonates with him.

But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an artist’s creative process not involving consideration for “rules” (which often aren’t really “rules” in the first place, so I don’t know why people keep calling them that), or consideration for how “innovative” they think they’re being.  After all, one can only judge “innovation” based on what one’s seen before, thus it is a subjective property, a matter of opinion, not objective academic analysis (though such analysis might be interesting for the sake of getting new ideas).  Innovation for the sake of innovation is, of course, worthless.  It’s kind of annoying how many music composers out there could, for example, spend their time trying to create something “new” despite sensing any beauty, hoping the beauty will be found by future generations.  The point of creation is then a hope for later fame, later recognition for being the first, even though they claim to be entirely unselfish in their creative act.  But I guess that’s all beside the point…

I don’t really understand the concepts of “safety” and “bravery” in relation to artistic creation, so it will be interesting to see those concepts expanded upon.  Perhaps it has to do with an artist asking “will this creation of mine work for others?”  If the answer is: “Gee wiz, I just don’t know!  But I believe in it!” then the artist is brave.  If the answer is: “Yes!  I have followed all the rules!” then the artist is being safe.  Or perhaps it has to do whether or not the artist even cares what other people think.  If the artist thinks: “I’m going to do what I wish to do and I shall not compromise for the sake of the masses!” then he is brave.  If the artist thinks: “Well, gee wiz, I sure don’t want to confuse anyone and I hope everyone likes me!” then he is being safe.

Again, though, I don’t think this necessarily has to be a conscious decision, or even a decision at all.  If an artist is just trying please himself, then “safety vs. bravery” just doesn’t apply.  It’s not like you can be “brave” to yourself; you’re never going to do anything outside of what you would do.  To me, “brave” seems to mean you have something to fear, but do something despite that fear.  If you’re not afraid of anything, then you cannot be brave.  And maybe I’d go so far as to say that a fearful artist is a stupid artist, and therefore no good artist can be brave.  After all, if you’re truly fearing something, then your creative priorities are probably wrong.

So, overall, I don’t think this diagram describes a lot of people’s “creative process” and I don’t think that’s bad.  I think it’s a lot more automatic for most people.  It basically goes: What would I like to see exist? –> Create it.  That simple.  No thinking about innovation, rules and rule-breaking, being brave or safe, studying long artistic histories, etc.  Just creating for the joy of it.

Perhaps I will at some point launch my own site dedicated to encouraging creativity… but first I will have to study whether or not such a project will be innovative enough…

By S P Hannifin, ago

The Khan Academy is not that good

UPDATE (March 24, 2011): The Khan Academy has changed a bit since I originally wrote this. My original post appears right below, followed by some updated observations.

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It seems there are plenty of people, both students and parents, who are unhappy with our current education system, myself included. Unfortunately everyone seems to have different ideas of what exactly is wrong with it and how to fix it.

Google had a link on their homepage to their Project 10 to the 100, in which they gave millions of dollars to organizations that won voting contests. You can see they’re giving Khan Academy $2 million. A lot of people really love Khan Academy (including Bill Gates) and think that it is a great step in the right direction. [The Khan Academy is basically a large collection of cheaply produced educational videos. Being videos, they can only teach fact-based material, like math, science, and history. They can’t teach skills that require feedback.]

I don’t think Khan Academy is bad, but it’s not a replacement for our current education system. It’s not that good. It’s not worthy of praise from Bill Gates (or maybe it is, since he seems to have completely wrong ideas about what steps the education system should take), and it’s not worthy of this $2 million gift. Khan Academy is great because it makes a lot of educational material available for free. But education is not about just knowing stuff.

The big thing people seem to forget or ignore is that everything ultimately comes down to employment… whether or not you can do a job, and whether or not employers will recognize that you can do a job and hire you. Unfortunately people seem to think education is about getting a degree. But the only reason a degree has any value is because employers give it value. It has zero value by itself.

Or people think education is just about knowing stuff, and the more you know the better. The more facts you can cram in your head, the smarter you are. But knowledge is useless if you don’t use it. Oooh, there’s a profound idea! But people don’t always seem to believe it. Going through Khan Academy’s resource is just, in the end, really not that helpful. You’re just not going to use most of it in everyday life, even when you’re employed. It’s a nice resource to have available if it turns out you do need to learn some of it someday, which is the same reason it’s nice for colleges to have libraries. But it doesn’t replace or change anything important in the education system. It’s just a nice reference resource.

Which leads us to what is wrong with our education system. It’s become thought of as separate from the life you’ll live after it, and thus has little focus. Rich people and rich organizations can throw all the millions of dollars they want at it, but until there’s a widespread fundamental shift in employers’ and educators’ and students’ attitudes towards it, things aren’t going to get much better.

The Khan Academy does plan to expand and offer more than just videos, so we’ll see what happens with it. Ultimately it’s currently just a library. A library is a great resource because it means you don’t have to learn stuff; if you ever need certain info, you can go find it in the library when you need it. The point isn’t to try to learn or memorize as much of it as possible.

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Updated comments from March 24, 2011:

(Really this is just copied from one of my comments, but I thought it was important enough to move it up here with the original post.)

Since I first posted this, I think the Khan Academy has added practicing software and coaching abilities, so it’s no longer just a bunch of videos, but does include some form of feedback. If they continue this trend, adding more features that allow more personalized feedback, I think they can certainly come pretty close to replacing the classroom experience, maybe even making it better in some ways: no more needing permission to go to the bathroom, no more disruptive paper airplanes, children can work better at their own pace, etc. There would still be a great deal of challenges (funding probably a big one), but if Khan’s goal is to replace the classroom setting with something more personalized, I think it’s definitely possible with today’s technology and we only await someone with enough tech savvy, time, and money to get it going.

But making a bad education system virtual doesn’t really help. It’s like adding new fancy fonts and pictures to a poorly written textbook.

That is, my main criticism isn’t that the Khan Academy is (or was) just a resource. The specific information is still mostly useless to most students, no matter what form they learn it in, whether it’s a physical or virtual classroom.

If you’re just learning something so you can spew it back out on a test and then forget it next year, that information is serving you no real purpose. You’re just wasting your time learning it. (I shudder to see “California Standards Test” lessons now listed at the Khan Academy.)

The Khan Academy videos seem like Mr. Khan spent some time learning the content out of a textbook and then just regurgitated the material in video form. That *can* be useful in some situations, but to me it implies that Khan, like most public education systems in general, doesn’t really question the applications of the content, doesn’t question why or how that specific content is worth the teachers’ and students’ time and effort. In many cases, it’s just not.

By S P Hannifin, ago

High art and snobbery

[All uses of the word “you” are general; they are just to you, the reader, not to any particular person.]

Yesterday I blogged a response to an article about art education, and I used the word “snob” a lot, which angered some people (of course… it reads very insultingly, and not very many people want to be considered snobby).  My use of the word “snob” was in response to a few ideas I was getting from the author’s writing.  (Whether or not the author truly holds these ideas is another matter.  This can be a pretty complex issue.  There are probably entire books dedicated to the subject.)  The main idea I attribute the word “snob” to is the idea of there being a “high art.”  Does that not seem snobby?  Doesn’t that imply the existence of “low art” that “high art” is “better” or “more important” than?  If not, why use the phrase?

Dictionary.com defines a “snob” as:

a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field

Using the phrase “high art” or “serious art” seems condescending to me.  If that’s not snobbery, what is?

What’s considered “high art”?  That’s probably subjective, but what comes to my mind is opera, symphonies, art galleries, Shakespearean theater, and university professor-approved literature.  What’s “low art”?  Brittany Spears, Spongebob Squarepants, heavy metal, Nancy Drew, etc.

(I am definitely NOT saying that anyone who likes opera, symphonies, Shakespearean theater, etc, is a snob.  Nor am I saying that anyone who doesn’t like them is not a snob.  But if you think the symphony orchestra is important for reasons beyond personal interest, if you think there’s something about it that all citizens should know about and appreciate, that’s snobbery; it’s false, and it’s condescending to people who don’t want to go to the symphony.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support or advertise a symphony; it’s about why you feel the need to.)

I think most people in our culture are certainly aware of a difference between these artistic areas, separating them on a mental spectrum, whatever their personal artistic tastes.  And there is a difference, obviously; I’m not trying to claim all art is the same.  What I find snobby is the notion that “high art” is innately and/or intellectually superior to other art.  The idea that only certain art is “high” or “serious” connotes this.

I’m surprised more people don’t have an issue with using phrases like “high art” or “serious art” … I suppose it’s because these terms and the idea of there being a big difference between “high art” and “non-high art” has just sunk too deeply into the mindset of our culture, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.  (Especially if you enjoy “high art” and want it to be more popular.)

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The big complex issue, I think, is in trying to answer the questions: Why might some art be considered “higher” or more “serious”?  What exactly is the difference between “high art” and “low art”?

There may be as many answers as there are people.

What comes to my mind the most strongly are the intentions of the artist.  For high art, the artist intends his art to be high; the artist creates his art in a conscious effort to have his or her artwork become a part of the high art world.  For low art, the intention is just to decorate something, or to make money.  The high artist strives for quality, the low artist for a quick paycheck.  The high artist has something deeply important to say to humanity and wants the audience to think deeply, the low artist just wants to have fun.  The function of the high artist’s art is to only to be considered art.  The function of the low artist’s art is to entertain.

I reject this notion.  It would mean we’d be basing our evaluation of a work of art on the intentions of the artist.  We’d be evaluating the intentions and not the art, only how well the artist’s intentions are executed.  And we’d have to be sure to know the intentions of the artist.  How do we know the intentions of the artist?  Just ask him?  What if we’re wrong?

You might say “Well, can’t we see in intention in the art itself?  Or in how the artist shares it?”  I don’t know.  How can anyone know?  You can certainly get a message out of art (especially in literature or theater or film, perhaps the least abstract arts), but how do you know that’s the message the artist was trying to communicate?  What if you don’t get a message or you’re confused about a message?  If the artist’s intentions (apart from what intentions we see in or infer from the art itself) should matter in our evaluation of art, our own opinions of the art itself become invalid and our understanding of other people’s artwork can only ever be incomplete.  We wouldn’t be able to think for ourselves, we’d have to look to the rest of society and make sure the people we want to be associated with agree with us.

Of course, some artists have known this and have played around with it.  What happens if you draw a can of soup?  What if your sculpture is a urinal?  What if you call random noise “music”?  How did we get to the point where we had to ask these questions or think them profound?  Methinks snobbery had something to do with it.

I could go on about this point, because it’s a complex one, and wording my argument isn’t easy.  Maybe I’ll dedicate an entire future blog post to this point.

Anyway, moving on…

One could also bring up the matter of influence… high art influences many high people.  But it’s easy to see why this explanation breaks down.  It turns art into a popularity contest; the more popular something is, the better.  And low art becomes popular all the time, yet it can never join the ranks of high art.

What about complexity?  High art is complex, and high artists spend years of practice and dedication to create their works.  Low art is simple.

Too subjective, right?

What about timelessness?  High art lasts hundreds of years, low art is soon forgotten.

Well then we got a long wait before knowing what high art is being created today.  (Perhaps there is none?)

What are some other answers to these questions?  I’m not sure off the top of my head, but they’re out there.  If there’s one out there I don’t reject, I’ll have to change my beliefs and take back what I say in this post.  But, come on, that’ll never happen!  Bwah ha ha ha ha!!  Aha ha ha!  Aha!  *Narf*

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In conclusion: the term “high art” and “serious art” and “high culture” and related phrases (and the world-views they imply) are snobby.  I hope you now understand why I think this.  And if we truly want “high art” to be more popular, we’ll have to rid ourselves of any appearances of snobbery.

“You know what I’m craving? A little perspective. That’s it. I’d like some fresh, clear, well seasoned perspective. Can you suggest a good wine to go with that?” ~Anton Ego

By S P Hannifin, ago

Stop blindly defending arts education

I’m not against people defending arts education.  I just don’t like seeing people doing it blindly.

I read this article from a link I saw on my twitter feed: Arts Education and Civilization: This Isn’t Child’s Play

[UPDATE: Please also check out the comments!  I throw around the word “snob” a lot below, but my intent is not to personally call the author of this article a snob; it is in response to the actual ideas.  Just in case you’re mad at me already.]

Now, Elizabeth King, the article’s author, isn’t being blind.  It’s people who support arts education and, in turn, support articles like these without reading them, or without reading them closely enough, just because the conclusion agrees with theirs.

About the article: I don’t like it.

The article’s author seems to suggest that arts education should be funded in public-funded schools because…

Because why?

Just because.

Because, you know, smart people think arts are good.  It’s just the “smart” thing to think.  So we all just defend it because we like it.

I’ll state my own opinion at the bottom of this blog post, but first I want to go over why this particular article annoys me.

The article starts off with two quotes, which I’ll reproduce below.  The first quote is from Doris Sommer, Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University:

Some people mistake the arts as only a vehicle for expression. That’s a very limited view. Art is a vehicle for exploration, learning, and trying things out. If people are serious about reducing violence and educating youth to become productive citizens and more satisfied in their own lives, supporting and expanding art is a major opportunity for developing intellectual capacity. All of the rhetoric about empowerment gets immediately grounded when a youth is working on an art project. This person is authoring something that didn’t exist before.

I’m guessing King quotes this because of its general support for arts education.  Of course.  But it’s a vague quote.  It doesn’t really say much beyond “youth that is creating art is good.”  But why is it good?  Well, it reduces violence.  Evidence of this?  Oh, it just does.  What else?  It educates youth to become productive citizens (whatever those are) and more satisfied in their own lives.  Again, evidence of this?  Oh, who needs evidence, these seem like truisms!  How could they be wrong?

Firstly, maybe their “art” is rapping about having gangsta wars and shooting each other.  Maybe they want to make violent films.  If expanding art education reduces crime simply because youth won’t have as much time to do crime in the first place, you could equally support sports, religion, couch-potatoness, and prison sentences for pre-crimes for the same reason.  Secondly, I’d like to say there are plenty of artists who aren’t satisfied with their own lives.  They’re miserable.  But this is probably beside the point, because “satisfaction” is not something that can be objectively measured.

The second quote is from Tim Smith from the Baltimore Sun:

… [Glen] Beck singled out cities with budget crises where they’re cutting back on police, but not slashing the funding for such things as libraries, museums and, in Baltimore, the Lyric Opera House — a.k.a. the “stupid, snotty opera house.”

Beck claimed that $750,000 was in the budget for that historic venue in our fair city, while “cops are on the chopping block. This is like my wife saying we are broke, we have to cut down our expenses on food. I turn around and say, OK, when you grocery shop, no more meats, organics, milk — we’re cutting that out. Just get Mountain Dew and Cheetos … How about we get the rich who never pay their fair share to buy their stupid snotty opera house? Would you cut the opera house or the cops? … What does your gut tell you? That everybody involved in this is moron?

I suppose this quote supports art, and that’s why King posted it.  But to me this seems to be more about “art vs. cops” and their funding.  So cities are not cutting back on funding for an opera house?  Why are they funding opera houses in the first place?

At least, that’s the message I get from this little quote.  Things are probably somewhat more complicated (read the full article).  But I do think the government can stay completely out of the arts and both the arts and the government will be just fine.  Using public funds to fund only a specific type of art is not fair to people who don’t enjoy that kind of art.  To support such a fund is to be stupid and snotty.

OK, to the article…

King writes:

Most high art…

Woah!  Hold it, hold it!  There goes my snobbish rhetoric alarm.  “High” art?  Some art is “low” and some art is “high”?  Already we must have completely different definitions of what “art” is.  Tsk, tsk!

OK, King goes on to try to define art:

Most high art—visual art, music, literature, dance, theater—intends to examine a group of people, comment on society, recount experience, investigate social norms, and challenge them, highlight them, or reinforce them.

Woah!  More snob rhetoric!  “Intends”?  You now think you know the intentions of dead artists?  Another big tsk tsk!  I disagree with this definition.  It might be true for some art, but I don’t think we can state a definition so objectively and self-contained like that.  Maybe King didn’t mean to do that, but that’s what she wrote.  You think Mozart’s 40th symphony had anything in particular to say about society?

King writes:

High art strives for better—better execution, better message. It looks for continuity between what has come before and its own sense of direction; it’s aware of its own longevity.

Ha!  You wish!  Wouldn’t that make the subject easy to understand!  But King is over-generalizing immensely, and the rhetoric is still snobbish (“high” and “better”).

After snobbishly attempting to define art, King then writes about a survey from the National Endowment of the Arts (which, ideally, does not need to exist) about how participation in snob, er, “high” art is declining:

The 2008 survey results are, at a glance, disappointing. As reported in Arts Participation 2008, a summary brochure of the survey’s findings, a smaller segment of the adult population either attended arts performances or visited art museums or galleries than in any prior survey.

Why are the results disappointing?  Why is attending arts performances or visiting art museums and galleries automatically good?  People should like and pay for this stuff, otherwise they are dumb, uncultured, uneducated fools?

The quote from the NEA goes on to try to guess at why there’s a decline, and guesses that the decline in arts education has something to do with it.

So… we should support arts education so attendance at NEA-surveyed places goes up?  Again, why would this be automatically good?

Finally, King attempts to answer this question:

When we let go of cultural traditions and inquisition, the after-effects are more than a momentary disruption— it’s not just some blip on the screen in our society. When we consistently replace cultural exploration with pop culture consumption we ultimately create a hole in our connection with each other across society. Ignoring art means breaking our bonds with each other. Truly, abandoning the arts puts us at risk for increased violence in our communities. Ultimately, if our culture is one of the defining elements of our civilization, if it propels us forward and connects the work we do now with that of the past and, even more importantly, that of the future, then to destroy that continuity and meaningful connection actually puts our society and civilization at risk.

Whew, that’s a lot.  Let’s go over this paragraph more finely.

King writes:

When we consistently replace cultural exploration with pop culture consumption we ultimately create a hole in our connection with each other across society. Ignoring art means breaking our bonds with each other.

What?  I don’t think so.  The problem here is that King has snobbishly separated art into an elite “high” art and the lowly “pop culture.”  Just because attendance at symphonies and art galleries goes down doesn’t mean that art isn’t being consumed, it’s just not the kind of art you think is “high” enough.  That “high” art is not some invisible important cultural glue keeping us all functioning properly, while “low” art does nothing.  How do we bond with each other through “high” art?  What sort of “bonds”?  That’s not a rhetorical question; answer it!

I, of course, completely disagree.  Art is something that comes natural to humans.  We will always involve ourselves in art, whether it’s taught in schools or not.  There is not some higher subset of art that keeps us all bonded nicely.

King writes:

Truly, abandoning the arts puts us at risk for increased violence in our communities.

Evidence?  No?  It’s just a truism?

And, again, not going to art galleries is not “abandoning the arts”!  If what you call “pop culture” is “high art” to someone else, then you have nothing to worry about, do you?

Ultimately, if our culture is one of the defining elements of our civilization…

Uh… OK, culture is a defining element of civilization.  But culture emerges naturally.  People don’t sit down and consciously design a culture.  “Well, we’re a great civilization, we just don’t have much culture…” No.

…if it propels us forward and connects the work we do now with that of the past…

We move forward in time because we have to.  Cultural changes do not go backwards and forwards (unless you mean in a moral sense), they just change.  Artistic trends, likewise, change; they do not “progress.”  And I have no idea what King means by “connects.”  That word is too vague.  Makes grammatical sense, seems fine if you’re reading quickly, but if you stop and think about what it means… what does it mean?  I don’t know.  I could guess, maybe that’s what King wants readers to do, but I don’t know.  The word is too imprecise.

…to destroy that continuity and meaningful connection actually puts our society and civilization at risk.

So ultimately this is all about a vague sense of “connection”?  This isn’t good enough for me.

King then gets patriotic:

The American experiment is still new. The work we’re doing to perpetuate a democracy is still, in terms of global history, extremely fresh. By abandoning the arts we are abandoning ourselves. By offering exceedingly paltry arts education we are abandoning our students now and future generations. We are abandoning the first Americans who risked their necks so we could be here. Finally, we are abandoning our potential for continuity, the creative economy, and, most fundamentally, the luxury of relative safety that we enjoy on a daily basis.

Again, King makes the snobbish assumption that art museum attendance (and such) and the cutting of art education programs are signs of the public “abandoning the arts” when in reality they’re just abandoning a certain definition of it.  King claims we are somehow thus abandoning “the first Americans who risked their necks so we could be here.”  What in the world do they have to do with it?  Saying that you’re “abandoning your parents who took their time to raise you” makes equal sense.

(Oh, and I guess art education isn’t as important for non-Americans?)

King then lists some other vague ideas we’re abandoning.  “Our potential for continuity” … what does that mean?  “The creative economy” … what does that mean?  And “the luxury of relative safety.”  Absolute safety would be more of a luxury.  But… what the?  How does safety have anything to do with this?  Oh, are you going back to the idea that crime rates go down with more arts education?

King writes:

The discussion about Arts Ed is heated, but it’s tough to talk about when so few Americans actually engage in the arts.

Well, yeah, isn’t that your problem to begin with?  That’s like saying “it’s hard to talk about why math books should be more popular when so few Americans actually read math books.”

King then makes a commitment that her blog, or website, will start talking to artists…

The vast majority of the artists we’re going to talk to are going to be full time, established artists–people you should know about.

Just had to get one last moment of rhetorical snobbery in there?  “People you should know about”?  Gee, thanks!

My own opinion

I hold the rare position of being against our whole system of public-funded education in general.  I think there are worse things to worry about, like the actual reasons behind why we even have to question whether or not to fund education about the arts.  What other things are we teaching and why are we teaching them?  What’s the point of education in the first place?  To be ranked #1 in the world and dominate it?  To stay busy?  To just learn as much as we can just in case we might use some of it someday?

If a work of art isn’t influential enough by itself to pervade the public’s consciousness on its own merit, then we don’t have to artificially extend its influence by forcing students to be conscious of it.  Works of art that were once considered “great” can be forgotten, and that is OK.  If you think that is not OK, if you think that is sad, then you are a snob.  Being conscious of works of art that used to be popular and influential does not make you “smarter” or “better.”  Just because something is helpful or interesting to you does not mean we should, as a society, force everyone to know it.

Having said all that…

In some ways, I’m playing devil’s advocate here, because I’d rather align myself with people like Elizabeth King who support arts in education rather than these stupid school officials who just want more compulsive testing.  But in some other ways, I’m very annoyed, because so many people don’t seem to have objective reasons for supporting this stuff; they just do it because they like the arts themselves.  And if that’s all that’s guiding them, they’re really not helping much.

“Support the arts in education!  A way to shove art chosen by other people down the public’s throat for its own good!”

We don’t need that.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Graduation speech and animation and stuff

Valedictorian unhappy with school – part 2

Back on August 4th I posted a link to a graduation speech in which the valedictorian went over some major criticism of the current American education system, which I mostly whole-heartedly agreed with. After all, I’ve ranted about the education system on this blog quite a few times. I said that I couldn’t verify the speech though; it was only posted on the web from a second-hand source. However, I finally came across an actual recording of the speech, which seems to have been uploaded to YouTube by the speaker herself. So, for your enjoyment, or for your frustration with young people these days, here’s the speech:

Woohoo! Yes! Indeed! That’s right!

Do you agree with this speech?

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Animation Mentor progress

Week 8 (of 72) starts today! I’m pleased with my assignment this week, though of course I can still see areas that could use some tweaking, but you only have a week, so running out of time is inevitable. I’ll upload it to YouTube tonight or tomorrow. I was hoping to revise my pendulum assignment from last week, but never got to it. (I got sick that week so didn’t spend as much time on it.) Oh well.

The transforming room

Someone on Facebook posted a link to this very interesting video:

Of course, here in America, if you have enough money to afford designing and building something like that, then you probably have enough money to just buy a more spacious place, unless I suppose there’s some squished location that you really really want to live in. It would be awesome if someone opened up apartment buildings or hotels in which every room was like this; should get some good business just for the uniqueness of it. (Probably apartments; hotels would probably need too much maintenance.)

By S P Hannifin, ago