Fabio Arciniegas A.' blog

[31] The Infinity of (Movie) Lists

2011-11-25T23:21:00.000-08:00

After reading the book "The Infinity of Lists," by Umberto Eco I've been giving some thought to the problem of Movies and Lists. I'm interested not just in a list of favorites, but instead in a special collection: a list of Movies made out of lists. Movies whose structure or content is essentially that of a list or a catalogue (e.g. Glitterati, or at least the 5 min version we see of it in Avery's rules of attraction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCvG1TCyikM)

The book was made in conjunction with an exhibit at the Louvre, organized by Eco himself, so The Infinity of Lists relies on literature and painting examples. This article presents, only as a modest game, film examples for each of the chapters of the book.

The Shield and it's Form v. the List and the Catalogue

The first two chapters of "The Infinity of Lists" set the stage for the examples and diversions to follow. Two examples from the Iliad illustrate corresponding and opposite modes of representation: First, when Hephaestus forges new arms for Achiles he includes a myriad of scenes from the earth, the sea, the sky, the sun, the moon, everyday life, and music into one and perfect, closed form. Achiles' shield is round, finite, and complete; the complexity of its content contained in harmonious unity.

Opposite to this closed form and unity is another example from the Iliad in which Homer attempts to convey the immensity of the Greek armada. Here no one metaphor comes to him, and instead he devotes the next three hundred or so verses to enumerating some of the ships and his captains. This is the list mode of representation. The catalogue.

To transpose the first mode into film, one could take Casablanca, for example. Casablanca is the ideally coherent narrative structure with an extraordinarly artificial and exhuberant content, but all within a preordained and contained system of representation. Even as events are hinted to exist before and after the movie, there is nothing relevant to Casablanca that is not contained within its classic beginning, middle and end.

On the other end there are the movies that occupy this article. Movies like 71 fragments of a Chronology of Chance by Michael Haneke. The problem portrayed -multiple lives in a modern city converging towards a catastrophic event- is far from a complete explanation, and the best Haneke (or anyone) can do is enumerate an incomplete list of vignettes that hints at the constituent elements.

Sometimes the elements of "list movies" are rendered together by narrative but often mostly by being part of the same list and explained only, if ever, by a critical and social narrative outside the work itself.

IMBD entry

The visual list

Film, like painting, is constrained by the frame. There are paintings and movies, however, that convey the idea that what we see in the frame is only a sample of a much larger group. What we see is followed by ellipsis. As Eco puts it, "not all but only an example of the totality whose number is hard to calculate, at least as much as Homer's warriors were."

The obvious examples here would be the hordes of CGI-produced armies on Lord of the rings, or the cocoons housing human batteries on The Matrix. But a more satisfying connection to painting can be made in Peter Greenaway's continuation of the dutch painting tradition of still lifes known as Vanitas.

Each Vanitas is an allusion to a wider list of delights. It mixes an abundance of disjointed perishables in one frame inviting us both to reflect on the range of hedonism and its transience. The marvelous filmed Vanitas of Peter Greenaway in movies like The Cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover are only the first example of why he is the prime list-making director.

The Ineffable

"Faced with something that is immensely large, or unknown, of which we still do not know enough or of which we shall never know, the author proposes a list as specimen, example, or indication, leaving the reader to imagine the rest"

As far as the topos of innefability goes the key movie examples are obvious and need no explanation: 2001: a space Oddyssey and Terrence Malick's The Tree of life.

Honorable mention should be made of Gaspar Noé and Enter the Void, which as flawed as it may be stands as one truly ambitious and original piece taking a stab at the visual representation of the ineffable.

List of things

The history of literature, Eco reminds us, is full of obsessive collections of objects. From the mundane contents of Bloom's kitchen board in Ulysses to Prospero's instruments. The allusion to Prospero should give a hint at the great list-maker, Greenaway, but I'll mention not his lists of wonders but two of his list-films based on everyday objects: Inside Rooms: 26 Bathrooms, London & Oxfordshire,1985 and The Tulse Luper's suitcases.

http://petergreenaway.org.uk/26bathrooms.htm

List of places

In a way many road movies could be counted as examples of movies dealing with lists of places. None more vertiginous and dense than Roger Avary's Glitterati, or at least the 5 min version we see of it in The Rules of Attraction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCvG1TCyikM

There are lists and lists

In this chapter the distinction is drawn between the practical list and the poetical. The practical list has a referential function: like the grocery list, it only makes sense with respect to that which it signifies. The poetic list is enamoured with signifiers, it exists as a mantra, a lethany, that makes sense only in the aesthetic pleasure of putting the words (or images as the case might be) together in the order prescribed by the list.

Admittedly, movies in this category are the most abstract. This is a necessity as we are talking of movies joining frames not by narrative cohesion but simply by the beauty of putting one image after the next. At its most ethereal, the poetic list finds place in Stan Brakhage's short films, of which Glaze of Cathexis is a fine example.

Less abstract samples of sequential images forming poetic lists include Sergei Parajanov's The Colour of Pomegranates and wonderful sequences by the greatest poet film has produced: Andrei Tarkovsky, particularly in the meditative Andrei Rublev or the slow still water tracking shots of Stalker.

Exchanges Between List and Form

Instead of a movie made out of lists, in this category we are looking for a movie given form by being a list. Bear in mind, it is not sufficient to have multiple parts, in this case at best we have a single unity of story split between chapters and at worse a list of disjointed movies glued together by external branding. No, we are looking for a work that makes sense only inasmuch as being formed by a list of movies.

Such work is Kieslowsky's The Decalogue. The Decalogue is made out of ten movies, each dealing with a commandment, and while individual movies make sense (as the apple in Arcimboldo's Spring makes sense alone pictorially) the work in total is only rendered form only as a list of the ten elements.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092337/

The rethoric of enumeration

In the chapter "the rethoric of enumeration," Eco gives a delightful breakdown on the different devices for enunciating accumulations, particularly anaphora, asyndeton, polysyndeton (lists repeating the same word at the beginning of each phrase, lists with no conjunctions linking them, and lists with conjunctions, respectively).

I admit this article hits a limit in this topic. One could make a parallel between different types of cuts and transition techniques in movies (jump cuts, fades, lists with voice overs and without, etc) but I fear this is either too specific or too forced of an analogy.

Lists of mirabilia

The list of marvels serves the double medieval function of listing wonders, which often we know not to exist, and presuming a form, an order, belying the list.

A nice example of lists of mirabilia I can recall is from an endearing clay animation called Mary and Max where lists of small mirabilia owned by each party are listed and shown sequentially over many exchanges from afar.

Collections and treasures

The voracious appetite for accumulation has one definitive reference in cinema: Xanadu.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qY-eqnw_DXE#t=17s

The Wunderkammer

The cabinets of wonders, those rooms filled with rarities and monstrosities prefiguring our natural science museums can be found in Greenaway movies like a Zed and two Noughts and even as sets for whole pieces such as Mark Romanek's Closer music video for Nine Inch Nails.

The challenge of finding a movie that is a Wunderkammer in itself, is only satisfied by one film to my knowledge: Historia Naturaeby the great Jan Svankmajer, best known for his mixtures of live action and stop motion animation like Alice and Faust, delightful rarities in themselves.

List of properties, List by essence, The aristotelian telescope

It is the goal of science and abstraction to understand the world by it's essence, Eco explains, and thus a purely scientific description of a tiger would set the tiger somewhere in a tree of genus, species, etc. Meanwhile, it is the goal of description and analysis to break down every possible accident and mention that a tiger called Shere Khan was Mougli's enemy in The Jungle Book.

The first, tree-like sort of knowledge sacrifices detail for the sake of clarity, while the latter, a rhizome (or fully connected graph, if you prefer the computer science term to Deleuze's poetic analogy of entangled underground roots) sacrifices clarity for the sake of connection and extensibility.

It is proper of a primitive culture that still has to construct a hierarchy to use the list by properties, instead of essence. It is also proper of a very mature culture (as eco says, maybe one in crisis) to use a list by properties, because it casts doubt on all previous definitions. Both the Medieval and Postmodern mind gravitate toward the rhizome, and thus the list by properties.

Films that are representations of properties, hinting at a hidden/underlying encyclopedia of meaning and metaphor are not very popular (and often not very good movies either, despite what Jodorowsky fans say) but there are some truly genuine jewels that fit the bill. The open and list-like exploration of encounters and properties of the race and guilt problem in Michael Haneke's Caché is one of them.

Excess, from Rabelais onwards

This type of list is excessive not just out of necessity given the number of things referred, but excessive in it's labyrinthic love of itself and its artifice. One extraordinary example suffices: The Draughtsman's contract, by Peter Greenaway.

Coherent Excess

Out of excessive lists, two trends rise in the post-modernity of

lists. The first is the coherent excess that deforms but stills refers to some underlying order. The purest example is The Alphabet, by David Lynch (warning: this can be a disturbing piece, play at your own risk)

Chaotic Enumeration

The second trend in the contemporary excessive list is the chaotic enumeration. Lists in this category are not necessarily long. Brakhage would be often a good example, but to provide a counterpart to the dark previous example, I suggest here Begotten by E. Elias Merhige.

Begotten is a great film, but it's truly hard to watch. Perhaps the most visceral piece of legitimate cinema I've encountered and it could be argued that it does have a certain metaphorical plot, but a full viewing should make it obvious why is included in the realm of the chaotic. (warning: this is definitely a disturbing piece, don't trust the trailer's promise of balance)

Mass-media lists

The mechanics of lists find their place in mass media as well but there

they serve a more basic role. They are in place just to remind us of abundance. This is common enough in musicals that Eco himself draws his examples from the genre for this chapter: Bathing beauty by Minelli and Footlight parade by Lloyd Bacon, only two of many examples of numerous repetitions of essentially the same showgirl repeated over and over.A simple music video by Nikki Minaj where you have eight or nine indistinguishable dancers (both from each other and from the main performer) would suffice, but in order to keep the examples interesting here is a more cinematic choice: Citta de la Donne by Fellini. Definitely not his best film, but one where the artifice of the mass-media list (that is, the all-you-can-eat buffet) is put to a use other than the typical musical number.

List of vertigos

Lists of vertigos imply containers for infinite lists or describe mechanisms to generate them. Examples include Borges' library containing all the books that can be written with 26 symbols.

Lists of vertigos present a problem for our exercise. Literature can only define the list, and leave the vertigo to take hold of the reader as the implication of the definition sinks in. Films show things, they enumerate them explicitly.

There is no film, in the strict sense, that can directly show the vertigo of infinite or truly huge lists. Of course it is conceivable to make a "film" that shows say, the decimal points of Pi as it is being calculated by a computer on the background, or a "film" made of 26 shorts that keep being shown randomly one after the other. However, unless you are willing to consider such exercises cinema, we hit here a limit of the medium.

Attempts at combinatorials have been tried in experimental cinema, both arthouse and commercial (e.g. the point and choose HBO Voyeur http://archive.bigspaceship.com/hbovoyeur/) but until we are ready to declare cinema dead (or at least limited the way we have declared photography and painting before it) and explore image in ways other than the passive sequentially of film, the list of vertigos will remain out of reach.

Exchanges between practical and poetic lists

Sometimes practical lists become a thing of poetry and poetic lists serve a referential or practical purpose beyond them. Such exchanges can be found in cinema too. One tremendous example is M is for Man, Music, Mozart:

A non-normal list

If the list of vertigos takes us to the edge of the capacity for the medium, the non-normal list puts us beyond it. And beyond the reason of lists themselves.

What a non-normal lists asks from us is a paradox familiar to readers who have studied set theory: Consider the list of all list that are not members of themselves.

If the list itself is not member, then it should be included on our list. But only things that are not members of themselves should be in it(!).

This paradox, formulated by Russell, opens a can of worms far beyond this article (and beyond Eco's book). If you have not seen this paradox before, and your mind is not blown away yet, I suggest you read the definition on The Infinity of lists rather than the wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox) .

As for our game, this chapter puts the nail in the coffin: There isn't a film that is a non-normal list.

Fabio Arciniegas A., San Diego CA, November 25, 2011

[30] Lo que Innita No es/That which No Innita is [review, fiction]

2011-07-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

What do nudism, vegans, rock, hyper-feminism, fine art and comics have in

common? The improbable answer is a pink girl with star-shaped freckles

called Innita, and her author/other half, No.

"No" is the legal name (legal surname "Para Innita") of a mysterious and

prolific artist dropping one amazing piece after another in a

variety of mediums/websites. A one woman army posting sometimes

several pieces a day, often digitally in places like flickr as well as oils in places like Bogotá.

The downside of No's outstanding creative output is that it leaves less time for curation, which means serialized books such as "De No para Innita vol. 1" lag a good two years behind the storyline and characters in the current drawn series. In any case, this is a good "origins" book and those bewitched by the visual work can start getting the coordinates of Innita's narrative in these two volumes available online at scribd.

By Innita's "origins" I mean something closer to those of the protestant revolution or the Dogma film movement than those of a Stan Lee character. She is rooted in a manifesto of principles more than

in a turtle-bit-me-so-now-I-have-x-ray-vision story.

The fundamental principle is roughly summarized as follows:

Feminine is best, reality is overrated. Reality shall be subverted and

replaced by art, not altered states, masculinity fully replaced, no

quarter. These ideas are expanded on page 192:

"Menorrealismo is an extreme artistic current; both classical and post-post-modern. This term comes from the amalgamation of the menorrhea (menstruation) and the word realism. Its significance determines that the essence of life is not reality (Spanish wordplay: “menorrhealism” as minor realism, lower realism),

but love[...]"

Based on this principle, the book covers three main narratives: Ginotropia

("gravitating towards the feminine"), interviews full of puns with Innita as a rocker, and the beginnings of "World War IV," a story line where the

vegan aspects of the hyper-feminine characters come clashing with the

world as we know it.

Incidentally, world war IV is fought between zombies and vegan female vampires. The origins of the conflict are World War III and the assassination of a female president. You'll just have to read it to make sense of it. If it seems twisted is because it is.

So much for description. Critically, I think its apt to describe what

sets this book apart, in terms of what it is not. Call it "That which No Innita is."

First of all, Innita is not your typical "hard rock chick,"

particularly not those presented in movies or comics. Those girls all suffer from one fatal flaw: inside all the hard exterior they are just a soft

goo of girly cliché. I personally believe that version of "hard women"

has been more detrimental to feminism than any broom or burka. No,

Innita is the genuine article, she is not waiting for the right guy to

knock her up and retire, she bleeds profusely and makes no apologies.

The next thing it isn't is "the first Colombian X." Whatever X

might be, those are not the right terms. The work is

highly innovative and there is no precedent I know of in Colombia, but

this is not some provincial figure with a bag of coffee under the arm

sold under the self-deprecation of exoticism. No/Innita is

an original playing by her own right on the big leagues, and asks for

no special treatment.

The girls on this book are not hot naked chicks derivative

of Milo Manara or superhero chicks a-la J. Scott Campbell "Danger Girl."

The accessible style borrows from comics as it does from other popular

illustrative art, such as the nouveau pieces of Mucha and

Lautrec. It contains traces and references to Klimt and Shiele, but

it all amounts not to a pastiche but to a distinctive visceral style

that is only No's.

By continuation of the previous argument, this book isn't really a

comic, (and I don't mean as opposed to a graphic novel) It is

fine art masquerading as illustration masquerading as comic book. In

this sense (but also in style and theme) the closest parallel I can

draw to No's work is that of the incredible Ashley Wood. In many ways

reading "De No para Innita vol. 1" is a pleasure similar to reading

Popbot.

Come to think of it, a mashup between Lady Sham, super agent Biatch

vs. Innita, would definitely be a fine art exhibit, er, comic book

worth seeing.

Fabio Arciniegas A., San Diego, California July 09, 2011

"De No Para Innita vol 1. and 2" is available on scribd,

http://es.scribd.com/doc/57472653/de-no-para-innita-vol-1-parte-1

Current works by No in the world of Innita available on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noparainnita/

Original Oils and Pencils available.

[28] Dragon Boats and other holiday racing

2011-07-04T03:29:00.001-07:00

When asked to explain the National Dragon Boat festival holiday, my
Taiwanese friends seem to experience that brand of self-consciousness
reserved for explaining a strange idea that doesn't make much sense but
you accepted a long time ago.

Legend has it that a poet loyal to the king in third century China was falsely
accused of treason; rather than living shamed in exile he decides to
drown. The townspeople, who loved the poet, threw rice cakes to the
river so the fish wouldn't eat him and raced boats to find him. Ever
since, they celebrate each year the dragon boat race.

In my opinion, it is a perfectly valid and beautiful explanation. If
you disagree and it seems a little strange to celebrate a holiday by
racing adorned boats, I submit for your consideration three other
holiday races I've seen, the true strangeness of which should put things
in perspective:

Top 3 - The Seven Churches Race, South America

Maundy thursday, also known as holy thursday, is a christian holy
day which happens every year the thursday before Easter. It
commemorates the last supper between Jesus and the apostles and
precedes the Easter Triduum, the three days of Good Friday, Holy
saturday, and Easter Sunday, which commemorate the passion, death, and
resurrection of Jesus.

So far so good. Here's the strange part: Seven local churches are visited by
devout catholics in south america in celebration of this day. The
churches are to be visited before midnight and a certain number of
prayers have to be performed in each. Because it is time-bound, there
is a sense of urgency to the proceedings and more than a pilgrimage
the route acquires the taste of a race against time.

In some locations such as downtown Lima, ts is relatively easy to
accomplish. More than eleven churches in one square kilometer
provide ample time to complete the requirement. In other cities, it
can get complicated; I remember as a kid attempting this race only
once and from my recollection, skipping a few due to lack of time (or
perhaps, lets admit it, devotion.)

Why should there be seven and not eight or six is explained apparently
by the important stops Jesus made that night. It is unclear whether
the participants can tell what those stops were but one thing is
certain: grandmothers and children alike buzz from one crowded church
to the next in order to fulfill the tradition.

Top 2 - The Easter Egg Hunt Race, US (and increasingly in its cultural colonies)

The usual explanation about ancient pagan rites of fertility (of which
the hare and egss were symbol) getting mixed with early european
christian celebrations may shed some light into the origin of easter
eggs, but does nothing to lessen the cacophony of the
celebration: On one hand you have the resurrection of Christ. On the
other, children racing to collect the largest number of colored eggs.

More weird is seeing this tradition imported to catholic countries,
where there was no history of egg hunting until recently, as part of
adopting more "American" celebrations. Some Middle and upper class people
in south-american countries as well as Philippines are putting their
kids through the egg hunt as a "fun" activity during easter.

As an atheist I can only say the theological implications of this
import are left to each parent's conscience.

Top 1 - The Halloween Drag Race, Washington D.C.

It is my favorite, but Halloween is also the least rational of
all holidays. If you ask americans to explain it, 95% of the time
you'll get the "dress-like-a-slut-day" reasoning; this is not an
attempt by most of the population at being witty. We just don't know.

To make things better, this race has no mythical grounding on the
holiday in question; it has no grounding at all other than satisfying
a verbal pun. Drag Queens run down Dupont Circle while a crowd of
confused bystanders cheer and take pictures. Drag - Race. Get it?

So, Taiwanese friends, no reason to fret. Compared with grandmas
running through churches to commemorate Christ's pain, and screaming
banshee-like drag queens in the US capital, a dragon boat race doesn't
seem a strange celebration. Not at all.

Fabio Arciniegas A.
Taipei, Taiwan - June 2011

[27] Vineland, 2011 [Literature, Fiction, Essay, Review]

2011-05-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

If Deleuze was right in seeing writers as physicians of culture, symptomatologists exposing the sickness of society, therapists proposing remedies of variable plausibility, Thomas Pynchon's Vineland is a treatise on Hematology: Vineland is about what ails the USA in its blood.

The book alternates its brilliant jokes -and almost everyone in the book is one- between the 60s and the 80s as Prairie leaves her ridiculous hippie dad, Zoyd (reduced to performing annual rituals of cross-dressing violence on TV to collect a disability check), in the search for everybody's object of desire: her mom Frenesi Gates.

On the trail of Frenesi's videodrome ghost we learn of the rise and fall of PR3, the People's Republic of Rock and Roll, a secessionist campus in Trasero county, California, of her involvement with the radical film crew 24fps and her calamitous relationship with bad guy Brock Vond, the fascist-par-excellence whose seductive powers are at the core of the cloudburst.

The mechanics of the book, and thus Pynchon's diagnosis, can be divided broadly in two: first is the mirror house, deformed reflections. Everything returns as a twisted version of its former self, including the actual dead (in the form of Thanatoids, undead victims of karmic faults who go around interacting with the living, watching TV, etc.). Family, individuals, pop culture, they all return in contorted, often amusing ways e.g., "Say, Jim!," an inverted Star Trek with an all black cast with the exception of a freckled redhead communications officer, lieutenant O'hara. At the end, not even fascism is what it used to be, as young would-be-rebels no longer need camps for "reeducation."

The second mechanism is sexual seduction. Fascism advances by means of corrupting desire embedded invariably in the character's DNA.

Beyond this, I will say no more about the book itself, don't want to spoil it for anyone; for praise of the books' literary merits, formal quirks, embedded song lyrics and puns (such as the japanese conglomerate Tokkata & Fuji) I'll refer you to Salman Rushdie (His New York Times review available here http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-vineland.html). For a thorough analysis of the Cultural Trauma in the book you can take a look at James Berger's lucid essay at The Modern Word (http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/papers_berger.html).

In the reminder of this entry I'll avoid repeating those great reviews in favor of a report from the field. A few years as a resident of California has prepared me to give you first hand information as to the current state of Vineland, the good.

THE ORIGINAL PLAYERS Vineland's children of the sixties, corrupted by the eighties, blindsided by the nineties, obliterated by the oh-ohs, are now effectively part of the living dead.

They gather in places like Cheswick's, a dimly lit box where time passes slowly, without anyone ever jumping through a window. In fact, there are no windows in the place, which suits everyone just fine. The minimum amount of air coming in is enough to keep them going.

Since there are no sits outside, the patrons take dutiful turns going out for smoking, standing right in front of the windowless hole that serves as ventilation. More smoke goes in than if they were sitting inside looking out. It is a formal game of do-as-you-are-told they have learned to play to perfection. In fact, the greatest faux-pas in this place of droopy eyes and daffy stares, sun-burnt wrinkled faces and faded tattoos is to inadvertently carry your drink in your hand as you cross the border between the inside of the box and the smoking area. This could "fuck us all up!" and its ferociously averted.

Obedience is the name of the game, and as long as they can have beer and tequila shots, the original players will keep dying quietly in line, and there's enough IPA and Patron to last everyone another two life sentences inside the place.

PRAIRIES CHILDREN Prairie's children are in their twenties or so and are a jolly bunch. Their life is full of music, but it is not Rock and Roll. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine reports there was not a single rock song in 2010's top 25. What you do hear in Vineland is pop-rap songs like this:

Bedrock

Oh baby, I be stuck to you like glue
Baby, wanna spend it all on you
Baby, my room is the G spot,
call me Mr. Flintstone I can make your bedrock.

G spot, I'll spend it all on you. Right. The mechanics of Vineland are what they always were, the pursuit of sensual pleasures, and screen to watch them. The contract is to work a job five days a week, and in return you can have an epic party every weekend and a facebook account to share it. A zero-sum game as long as you don't hate your job and the party indeed gets you laid.

Epic parties take time, are not always epic, and often take more money than Vinelanders earn. As these frustrations accumulate, the difference between the girl doing the St. Vitus dance on booze and ecstasy and the homeless dude shaking it to the same tune and drugs on Newport ave. starts appearing less accidental. The shared illusion that prompts one resident to applaud another on saturday nights is perturbed by the sight of wrinkles.

The karmic effect of time starts to contaminate the party, but for that too, Vineland has an antidote. And that is where the Flintstones come in..

CHILDREN OF PRAIRIE'S CHILDREN The Flintstones and the rest of the soft-core, infantile coating on sex prefigure the boundaries of the next stage. Thankfully, adulthood remains untouched during the party, because when the party looses its luster, or becomes too expensive, or one looses luster and feels no longer welcome to the party, reverting to childhood is much easier. When the time comes to make children, there's less adulthood to miss.

Kids provide great relief to Vineland, as socially accepted validation of any citizen which requires no particular skill. Be famous or be a parent; a renewed covenant where Prairie's children get to work the job they are tied to without loosing face. That's just the way life is, they'll tell you, this is what it means to grow up. And don't worry, you can still party. In moderation, of course.

BALANCE IS THE KEY In conclusion, thirty years later, all is good in Vineland. There is no revolution nor need for it because life here is truly a continuum. We have fat-free chocolate, and FDA-approved opiates without opium. Music is both sex-filled and kid-safe. The tube and life are identical, no need to escape one with the other. Young and old are closer together, all sharing the same desires and occasional addictions. Those desires taught at ever-tenderer ages to little Vinelanders, who will be even more efficient than their parents at both the party and at keeping the balance by finding meaning in the miracle of another little Vinelander on the way.

And if at any point should suspicion rear its ugly head suggesting we've been duped, the joint that is no longer revolutionary nor prosecuted will be there, and the tube will soothe our worries through one of those great Vineland saints who will sing to us tenderly:

Don't worry
about a thing.
every little thing
is gonna be alright...

Fabio Arciniegas A. San Diego, CA. May 26, 2011

[26] Vector Illustrations

2011-04-24T12:21:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been working with illustrator, trying to spend more time with the vector world. Another promiscuous deviation from moving-pixel world.

I've been concentrating on clear and clean drawings often of known cartoons to force myself not to cheat on the technique: One can draw an abstract alien body full of errors and few will tell, but a familiar face drawn wrong is less easy to hide.

And so, in that spirit, here's the most recognizable of all: Batman. More on flickr

Fabio Arciniegas, San Diego CA, April 2010

[23] An update to muse-emacs-html-slidy

2010-10-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

The code is now hosted at google:

http://code.google.com/p/muse-html-slidy/

and I made a little video for planet emacsen:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arciniegas/5108022392/

A quick way to replace PPT for emacs users. The user writes simple text files with a minimal wiki-like format and the output is a full presentation.

The project relies on emacs muse for parsing and html-slidy for slide functionality. It provides a number of useful features like the embedding of local images inside the xhtml file.

[21] Collecting favorite portraits

2010-08-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

A personal selection of my favorite portraits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arciniegas/sets/72157624668960814/

Fabio Arciniegas A., Cupertino CA, August 6, 2010

[20] Religious Portraits

2010-02-19T13:21:00.000-08:00

In the absence of my camera due to repairs from a mysterious water spill, I've decided to turn to drawings for a while. In particular, religious drawings made exclusively of closed paths (which I find incredibly relaxing to make). The following figures are hereby depicted: St. Jan (Švankmajer), St. Lynch, and Archangel Steven Soderbergh:

Fabio Arciniegas A., San Diego, CA February 2010

[19] On occasion of Innita's cup size

2010-01-16T15:19:00.000-08:00

When artist and friend No(that's his name) asked me to comment on whether his lover and muse --rock star Innita-- would be better received by critics if she had smaller breasts and clothed herself more, I was reminded of Paris' story and the perils of taking sides in arguments about women's looks; however, in matters of aesthetics is better to have a Trojan war than a cop out, so I've accepted to weigh in.

I guess the question could be answered statistically, a-la rotten tomatoes. However, the enduring success of Dolly Parton alone would be enough to skew any numerical results, so a philosophical answer is in order.

"Would critics receive better a clothed, A-cup Innita?" Let's break down the problem. Which critics are we talking about? Low, mid, or highbrow?

First of all, there's no such thing as a lowbrow critic, only lowbrow consumers. like camels they eat what they're fed.The predilection for larger breasts in this camp is guaranteed.

The midbrow is characterized by dissent and a contrarian attitude. Critics of this ilk are guaranteed to oppose Innita, they are in love with Audrey Hepburn anyway.

And the highbrow? Well Nietszche readers probably have guessed where I'm going talking about three levels, camels and so forth [1], and all i can say is this: i have yet to see the first child who doesn't love a big pair of tits.

Fabio Arciniegas A., San Diego, CA January 2010

[1]. "Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child. Thus spoke Zarathustra."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noparainnita/sets/72157619469279744

[18] Some thoughts on Compression, Visualization, and Blackjack

2009-12-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

Beautiful Mnemonics - Compressed Graphics

It occurred to me a while ago that some printed graphics can be said to be "compressed," not in the JPEG sense, but rather in the traditional information theory sense of the word, i.e. they can contain more information than explicitly shown, provided the recipient knows the conventions necessary to extract the implied information. In traditional Tufte terminology, these graphics could be said to have a data-ink ratio higher than 1.0, and more poetically, to borrow another Tufte motto, they can illustrate a negative "smallest effective difference."

The example shown below is the compression of the traditional table for Blackjack basic strategy to a set of smaller tables with many implied cells. Perhaps these tables will not be useful to a complete amateur, but everyone with a basic knowledge of the game I have tested them with has found them very useful in memorizing the rules completely, something they have failed to do with the traditional table, which shows independently the 220 data points.

I believe this is an effective example of a special type of "compressed graphics" that can serve as "beautiful mnemonics" rather than "beautiful explanations."

(click for large version)

Below is a longer explanation of the two points above for those not familiar with Tufte's terms.

A longer version - Questioning data ink ratios and the smallest effective difference

Given the amount of manipulative and content-free media pushed around us (think Fox news), teaching people how to create elegant and meaningful visual explanations seems a useful goal. Perhaps no one has contributed more to it than Edward Tufte, who in his books explains the basic principles of effective information design and shows many outstanding applications. If you have not had a chance yet to see his work, I recommend you stop here and check the following link:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

One of Tuftee's recurrent themes is avoiding waste, making graphics with a "high data-to-ink ratio." In other words, charts where every line and piece of text is meaningful, without unnecessary colors and decorations. A sort of Visual Strunk and White which Tuftee praises with the lyrical phrase "the smallest effective difference."

In Tuftee's books, "the smallest effective difference" is usually illustrated by starting with a bloated and ugly graphic and succesively getting rid of unnecessary ink, minimizing waste. The result is usually a beautiful and compact representation of the original data, with a higher "data-ink ratio."

I've often wondered about the possible results of the "clean up process" given a starting point that was not a bloated graphic, but already a clean one1. To which point can it be simplified? are there cases where we can delete even data-ink and still have a useful graphic? perhaps an even better graphic? In short, is there a case to be made for a negative smallest effective difference?

1. Playing with other properties of the graphic such as dimensions is one possible answer. This is illustrated in Tufte's discussions about sparklines. In this case I'm referring to further deletion of data past the obviously desired deletion of fluff.

Before jumping into these formulas it is important to make a disclaimer: Tuftee's points are heuristics using math terminology, not standalone formulas for quality. With the above in mind, lets phrase in pseudo-math terms the idea of the smallest effective difference as follows:

Data ink ratio = data ink / graphic ink (ink that conveys information vs total ink used to produce the graphic)

From this, one interpretation of the smallest effective difference could be:
graphic ink - data ink

This would seem to imply that the goal is a data ink ratio closest to 1.0, in other words, a smallest effective difference of 0. However consider a graphic that implies more data than it explicitly expresses:
data ink = explicit data + implied data

To express more data than that explicitly shown, the receipient must know an algorithm to extract such data from the original message. In other words, the reader must be able to infer the implied data. In traditional information theory, a classic example of compression is run-length encoding, where contiguous identical digits are implied by specifying how many times they repeat instead of writing them explicitly. e.g.
3.422222222231333333 is converted to
3.42{9}313{6}

The compressed format is shorter, although it requires the reader to know a convention. If we were to consider text as graphics we'd already have a first example of a graphic with a data ink ratio higher than one. Thankfully, we don't have to make such an extreme case to illustrate the idea: the blackjack table below is a more meaningful example.

The point of many graphics is to render new data clear to the reader. In such cases, using a "compressed" graphic may not be a good idea because first one would have to explain to the reader the conventions necessary to read the implied data. However, not all graphics are meant to explain new data. Memorization and quick confirmation previously known information is also helpful.

Here's a practical example, compressing the traditional table for Blackjack basic strategy to a set of smaller tables with many implied cells. Perhaps these tables will not be useful to a complete amateur, but everyone with a basic knowledge of the game I have tested them with has found them very useful in memorizing the rules completely, something they have failed to do with the traditional table, which shows explicitly 220 data points. I believe this is an effective example of a special type of "compressed graphics," that can serve as "beautiful mnemonics" rather than "beautiful explanations."

A traditional Blackjack Strategy table
vs A compressed/mnemonic table

[17] A guide to existentialist cinema

2009-11-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

[16] MLM 10/22/09

2009-10-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

[15] Alfred Jarry and Edsger W. Dijkstra

2009-09-11T19:22:00.001-07:00

to Schaffer El Dedos.

It is a common opinion, among those who have traveled the proverbial path of excess, that the palace of Wisdom can only resemble either an absinthe-filled whorehouse or a physics lab.

Perhaps less obvious is the equivalence of the two options —at least when real professionals are involved— in defense of which I present the following parallel between Libertine glory Alfred Jarry and CS hero Edsger W. Dijkstra, on the topic of Certainty:

Jarry - Discussing principles of "Pataphysics"

http://faustroll.lineaments.net/ (free in french) or Amazon (english)

If you let a coin fall and it falls, the next time it is just by an infinite coincidence that it will fall again the same way; hundreds of other coins on other hands will follow this pattern in an infinitely unimaginable fashion.

Dijkstra - From "A position paper on Fairness"

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1013.PDF

[...] With a perfectly fair roulette it is possible that each time he turns the roulette and throws the ball, the ball will end up at zero. Unlikely, but perfectly possible. [...] The dissatisfied customer can still try to sue the roulette manufacturer, not because he has been cheated by the latter but only on account of the very high probability that he has done so. In a case like that, the conscientious judge can give the roulette manufacturer only a probabilistic fine; whether or not it should be paid can be settled by the roulette in question.

Fabio Arciniegas A., Taipei Taiwan September 2009

So you say you LOVE "Inglourious Basterds"

2009-08-28T21:14:00.001-07:00

Fabio Arciniegas A., San Diego California August 2009

[13] Technology and Sentimentality

2009-07-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

To my friend, Mr. X.

Luis Buñuel was fond of saying he preferred sad endings in his social movies rather than happy ones so as to not rob the audience the anger the film inspires and with it the impulse to change the world outside the cinema: If the pretty girl who sells roses on the screen doesn't become a princess, but instead lives forty years of unjust pain, maybe we'll get out of the theater more concerned about the woman selling roses at the entrance.

Buñuel —like Fassbinder and Herzog— understood that the process of documenting the world is hurt when tainted by sentimentality.

By sentimentality I do not mean either an excess or misplacement of emotion. Herzog is very emotional about jungle animals and Fassbinder makes love declarations to whores. In the words of the master: "Who can judge when emotion is too much? People vary not only in the power to feel and express feeling but also in their imagination."

Instead, the problem with sentimentality is action. Sentimentality is feeling that paralyzes action. It is self-serving and a brand of bullshit.

The mechanics of sentimentality

Sentimentality works by dulling legitimate urges and providing feel-good, simple, and ineffective solutions.

A friend of mine often mentions how he hates "Prince Caspian" because after killing thousands of foot soldiers, they finally get to the top bad guy who made all the trouble and in a teary moment they spare him. It is a good example. Barzun also mentions how on "A Sentimental Journey" William James has the woman shedding "tears for the plights of the poor heroine on the stage while her coachman is freezing outside the theater. "

Examples abound online too: Feel bad about the killings in Rwanda? become a fan of our facebook group!

There is in the last example a positive element of dissemination and some people do use those online groups as a first step towards action. But for the most part it is a placebo and a self-promoting platform.

Consuming placebos or taking action (or not consuming anything at all) is an affair between each man and his conscience. Instead I want to talk about the issue of producing this sentimental content, in particular doing so to sell social positions related to technology.

The technology brand

Technology sentimentality starts from the conclusion a priori that technology (especially online, sharing, free) is essentially good and desirable and should be pursued and encouraged by everyone. It presents a world full of "success stories in sharing" so people are encouraged to accept, even rejoice in the assumed fact that we live in a "society of perfect information and sharing your value away online is the way of the future."

By painting this picture, pundits seduce people into non-critical thinking and obscure the most important aspects of the discussion; Worse, they recruit people not just for their personal brand but for interests beyond their scope and control. Given that those interest can have serious negative consequences, the technology sentimentalist may be doing a great disservice to its herd. We'll come back to this point later on, let's review now a compounding aspect to the issue,

Accelerating sentimentality through technology

Technology can be not only the focus of sentimentalism, but its delivery mechanism. Chronic online sentimentality occurs when commentators pushed by the need of a theme and pressed by the tools of social networks take a "positive" idea, such as "technology is a progressive and democratic force," and become their pundits online, reporting in snippets every successful example of the cause. This has some distinguishing features:

1. Because the format of social networks is fast and short and the piece of information is competing with so many others, the message is tailored to elicit a quick emotional response, not an intellectual one. It is garbled with status symbols and disjoint examples are mixed to maximize impact. In short, it is manipulative.

2. If the underlying veracity of the theme is challenged, so is the legitimacy and existence of the pundit. Therefore, the pundit's goal is to proselytize a conclusion, not to analyze a problem. Information "useful" for the cause is pushed through and "problematic" information is hidden. This is not new to propagandists, of course, just emphasized, accelerated online.

3. Because the goal is to attract as many followers as possible and expand the profile, association with other groups is mandatory. Because association with other "positive causes" is so simple and quick, the pundit rapidly becomes a fan of many causes that sound good or popular but are unrelated and the space in which he can disagree becomes smaller as the mixed interests become larger.

4. Because the medium is made of snippets and the audience is so broad, the message must be simplified, shortened, sanitized. Inspiring and Infantile.

In short, technology pundits tend to deal in sentimentalized information. To make it worse, their medium of choice pushes them to further idealize and simplify their conclusions.

The consequence is a very effective indoctrination, a feeling of "inspiration" on the masses and with it, non-critical thinking and paralysis towards the serious underlying questions.

A particularly troublesome case

There is one particular case of technology sentimentality that encompasses everything said above and worries me especially. It is selling the idea to people in developing countries that giving intellectual products away online is "good," "invitable," and they must "catch up."

The argument goes something like this:

"The future is sharing (a priori conclusion). Those who do not share and adapt to new technologies will be left behind (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Here are examples of how a few in the first world monetize social networks, peer to peer content, and free technologies (extraneous, aspirational example), here are samples of mavericks, innovators, pirates (symbols of status, cool) in our own community who benefit from the publicity and collaboration of social networks (discourse changes from money to love as needed).

Here is a gadget you don't know about (exoticism and status) in which you too can create content for free (let the others hold the means of production, you just pay your fee and put on your work). The future is great (sentimental, unsubstantiated claim) and although is not a perfect world (fundamental issues glossed over) there is hope in these technologies and the path is to 'catch up' and join the first world in sharing our products online! (back to a priori conclusion, and an inspirational message resembling more religious ecstasy than intellectual conclusion)."

It is effective propaganda and the audience loves it. Whether it is a good idea or not remains a hidden question.

The mechanics of selling it can be extremely sentimental. Here's a sample from a conference from one of my best friends and 15 year counterpart on this discussion: Mr. Pablo Arrieta. I don't doubt my friend's good intentions, in fact I vouch for them. This makes it all more worrisome, because it shows the messenger is as susceptible to the kool-aid as the audience (the caption reads: "Someone had an idea. To prevent it from becoming stale he posted it to the web. The idea became a movement and then it changed the world. The man who had it had a beautiful life, and everyone that shared to make the idea grow loved him forever")

This position bothers me because of its sentimentality and because of its audience. It can mislead capable people down a difficult and conflicted path.

So what would I do differently? In the spirit of Buñuel I'd suggest to end with uncomfortable questions. Here are some I'd ask a Colombian audience thinking of giving away their stuff for free:

What is the proportion of your goals? to be cool with the new gadget, to play around while you make your real life elsewhere, to get free stuff, to make money, to make a profit by distributing others work, to belong to a group, or to expose your work without further expectation? Your logical position towards sharing may change dramatically depending on this answer.
Are you a fan of sharing because of altruism or because you don't know how to hack/break into the market? Honestly, if you could do the same and get paid for it would you still share for free?
If your work is so-so maybe you know you wouldn't make any money off it anyway. Maybe you don't care about money. But if your work is really good and you'd rather be paid to do it, have you explored fully your options? wouldn't your interests be best served by questioning the assumptions (your current location, for example) and learning how to monetize your work instead of assuming the world is about sharing?
The name pirate sounds cool. But if you were really a pirate, wouldn't your interest be best served by stealing all you can and giving nothing away? Wouldn't you tell others to give things away but don't do so yourself?
If you're a pure artist, live for your art only and already have some means for subsistence, you may share without further expectation. For you, leaving the monetization issue in the air is not a problem. I've met only a few of such artists, they are indeed untouchable. Have you met many? Are you one?
Suppose you care about exposure. Do you honestly think getting 4,000 hits on a blog does the same for you as selling 4,000 books?
A running assumption is that new media is the queen of exposure. It is certainly quicker, but do you think you'd get more chances of publishing a book to a national audience if you (a) win a local literature award, (b) submit academic papers to US conferences or (c) get 4,000 hits on your blog?
Suppose you are producing intellectual content other than art and you want to eventually make money. Do you think google and those other examples from the US give away their knowledge for free? do they sell a product on the web or their brand in the stock market?
Is the google game a feasible one in a place like Colombia or are you playing a different one? what good is to play the goals of one game within the rules of another?
Do you control the means of production or just your labor?
Suppose you want to take this to the next level and care about a group, like a developing country. Can It afford to invest the labor of its brightest on the sentimental promise that one day it'll be as open, cool, and progressive as the US is suppossed to be?

Fabio Arciniegas, San Diego California July 2009

"On Bullshit" Harry G. Frankfurt
"The House of Intellect" Jacquez Barzun
"An unspeakable betrayal - Selected Writings of Luis BuÃ±uel" Luis BuÃ±uel
"Begin here: the forgotten conditions of teaching and learning" Jacquez Barzun

[12] A boastful haiku

2009-07-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

to test extremes
fearlessly as anyone.
this much I know

[10] The Game of Masa

2009-06-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Game of Masa is a super simple social game played in Taiwan. I'm blogging it so I don't forget how to play it, as it happened with other local games I've learned during travels, such as Truco, a brazilian game I enjoyed but now have completely forgotten, except you are supposed to yell "Truco!" every time you are calling a bluff.

Anyway, the game of Masa is a fun and very social taiwan card game of luck (no strategy involved) played between 2 or more players, usually at the end of a meal, at least in my experience.

Overview

Everyone on the table wagers the same amount of money. Everyone on the table gets two cards, the combination of which makes up a score. Whoever has the highest score wins all the money.

A round consists on repeating the game as many times as there are people on the table, letting each one act once as the dealer. Usually only one or two rounds are played.

More precisely the game consists of three stages:

Game Rules

Determining the dealing start point, dealing

The dealer, after shuffling and letting any other person cut, opens the deck at a random card. The numeric value of this card will determine the starting point. For example, if the card is a 6D, the dealer will count 6 people counter-clockwise ("to the right") starting from himself (the dealer is counted as one, the person to his right as two, etc.). When the number is reached, she proceeds to deal the cards counter-clockwise starting from that position.

Only two cards are dealt.

Scoring

Each person scores his own hand and announces it to the table. The scoring is as follows:

Ace counts as 1
All Face cards count as 0.5
Each non-face card retains its numeric value

The cards are added to obtain a score. If the value is equal or larger than 10,the final score equals value-10. In other words, if you get 10 or more, drop the 1.

Some sample hands and their score: (6D,5Q) = 1, (3D,4D)= 7, (AH,QD)=1.5 (9D,QH)=9.5, (9D,AH) = 0

Additionally, pairs beat any non-pair score. Higher pairs beat lower pairs.

(3H,3D) < (6H,6S)

Payout

The highest score on the table gets all the money. Simple.

The dealer role moves to the person to the right of the current dealer.

Breaking Ties and Other Rules

There is no "splitting" of the winnings. Ties are broken by dealing a single card to each person involved in the tie. The highest card wins. Cards have their traditional poker ranking at this stage, suits do not matter (order is 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K,A). If people are still tied after the single card is dealt, another one is issued until the tie is broken. Each tie-break card is scored independently, no addition is performed.

The game continues until everyone has had a chance to deal, this is called a round. The game cannot be stopped in the middle of a round.

[9] "Bitch, dare you cheat us with trick?" and other random gems

2009-06-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

The merits of the movie Johnny Mnemonic are debatable —assuming you remember it ever existed and have nothing better to debate— but whatever critics may say, the coolness of the following three scenes is undeniable:

Using random images from asian TV as a password,
The shirt monologue
Ice-T's tricked-out pet dolphin.

OK, two scenes.

The use of random images from the TV initally sparked my interest in steganography, but recently I've discovered it is far more interesting as a way to populate your flickr page with cool content without any effort. Below, a link to random captures from Taiwanese TV including the following perennial favorite:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arciniegas/3627831673/

Incidentally, if you have a TV adapter you could fill out your own flickr account with a random 1 second video every hour using this command (don't, obviously):

watch -n 216000 xvidca —fps 15 —cap_geometry 720x480+0+0 —rescale 25 25 --time 1.0 --start_no 0 --continue yes --gui no --auto | mail youraccount@flickr.com

Fabio Arciniegas A. Taipei, Taiwan, June 2009

[7] Never write powerpoint or keynote again

2009-06-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

The code is now hosted at google projects:
http://code.google.com/p/muse-html-slidy/downloads/list

See more (including a little video) at this updated post:
http://fabioarciniegas.blogspot.com/2010/10/23-update-to-muse-emacs-html-slidy.html

Or "A really lightweight way to create the inevitable occasional slide deck."

The reasons for disliking bullet point-style presentations are well known and documented on Tufte's "the cognitive style of powerpoint" or better yet, the very funny Peter Norvig "reimagining" of the Gettysburgh address in powerpoint.

And yet, sometimes we all have to whip out a simple slide deck with an agenda and a few bullet points. What then? open PowerPoint and bitterly surrender to the harsh realities of the corporate world?

I say "...mmm... nah."

Here's a little code to hack your way out. It mixes Muse and Slidy to create the simplest functional approach to slides ever. Text files without markup come in, and a self-contained single file with all the slides comes out.

This is based on an emacs package but you don't need to write the text on any specific editor: actually a great way I've found to use this is to write the presentation last minute as a note on my iPhone, and email it to myself. By the time I arrive I have the slides ready.

Ain't post-cyberpunk life grand?

Fabio Arciniegas A. Taiwan June 2009

[6] Top five: Relatively less famous artists who rock at drawing dangerous girls

2009-05-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

On occasion of the news of Hugo Pratt's retrospective "Périples Secrets" I thought of a top five list that deserves a bit better than a facebook entry. Five of my favorite artists, very well known in their own circles but not so much outside, who share one thing: doing great illustrations of dangerous wonderful girls. Enjoy:

5. Zak Smith

Junkie Goddesses. A compulsive artist best known for illustrating every page of Pynchon's gravity's Rainbow, makes wonderful watercolors of NYC's tough and beautiful

http://www.zaxart.com

4. Tara McPherson

Best of this American Cute post-tatoo style. Clever, polished.

http://www.taramcpherson.com/

3. Hugo Pratt

Old School great exotic dangerous girls. I loved Julie from the Maxx's growing up, and that was just my proxy to Pratt's girls

http://www.cortomaltese.com

2. No

Yep, that is her name: "No." and she pours feverishly image after image of aggressively feminist rock and roll girls on flickr and elsewhere. Innita, her lover and band leader is the queen of the "menorrealista" movement.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/innita/

1. René Gruau.

Dangerous perfect girls the way I like best: happy and flirty in the best of high fashion, with no need, hope, or fear of the future, flirty elegant things in $10,000 necklaces, all smiles and knowing looks, captured with simple and elegant curves. Ah!

"Elegance is fluid and therefore by definition difficult to define, but it is made of desire and knowledge, of grace refinement, perfection and distinction"

Fabio Arciniegas A. - Taipei, Taiwan May 2009

[5] Inventory

2009-05-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

To look at the world, without fear or hope. That is freedom.

To describe the world, without explanations. That is art.

To behave honorably for aesthetic reasons, without morals. That is style.

Fabio Arciniegas A. - Taipei, Taiwan May 2009

[4] My Heroes' Heroes

2009-04-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

"I see no better steadying force than to take history personally; I mean, not solely as aid to serenity, but as power with the right to be 'the intruder at the door.'"
-- Jacques Barzun

As I start my thirties, it seems people around me once avid for knowledge and exciting artistic discoveries hit a barrier.

The symptoms may be familiar to many personally, or at least through observation of friends: first, a reduced number of valuable references and exciting discoveries occur: long gone are the days of discovering Martin Scorsese or Chuck Palahniuk for the first time. Second, a certain nostalgia and repetition sets in and heroes become deified in the absence of exciting enough replacements. This is particularly apparent in rock fans.

In short, given a rich enough popular knowledge background during your teens and twenties, by the time you hit thirty you may feel like you've exhausted what is "cool to know," and the rest is repetition, footnotes, occasional minor discoveries.

Coping Strategies

One popular coping strategy is to teach: chasing the dragon by introducing others to the same set of references. This is both a necessary enterprise and a consolation prize. On one hand is important and satisfying to share, on the other it is a pale comparison of the thrill of research and discovery of new treasures for yourself.

The second strategy is to give up: basically rationalize the experience as an inherent limitation of your capacity as a human; categorize intellectual curiosity as a phase, or in the worse case, declare bitterly the world as a known quantity with little else to offer and let repetition set in.

The Nature of the Problem

To a certain extent, the reader will be surprised to know, I find truth in the last strategy mentioned: the world of mid-brow valuable references available through pop culture, which we usually acquire in our teens and twenties is finite and relatively easy to exhaust. There is only so many movies as good as Taxi Driver. There is no need, however, for despair:

The issue, as far as I can discern, has its root on the way we discover "cool" information in the modern world. This mode is best summarized by the "find more like this" or "if you liked this artist you may like..." buttons on online interfaces. To guide yourself by the thrill of similarity is to travel a relatively flat surface searching for the next sweet taste in your mouth. The candy store is ample but at some point you'll exhaust it.

Changing Strategies

We all heard the stories of Newton and Descartes turning to tradition in their latter years, Borges learning icelandic to read the veddas, instead of reading the newspaper, and Rosellini quiting commercial movies to do character studies of kings and queens. These episodes are often sensationalized but I think they hide a very useful and down-to-earth strategy: to keep interested and excited these guys decided to get lost on the volume of history instead of trying to roam the plane of "more like this."

Lets call this strategy looking for "my heroes' heroes." It is a very rewarding process and as far as I can tell far harder to exhaust during a lifetime. It holds the power of truly new discoveries and gives volume to an artistic experience that was previously planar.

What's more, I suggest that without this approach where every curious person turns into a historian, the pressure of finding new exciting things is impossible to satisfy. Reminds me of that Umberto Eco joke where they guy turns to the girl and says: "pardon me, do you have any plans after the orgy?"

Fabio Arciniegas A. - San Diego, CA April 2009

[3] Drinking, Existensialism, and Magic

2009-04-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

As a result of my decision to stop drinking alcohol permanently, plus my insistence on referring to the process by the completely exotic term of "a magic ritual," I've recently engaged in a higher than usual number of conversations regarding religion, existentialism, and ritual.

Being pulled, or pushing people into metaphysical conversations is usual fare for new sober people given both their vanity and the fact that society, particularly in America, expects sobriety decisions to be accompanied by a surge of faith and demands Pathos. I intend to convert no one nor tell any rebirth stories here, but only to leave record of some of the books that explain an unusual position. This way a few friends who have found my summary intriguing can explore further.

A more direct explanation of the relation is pending, but here's a selection of writings related to the three key ideas: the absurd, hopeless joy, and Ritual or Magic defined not as stage tricks --which I love, incidentally-- but as human will given focus by method.

- The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus http://www.scribd.com/doc/3223928/Albert-Camus-The-Myth-Of-Sisyphus
-Toward a Fateful Serenity, Jacques Barzun
- History of Eternity, Jorge Luis Borges

Fabio Arciniegas A. - San Diego, CA April 2009

[2] Z

2009-04-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

New shoot with Zosia @ Flickr

Fabio Arciniegas A. - San Diego, CA April 2009

[1] Certain colorful enthusiasms

2009-04-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, around the time of the inauguration of President Obama, I dared quote Bernard Shaw to an exuberantly hopeful audience in our small town of San Diego, CA.

The reactions consisted of confused shrugs and saddened disbelief at my "pessimism," with the exception of a handful of friends trained in the art of exercising healthy skepticism, particularly about dramatic and widespread positive changes in humanity, even when coming from the smartest and most charismatic of political figures.

But how to reach the others? how to communicate to them how misguided certain enthusiasms and hopes sound to those of us who share their nature but not their degree and tone? didn't seem possible at the time so I forgot about it until today when by chance came the answer, in the form of pictures truly worth a thousand words. Please enjoy:

http://badpaintingsofbarackobama.com/

Fabio Arciniegas A. - San Diego, CA April 2009

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2009-03-05T01:33:00.000-08:00

It is March 2009. These days the idea of a personal site is passe, a "Web 1.0" phenomenon. Instead, the use of social sites and blogs to share "personal perspectives" is in fashion. Only a few years ago most people seemed to agree that the sharing of such personal details lacked decorum, it was an uncool/nerdy activity, or was something fit only for kids. Some people --I am honestly proud of them-- still hold some of those views and never touched the stuff. Most others, eventually have converted and poured over their personal life in real time over twitter, facebook, doppler, friendfeed, etc.

Like many,I've become increasingly disenchanted with the quality of information on the so called Web 2.0 and I'm cured from the illusion that anyone cares whether I'm brushing my teeth at the moment, So why then a personal blog?

Well,three simple reasons:

1. Although not terribly interested in link sharing etc, I am interested in producing from time to time small digital tools and toys that people might find useful or interesting,and I don't want to pay for hosting or devote time to maintaining a server for them.

2. I'm interested in maintaining a searchable log of articles and other public and semi-private information I push to the web. These things may have nothing in common other than they are produced by me. Imposing a theme seems an unnecessary promise useful for nothing other than increasing the stress to make posts frequent/fit the theme.

3. As a final reason, I confess my Vanity may insist on telling me an occasional rant *needs* to be shared, and although I consider it a gentleman's duty to resist her, I reserve the right to indulge.

Fabio Arciniegas A. - Taipei, Taiwan March 2009