Neo-Non-Conceptual Art

If....

* Jeff Koons can afford an atelier of assistants to polish his balls;

* Urs Fischer can hire someone to construct a set of autonomous office chairs;

* Mauricio Catellan can be praised for his Duchampian wit, a century on;

* Darren Bader can get a warm review in the Times for his re-heated thoughts;

Then....

It seems that even the ideas of post-post-modern artists' are of little utility.

Therefore....

Along with no longer producing anything of intrinsic value, I should also outsource the conceptualizing. Surely there are artists in other countries who can have ideas much more economically than me?

After that, given its glaringly short supply in the developed world, I might as well suspend my judgement as well.

So, from here on in, just assume that, if I had thought it was worth the effort, I would have done it.

Already....

Software Architecture

The low level controller in the Variations Too project is an Arduino, beloved by LED Flashers around the world. But my last actual job title in the Software Industrial Complex was Extensibility Architect (...see how well that went here...) so I can't leave things alone without extending upon them. And the Arduino system is badly in need of some Software Architecture. Since it's simple enough, in most respects, that I can almost understand it, that's what I've been doing by fits and starts lately.

First, there's a lot of busy-waiting going on. The Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) code just starts a conversion and sits there waiting for it to complete. This is not so bad as it usually comes through in a tenth of a millisecond, but that's about 400 instruction cycles that could be used for doing something useful.

Then... delay() is the favored way to make something happen sometime in the future. This is just a bad idea in a system that might be responding to a buncha stuff in a realish time frame.

And. Then. Speaking of responding. The "usual" way to do responsible data acquisition is to sample at some fixed rate. There is no provision for doing that in the system as it is constructed.

Plus. Communication. One often wants to send and receive messages from the rest of the computing planet in some reliable manner. Unfortunately the Serial interface has hidden it's underlying structure and parsing mechanisms such that this is difficult. Doubly impossible if one needs to implement a message format that contains framing, headers, and/or checksums, which might, for instance, be of use in less than predictable mediums like radio.

On the other hand

I was making amazing claims about the Arduino system, such as, "It just seems to work!" -- in comparison to a previous ATmega based development system, constructed by grad students that needed thesis topics, I used, lets just say, 20 years ago, where my strongly held belief was that NO ONE knew how the build system worked, such that the way to get it running was to reinstall different versions until a compile stuck to the wall. But. Of course. The one time I tried to teach a class using Arduinos, three of the six students had varying levels of failure, from port configuration (on a Mac, so, well, yeah, sure...) to execution failure (on what appeared to be a garden variety Widows machine). So I've forsworn further involvement of that nature.

But I woolgather...

Here's the latest bolus of my improvements to the world:

http://www.etantdonnes.com/DATA/schipArduino.zip

Details at 11.

YATC -- Yet Another Taxonomy Compiler

For decades my friend Brian has self-identified as a Moron. In his defense, because he is obviously much smarter than me, I declared myself an Idiot. Recently affairs of the world have come to such a point that I was sorely pressed for descriptive expletives, so I asked Brian if I could join him in order to free up an appellation for other uses. He agreed to upgrade me to moron and now I can freely use idiot as needed.

In order to have a clear order of precedence I looked for the ur-meanings of my terms, and the ever faithful wikipedia came through under the Idiot sub-heading of Disability:

Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.

This is reasonably close to how I would classify actual children of those various ages so the glove fits nicely. The entry also mentions that Idiots are barred from voting in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, and British parliamentary elections. Would it were so...

From this I have developed my idiosyncratic taxonomy for use in further discussions.

Intelligence

An Idiot does stupid and or dangerous things over and over. In current American medical classification, these people are now said to have profound intellectual disability.

A Dunce is an idiot who is specifically incapable of learning.

An Imbecile has an intellectual disability less extreme than idiocy. This is now usually subdivided into two categories, known as severe intellectual disability and moderate intellectual disability (again, thank you wikipedia). I apply this word to media personalities who just make up information and then get huffy when someone argues with them.

A Moron misses connections which are staring him/her right in the face. They do however usually have the ability to learn once something is explicitly explained to them (Brian, and now I, pretty clearly fit in this category).

"Moron" was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry H. Goddard from the Ancient Greek word μωρός (moros), which meant "dull" (as opposed to oxy, which meant "sharp" (see also: oxymoron)) [!emphasis mine!] [wikipedia:Moron]

Education

Then the various categories which reflect lack of experience, education, or tact rather than missing capability, and thus may be redeemable.

A Fool is unwise or lacking in judgement.

An Ignoramus is stupid, uneducated or ignorant.

A Dolt is stupid and entirely tedious at the same time. According to the Urban Dictionary  they may also be oblivious to their own mental incapacity.

A Dullard is an unimaginative person. Again with thanks to The UD: An omnipresent, boring, annoying, and frequently idiotic being who is a master of inane conversations. Note that Websters has an extensive set of synonyms under dullard, but only two antonyms...

A Cretin is a vulgar or insensitive person, c.f.: clod, lout.  A special sub-class (which may not be redeemable) was created by Karl Marx and best described by Friedrich Engels:

Parliamentary cretinism, an incurable disease, an ailment whose unfortunate victims are permeated by the lofty conviction that the whole world, its history and its future are directed and determined by a majority of votes of just that very representative institution that has the honour of having them in the capacity of its members. [Encyclopedia of Marxism]

Working our way further into politics:

A Jackass will do anything that might make them seem to be popular. I apply this to most politicians.

An Asshat has their head up their ass, or more technically:

Their cranial capacity has been reified by the hegemony of the interiority of their posterior. [Schippling, 2014]

Asshats believe what imbeciles (media) and jackasses (politicians) say.

Work

A further set of categories applies to working environments:

Dweebs are people that aren't really capable of anything but sometimes try anyway. Most employees throughout the management hierarchy are dweebs.

Then there are the Nerds and Geeks. They're pretty much the same except for one important quality. Both Nerds and Geeks are fairly tightly focused and capable in some, usually technological, subject. The difference is that the nerd thinks he actually enjoys doing what he's doing. The geek knows better.

Yahoos are egregious people whom you can't live without because they get things get done.

And finally, Gurus can be truculent and unpredictable. They amuse themselves by solving obscure problems and, if you are lucky, one of those problems will be yours.


Many of these folks are intelligent enough to believe that they know everything. Some few realize that they don't. An even smaller number actually do know everything, or at least how to figure it out.

Yet More Flattery, Update

So. I'm achieving even higher ground vis the visibility thing. I got a (seemingly) positive mention in the official review of the Santa Fe CCA show:

The Armory Show -- Richard Tobin -- The Magazine May 2014

(sorry about the tabletized viewing interface, but it is free afterall)

Mostly the reviewer didn't like the show, the idea of the show, or the show's content very much. However the actual relevant positive text taken out of context reads:

The dogged visitor will find some strong work in the show:
painting [by]...; photography ...; sculpture ...; magical multimedia ...;
and wry, witty, wanker-ish pieces by Janet Russek, Yuli Nishimura,
Michael Schippling, Laura Stansiola, and Ligia Bouton.

In comparison I notice that the work of the other artists referenced in my sub-phrase is either wry or witty, so by elimination I come to the conclusion that my Rabbit Ears must be the wanker-ish example. Now wanker has a specific meaning in British slang so I'm hoping that he really meant something like geek-ish but was so taken with his wit-eration that he ran with it. No harm no foul when no publicity is bad publicity. I guess.

I also don't quite know what he though was so magical about the multimedia, but video projection can seem pretty mysterious to those who still yearn for the AbEx lifestyle.

Drive This Google

this morning's, ok ok, early afternoon's, view from the top of my driveway

I now command my Google Driverless Car to take me to town for lunch...

On the other hand it took just one adventurous adClick to get this image to appear on every web page I visit, so life is not all bad:

http://www.revolveclothing.com/DisplayProduct.jsp?product=WARE-WX20&utm_campaign=Tellapart&cvosrc=Retargeting.Tellapart&utm_medium=retargeting&utm_source=display&source=Tellapart

First World Re-Gifting

Been a long time here...lots going on...in my mind...mostly of no interest to the world at large...but...the holiday spirit has taken hold...so...

Amongst the soon-to-be-excruciating deluge of snailmail crap, I recently received a giftalog from worldvisiongifts.org which offered me the chance to send a cute furry bunny rabbit to some un-specified-but-probably-third-world-personage(s) for only $19 (plus, undoubtedly, tax and license) :

Since I am still in the process of recovery from the March loss of my rabbit-companion, Bonbon lil'Bubba Badbunny, I am somewhat sensitive to their presentation in the world.

Now.

I'm sure this charity means well. Based on vetting by various online adjudicators they even seem to be doing pretty well  -- OkOk, 53 out of 70 and 3*s is the lowest in their "highly-rated" category on Charity Navigator, but they are after all a "Christian humanitarian organization", and I guess Jimmy Carter would approve, so it can't be all bad.

But...

In the accompanying text is the statement, "Not only is this a way to feed hungry children..." which sorta-kinda sidesteps the actual-fact-of-the-matter that little Kenyatta's gleeful smile here is not the result of having found a life-long companion, but more likely because he/she is looking forward to a nice stew and a pair of furry moccasins.

And pretty much the same, maybe minus the moccasins, goes for happy Maria's piglet too:

This catalog offers me so many ways to share the wealth of sheep, goats, chickens, and partridges in pear trees while never once admitting that most of those pear trees are destined for the killing floors within months if not days of receipt. This is of course the way of the world, and feeding children is a more noble cause then coyotes, but...can't we just face the gdm facts once in a while? Do I really need to abuse the concept of cute mammal companionship to convince little Sally to forgo her next GTA-FuckBall upgrade so some distant, theoretical, Kenyatta can have one decent meal? And some nice shoes?

Maybe that's the only way it will work...