Some highly coherent thoughts cannot be expressed as if they were single points. They don't fit inside single points. They're also too large to be expressed as a series of points linked together by linking sentences and structures. You just have to hope that the way in which you express the thought manages to work. What do I mean by 'work' in this context? And what do I mean by highly coherent thought?
I have a program of aesthetics. Well, it's a kind of aesthetics that I've been working on that's related. I call it informed aesthetics. And I suppose that I can start explaining it simply: basically the idea is that a considerable number of aesthetic systems work in a void. They don't consult with other areas of human knowledge. There's no exchange, just isolation. I think a considerable quantity of dreck is generated when people either don't have some kind of overarching vision -- which is a problem because the whole programme is started with a collection of vague, overarching statements which are supposed to be the guidelines for every enactment of that given sort of aesthetics, or people just declare that certain items belong in a newly named aesthetic, and later wonder about what fits into that aesthtic in particular, and some even go so far as to be gatekeepers of a particular type of aesthetic, putting themselves in charge of declaring what's a member and what isn't. That's a bad idea for thermodynamic reasons, particularly if someone is very strict about what belongs with a particular aesthetic and conservative with their ideas about what belongs.
Objects do not possess independent existence or independent qualities of their own. They acquire both their preobjective qualia and their properties through their interaction with other so called objects. To determine a putative object one must determine its putative relations to all other objects. (this is dependent origination, from Buddhism). Therefore, to determine the a given aesthetic, one must decide what are the relationships of this aesthetics to other aesthetics, and any given sort of object which the aesthetic might relate to.
Informed aesthetics is not about art. Informed aesthetics is about one's living environment, one's representations, one's constructed reputation. It is about objects which are useful. It is about objects which may be interpreted as artistic or displayed in museums later. The relations here is that this form of aesthetics which I am proposing is concerned solely with objects that interact with people on a more regular basis. One appreciates art in a museum, but one does not live in a museum. If the art is in one's living space, or one works at an art museum and is concerned with the arrangement of art pieces there, then this aesthetics applies. This aesthetics does not apply to environments for which a given person will never have any interaction with.
The above paragraph mostly covers scoping issues. The next covers content.
Imagine that I am considering a pepper grinder. I want a pepper grinder that will last a number of years, be immune from rust when cleaned with water, will work with relatively little effort on the part of the user of the pepper grinder -- so if they want quite a lot or a little pepper they aren't strained. These are functional requirements. But there are other requirements as well. The pepper grinder should be immediately distinguishable from the salt shaker in form so that when one reaches for a pepper or salt shaker one does not have to pick the wrong one. In restaurants this is accomplished by having the two items different colors. The more visually distinct they are the better. But there are other requirements of the pepper and salt shaker: they should not necessarily be imbued with outright and flagrant trademarks of the organizations that made them. If they are to be sold or marketed on the flashiness of their image rather than the functionality of their products, then they are just as culpable for the modern affectation with representations of objects (whether these be corporate trademarks or not) being more important than the functions of objects. Then, assuming that the manufacturers of the pepper grinder have designed the golden pepper shaker, comes the question on their part of how to design some kind of way of identifying them along with the packaging: if they engineer good products, they should be known on the basis of the good products. Corporate trademarks of high visual complexity abuse people's ability to judge whether or not a product is worthwhile because people are more concerned with the brand than the viability of the object in the long term. Such shenanigans should not have a place in the modern world. Whether or not a given object works is not determined by an imprint on that object.
On the flip side, whenever self-representation is properly called for: that is, when I'm representing myself via stationary or writing, I want myself to be as distinct as possible. Which is to say if that I produce a personal logo, mark, or symbol denoting myself, I want it to be as robust under a wide variety of methods of interpretation as possible. If there are ten different ways of interpreting the same symbol or logo, I want those ways of interpretation to produce the same result. Or as close to the same result as possible in a wide variety of people making that determination. This drives to the heart of the difference between personal artifacts and corporate artifacts. A corporate artifact wants to be as nonambiguous in interpretation as
possible that it is associated with a particular corporation. Well. The corporation wants that of the artifact. And, again, a way to do this is ornateness of construction in all respects. A logo is not the same thing as complex artwork with multiple interpretations on multiple levels. Especially if those interpretations are layered on top of each other cryptographically. With ten different interpretations of a complex corporate logo, anyone who was copying some given item would not necessarily know or care, and thus those complex multiple layers of encoded meaning might not be copied properly.
So, the idea here is twofold. One is a functionalist message, that aesthetical viewpoints about particular objects should jive together as a coherent whole, objects should be biologically, ergonomically, physically, and visually constructed to be pleasant and sensible, and that construction should be complex in such a way not as to be excessively complex so as to be brittle, but sufficiently complex that multiple layers of meaning pointing to the authorship of the object are clear. As an example, if anyone writes a large quantity of text, a statistical signature of their word constructions can be generated. In an ideal world, we'd be able to generate that on the fly and discover that during reading of texts, but most people are incapable of sorting out the authorship of a text just by reading it, and many texts generated by people are too generic to specify one or the other. But this text which I've just wrought should scream that it was written by me very strongly. And when I get custom stationary made by Crane's, it's going to feature a complex logo with multiple layers of interpretation, one that is not one of those monograms or other rather poor representations which people choose which say "well, yes, I like high quality paper but I'm too demented to realize that that hideous copperplate or whatever other typefaces they provide are ugly and robotic in character and rather unbecoming to personal stationary or whatever kind of other personal representation which I've chosen for this paper". Something with fractals is my choice. Something with a fractal whose constant is generated from binary numbers generated from some kind of representation of my name. Something with that many layers.
For the moment I'm done with this.
I have a program of aesthetics. Well, it's a kind of aesthetics that I've been working on that's related. I call it informed aesthetics. And I suppose that I can start explaining it simply: basically the idea is that a considerable number of aesthetic systems work in a void. They don't consult with other areas of human knowledge. There's no exchange, just isolation. I think a considerable quantity of dreck is generated when people either don't have some kind of overarching vision -- which is a problem because the whole programme is started with a collection of vague, overarching statements which are supposed to be the guidelines for every enactment of that given sort of aesthetics, or people just declare that certain items belong in a newly named aesthetic, and later wonder about what fits into that aesthtic in particular, and some even go so far as to be gatekeepers of a particular type of aesthetic, putting themselves in charge of declaring what's a member and what isn't. That's a bad idea for thermodynamic reasons, particularly if someone is very strict about what belongs with a particular aesthetic and conservative with their ideas about what belongs.
Objects do not possess independent existence or independent qualities of their own. They acquire both their preobjective qualia and their properties through their interaction with other so called objects. To determine a putative object one must determine its putative relations to all other objects. (this is dependent origination, from Buddhism). Therefore, to determine the a given aesthetic, one must decide what are the relationships of this aesthetics to other aesthetics, and any given sort of object which the aesthetic might relate to.
Informed aesthetics is not about art. Informed aesthetics is about one's living environment, one's representations, one's constructed reputation. It is about objects which are useful. It is about objects which may be interpreted as artistic or displayed in museums later. The relations here is that this form of aesthetics which I am proposing is concerned solely with objects that interact with people on a more regular basis. One appreciates art in a museum, but one does not live in a museum. If the art is in one's living space, or one works at an art museum and is concerned with the arrangement of art pieces there, then this aesthetics applies. This aesthetics does not apply to environments for which a given person will never have any interaction with.
The above paragraph mostly covers scoping issues. The next covers content.
Imagine that I am considering a pepper grinder. I want a pepper grinder that will last a number of years, be immune from rust when cleaned with water, will work with relatively little effort on the part of the user of the pepper grinder -- so if they want quite a lot or a little pepper they aren't strained. These are functional requirements. But there are other requirements as well. The pepper grinder should be immediately distinguishable from the salt shaker in form so that when one reaches for a pepper or salt shaker one does not have to pick the wrong one. In restaurants this is accomplished by having the two items different colors. The more visually distinct they are the better. But there are other requirements of the pepper and salt shaker: they should not necessarily be imbued with outright and flagrant trademarks of the organizations that made them. If they are to be sold or marketed on the flashiness of their image rather than the functionality of their products, then they are just as culpable for the modern affectation with representations of objects (whether these be corporate trademarks or not) being more important than the functions of objects. Then, assuming that the manufacturers of the pepper grinder have designed the golden pepper shaker, comes the question on their part of how to design some kind of way of identifying them along with the packaging: if they engineer good products, they should be known on the basis of the good products. Corporate trademarks of high visual complexity abuse people's ability to judge whether or not a product is worthwhile because people are more concerned with the brand than the viability of the object in the long term. Such shenanigans should not have a place in the modern world. Whether or not a given object works is not determined by an imprint on that object.
On the flip side, whenever self-representation is properly called for: that is, when I'm representing myself via stationary or writing, I want myself to be as distinct as possible. Which is to say if that I produce a personal logo, mark, or symbol denoting myself, I want it to be as robust under a wide variety of methods of interpretation as possible. If there are ten different ways of interpreting the same symbol or logo, I want those ways of interpretation to produce the same result. Or as close to the same result as possible in a wide variety of people making that determination. This drives to the heart of the difference between personal artifacts and corporate artifacts. A corporate artifact wants to be as nonambiguous in interpretation as
possible that it is associated with a particular corporation. Well. The corporation wants that of the artifact. And, again, a way to do this is ornateness of construction in all respects. A logo is not the same thing as complex artwork with multiple interpretations on multiple levels. Especially if those interpretations are layered on top of each other cryptographically. With ten different interpretations of a complex corporate logo, anyone who was copying some given item would not necessarily know or care, and thus those complex multiple layers of encoded meaning might not be copied properly.
So, the idea here is twofold. One is a functionalist message, that aesthetical viewpoints about particular objects should jive together as a coherent whole, objects should be biologically, ergonomically, physically, and visually constructed to be pleasant and sensible, and that construction should be complex in such a way not as to be excessively complex so as to be brittle, but sufficiently complex that multiple layers of meaning pointing to the authorship of the object are clear. As an example, if anyone writes a large quantity of text, a statistical signature of their word constructions can be generated. In an ideal world, we'd be able to generate that on the fly and discover that during reading of texts, but most people are incapable of sorting out the authorship of a text just by reading it, and many texts generated by people are too generic to specify one or the other. But this text which I've just wrought should scream that it was written by me very strongly. And when I get custom stationary made by Crane's, it's going to feature a complex logo with multiple layers of interpretation, one that is not one of those monograms or other rather poor representations which people choose which say "well, yes, I like high quality paper but I'm too demented to realize that that hideous copperplate or whatever other typefaces they provide are ugly and robotic in character and rather unbecoming to personal stationary or whatever kind of other personal representation which I've chosen for this paper". Something with fractals is my choice. Something with a fractal whose constant is generated from binary numbers generated from some kind of representation of my name. Something with that many layers.
For the moment I'm done with this.
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