Syllabus

pp 4–5 Intro

  1. 1 Erwin Schrodinger, Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1944, from What is Life? With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, 1967, page 136. ES was echoing and extending Schopenhauer’s “The world extended in space and time is but our representation”
  2. 2 See the filmography of James O. Incandenza

p 9 Mirror

  1. 1 Re Pliny the Elder’s “The worst crime against man’s life was committed by the person who first put gold on his fingers, though it is not recorded who did this.” From Natural History, book XXXIII, page 8, Harvard University Press, circa 79 BCE this is not a page number

pp 15–34 Crafting Error

  1. 1 Richard P Feynman, quoted from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (the best short works of RPF,) Perseus Books, 1999, pages 171-188. In 1966 RPF gave a lecture to the National Science Teachers Association in New York City called What is Science? He talked about how the human race learns, explaining that individuals acquire new experiences about as fast as we forget about others. We accumulate va
  2. 2 Which here refers very little to preproduction visuals, but in a larger sense I mean to give form to, to construct
  3. 3 Although they could also be well integrated into research, could be developing engineering requirements in situ as each design idea is kicked back down to research or up to approvals for verification
  4. 4 “Experience, the name everyone gives to their mistakes. I never make any” Oscar Wilde, Vera, or the Nihilists, original 1880, page 49
  5. 5 Invention “requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not Talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know…” Although they are “actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.” George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form, Appendix I, 1969, page 110
  6. 6 Points, curves, surfaces and solids over sketches on paper and 3D printing using Rhino, Grasshopper, Realflow, Meshmixer, Keyshot and other software. I am generally making speculative or relatively academic work, so that’s why I don’t often have a formal approval process – which is probably unfortunate
  7. 7 Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo, also ‘what is not in the law or statute is not in the law’
  8. 8 Stephen Bayley, Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything, 2009, page 11
  9. 9 Alva Noë, Strange Tools, Art and Human Nature, Hill and Wang, 2015, page 30
  10. 10 Umberto Eco, Spiegel interview, http://tinyurl.com/craftingerrorecoquote, 2009
  11. 11 Although we should be careful to recognize, as Heisenberg did, that “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” Physics and Philosophy, published 1958, page 58
  12. 12 Nothing about either variant of the system necessarily ensures quality at a particular level – they describe some of the common features in a particular design workflow, and do so regardless of whether the outcome is effective
  13. 13 Frederich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Transcendence in Art, 1878, page 132
  14. 14 Our eyesight is usually strong enough to see the flaws without magnification – but even jewelers quickly overlook the kinds of things their peers and customers aren’t likely to complain about. And the rest can be waved off by branding it as handmade; which excuses crap craft
  15. 15 Solomon Diamond, Information and Error, Basic Books, 1959, page 7
  16. 16 And to the extent that communication can be reduced to verbalizable ideas
  17. 17 For an exceptional example of an all white ‘74 Golf GTI, check out Cars: Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything, by Stephen Bayley, Octopus Publishing, 2009, page 339
  18. 18 See BBC Culture’s: The VW Beetle: How Hitler’s idea became a design icon http://tinyurl.com/cebettle
  19. 19 Does the fact that Hitler did something make it bad? Of course not, necessarily. But the Beetle was specifically engineered to transport the nuclear families of the master race. So it’s not as innocent as something like Fanta, which was just created for the Nazi German market when Coke stopped being able to export to that country – the Beetle was ‘Strength through Joy’ – an object of Nazi propaganda
  20. 20 Though it’s still one of the most attractive buildings in Grand Rapids
  21. 21 One graces the stairway to the Detroit Institute of Art, where I saw my first formal fine artworks as a child
  22. 22 Mark Bole, Dante Alighieri, a Complete Guide, page 35
  23. 23 Translated by Cyril Scott
  24. 24 The evidence could be shown to be flawed, and yet that wouldn’t necessarily show that I don’t love her. If she ended up not existing I would have a pretty serious problem, and if I gave evidence that read like hatred we would have a semantic problem – but since love isn’t a terribly well defined condition I think I would get a pass on most poor arguments in this kind of case. The poem could still be terrible, however; having unimpeachable sources says nothing about the quality of the work built on it
  25. 25 Consider ranges of maximum weights and other forces that need to be accounted for in a bridge design; we could not perfectly measure to infinite resolution current conditions on identical projects (if they exist.) And while we can infer approximate forces in the future based on our current measurements, we generally wouldn’t design something that could withstand only these. We would engineer forms and materials (themselves with a range of predicted capacities) that our experience, calculations and tests suggest would work, if properly maintained, with provisions for certain tasks, for a defined period, with confidence decimally below one hundred percent. Having devised this plan, we might iterate to account for late added requirements, to satisfy some aesthetic demands, to use a material that has some quality that needs to be accounted for, or in order to run model based simulations as to which might provide the greatest combination of benefits
  26. 26 Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Viking Press, 1973, page 167. Pynchon’s context in GR is significantly different than I am hoping to elicit here – but these two questions seem apt in determinations of how we understand and mix sources into the work we do – and the extent to which we have dominion over the work product, and then responsibility for the source
  27. 27 Nor would we want to be, and Apple is not perfect (especially on the soft, human interface side of their business)
  28. 28 Not that finding perfect spheres in the universe would prove their infallibility
  29. 29 I discussed this idea with a colleague who reminded me that something like a sphere may exist, probabilistically. Which is a kind of reality, and I imagine that sphere-ness is something a water droplet might briefly move through while undulating in space
  30. 30 Consider John Gall’s observation that “a large system, produced by expanding the dimensions of a smaller system, does not behave like the smaller system.” Systemantics, 1975, page 45
  31. 31 Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, page 52

pp 40–47 Titers, Trinities, Truth

  1. 1 Nancy Updike, This American Life, The Night in Question, NPR, Chicago Public Radio, Oct 16, 2015
  2. 2 Although some of this moisture might be insolubilia; paradoxes outside the hope of formulae
  3. 3 After nearly failing to convince Hitler to stop the Leonidas Squadron from sending all of its pilots crashing into London in their Storm Birds
  4. 4 Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, Chapter 5, 2014
  5. 5 This tablet was withdrawn from the market within a few years as the supply-side-addled FCC measured RF interference beyond the range specified in the FCC OET Bulletins of the era
  6. 6 Apple Computer, 1981 Spring Catalog
  7. 7 From direct, immediate and utilitarian points of view
  8. 8 Stanley Lechtzin, Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA, Feb 2002, interview by the author
  9. 9 Hericlitus, Plato, 402CE
  10. 10 Google “signs of revelation 2015” and read some of the writing that comes up on the topic
  11. 11 Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide, Houghton Mifflin, 2009, page 66, footnote (on the Monte Carlo fallacy)
  12. 12 Imagining the coming winter for the House of Romanov and the glory of their dictatorship of the proletariat
  13. 13 Faberge Research Newsletter, fabergeresearch.com, Fall 2015, “Statistical cost analysis of Faberge’s 50 Imperial Easter Eggs”
  14. 14 This was the equivalent of 568 years of work for an average family income in Russia at the time (37.5 rubles)
  15. 15 As did many Americans, thanks in part to Henry Ford having half a million published in the US. Some Christians are still pretty into this hoax, e.g http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm
  16. 16 Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery, 2011, page 199
  17. 17 Edmund Levin, The Last Blood Libel Trial, Slate, Oct 8, 2013
  18. 18 Using a hemocytometer that has been calibrated to a standard accuracy of less than 2% count variation over using a Neubauer counting grid and a stochastic distribution of 10 microns. The remainder should be stored in a refrigerated state for at least one year in case any null or FP retesting is needed, or in case the ReV counts reflect antichristmorphia with a confidence of greater than 1:922. A hemobuffer must be used periodically to keep the solution at precisely pH 7.35. Refer to ENIST color and luminescence charts for tips on proper glow color and intensity identification
  19. 19 A blanket genetic exception is made whenever the life of the Christian was taken by another Christian who was righteously protecting his personal property or preferences

pp 56–59 Cups and Collections

  1. 1 This is the anticipatory setup in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. It is within paragraphs of tasting his madeleine, and is summarizes dozens of pages before on the topic, presaging hundreds of pages in the book and then thousands of pages in Remembrance of Things Past
  2. 2 Umberto Eco, On Beauty
  3. 3 Donald Norman, Emotional Design. See Chapter: Attractive Things Work Better for more on Visceral, Behavioral and Reflective
  4. 4 “Nutrition is not foremost on people’s mind when they choose their food,” “It’s the taste, the flavor, the sensory satisfaction,” Michael Moss, Salt Sugar, Fat, quoting Robert McBride about how his concept of the bliss point works - page 33 5 Arcadia, Tom Stoppard, 1993
  5. 5 Arcadia, Tom Stoppard, 1993

p 61 Gilead

  1. 1 An amazing book by Margaret Atwood, 1985

pp 74–79 Organic and Disembodied

  1. 1 Holly Korbey, Understanding Dyslexia and the Reading Brain in Kids, October 2015
  2. 2 For instance, http://tinyurl.com/crafting-error-memory
  3. 3 Also called In Search of Lost Time. I’ve been ‘trying’ to read this massive opus since I first saw Man Ray’s photograph of its author, Marcel Proust, on his deathbed
  4. 4 Proust, Swann’s Way, page 42
  5. 5 From Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, page 257. The original context was the difference between an East/West split on the meaning of movies. That the East saw the film as normalizing monster for consumer goods – and MM is arguing that they are right
  6. 6 Allan Bloom, June 7, 1987, Is Rock Music Rotting our Kids’ Minds?, The Washington Post
  7. 7 Prince Rogers, Nothing Compares 2 U, 1985, 1990
  8. 8 David L Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading, Sasquatch Books, 2010, page 34. An interesting little book with a dubious conclusion; that reading “is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction,” that it “connects us at the deepest levels.” There is a red light that flashes when I read things like this – at once alerting me that someone (in this case a professional writer/critic) wants to enoble the work they do, and reminding me that there are other media that could make this claim. McLuhan might argue for oral discourse, one of my colleagues for the reading of drawings, and Ken Robinson for the resurgence of dancing and watching dance. We all champion those things we do, which we imagine are waning in import
  9. 9 Page 18, George Henry Boker by Oliver H Evans - 1984
  10. 10 Page 80, Evans – from Boker, Francesca da Rimini - 1853

p 81 Bonding

  1. 1 The Spill Canvas, Staplegunned, from the album One Fell Swoop... “...the chemistry between us could destroy this place”

p 83 Drown

  1. 1 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Narcissus

pp 84–90 Void-Free Class A Surfaces

  1. 1 Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, George Allen and Unwin, 1940
  2. 2 G-E-B, An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter, Basic Books, 1979
  3. 3 “1. Any consistent formal theory capable of producing arithmetical truths cannot be both consistent and complete. 2. Any formal theory containing the truths of arithmetic and truths about provability has a statement of its own consistency if and only if the theory is inconsistent.” - Justin Curry, MIT/UPenn, summarizing Godel’s incompleteness axioms
  4. 4 Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, George Allen and Unwin, 1940
  5. 5 There is also a very stylish television commercial for Honda Scooters of the period that used Walk on the Wild Side as theme music and starred Lou Reed at the end, with a guy playing the saxophone part on a street corner and everything
  6. 6 See Uncertainty Principle, Heisenberg
  7. 7 See observer/probe effect, Hawthorne et al
  8. 8 “One Thing is Certain: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is not Dead,” Furuta, Scientific American, March 2012
  9. 9 Homer, the Odyssey, Book 12, “...stop your men’s ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope’s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster”
  10. 10 Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, 350BCE, translated by W. D. Ross, 1908, beginning of book 2
  11. 11 J. Fred Woell, Handouts from the 20th Century, self published, 2000, page 12
  12. 12 “Squeezing my shoes,” One of my favorite, if overused lines from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King
  13. 13 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Chapter 2 (Hot media require less of the consumer than cool)
  14. 14 Marshall and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science, 1988, University of Toronto Press
  15. 15 Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Viking Press, 1973, page 100
  16. 16 Shakespeare, Hamlet, “I could be be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams”
  17. 17 A series of books for children by Bantam, 1979-1988
  18. 18 Portlandia, “Sharing Finances,” season 4
  19. 19 Portlandia, “Sharing Finances,” season 4
  20. 20 Rob Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, Not by Genes Alone, 2006, page 178
  21. 21 Rob Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, Not by Genes Alone, 2006, page 178
  22. 22 “a miasma, of incandescent plasma” from Why Does the Sun Really Shine, They Might Be Giants, Disney Sound, 2009
  23. 23 Vincent Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb, US ARMY, 1985, (http://history.army.mil/html/books/011/11-10/CMH_Pub_11-10.pdf)

pp 106–113 Dreams of Memphis

  1. 1 The Name of the Rose, a book by Umberto Eco, a film by Jean-Jacques Annaud
  2. 2 Norbert Elias, 1939
  3. 3 Frederich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878, page 132
  4. 4 Song by Glenn Frey, 1985
  5. 5 Miami Vice, Walk-Alone, October 1986
  6. 6 Their most popular song was a semi-power ballad based on the book And I Don’t Want to Live this Life by Deborah Spungeon, written in 1983
  7. 7 Frederich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, page 82
  8. 8 Polymers OU13-OU17 were designed as resists for coating lithographic plates, but the plant had suffered some air conditioning outages that made the product of batches M862.0X-M865.28 unsellable
  9. 9 Alfred Tarski, What are Logical Notions, 1986, based on his 1966 lectures, pgs 152-153
  10. 10 Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Viking Press, 1973, page 148-149
  11. 11 Pope John Paul II, as reported in the April 14, 1986 issue of the NYT, E.J. Dionne
  12. 1 Stolen from Benito Mussolini

p 119 Mass

  1. 1 Abigail Adams, March 31, 1776, letter to John Adams, “Remember the Ladies” letter. “That your sex are so naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit no dispute...”

pp 120–122 Fertilization

  1. 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, “ What can be shown cannot be said.” Tractatus, 4.1212
  2. 2 Pedro the Lion, David Bazan, The Fleecing, 2004
  3. 3 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, page 58
  4. 4 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, page 85
  5. 5 I was a college student, in my third or fourth major, looking to focus. I was hypergraphic to an extent that some mental illness might have been assumed by anyone looking at my notebooks; alloying lecture notes with observational sketches, with repeating entries of ‘shut up, shut up, shut up…’ and ‘fuck you, fuck you, fuck you…’ aimed at people who I wasn’t yet brave enough to shout down. But this pop philosopher helped me, at least a little bit, (once I could feel the rhythm.) The oral gave us the written, we clothed ourselves, invented money, we started calculating, which put us in print and these extensions (and others) allowed us to direct fire, to develop increasingly sophisticated forms of transportation, electric light, image making, advertising and eventually the media we would recognize by that word
  6. 6 Kralik, Novotny, Oliva, Fingerprint on the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, 2002
  7. 7 Hannah Jarvis from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.
Audiobook: narrated by a synthetic voice.