Category: The Arts
Interview with a safecracker
Interesting throughout, here is one bit:
Q: How realistic are movies that show people breaking into vaults?
A: Not very! In the movies it takes five minutes of razzle-dazzle; in real life it’s usually at least a couple of hours of precision work for an easy, lost combination lockout.Most vault lockouts are caused by malfunctions. A bank employee over-winds the time lock, a technician makes a mistake servicing the vault, or there was no maintenance because the bank has initiated yet another round of cost cutting.
Another 10-20% of my income comes from law enforcement searches and seizures or estate, aka “dead relative” openings. They hire me and I drill it open, but these are not situations where I like to hang around too long.
Q: Do you ever look inside?
A: I NEVER look. It’s none of my business. Involving yourself in people’s private affairs can lead to being subpoenaed in a lawsuit or criminal trial. Besides, I’d prefer not knowing about a client’s drug stash, personal porn, or belly button lint collection.When I’m done I gather my tools and walk to the truck to write my invoice. Sometimes I’m out of the room before they open it. I don’t want to be nearby if there is a booby trap.
The full article is here, and for the pointer I thank Anton Radice.
*The Substance of Style*
That is one of Virginia Postrel’s best books, you can now buy it on Kindle for $2.99. Mine is the second Amazon review, Jerry Brito’s is first.
The African cake that cries when you eat it
Comovement
Is the lap dancer sector being brought down by finance? Is the British knowledge base being eroded?
The study by Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy from Leeds University warns of “de-skilling” across the industry. Dr Sanders said many dancers had “never even used a pole”.
Researchers carried out a survey of 200 lap dancers, the largest study of its kind in the UK, it was reported.
Dr Sanders said there had been a “real change” to the “aesthetics of the dancers” as well as “the skills of flirting and chatting”.
The study is due to be presented today at the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Leeds, according to The Times.
Here is much more, and I thank a loyal MR reader, WM, for the pointer.
Clubsterben, the culture that is Berlin
Not everyone thinks gentrification is a good thing:
Politicians in Berlinhave launched a campaign to rescue the city’s legendary nightclub scene from the spectre of property investors in the hope of salvaging the capital’s reputation as one of Europe’s party hotspots.
A ‘Music Board’ fund of around €1m (£835,000) has been set up to help protect the city’s shrinking club scene, which has been a mainstay of the economy since the fall of the Berlin Wall but has found itself increasingly squeezed out by real estate investors.
Berlin’s clubs have even coined the word ‘clubsterben’ – literally, ‘club death’ – to describe the phenomenon. The €1m fund will be used to help stricken clubs find new locations and hold fundraising concerts.
Around 15 clubs are currently under threat of closure according to Spiegel, while three prominent clubs have closed within the last few months. The nightspots, which are often housed in grungy urban buildings, breweries, or former factories situated on prime land, are increasingly being converted into apartment blocks and loft homes.
Here is more. Here is an article on whether Berlin can afford its billion dollar arts subsidy programs. This sentence is interesting:
Since German reunification in 1990, the capital has seen about half of its population leave and be replaced by newcomers.
For both pointers I thank www.artsjournal.com.
Felix Salmon on the Spot Market, Stripes Too!
http://youtu.be/14IerE0rIEs
Is Creativity more like IQ or Expertise?
IQ, whatever its flaws, appears to be a general factor, that is, if you do well on one kind of IQ test you will tend to do well on another, quite different, kind of IQ test. IQ also correlates well with many and varied real world outcomes. But what about creativity? Is creativity general like IQ? Or is creativity more like expertise; a person can be an expert in one field, for example, but not in another.
In a short piece in The Creativity Post, cognitive Psychologist Rober Baer argues that creativity is domain-specific:
Efforts to assess creativity have been plagued by supposedly domain-general divergent-thinking tests like the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, although even Torrance knew they were measuring domain-specific skills. (He create two different versions of the test, one that used verbal tasks and another that used visual tasks. He found that scores on the two tests were unrelated —they had a correlation of just .06—so they could not be measuring a single skill or set of skills. They were—and still are—measuring two entirely different things.) Because these tests have been used in so many psychological studies of creativity, much of what we think we know about creativity may be based on invalid data. These tests have also been widely used in selection for gifted/talented programs — programs that have, in turn, often suffered because by assuming creativity was domain general, these programs often wasted students’ time with supposedly content-free divergent thinking exercises (like brainstorming unusual uses for bricks) that really only develop divergent-thinking skill in limited domains.
The metaphor we use for understanding creativity will impact how we train for creativity:
If one’s goal is to enhance creativity in many domains, then creativity-training exercises need to come from a wide variety of domains—just as we must provide a broad general education if we want students to acquire modest levels of expertise in many areas. But if one’s goal is to increase creativity in just one domain, such as one might want to do in a gifted program focusing on one domain (such as a program in dance, poetry, math, etc)., then it would be appropriate for all of the creativity-training exercises to come from the particular domain of special interest.
Baer’s view is controversial. My inclination is to think that creativity does have a significant general aspect because creativity seems so often to involve combining seemingly disparate ideas. My suspicion is that that there is a neurological basis for this in, to put it crudely, right-brain, left-brain communication channels. The fact that creativity can be stimulated by drugs and travel also suggests to me a general aspect. No one ever says, if you want to master calculus take a “trip” but this does work if you are blocked on some types of creative projects.
Nevertheless, Baer’s view is worth thinking about; he gives more detail to his argument in two academic papers here and here.
My favorite things New Mexico
If I haven’t done one of these in a while, it is because the processes which rule my life keep sending me back to the same states. Here is a new one, since my last visit predates blogging at MR:
1. Entrepreneur: Jeff Bezos, for $75 a year you can step into a new universe. This will go down as one of the most significant innovations of our time. Furthermore, Microsoft was founded in New Mexico and spent its first four years there.
2. Painter: Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O’Keefe are all strong contenders, though they do not hail from the state but rather moved there to work.
3. Museum: Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe. You can take this place as a stand-in for all the superb New Mexico visual arts of old, such as the santos and retablos.
4. Music: James Tenney, most of all his Postal Pieces.
5. Movie, set in: It is hard to think of anything other than Them!, though I suspect there are better candidates. Contact is a good movie.
What else? Cormac McCarthy I have never warmed to, and anyway he moved there later in life. Don’t they have a bunch of astronauts? Is there any popular music from this state not including John Denver? You’ll get a separate report on the food.
The bottom line: It’s a state I’m fond of, and it has contributions in surprising areas.
The very best coverage of the new Charles Murray book
Could it be the lengthy NYT profile of Stevenson and Wolfers? Other than finding material on economists interesting per se, and knowing them a bit, I found this profile relevant for two reasons. First, successful economists really can earn a good amount these days, and at relatively young ages. They could probably earn much more, if that is what they set out to do. Second, there really is a cognitive elite engaged in assortative mating, and the children of those couples will have a big head start. Furthermore that cognitive elite is now global (Justin is from Australia). No, Murray’s econometrics do not demonstrate all of his conclusions, but nonetheless this family is a walking embodiment of The Bell Curve, not to mention the new book. (I would have preferred a piece which explored this irony with more depth.) Some of you are negative in the comments on my post, but the facts about the Wolfers/Stevenson family are hardly exceptional, conditional on a few other variables but of course strongly conditional on those variables. They own a Noguchi table, we own a Noguchi lamp (cheaper than you think, by the way). They ban sugar, we do not, but there is no junk food, sugary or otherwise, kept around our house. My professional writing rails against junk food. I was disappointed that their nanny has only a Master’s degree. The nanny in our family has a Ph.d and is a well-known economics blogger.; going back in time, the two other nannies were a professional linguist and translator and an engineer (they are sometimes called “the grandparents”). Get the picture? The rhetoric in the profile is oddly non-self-conscious, perhaps in a way that makes the couple look less charismatic than they really are, and that too is worth thinking about. Parts of the profile felt like a bit of a slog to me (despite my interest in the topic), but I suspect not to most NYT readers, and of course we are seeing a highly skilled and experienced journalist at work along with a first-rate team of editors.
Always try to give things the more subtle reading.
Merry Christmas!
Are we stagnating aesthetically?
Some of you have been emailing, asking for my opinion of this recent Kurt Andersen Vanity Fair article. Here is the summary introductory paragraph:
For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.
There is plenty more at the link. A serious response would require a book or more, so let me offer a few conclusions, noting that it’s not possible in blog space to defend these judgments at any length. This is all about aesthetics, and it is distinct from the TGS technology argument, though one might believe that technical breakthroughs are needed to usher in aesthetic innovations, and that slowness in the one area would lead to slowness in the other. That’s not a claim I’ve ever made, but it’s worth considering even if it can’t be settled very easily. In any case, here’s my view of the evidence:
1. Movies: The Hollywood product has regressed, though one can cite advances in 3-D and CGI as innovations in the medium if not always the aesthetics. The foreign product is robust in quality, though European films are not nearly as innovative as during the 1960s and 70s. Still, I don’t see a slowdown in global cinema as a whole.
2. TV: We just finished a major upswing in quality for the best shows, though I fear it is over, as no-episode-stands-alone series no longer seem to be supported by the economics.
3. Books/fiction: It’s wrong to call graphic novels “new,” but they have seen lots of innovation. If we look at writing more broadly, the internet has led to plenty of innovation, including of course blogs. The traditional novel is doing well in terms of quality even if this is not a high innovation era comparable to say the 1920s (Mann, Kafka, Proust, others).
4. Computer and video games: This major area of innovation is usually completely overlooked by such discussions.
5. Music: Popular music has been in a Retromania sludge since the digital innovations of the early 90s, but classical contemporary music continues to show vitality and it is even establishing some foothold in the concert hall and in nightclubs too. Jazz has plenty of niche innovation, but it’s not moving forward with new, central ideas which command the attention of the field.
6. Painting and sculpture: Lots of good material, no breakthrough central movements comparable to Pop Art or Abstract Expressionism. Photography has seen lots of innovation.
7. Your personal stream: This is arguably the biggest innovation in recent times, and it is almost completely overlooked. It’s about how you use modern information technology to create your own running blend of sources, influences, distractions, and diversions, usually taken from a blend of the genres and fields mentioned above. It’s really fun and most of us find it extremely compelling. See chapter three of Create Your Own Economy/The Age of the Infovore.
8. Architecture: Slows down after 2008, but there were numerous innovative blockbuster buildings prior to the crash.
Today the areas of major breakthrough innovation are writing, computer games, television, photography (less restricted to the last decade exclusively) and the personal stream. Let’s hope TV can keep it up, and architecture counts partially. For one decade, namely the last decade, that’s quite a bit, though I can see how it might escape the attention of a more traditional survey. Some other areas, such as the novel, global cinema, and the visual arts are holding their own and producing plenty of small and mid-size innovations.
Although that is a relatively optimistic take on the aesthetics of the last decade, it nonetheless supports the view that aesthetic innovation relies on technological innovation. Most (not all) of the major areas of progress have relied on digitalization, and indeed that is the one field where the contemporary world has brought a lot of technological progress as well.
Lend out the Pieta to the Louvre?
Asher Meir writes to me:
You wrote once that Italy doesn’t have to sell the Pieta to pay off its debts. But maybe it could create a lot of credibility by putting it in hock. In general, a country could create a lot of credibility by issuing bonds backed by various cultural treasures that they would find it plausibly inconceivable to forgo.
Italy could sell “Pieta bonds”.
Of course it could never work, even though it makes economic sense. Italy would feel it is being taken advantage of. Which is precisely the problem behind a lot of other proposed deals too. Under what conditions could the French government actually keep the Pieta and find the benefits from keeping higher than the benefits from sending back?
The entire “tighter sanctions against the fiscal violators” approach, now on the table, encounters exactly this problem. It’s already the case that the eurozone is unwilling to pull the plug on Italy.
*Reading my Father*
The author is Alexandra Styron, daughter of William, who is portrayed as manic depressive. I found this memoir compelling, and it has been making many “best of” lists. Here is one excerpt:
By all accounts, my sister was a cheerful baby, smart and pretty, with an easy manner. In short, an ideal firstborn. Daddy was enthralled. “Take a lesson from me and don’t get too interested in the child,” Irwin Shaw wrote in a congratulatory letter. “Since Adam’s first birthday, I’ve barely written a word, as it is much more interesting to watch all the subtle and terrible currents that run through a complex human being than to sit at a typewriter and battle with the comparatively flat and lifeless material of art. Dole the child out to yourself in small doses, for your career’s sake.”
You can buy it here.
*The Lives of the Novelists*
Here is a mini-review from today’s FT, from their best books of the year discussion:
Lives of the Novelists, by John Sutherland, Profile, RRP£30
The fruit of decades of reading and research, Sutherland’s quirky compendium offers selective mini-biographies of 294 English novelists including Jeffrey Archer but not, oddly, Lewis Carroll or PG Wodehouse. A witty and enjoyably wide-ranging work.
The book has a remarkable density of information, as virtually every sentence tries to teach you something. I have never read a book quite like it, definitely recommended.
Sentences of art and beauty
Indonesia’s growing wealth has also came into play as its collectors compete for the Balinese work of Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias.
And the explanation is here:
“Before the Indonesians wanted the art but didn’t have the money to pay for it,” said Martin. “Now they do.”
At Christie’s in May, Covarrubias’ 1932 “Offering of Fruits for the Temple” set an auction record for the artist at $1.02 million, This week Covarrubias work on paper also hit a new high, selling for $290,500 also at Christie’s.
Here is the full report, mostly about the boom in Latin American art.