Is the credit crisis accidentily a great piece of (subversive) art?

Being fed up with the boring pieces of art in musea, opera and classic music (and the righteousness explanations why it is “better” than pop cult) and grown up with wonderful expressions of color and animation on MTV, comic books, pop and underground music, computer games and in street art I started wondering what “type of art” was relevant for me. So I made a list of what I personally consider to be “art”.

1. It can be any creative outing from music, to (digital) imagery to (computer) code to plastering
2. It display an above-avarage to brilliant skill or insight in a specific field
3. It moves me emotionally and/or intellectually
4. It shifts and broadens my perception on people and / or things

More personally:

1. It is appealing to me

Regarding relevance:

1. It marks or created a clear turning point in perception / thinking / experience in a certain time frame

Some pieces of art I like. Others I do not, some I loathe but still consider to be art as they show high skill and/or relevance.

Wikipedia on Controversial and Subversive Art:

5. Art for social inquiry, subversion and/or anarchy. While similar to art for political change, subversive or deconstructivist art may seek to question aspects of society without any specific political goal. In this case, the function of art may be simply to criticize some aspect of society.

The collapse of banks has led to a credit crisis. It’s tipping point was reached by massively loaning money to American people who had low income and — in most cases — would only get further in debt. The unsafe mortgages were sold to other parties and were theoretically covered by statistics showing that “a crash would only happen once every 10.000 year“. It has unveiled a long trail of financial trickery and power games that lead back to the early 1900’s. (“Als de dollar valt” puts it all neatly together. The page I link to has referrals to sources used in the book) It is built on a framework of stupidity and greed.

Currently people state that we should rethink our economic models. “They do not work”. Well, they have certainly been bent to the breaking point by people who have become very rich and gained a lot of power, or tried to and got burned. Apparently some people who have made this crisis possible have been appointed to solve this crisis as well.

I personally believe it is one of the biggest scams in history.

And I believe it is a great piece of art. It is not pleasant art, but High Art need not to be pleasant to be art. Here are the parameters:

1. It is a genius scam going on for decades, building new empty promises above old empty promises and displayed an above avarage skill and insight into (the greed and fear part of) human nature
2. It required a lot of creativity (and manipulation)
3. Nobody dared to unveil the scam although it was clear and present (except for some eccentrics who apparently did not give enough about their own  career to play the game and instead stated what anyone with a right mind would have seen for a long while: “LOOK! The emperor has no clothes“)
4. It has shifted the awareness of people on a global scale regarding the scale empty promises can take
5. It has caused
6. It certainly is controversial and might be even subversive
7. It is very relevant and might very well mark – or be the cause of – a turning point in our mutual history

To blame the con artists is also to deny our own collective stupidity. You only get away with a scam like this when you get us to deny the obvious that lies right in front of us, like the tailor almost did in “The emperor’s new clothes”. Killing the tailor still does not wash away our own naivity/stupidity.

Fun with Flash and Flickr Interestingness

A photographic mosaic is a picture, divided into rectangular (or square) sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph of appropriate average color. (Wikipedia)

When I saw the first one (a portrait of a woman with many other portraits inside) somewhere in the 90’s I was blown away by the concept. Only recently I picked up the longing to create something like that myself inspired by the “Endless Interestingness” project made by Mark Barcinski.

Example of a mosaic generated by the Beta 0.1 version of the Flash client

Demo Flash Photographic Mosaic

Click this link to see the demo.

You can zoom into the presented image using either the mouse or the <up> and <down> keys on your keyboard. When you click on one of the photo’s in the mosaic, that photo is presented as a new mosaic. To prevent (memory) overload I only load 255 image at first. You can then decide when you want to load more images to refine the presentation and increase the variety of the images.

Limiting stuff

As even a simple palet of 16 x 16 x 16 colors requires 4096 images to crunch to their representative base color I decided to stick to a grey scale conversion. Each image I load from Flickr I convert to a grey scale image of which I define the mediate grey value. Thus I only need a base-set of 255 images or “tiles” (covering for the gaps by getting the “closest by” image) to create the base-image in grey.

I then overlay each tile in the created mosaic with a copy of each pixel the Mosaic is built out of. Each of these “pixels” has an alpha of 70% showing both the underlying tile and a color close enough to the original pixel the tile represents. The examples below show some of the results.

Examples

Below you will find six examples generated out of random Flickr images. Doing your own exploration no doubt you will find some nice ones of your own.

Maximum zoom: increasing abstractness

Mouse trail showing images in their true colors

Black cat

Jelly fish

Harbor view

Car

Portrait of a woman

Back of a woman

Kids are crappy programmers – fun with behavior patterns

Embracing yourself, embracing your inner child, be at peace with yourself, deal with your fucking “pain body”. It has not worked for me yet. I read the stuff and simply do not “click” with it, nor do I allow myself the time to decipher the fluff and get to the practical side of it. So let’s get to business.

Intro

My main goal for years is to get “unstuck”. I know I have much more potential than I show now (and fuck the Tony Robbins-es of this world milking this by claiming “OK is not enough” and that I should be “on the Edge” That as well does not work for me). I see myself holding back on issues where there is no risk except for maybe to get hurt.

So what is keeping me back?

One thing I use to get unstuck is the assumption that my brain heavily leans on pattern recognition to interpret my “reality”. It is a handy and very clever shortcut my brain applies by using already interpreted stuff from my memory instead of re-interpreting what I just experienced. In programming we would put this under the label “optimization”.

Illustration 1: Matching situations with patterns via pegs and hooks

Simplified it looks like the above image: a “square” situation is matched with a (memory) pattern already available and when our brain finds a matching “square” in our memory we can assume it is similar to something we already know.

But what if this pattern has some gnarly emotions attached to it: fears, anger, desperation, sadness, you name it. A new (possible) situation will recall and trigger these emotions we might have experienced and attached to this pattern. So every time I  move into a new social environment I might experience the same anxiety I experienced once as a toddler or teenager since the situation of old times might repeat itself again.

Why do we do the irrational things we do? – Kids are not the best people to write complex software

A 1,5- or three year kid is not the best person to write the often complex software of responsive patterns. It simply misses the experience and broader view you (hopefully) develop when growing up. Looking back at your own creations from when you were that age, there is certainly a significant difference in style and quality. And some simply do not make any sense any more and may even seem irrational to us from where we stand now.

Still: as a kid we are actively programming all kinds of patterns to be able to respond to new and old situations in the best way possible at that moment. And all this programming grows and is tweaked and adapted as we learn and grow. But still old remnants remain active. Jumbled up code. Weird response patterns that make no sense anymore now that we have become more experienced teenagers and grown to be adults.

Enter the world of broadly defined filters and new connections

People who state: “it’s how I am” or “this is what I am” are talking bullshit when you take the following into consideration: We “are” not our response patterns. We merely created them as a response to our environment.

Our mind already starts programming response patterns and pegs and hooks to be able to respond faster to new situations which resembles situations we already have stored in our memory. Let’s say one of these pegs is our “square” in the image. Now suppose we forgot to be very specific of the matching criteria of this square. So instead of only squares, any form small enough to fit will be accepted as a match.

Let’s assume I have been repeatedly publicly humiliated by the class bully. Since there was no other options shown to choose from, at these moment I went through the emotional states of shame, angst anger and sadness. Most of the fights I started I lost. So on top of the first humiliation the second of physical defeat was added, combined with a deeper hurt. And repeated.

A new pattern takes form. The main message is: when you show yourself in public, you take a risk to be humiliated.

But how specific is the filter I use for this pattern?

1. Any situation?
2. Any situation in public?
3. Any situation in public where I think people are watching me?
4. Any situation in public where people are actually watching me?
5. Any situation in public where males or females are actually watching me?
6. Any situation where I might wear the wrong combination of clothes?

And who is marked to be hostile in my mind?

1. Anyone?
2. Only males?
3. Only females?
4. Within a specific age?
5. Any age?

When the filters are to wide, any seemingly similar situation can be linked to this one specific pattern.

In the worst case: anyone could be hostile and out there to humiliate me.

Illustration 2: Mismatching judgmental pegs and hooks

Brief: “Five and six sided situations are the same as square ones”. The result is that I will be limiting my own options more than I really need to because I assume that “Square is the same as five- and six sided” where they are not. It is the result of bad programming.

But hey: I was 1, 2, 3, 4 years old at that point.

Narrowing the filters, re-evaluating and re-matching patterns

First: any pattern I created had it’s value in the past. It helped me to cope with the situations I was in at that moment the best I could.

Step 1 is to disconnect the situations that actually are different from the situation related to the pattern.

Instead of assuming that my judgment is right, I become inquisitive. “Is this situation really what I assume it to be?” It might not. I might be totally wrong when I take a better look at things. And yes: it takes courage to look beyond my assumptions. I suddenly have to open my mind, take a look at things I have learned to avoid because they might inflict pain or hurt. I have to re-learn that not all things I am trying to avoid or attack are a possible threat to me.

Step 2 is to define new judgmental pegs and hooks and to create openings for new patterns to evolve.

The question is: “if it is NOT-A, what COULD it be otherwise?” The only way to find out is to stay open, broaden my vision, observe and discard my assumptions as best as I can. Reality proves 99.99999999% of all my fantasy futurama assumption escapes into “WHAT COULD HAPPEN WHEN..” wrong anyway when I am brutally honest, so there is hardly any loss into neglecting them and try something new instead.

Step 3 is to reconnect situations to new matching hooks.

It simply makes it easier to re-evaluate a situation every time I do so. The school bully is not around any more to humiliate me. The people around me are no representatives of this bully: “out to get me… even now”. And if they are I can respond in many more ways than I could image when I was that kid because I learned some new tricks. Responses I previously perceived as attacks might even be positive critiques outed from a loving place to help me grow beyond my current state. I can stop repeating specific behavioral patterns.

Any situation is different and with different actors.

Why I think “positive thinking” does not work…

There is a lot of old hooks and pegs and response patterns in our brain. They produce all kind of responses to our day to day situations. In my case it sometimes seems like I have an entire crowd of people with sometimes contradicting agendas in my mind all talking at the same time without getting to a productive result.

To override these patters with “positive” thinking is like adding a new person to the crowd. It is really hard work to make this new “thought” loud enough to get the others to stop. And what if this “positive guy” fails? Some of the others are constantly ready for the kill. And they will make sure I understand that I have failed in yet another attempt to make a change.

..and I think opening your mind and aiming for a neutral state does

You first need to clean up.

Instead of working hard, try for a change to do nothing. Sit back and let the crowd speak their mind in your mind until they get bored from getting no response from you at all. It is already such an advantage to get a loud and noisy mind to calm down. It is like moving from a busy street to a calm meadow. Suddenly you can hear your own thoughts again, relax. Be you instead of an internal response machine repeating over and over again all the fears and doubts you already know for so long.

Like stated before, to develop new pegs and hooks for new response patterns, you first need to understand what the situation is. In my experience the best position to do this from is where I am calm and relaxed. In an argument, or when receiving critique, it is good to actually hear what is being said without immediately responding to it. To let things sink in without immediately connecting it to yourself or to your possible failure.

A neutral state is simply “observing situations without the need to have any opinion at all about it”.

“And the price winning solution is?”

I have no clue. (Fuck me if I knew. I could make millions.) My best guess for now:

1. To challenge yourself to assume that your current judgmental system is flawed. Non-stop.
2. To start with observing and learning to see things from multiple angles.
3. To re-evaluate any current judgemental system and build new ones where you feel it will help you

Signing off.

Until next time.

Peter