Archive for the ‘art’ Category
Does Hollywood have a favorite aperture?
Friday, November 26th, 2010Music Microreviews
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010- Gorillaz, El Mañana: A wonderfully melancholic chorus: a descending scale that fits in well with the music video
- Tomoyasu Hotei, Battle Without Honour or Humanity: An instant classic; when I first heard it after Kill BIll came out I couldn’t believe the song hadn’t been around for a long time and hadn’t been used anywhere else
- Jan Hammer, Crockett’s Theme: One of the early favorites; I liked its simplicity and coolness
- Mozart, Turkish March: This song made me want to play the piano. I first heard it in the video game Civilization. I loved how complex it was; it was fast but didn’t feel rushed
- Scarlet, Independent Love Song: The first song I heard on my portable radio. I was moved by its sadness. It is resentful and powerful
- Grieg, In the Hall of the Mountain King: One of my favorite classical tunes, it’s short, recognizable and has a lot of velocity
- Vivaldi, Four Seasons-Spring: Another classical tune, probably the most pleasant four bars (that the tune is synonymous with) in all of the classical music
- Queen, We Will Rock You: I love its simplicity and energy
- Queen, The Show Much Go On: The song as well as its story is incredibly powerful
- Metallica, Nothing Else Matters: My second most favorite song of all time. It never gets old
- Harold Faltermeyer, Axel F: My most favorite song of all time. It even survived my making it into a ringtone (fortunately I no longer do; it destroys songs)
- Pink Floyd, High Hopes
- Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Under the Bridge
- Ennio Morricone, Ecstasy of Gold
- Kansas, Dust in the Wind
- A3, Too Sick to Pray: Surprisingly I only saw the Sopranos intro some seven years after I first heard this song
- Radiohead, Everything in its Right Place
- Santa Esmeralda, Don’t Let me be Misunderstood
- Eagles, Hotel California: Certainly a one-show band. That live version of this song is breathtaking
- Carol of the Bells: I’m a huge sucker for this Christmas song. It’s intense and serious, very unlike any other carols
- Air, Alone in Kyoto
- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb
- Gnarls Barkley, Crazy
- Eric Clapton, Layla: I can only imagine what Clapton (and friends) were doing when the chorus of this song started
- Linkin Park, My December
- Gorillaz, Feel Good Inc.
- Beatles, Hey Jude: After all, everyone has a favorite Beatles song
- Gary Jules, Mad World
- Moby, Extreme Ways
- Explosions in the Sky, First Breath After Coma
- Coldplay, Cemeteries of London: I admit, I like Coldplay
- Flobots, Handlebars: Probably the only song whose lyrics I could really appreciate. A great crescendo, too
- Cab, High Hopes in Velvet
- Bonobo, Transmission 94: Is it one song? Or two?
- Rodrigo y Gabriela, Orion
- Pearl Jam, Arc: The live version where Eddie loops samples is indescribable
- Yoshida Brothers, Fukaki Umi no Kanata
- Sigur Ros, Samskeyti
- Jude, Prophet
- Just Jack, Heartburn
- Protomen, Keep Quiet
- The View, Unexpected
- Band of Horses, Funeral
- Snow Patrol, Shut Your Eyes
- Kings of Leon, Closer
- Mumford & Sons, Little Lion Man
- Placebo, Running Up that Hill
The Distance between Two Opposites
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010A good story is like a sound wave: just as the latter can be decomposed into component sine waves, the former is a superposition of nested arcs. The shortest ones keep you from toggling the TV channel; the longer ones begin and end chapters; the longer still travel the length of the story. If you have never experienced it, watch something carefully.
As the more and more arcs all conclude at one point, it becomes more and more difficult to start them all up again. The story begins to introduce twists: devices whose purpose is to be re-able spinning up of new arcs.
I first noticed a particular style of twist relatively recently (too recently given the ubiquity of this device), one in which who hitherto appeared a villain is actually a hero, and vice versa. And that got me thinking.
If it is indeed so simple to mislead the reader (OK let’s face it; it’s most often used in movies but I like to believe that a certain kind of equivalence can be constructed) into thinking that good is evil, what is the difference between them anyway? Can one just be the same thing as the other? Surely not? Well, consider this: Can one exist without the other?
The distance between two opposites is microscopic. If we attempt to measure it, we will undoubtedly end like scientists today, chasing after explanations of everything with ideas of ever more increasing complexity. It’s like skiing on the outline of 
on the way back to the origin — the slopes get more crazy; there seems to be no single point at the end. Understand it and you will see how possibly Two could be equal to One.
The first step is to understand that there is no such thing as Two: zoom out enough and nothing is black and white. Just like that villain that ends up being a hero in a shocking twist at the end of a season of a TV show, how can you tell if an Altruist of the Year is actually not a truly selfish person? How can you tell that someone who believes in not letting ego stand in the way of anything has no ego? You can’t — this phenomenon is akin to quantum theory, but at a much higher level.
The second step is to understand that the inexistence of Two really has no consequences. A villain could be a hero, but we have to choose our allegiance, so we’ll make the best decision we can, based on the information we have. An Altruist of the Year may, deep inside, be truly selfish, but she still donates millions to good cause. If I can convince you of anything with logic, does it matter what I truly believe in?
The way to reduce Two to One is to realize that it’s all Zero.
Movie Microreviews
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010The best movies, according to me:
- Alien: Came out just a few years after Star Wars but paints such a diametrically different picture of the future. What science fiction should be — it’s not about special effects. Giger is a visionary.
- Animatrix: I actually like this set of animated shorts more than Matrix itself. One of my favorite shorts (the children playing in a neighborhood that suffers from the Matrix’s defects). The story of mankind post-AI era is also a great cautionary tale (which seems more realistic than I’d like it to be).
- Dark City: I like dark sci-fi movies. This one has a great premise. I loved the search for the end of the world that I think was done better than in other movies (Thirteenth Floor, Truman Show).
- Donnie Darko: Well-deserved status of a cult classic. I like the subculture of it and the world it creates.
- Primer: One of the better storylines. The movie is incredibly low budget but you don’t notice at all (it’s not in your face like the Blair Witch Project). You’re not meant to understand the plot.
- Godfather I and II: I liked them both for very different reasons, the second part probably more because it’s so much harder to do a sequel to one of the best movies of all time.
- Matrix: Despite having Reeves in it (or maybe because of it– there is a strange no-facial-expressions robotic quality to Neo), it’s a movie with an amazing premise and great symbolicism. Makes you wonder “what if”.
- Paprika: A wonderfully creative and visually appealing animated movie. It reminds me very much of a dreamlike state. Beautifully weaves dream and reality.
- Inception: Thought-provoking and visually appealing. Constructs a simple yet expressive system out of dreaming (an everyone phenomenon); a good puzzle
- American Psycho: I love watching it every few years. Chrisitian Bale is perfect for the role. The movie feels strangely applicable.
- Casablanca: Everyone said it’s a great movie, despite having been made so long ago. I was doubtful, but agreed humbly and wholeheartedly once I saw it
- Moon: A minimalist science fiction movie; probably the best sci-fi of the past decade
- Intacto: My favorite foreign movie, great premise and atmosphere that’s just dark enough. Max Von Sydow finds himself in a perfect role of a slightly creepy head of a very creepy organization
- 12 Angry Men: A timeless movie. So simply made, yet so gripping. I was pleasantly surprised how engaged I was while watching it despite how old it is.
- Wall-E: A beautiful love story as well as a deep message about humanness; turns into a caricature, a little patronizing, but nevertheless a beautiful movie. I didn’t feel it was an animated movie at all; it lifted me up and took me with it
- Devil’s Advocate: Good cast (yes, even Reeves), great depiction of the devil, and a good ending.
- 12 Monkeys: I love time travel movies, but this one is dark and confusing and dirty. Good vision of the kind of future you certainly don’t want to be your future
- American Beauty: I like its atmosphere of a slowly looming disaster. All threads converge at the very end in a way where, ultimately, isn’t actually that relevant how the movie ends. It’s also visually pleasing.
- Usual Suspects: The story and the acting is unbeatable
- Shawshank Redemption: Simply one of the greatest stories told
- Rosemary’s Baby: The ultimate suspense movie, kept me at the edge of my seat throughout
Premise
- Children of Men: Thought-provoking premise (although the book is probably much better)
- Thirteenth Floor: Brilliant premise, even if execution is a little weak. Gave me good food for thought on what kind of transmission is possible in enclosing systems
- Saw: Good story, probably the best of the one-room-thriller-breed
- Memento: It’s surprising nobody thought about rearranging the scenes in a movie before. Good idea to link with a short-term memory loss condition
Story
- Boondock Saints: Solid story, highly symbolic
- Extract: Features the funnies Rube Goldberg-like freaky coincidence
- Thank You for Smoking: Funny, handles a heavy topic with lightness
Acting
- Mr Brooks: Kevin Costner in an unlikely role, yet a very good performance. If I were a serial killer, I would model my work on Mr Brooks
- There Will Be Blood: Daniel Day-Lewis at his best
Visual / Construction
- Watchmen: Wonderful adaptation of the graphic novel. I actually think that the editing they did made the story crisper. They stuck to the style and the spirit of the novel without being condescending or boring
- Run Lola Run: High-energy, original format although the three stories could be more cleverly tied together. I liked the projections of people’s lives after Lola bumped into them
- V For Vendetta: Artistic (great imagery); an excellent action movie
- In Bruges: Simple, dark, depressing yet funny
- Open Your Eyes: I much prefer it to the U.S. version. Wonderfully surreal
- Blade Runner: Reminds me of my favorite neo-tech vision of the future (2050 Tokyo as seen in 1980)
- Machinist: Very dark, good performance (as always) by Christian Bale
Overall
- Back to the Future: The most entertaining time travel movie ever
- Batman Begins: I love this renewal of the franchise. Well-cast Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and of course Michael Caine
- Kill Bill Volume I and II: A cult classic
- Indiana Jones and the Las Crusade: A quintessential action movie; has all the necessary elements. I loved it as a teenager
- Office Space: A classic
- Terminator II: A good action movie, one of few examples of the sequel being better than the original
- Clue: I love its atmosphere
Humanities, the enemy of Science
Monday, October 11th, 2010When I was younger, I strongly favored sciences and mathematics over humanities. I didn’t enjoy the seeming arbitrariness in what I was learning about humanities, and the fact that what was rewarded didn’t seem conceptual but factual (in sciences and mathematics, I felt I was taught the concepts and the way to derive facts from them; in humanities, I was supposed to regurgitate the facts I was taught — it seemed like memorization). Moreover, I cringed at a thought of the imprecision of humanities (what do you mean there is no exact answer?); if there was no verifiable, universal answer, how can we agree on anything, let alone be assessed on our knowledge of it? Finally, I could not for the life of it understand why everyone around me seemed to prefer humanities. Did people really prefer memorizing dates and causes of wars to deriving results from relatively few theorems?
As I grew older (and as I learned to take deep looks at my observations), I discovered a certain complexity to the above picture which made it not so obvious anymore. First, I realized that mathematics, sciences and humanities (in that order) are disciplines on a continuum and that continuum has several important characteristics. I already knew that as you move from the former to the latter,
The disciplines become less precise and exact, that is, it becomes harder to make statements which can be validated, verified, and agreed upon
I had also observed long time ago that
They seem to require more information for the same amount of conclusions drawn (memorizing many causes of wars vs knowing only a few mathematical formulae)
However, what was a relatively new realization (and what gave me a rather powerful aha moment) was that
They are increasing in complexity because of the systems they are trying to describe and whose behavior they are trying to predict
In retrospect, this last characteristic is pretty obvious, but it has powerful implications: humanities tackle much more interesting (and important) problems. They deal a lot with the human nature, with what makes us us, with inter-personal relationships, with our feelings and intangible abilities (such as the appreciation of the art). In a way, humanities take the world for what it is even if they can’t fully grasp it, as opposed to creating a simplifying model of the world and making exact predictions about it.
Let’s take mathematics, for example. What got me very excited about it was how richly it could talk about the world constructed just from a few assumptions, for example, discuss all numbers existing in nature (and even those that don’t!) by starting with five simple axioms. It could describe an incredibly complex world of geometry by postulating five things (and eight even more complex worlds by tweaking the fifth one). Yes, mathematics is exact — once proven, statements remain proven — but the domain that mathematics deals with is so narrow that it doesn’t really correspond in any meaningful way to the real world; it can’t even get to a kind of complexity we’re dealing with every day.
Similarly, the ethos of all sciences is that they propose and test models based on consistent observations. A model is a gross oversimplification of some real-world phenomenon; again, sciences (in the strict definition of the term) are unable to talk richly about any sufficiently complex phenomenon — in fact, physics (probably the purest of all sciences) chokes on even the simplest (in terms of the amount of complexity) systems — one of the interaction of inanimate matter in the universe.
So instead of thinking of humanities as “weaker” forms of the sciences or mathematics, I started thinking of humanities are their “more ambitious” forms. True, because the complexity mounts so quickly, the specific disciplines we know of as “history” or “economics” are more vague and less precise than the sciences, but fundamentally, the problem is simply much more difficult. Unsurprisingly, more information is required to make the same level of predictions.
Once I realized that the humanities and the sciences are the same conceptual discipline that happens to deals with problems of varied complexity, I realized that while humanities scholars have the humility to point out the inexactness of their disciplines in search for answers to complex problems, scientists don’t convey the flip side (that the exactness of their responses comes at a cost of transforming what’s around us to something simpler. In a way, then, the problem with the sciences is that the apparition of precision creates a dangerous approximation. Moreover, by forcing you to frame yourself in terms of models, sciences tend to be escapist and detach you from your nature; wouldn’t you rather feel the answer even if you can’t write it down, than write down a precise answer to a much more simplified question?
A final strength of humanities is that they don’t constrain themselves to be brittle. In mathematics, out of billions of statements, if you insist on just one to be different, you destroy all of mathematics. In physics, a new discovery may force us to rewrite the textbooks that we have used to teach generations (this has, in fact, happened about a hundred years ago already!). In a way, past results in the sciences are not indicative of future performance. But the lessons of history, even if imprecise, are a pretty good beacon for its future.
Book Microreviews
Sunday, October 10th, 2010Recommend Whole-heartedly
- Lessons of History: A beautiful example of what it means to synthesize forty years of research into a 100-page essay. The Durants start at the broad level (the Earth, evolution, geography) and zoom in on other factors that influence our history. They isolate the timeless and the universal, and make thought-provoking predictions about the future
- The Last Question: An ultimate story of progress that transcends everything
- Letters on Life by Rilke: Talks poetically though approachably on the simplicity and majesty, gracefulness of things
- Short Stories by Borges: Borges combines conceptual thought with an ability to write artfully (and concisely, almost poetically), which makes his writing
- Motion Mountain: The only physics textbook you’ll ever need, and you will need this one. It explains in conceptual yet approachable way everything we know about the Universe today. Wonderful puzzles that get you thinking. This book made me look at the world differently
- The Mysterious Island: The first “big” book I ever read. It awoke my imagination and kept me in suspense throughout the whole story. Wonderfully crafted, engaging, contains just enough mystery to be gripping yet fully plausible
- To Kill a Mockingbird: Wonderfully and simply crafted novel that paints a vivd picture of the South; I couldn’t stop reading it
- The Picture of Dorian Gray: A great book for a stormy night. It’s dark, deals with corruption of the human soul. Its premise is uniquely simple and sinister.
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The book of my early teenage years. The case solutions are clever but not didactic. Holmes is my first personal hero (yes, despite being an opium user); it’s not surprising I love “House, M.D.”
Interesting for certain insights
- On Intelligence: He has some great insights (we didn’t have enough time to evolve to recognize written symbols specifically–so each area of the brain must use the same algorithm; the brain takes 100 steps to make any decision; brain operation as exception management) to point out why we have been thinking about it wrong but then thinks that the reason we don’t have AI now is because the technology is not there yet (size of associative memories)
- Stranger in a Strange Land: A hilarious story that instructs how to start a new religion; features elements of the “chaotic future” such as in Ubik, but with enough self-parody to be enjoyable
- Dracula: Surprisingly enjoyable as an audiotape. A great Gothic suspense novel that combines the best elements of victorian-era England
A Life’s Work
Monday, October 4th, 2010Today’s generation is used to instant gratification. I want to earn lots of money now. I want to be an expert now. An idea of a 15-year career sounds crazy to us — we have no idea what we will be doing in 15 years, but it will almost certainly not be the thing we’re doing now. Because of that we’re limiting ourselves and our potential to the kinds of work that reward bursty, energetic types but don’t stick to their guns.
In doing so, we are missing a lot. The most impressive careers are not those that are made overnight, but those that have substance, purpose and meaning. Have you seen someone’s life work? A work of someone who has been working on the same thing for 15 years? How about forty years? How impressive is it?
Thoughts on Memory
Saturday, September 18th, 2010Have I mentioned that I’m fascinated by memory? (And, more importantly, by how little we know about how it works and by how much we think we know, trying to model it as all these things it’s obviously not).
I realized that the first step to forgetting is to forget what it was you were trying to forget. There is one experiment I have been running for several years now. I thought of something relatively unique, such as a pink panda bear (of course the actual thing is not a pink panda bear), and told myself I’ll make myself forget it. However, every so often I remember the experiment which instantaneously means that I’ve failed — because for the next several months I will not be able to forget the thing. Apparently this phenomenon is very useful — people found out that the best way to memorize things is to recall them just as you are about to forget.
This makes me think about the recall mechanics. The way memory is structured, it seems, is that memories have little “pointers” which remain on the surface (I mean conceptually, not visually). These pointers allow you to access the memory, but if not refreshed, they get fainter and eventually the memory is buried altogether. Of course, pointers themselves are interconnected, so re-jiggering one memory may expose another one by pulling the pointer back up to the surface.
This is a very efficient way to keep a large number of memories somewhat accessible — a pretty common use case (memorization for the sake of memorization, it turns out, is not a useful survival skill; however, being able to recall memories as a result of some trigger is very useful — it allowed us to build a large “toolbox” of primitive skills by remembering our reactions to impulses. These reactions are then brought back upon the re-occurrence of the same impulse).
Learning New Skills
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010Initially I had this realization about driving, but later I realized that it can apply to many other things: when we first learn a new skill, we learn a set of rules and practices. These rules help us avoid making mistakes but they slow us down in fully internalizing the thing we’re trying to learn. As we exercise the skill more, the rules become second nature to us. Finally, the rules disappear — we end up anti-deriving them back to the few conventions that were established long ago, and finally back to the innate sense of what it means to possess a particular skill.
This is, in my view, particularly evident in driving: for the beginner, driving is an extremely complex set of activities with seemingly arbitrary rules (such as, what to do when you’re at an intersection and about to turn left, or how to drive stick shift). Once you’ve been on the road for several years, driving becomes natural: it’s not that you get used to the rules. It’s that they become commonsensical to you–the decisions you make are just simple consequences of the few fundamentals your brain has internalized.
Great Music
Monday, September 13th, 2010Music also has a property of bringing back compressed memories quickly. It symbolizes a particular set of circumstances, a particular company, particular events. Great music is all about the atmosphere it creates. In a way, it doesn’t even matter what it is — the actual melody or lyrics are just a medium; what matters is what it connotes.
The best music is nondescript.
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