Meeting Etiquette

My cell went off
during a meeting
and I thought,
what the fuck
I’ll just jump up on the table
and throw my phone at the floor
as hard as I can.

That’ll show some team commitment.

Foreclosure No. 1

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This is a mix of images of abandoned possessions in an otherwise empty foreclosed house. This stuff was in the basement.

 

There’s Got To Be Another Way

 

A 1-minute science fiction horror/comedy (well, subtly horrific and very subtly comedic) animation about the difficulty finding traditional grooming products in the future. Hey, it could happen.

 

Model Railroads

My father, my grandfather and I were all into model railroads. At various times we each had a layout up on sheets of plywood resting on a 2×4 frame in one corner of the basement.

Mine was a sort of Railroad of Tomorrow. I got a glass bowl from my mother, spray-painted it white, flipped it over next to the track and put a lightbulb in it: a glowing orb of a Building of Tomorrow. I inverted an angular plastic trash can and stuck a lightbulb in it. A glowing, towering Office Building of Tomorrow.

I painted all the miniature plastic cars and trains dark green because I thought (and hoped) that we’d all be living in a military-dictatorship-like World Government of Tomorrow.

Hey, I was a kid. Kids like order.

Well, some kids like order.

My dad was thinking more like 1900 as a historical setting for his layout. He had this big honking locomotive. It even made smoke. His train layout had an old station with little tiny plastic people who were leaning against toothpick-width wooden siding, or walking along roads built of used coffee grounds mixed with glue. The people were so tiny that they were very difficult to paint with any detail. Blue for pants, maybe a red shirt, yellow for the face and maybe a blue cap.

I couldn’t believe he would wallow in the past when there was a bright sci-fi World of  Tomorrow just around the bend.

My grandfather’s railroad was not set in any particular age. He used bigger guage trains. There were no decorations. Everything always worked. There was a loading dock with big drums of milk that were automatically loaded and unloaded onto flat cars.

He was the public works director of Evanston, Illinois. At work he got things done. When he relaxed, he got other things done.

Fish At Meta-Play

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The photos in this remix were taken of an indoor “wintering” pond. The bright spot is the reflection in the water of a hanging overhead light fixture. One of the fish is named Templeton and many of the fish are her kids. Maybe, now that I think about it, at the time these photos were taken, Templeton was, and remains, dead.

 

On The Way Out

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A few years ago I visited a junk yard in nearby Owen County. I shot about 100 photos that I have come back to again and again – mixing and remixing the mixes. I sometimes pull up a piece I did earlier and rebuild it. In the interpretation above, there’s not much identifiably junkyardish in the thing.

 

How Much to Tax

Tax at a rate that is optimal.

Duh.

I know it seems pretty duh, but the rate at which to tax different income groups and corporations should be informed by the behavior of the taxed. Tax enough, but not too much.

Duh.

Many thoughtful people claim that higher tax rates reduce the capitalist will that is applied to creating opportunity and building growth. I assume that, to some extent, this is true. We just have to answer the question, “To what extent?” 

We need to do some surveys – some analysis of historical data, some economic game experiments. These could provide actionable data and answer the question of how much to tax. 

Once you know how different tax rates elicit different behaviors you make informed decisions about tax justice.

Take the idea of the Laffer Curve seriously, just not necessarily the shape of the curve.

Lower taxes will, to some extent, encourage productive investment. Higher tax rates will discourage investment. Once we answer “how low”, and “how high”, we’ll be able to create a tax rate that maximizes state revenue while minimizing productivity losses. We can run psychoeconomic experiments to analyze our way to an optimally effective tax policy.

I personally think that the capitalist profit motive is relatively independent of tax rates. That the urge to make more money persists when additional money is personally useless. Think of the wealthiest people in the world. Additional wealth will provide them with nothing they can use. It will not increase their quality and frequency of food. Their ability to have functional shelter. Their ability to attract mates and reproduce (or go through the motions of reproduction). A large portion of the wealthiest people in the world continue to seek greater wealth. These well healed folk want more money for its own sake – seeking a score-keeping abstraction. And that behavior, that motivation, is something that is very good for society as a whole. 

Tax rates should be based on how hard a captain of industry will work for the abstraction of profit – for the sport of the market, before the opression of taxation cuts off enough motive to be inhibitive. 

We can figure this out through experimentation and have a fully functional tax code.

Some ant species have workers who gather vast quantities of food in their large distended bellies then redistribute this food to hundreds of others. They are isolated in large, relatively opulent rooms, collecting and dispensing their ant honey, their value.

In effect, in our world, the wealthy serve this purpose.

There’s This Note I Really Like

Tearing Space and Time Just a Bit

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I made this remix while listening to Zuill Bailey playing Bach’s 5th Solo Cello Suite on Performance Today. There was something about the warm contrapuntality of the tunes that seemed to inject itself into this visual interpretation.

The source images were shot of my son Nick who had drilled a hole through a tennis ball, inserted a bolt, attached that to a chain, dipped the ball in lighter-fluid, lit the ball, and waved it around at dusk in the middle of the cul-de-sac outside our home.

 

 

Caress as Art

Right now, in 2009, there’s an art and media for just about any form of communication.  

There’s mp3, wav, cassettes, records, etc. for sound.
Printing and video for sight.
Recipes and mass-produced foods for taste.
Smell-o-vision movies and aroma-disks (there is such a thing, I’ve got one) for smell. 

But there’s no media for touch. There’s no art of touch. No recorded art of the caress.

Which is a danged shame, because a wonderful caress is a thing of beauty and a joy to receive or express.  

In general, caresses are currently expressed as part of the love and sex thing, massage, friend and family touch, but not in a choreographed sequence of non-theraputic, not-necessarily-erotic movements. You can’t go to Lincoln Center to be caressed by Twila Tharp. And in any case there is no ability to broadcast — all touch is one on one.

You can’t download a popular suite of Kate Winslet caresses or an invigorating foot massage.

But, I have a great deal of confidence that in the development of robots we will be able to record or create sequences of gentle, skin-friendly movements. An artwork of caressing. And that these patterns of touch and movement will be duplicatable and transferable.

Snicker

Yes, yes, like any new media technology, the pornography of touch, or to coin a phrase pornotactus will be among the first uses.  But, just as not all touching is erotic, not all tactile recordings will be either. 

So, to get things started, here’s the general specifications for a very short, non-erotic, non-massage,  ”Hello world.” sort of tactile recording. A brief recorded caress. A little tactile haiku. A tact.

 

1. Lightly touch above the right eyebrow.
2. Lightly touch above the left eyebrow.
3. Gently roll knuckles along the right cheek.
4. Lightly touch the tip of the nose.

Eventually, this simple caress sequence will be able to be specified in a computer file of robot movements with generated gestures and pressure response parameters that is run through drivers that can adapt to any individual human face, limb or whole body.

What we’ll have will be a recorded work of ars tactus, the art of touch. 

In addition to erotic and artistic tacts, we will have massage tacts delivered by robot masseurs. Possibly designed by — or recorded from — skilled caress artists, utilizing touching themes, designs and tactoharmonies.