David Byrne's Journal

12.14.11: "You 'Da Boss?" Collective Creation

2011-12-14T11:27:00-05:00

There are many forms of collective creation that run the whole spectrum, from merely coloring in someone else’s existing drawing to the actual creation of a thing from scratch. Often this spectrum of distinction is lost in the rush to embrace the amazing and wondrous, collectively created works like Wikipedia and, um, Zagat guides—these being held up as models for the possibility of collective creation of all and every kind of activity—from politics to newspapers. I’ve maintained a fair amount of skepticism about the idea of crowd sourced creative works for some time, which is not to say some of them don’t work incredibly well. But, they’re not all the same. To me, even though Wikipedia is indeed an example of the wisdom of crowds producing an amazing work—one that is possibly better than those that are top down in their inception—it seems that the claims made for this kind of creative process are often a little misleading. Each Wikipedia entry is not vetted or added to by everyone—by the lumped masses—but by self-appointed experts on each subject. Then, after these experts have had their say, we, the masses, tend to accept on faith that they have haggled amongst themselves over a particular subject to determine what will be included and the accuracy of what is in the entry. Of course, everyone considers themselves an expert on some subjects…

I’m not going to claim that only folks nominated as experts should be trusted to manage our world and create the things we enjoy and consume. I’d be the last person to believe that a college degree or experience in a field gives one a guaranteed wise perspective—would you trust a Rumsfeld? Often, it’s the perspective of amateurs that is more accurate than the professionals who are embedded and entrenched within their field of work. That said, nature seems to have found that some level of specialization is proven to work on some level. Though it seems clear that certain ants are designated as “experts,” and are deferred to as such, I admit that I have a bias against deferring to experts. Despite the sound social management system of ants that is responsible for their long survival—a system that we often believe that we might do well to emulate—I refuse to believe that the bankers who got us into our current economic mess are the best minds to get us out of it. Similarly, I sense that one maybe shouldn’t trust the military in evaluating and establishing their own budgets. It happens over and over—the police have proven they can’t be trusted amongst themselves. Economists? Oh, forget it.

The popular hive analogy, which compares insect societies to human interactions and creation, is often applied to the idea of many doing and creating what one alone cannot. Even in the hive though, there are “experts”—worker bees are given right of way to accomplish their tasks by the other bees because it seems that everyone recognizes no one can do their job as well as they can—there is not a mass consensus meeting or discussion amongst the entire hive about the role of these worker bees. For example, it is assumed they know best how to forage for food. Like the worker bee, the area of expertise of Wikipedia contributors may vary widely, potentially covering topics from Glee to String Theory. When one of these experts writes an entry, and then annotates and/or expands on it, we (in some sense) assume they are wise and perceptive in their particular field. Also, we assume these contributions have been vetted by that expert’s peers—not by everyone. So we, the non-expert readers, give respect.

With ants it is similar. Certain worker ants (all of whom are female) have designated tasks. A quick smell, via an antennae brush, identifies what a specific worker is best at doing—foraging, cleaning debris elimination, guarding—and no one tries to “tell them” how to do their jobs. There are no bosses. It is possible for the worker ant to switch jobs, but usually, as with humans, that opportunity arises when the colony is relatively young. After that, the job pool, one’s career, is more or less set. Though, there are always reserves of other ants underground that are recruited if a new food source suddenly becomes available (Thank you Deborah Gordon’s TED talk 2003).

One of the ways an ant figures out what is going on is oddly similar to the Google search algorithm—it “counts” how many encounters it has with a specific kind of worker. Based on these encounters, the ant can deduce that there is, for example, a major clean up in progress. Instructions and situations in progress are not “described,” but are inferred by the aggregate of encounters.

The consensus “rules” of OWS were (are?) possibly a more accurate example of real crowd (or democratic) decision-making. How did the OWS group, who struggled to maintain their leaderless and self-organized identity, ever make decisions? They endorsed the idea of consensus as opposed to voting. The word consensus comes from a Latin word meaning, “feel together”. Consensus means everyone (eventually) arrives at a place where they will give consent, although they might not be in 100% agreement. The distinction seems a little vague to me.

The well-reported use of hand signals, as a means of reaching this consensus, was adopted (microphones weren’t allowed due to noise restrictions) by the movement. One would be very tempted to ask who exactly decided that consensus would be the mode for decision-making? Who and how was that decision made?

(Image Source)

Many of the participants found the assembly and consensus reaching process a bit tedious and boring—some would wander off from lack of interest.

Maybe the ants are on to something. They too have no leader (the queen lays eggs but doesn’t manage the colony via smell, as used to be thought) nor do they have a central control. On the surface, this sounds very democratic—even anarchistic. A completely leaderless society—that works! Although it might appear this way to us when viewed from a distance, you, as an individual ant, are very much programmed by your evolved instincts and your innate reaction to smells and behaviors. While having no leader might imply absolute freedom, there are other restrictions among insects. The leader, the guide, the rules, are not external, but are built into you as an individual.

Therefore, it statistically appears as if there is no free will in the ant colony. Each individual seems to go about their task without questioning things or stopping to ponder why or what for. But, maybe on the individual level, to each ant, they feel like there is, in fact, free will. Maybe they do agonize and make specific decisions. Maybe they have simply “learned” that following the aggregate tends to give the best results for the colony as a whole. They may feel that they have made a personal decision to join along with everyone else; they may also feel that they have acted of their own free will and are not forced into joining a specific program or activity. They’re acting in consort because, from their point of view, they want to…. or so they may be telling themselves. Maybe, their “government” is internalized.

According to Gordon, when you look inside of ant colonies, the behavior seems pretty haphazard. They’re not the well-oiled, smoothly functioning machines we might expect from a species that has survived for millions of years. As in human society, the behavior of individuals is not predictable. We all, as individuals, appear to be acting on our own—but just as it is with the ants, there is a kind of decision-making based around aggregate behavior. I’m not sure how this translates exactly—how this process works with people. Does it mean that if everyone is “drinking the Kool-Aid,” I intuitively “decide” that I should too? If everyone watches Kim Kardashian, then I better join the bandwagon and do what everyone else does? If the ants appear to have some sort of free will on an individual level, but in actuality it is mostly an illusion, does the same apply to us?

How Does Anything New Come Into Existence?

I’m curious as to whether or not what we call creative works can come into fruition as a result of the contributions of countless individuals. Must a creative work inevitably be guided by the tyranny of one person’s vision—or at least a very small group (Pixar films, for example)? Can the crowd write a great novel? A symphony, or pop song? A feature film? (Hollywood films are notoriously made by a committee—and the results speak for themselves). Do we all have a kind of innate (possibly unconscious) wisdom that can profitably guide us to influence and direct the track and arc of a creative work? Do these deep instincts, if trusted and tapped into accurately, and without bias, result in a work that is inevitably true? Is this why we feel cheated when a Hollywood movie has an obviously happy ending tacked on? Do we sense that the instinctively “true” ending was abandoned? Or, is this why the happy ending was tacked on in the first place? Is the happy ending what we instinctively want in a narrative? (Is this making any sense?). If, to some extent, a sense and structure of narrative is innate, then are authorship and writing skill overrated? Superfluous?

A parallel to the question of how new works come into being are some ideas that seem to be related to collective creation, but that might not really be the same at all. Are open-ended works (e.g. video games in which the players determine details of the story) and self-generating works—such music and visual programs that accept outside input but are designed to endlessly generate content on their own—truly collectively created works?

There is an established tradition of what are called indeterminacy in music—a not so new idea that has now migrated to digitally programmed works (musical and otherwise). In these earlier musical works, used by John Cage and many others, the player was allowed to determine how long to hold a note—and sometimes, what note to play from a set of given choices. Terry Riley’s “In C” is like this, as is Cornelius Cardew’s “The Great Learning.” These are all works that almost always end up sounding wonderful, despite being as open ended as they are. The marvel is why they don’t go off the tracks. We expect that, given free reign, chaos will inevitably result. Though, it doesn’t seem to—not always, anyway.

Maybe what is key is that the overall shape of the work has been cleverly pre-determined. There is free will involved in the choices the players are given, but within very severe limitations. One might say that this process is a way of fostering the illusion of free will. Maybe it proves that these compositions and social mechanisms, when cleverly “designed” can appear as though they allow for free will but, in actuality, they involve lots of restrictions—which have the effect of guiding the structure and the finished work to be something beautiful.

Cage used other devices to introduce chance and randomness into the “decision-making” process, but the “programmer” was always lurking. More recently in music, this process has been moved into the digital realm—with algorithms that do their best to randomize the choice of notes, along with other aspects of a composition. The Buddha Machine is a good example of this—a transistor radio sized device that plays endlessly changing sounds, chosen by the program, from a given set of notes and sounds. There is, as one would expect, no arc to these compositions—no beginning, middle and/or end. They are merely states of being, not substitutes for narrative.

These indeterminate scores can be viewed a bit like the literature that emerges out of oral traditions—the great epics and sagas. The process is not so different than what occurs in a lot of folk music as well—blues songs that get passed from area to area and subtly altered each time someone new sings them… but the main thrust of the story and the song tends to remain consistent. Everyone recognizes the song despite every interpretation being absolutely distinct.

There was a text version of this process called Consequences. It’s a bit like Mad Libs, though it originated much earlier (pre-1918). One creates a sentence by filling in the following blanks (from Wikipedia, of course):

1. A Man's name
2. A Woman's name
3. A Place name
4. He said to her…
5. She said to him
6. The consequence was… (A description of what happened after)
7. An outcome

Then the resulting “story” is read (for example):

Scary Bob met voluptuous Alice at the zoo. He said, "This is delicious.", she said, "Hit me baby one more time." He gave her a red rose, she gave him cholera. The consequence was that they eloped to Mexico. The world said, "the femme fatale will always win".

Could one write a whole book this way? William S. Burroughs used an aleatory (chance) literary technique that he and Brion Gysin popularized, called cut-ups. Cut-ups are created in two steps: by cutting a finished text into pieces and rearranging the words and then, by folding the linear text and looking for resonant bits of text when overlapped and placed next to one another.

(Image Source)

There is the visual equivalent—collectively produced artwork like the Exquisite Corpse drawings. The Surrealists created these images based on an old parlor game. The idea is that 3 or more people contribute to a “body” by drawing on a folded piece of paper and then passing it around without knowing what the next person will contribute below the fold. Restricted by the rule that one is obliged to draw either the upper, middle or lower portions of the body the resulting monsters are, yes, beautiful and strange things whose authorship we could say belongs to an invisible 4^th entity.

Here is a Chimera collectively drawn by Joan Miro, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy. They sort of didn’t adhere to the normal rules (in which you are to add normal body parts appropriate to your segment):

(Image Source)

I’d argue that all of these forms are in fact authored. The programmer that sets the ball in motion, the one who determines the set of simple rules is, in these cases, the author. While you often get marvelous things through these algorithms, I’d be inclined to think that what you don’t get is a coherent story arc, complex characters or even a consistent vision—musical, lyrical or visual. That is, unless the framework has already been provided by a “programmer.” Follow a framework modified with embellishments, modification, additions, etc.—as in the oral tradition of storytelling—and, as a result, you get a coherent form.

Some of our most resonant works of literature have emerged out of the tradition of oral storytelling and do not have a single author credited. The tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights, for example, is composed of stories that have all been embellished, edited, written and molded by an unknown multitude of individuals over a long period of time. The stories hold up, and continue to move us today, as do the folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana epics are similarly composed by a host of unknowns, as is the Bible. These all were all derived from oral traditions—in which each storyteller would add subtle embellishments and refinements to suit the local culture, time and place. The basic story arc would tend to be maintained and serve as a skeletal framework—though, in many cases, we can see where successive refinements over time completely altered the “message” of the tales. We know this because people wrote down some of these tales at different stages of their evolution and transformation.

The Old Testament tales are, in many cases, embellished versions of stories that were told (sometimes even written down) for hundreds of years. Though, by the time the stories came to exist as they do today, they had already morphed into tales that emphasized the overthrow of the older matriarchal society and spirituality by a more rigid patriarchal one. (There’s a very nice analysis of this in the back of the Crumb comic version!)

Even though these particular tales changed their emphasis in a majority of cases, usually not too much fundamentally changed in the narrative framework. The embellishments were mostly superficial… until the cumulative effect of the changes became something more profound. When reading these works, one can often sense the fragmentary nature of the chapters and episodes—many of which contradict one another. At other times a plot point or explanation is dropped for political reasons, leaving one wondering why there was a sudden shift in tone of a story or the behavior of a character. A single author would be less likely to contradict him or her self. But often, if we take each single episode—such as a single Grimm’s tale or one of the tales out of the Arabian Nights—it is often consistent, incredibly well constructed, efficient and resonant—like a tool honed by use over centuries.

These stories behave like living creatures that have evolved over time—adapting themselves, over and over again, to the psychological needs of the listeners and the creative embellishments of the narrators and their audiences. They’re not, and never were, fixed stories with an Ur version—there never was a primal text. They survive and maintain their resonance by mutating, changing and adapting to the world around them. As soon as they become fixed, they die (in a sense). They become a work that is somewhat ossified—rooted in a specific time and place. Then, the core narrative quickly resurfaces in another form—a film, TV show or popular novel.

Folk, blues, house music, pop, hip hop and lots of other musical genres might be viewed the same way—not so much as individual songs or acts of unique creativity, but as the cumulative result of many creative narrators pitching in to tweak a form that already has a given and collectively accepted shape and framework. The equivalent of the narrative arc of a story is already there in these song forms, and we songwriters, producers and singers are the storytellers in our own oral tradition—putting our own spin on an existing form, but not making substantial changes in the form itself. The point is, a lot of music that we think of as being individual acts of creation might actually be narrators contributing to what might be viewed as a larger epic work.

Though I am not a griot or epic bard, I am in my home studio making subtle adjustments and contributions to a form that came before me, and will later be picked up by others. I have the illusion of free will, of creating work and forms from scratch, but I am merely embellishing. Of course, successive embellishing will eventually lead one far from home…

That said—I believe I lean towards work that has a consistent vision. Don’t we want to feel that the version of a song, movie or narrative we have just spent time listening to, reading or absorbing is consistent—that every part was considered by its author, so as to adhere to a coherent vision? We assume that collective works don’t have the same intention as authored works. This view doesn’t totally exclude the author as a creative contributor to an ongoing epic storytelling effort though, as one still might hope for consistency from a narrator, songwriter or storyteller, even if the individual works that result are essentially modifications of something recurring and familiar.

Authorless Architecture

Architecture Without Architects is the title of a wonderful picture book, by Bernard Rudofsky, that came out in 1964. The pictures are presented as evidence that exquisite, “authorless,” architecture has existed for thousands of years—and that, despite not being designed by one person, it rivals individually designed works in beauty and, above all, practicality. One might view the simple and elegant furniture of the Shakers the same way. The buildings Rudovsky chose evolved much in the same way folk stories and oral narratives did—to best meet the demands of each place and society, while also maintaining an aesthetic and spiritual appeal.

Was the latter aspect an unintended consequence of meeting local and practical needs? Could one say that these entities that have evolved over time tend to be beautiful because we recognize that some deep parts of ourselves are expressed and manifest in them? Is the beauty a layer that is, in fact, serving another equally practical function that is as important to human beings as keeping out the cold or ventilation? Is the need for beauty and elegance also something practical?

It seems that the beauty these buildings possess is not an aspect added on, an appliqué, but an integral consequence of every other aspect of these kinds of works. When every other aspect is true and integrated, maybe you automatically get beauty. These buildings and houses have evolved so that they have a spirit of life deeply ingrained in them. By recognizing this, by sensing that these qualities are in there, we find the resulting structures beautiful.

In his book Rudovsky includes single-family homes, as well as monumental works.. All of them were molded over time by a kind of collective will and impulse; none were built by just one designer. The design is not open to anyone-—it’s clear that not everyone in the community would have voted on where the chimneys go—there are folks who know how to thatch a roof, for example, better than others. But, it’s the evolutionary process that tells the community, and the specialized workers within it, that maybe there is, indeed, a best place for a chimney or a best size for eaves—and that this wisdom shouldn’t be ignored.

Here is a vernacular plantation house in Hawaii and the Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu:

(Image Source)

There are other types of architecture, not designed by “individuals,” and these are not so different from the mosque above—like these giant termite mounds in Australia (near Darwin):

(Image Source)

Here’s a cross section—they’re not just mounds of dirt or refuse from the tunnels:

(Image Source)

The chimneys and air vents from underground allow the hot air, in the parts of the world where these things are built, to escape—so that the precious nurseries deep inside can maintain a constant temperature. It’s a fairly sophisticated bit of building and HVAC for a creature whose brain is the size of a pinhead. However, one might say that if you combine all of those pinheads, you get a more substantial mental capacity.

However, I’m not sure size is what matters. Heh heh. A fairly simple algorithm—rules and behavior that don’t require a lot of brain cells—can set in motion what, in retrospect, seems like a very complex bit of creation. So if over time evolution arrived at a structural solution by adapting to the situation at hand, and by using just a few rules, When these rules are set, the mental capacity of each individual doesn’t have to be so “big” at all. Everyone (or all of the workers anyway) can, and does build these incredible things instinctually.

Recently, there was a short film posted on the web of some scientists who poured concrete into an anthill to see what the network of nurseries and tunnels might look like. After the concrete (10 tons of it!) set, they painstakingly dug away the surrounding dirt to reveal an entire (miniature) futuristic city.

Here’s a blurry still:

(Image Source)

And a blurry close-up of passageways and chambers:

(Image Source)

And a link to the video (it’s short):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFg21x2sj-M

It’s easy to see how incredibly impressive the city is that these little things constructed. Overlap this town over a medieval city in Europe, in the Maghreb or in the Middle East, and one might see an almost an identical layout. It makes one think that: (A) we haven’t come so far, and (B) maybe the “hive mind” concept is more literal than metaphorical. Maybe we have retained elements of the insect mind, and we use and are guided by that, to order, build and organize our own cities. Like storytellers and songwriters, maybe in urban planning, we are merely embellishers too—we are reworking the same forms over and over, making slight adjustments to fit our own needs.

Others have preferred to view the social insects, not as social cities composed of individuals, but as single super organisms—more like one being made up of millions of semi-autonomous crawling “cells.” This would mean that these towering termite mounds and the tunnels of the ant colonies might represent the clothing or shell that belongs to a collective whole being. The mound is like the skeleton and the skin of a large creature. This view makes the cooperation of the little critters seem more like the cooperation and symbiosis of the cells and bacteria that make up our own bodies. The chambers are like the organs in our own bodies—each with its specific function and specialized job functionaries.

If we make that leap, then we too can be seen as sophisticated works of “soft” architecture. Just like the cities of the ants, bees and termites, one would never imagine that our little cells would be able to individually make and organize a structure as complex as we are. If we reorient our viewpoint, and can see ourselves as a kind of ant colony, we get a frightening insight that maybe our sense of free will is not much more than that of the ants and termites. Our most beautiful cities, and maybe we too, are not much more sophisticated than those of the social insects.

12.13.11: Odyshape

2011-12-13T14:27:00-05:00

I recently read an article about a group of Swedish neuroscientists: Björn van der Hoort, Arvid Guterstam and Professor H. Henrik Ehrsson, who conducted an experiment called, “Being Barbie.” Their findings explain how our perception of our bodies determines our perception of the world. Here’s a summary of what they did:

They built a rig that allows them to substitute other body images for your own. Their experiment was based on two models—a tiny sized Barbie (or Ken) and a 16-foot tall giant sized model. You lie on a table, wear a video helmet and when you look down at “yourself," you see not your own torso and legs but these models as if they were your own body. They encourage this belief by having a stick touch your leg while another stick touches your virtual body. You see the padded stick touch the Barbie body and at the same time you feel something—another padded stick—touching your own leg. This really locks the illusion into place.

(Image Source)

So far, this might seem merely like a nifty parlor trick—albeit one I’d love to participate in. But there’s more to it than simply fooling the eye.

What the scientists point out is that their “trick” emphasizes that your perception of the whole world is affected by the size of your body image. If you perceive your body as Barbie size then the chair across the room now seems both giant and incredibly far away. That hand that touches your leg, in that instance, appears to be that of a giant. Like Alice after she drank from the vial, you believe that you have shrunken (or grown in the case of the giant body model they built).

What you see in the room doesn’t change. Your eyes, with their stereoscopic vision and depth perception, should tell you that the room and its furniture are normal. Wouldn’t one think that our eyes would at least tell us the “truth”—that the chair is still where it was and is a normal size chair? Wouldn’t you think that our eyes would counteract this trickery? That we’d instinctively realize that the doll body was a Barbie torso and that the chair is not miles away and giant? We assume that it is our eyes that transmit to us a kind of objective visual truth—but it seems these other factors can and do influence how we interpret what we see. They can override that “objective” truth. It seems that our “vision,” or at least how we interpret it, is quite malleable, and our body image has an unexpectedly huge influence on how we see the rest of the world. One can only imagine what an anorexic or bulimic young woman sees! Maybe these women would benefit, or at least get a measure or relief, from wearing the rig and experiencing their body image in the form of little Barbies?

This experiment is evidence that our vision, our image of the world around us, is even more subjective than we might have thought it was. What we believe is our “true” version of the world around us, a vision we assume matches that of everyone else, is merely the one (among many) that accommodates and is modified by our particular body image. Who knows how many other factors might similarly affect our image of the world?

It was then a small leap from discussing this experiment with some friends to a conversation regarding our current situation in which we are continually confronted with unreal body images in magazines and ads. Surgically enhanced, photoshopped and artificially tanned bodies are nothing new. For decades, Playboy centerfolds have been a mash up of drawings and cartoons aimed at men and photographs of what are purported to be real women. The visual clues that trigger a man’s lust, along with other factors that would make a woman desirable, seemed, in these images, fairly easy to exaggerate and emphasize. With digital and other image manipulation techniques, combined with surgical modification, we now have a whole race or super people parading in front of our eyeballs. Not just in centerfolds, but on TV, newspapers, tabloids, fashion magazines and yes… in real life. I recall sitting at on outdoor café in West LA marveling at the new heightened version of the female species that paraded in front of me. Now, the poor male who has evolved over millennia to respond instinctively to such clues is continually manipulated and completely helpless. For example, one might “know” that what they are looking at is photoshopped but, as in the Swedish experiment, one’s gut responds, as it will, despite any rational cognitive dissonance.

Likewise, women who view similar types of images—for example, the surgically and digitally enhanced images of celebrities and models—are also subject to succumbing to the power of these new bodies. Maybe not necessarily as objects of lust (as some men might instinctively to the centerfolds), but as body images they might emulate and aspire to. They too believe that what they are seeing is “real,” despite intellectually knowing that a picture has been doctored or an actress, reality star or celebrity wife surgically enhanced. These visual buttons and triggers that are being pressed are deeply ingrained in us as a species—mere rational thinking is powerless as a way of discounting them. Ordinary women (and men) naturally then hold up these doctored images of an ideal humanity as something to be strived for. Despite knowing better, they believe that this look can (and should) be achieved through a mostly simple and prolonged effort. Stick to one’s exercise regimen and maintain one’s diet and then, you too will look like the folks in the magazines. Sure, some surgery wouldn’t hurt either. This, we know, is a recipe for heartbreak… or even worse, a kind of insanity—as no amount of exercise and diet will ever make a human being look like the images being dangled in front of us.

We instinctively want to believe that a merit-based world exists—that with some hard work, focus, time, effort and perseverance, you too will be rewarded with the body you see on the billboard. The same also applies to our notions of economic well-being. As a result, you have Bill O’Reilly and Newt Gingrich (among many others) implying that poor people are poor simply because they aren’t trying hard enough (note the clever segue from Barbie to politics and economics). The implication is that poor people, or anyone who isn’t successful, just aren’t applying themselves or trying hard enough. Also, that less than fabulously attractive people similarly aren’t going to the gym enough. The corollary is that Bill and Newt are as wealthy as they are because they worked hard. This, excuse me, is bullshit. Donald Trump definitely received a few handouts from his father.

Sadly, this dissonance between what is possible image wise, and what is being aimed for by many normal women, is making many of them nutso. They exercise like crazy but still don’t quite match the girl on the red carpet. What gives? Must one need eat even less or switch to a new exercise regimen?

I was told recently that fashion designers and retailers now have to alter the cut of women’s garments to accommodate the extreme diets and surgically enhanced bodies that prevail among certain classes and in specific regions of the US. This swath of enhanced and altered bods runs from southern California across the southwest to Florida and Georgia. The silicone belt, one might say. Clothes cut to fit unenhanced, naturally evolved women’s bodies don’t fit these gals anymore… or at least they tend to look weird in them because they need clothing that accommodates a disproportionately bigger top and a smaller bottom.

Spent author and evolutionary psychologist, Geoffrey Miller suggests that these new body images are short-circuiting the criteria of evaluation for mate selection that has evolved over eons. Sexual selection is the other aspect of Darwin’s theory. Darwin proposes that how and with whom we mate with is at least equally as important to our “survival” and determines the course of evolution. For example, it used to be that a woman with perky breasts probably indicated that she is under a certain age. The same could be said for indicators such as lack of wrinkles, thin waists and non-grey hair. From a Darwinian point of view, these clues point to these women as prime candidates for mates—they appear both healthy and of prime child bearing and rearing age. According to Miller, these, along with similar markers, no longer can be guaranteed to signify what they have for eons. These days our rational sense might tell us that a woman or man is of a certain age, but now quite often the visual cues don’t match—there is a weird conflict between what we see and what we “know.” Which are we to believe? Will we be like the participants in the Being Barbie experiments and the men ogling centerfolds? Will our instincts override our “knowledge?” It seems they usually do. Advertisers and fashion magazines know this, and use it to their advantage.

One might read all this as a criticism (and probably some of it is) of these increasingly ubiquitous body modifications and enhancements. Although, one could equally say that if God didn’t want us to use the tools at our disposal—be they scalpels or pixels—then he wouldn’t have invented plastic surgery or Photoshop. Like “dressing to impress,” maybe these tools are just medical and digital extensions of our natural tendencies to put our best foot forward. In which case, we’ll collectively just have to adapt to this new wrinkle (sorry for the pun).

10.26.2011: Bogota Part 1

2011-10-26T13:45:00-04:00

I was recently asked to do a conversation/talk with Janette Sadik-Kahn, our commissioner of transportation, at the AIA New York Center for Architecture Center (American Institute of Architects). Since I imagined there might be some architects or designers in the audience, I took some time to share some of my notes and photographs from my summer Latin American bikes and cities tour. I also took this opportunity to finally organize some of the notes I had taken and post them. So here it is, many months late.

Flashback to July 23, 2011—Oscar Diaz is my host here in Bogota. He worked closely with Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of the city (from 1998-2001 and currently running this year with the Green Party), on various projects to improve Bogota’s system of parks, bike paths, road construction, and mass transit system. He suggested we take a field trip so he could show some of the projects they had initiated. A few of us piled in a van in the morning and headed towards the outskirts of town, to the Kennedy District. In this district there are several small neighborhoods like El Tintal, Bellavista, and El Recreo. Bellavista is a small community that was formerly illegal. It was a place of dirt streets, no sewage, no water, or electricity. There was no property ownership or the various rights that go along with that. Much of that has changed, for the better, since that administration implemented a number of interrelated schemes.

There are lots of these illegal communities around Bogota and other cities here. Invasiones ilegales or piratas (illegal or pirate invasions) are what these communities are called when they begin forming—as they’re completely illegal. They’re called favelas in Brazil, townships in South Africa. They don’t hook up to city water, sewage, or electricity (not legally anyway), but there are still entrepreneurs who will develop real estate in these settlements, if you can call it that.

This is the way they used to look (Oscar took this in 1997):

One might call this old view of this community an example of crowd-sourced architecture—as there are no regulations or governmental guides. The patterns—streets and basic infrastructure—that comes into being could be considered to be emergent. But without sewage or water it’s pretty sad. Maybe that crowd principal can’t really be applied in all areas? Or maybe it needs a framework and set of principals and then it can form and grow around those?

This is the way it looks now (I took this July 2011):

We biked along these bike/ped paths that have been built here. We passed many improvised bike repair stations that have sprung up—a guy with a set of flat fix gear and other tools sets himself up as a pop-up business. Little shops have appeared on the ground floors of many of the buildings since the paths have been built. Needless to say in the intervening years this area got electricity and sewage, streetlights and schools.

Unfortunately, because of the current administration, the neighborhood has gone back to being a tough and dangerous area though it didn’t look it—I was advised to slip my big camera into my bag rather than letting it hang on my neck. Whenever I went off a little on my own, someone from the group would appear close to me, watching out. But now, at least there are possibilities for the residents—the local schools, the library and other centers provide educational services, and the TransMilenio buses that now reach here can connect these folks to employment in town—all of which didn't exist until the bus system (BRT) was created under Peñalosa’s administration.

The bike and pedestrian passages that former Mayor Peñalosa and Oscar instigated go through these communities and provide a network—they give the communities a street-type focus. Also, the “roads” serve as a link to other communities and to the TransMilenio—the rapid bus network that goes to, among other places, the center of the city.

The TransMilenio system, was begun some years ago as a cheaper and less socially and ecologically damaging alternative to the 600 million dollar highway scheme that was ready to go. The buses run really fast and, because you buy the tickets before getting on, there is no time wasted doing ticket business after you board the buses—which pull up to specially built stations along the existing highways as well as inside the city. They pull up, exchange passengers, and then zoom off. Only a masochist would decide to drive his or her own car to work... but there are plenty of those.

In the Americas terminal the station has indoor bike parking, as the inhabitants of that zone get around mainly by bike or by walking.

Would this kind of bus system work in some place like Atlanta, Georgia, where people spend hours and hours stuck in their cars getting from one side of the sprawl to the other?

It was pointed out that the improvements in Kennedy (schools and the bike/ped paths), and those in other barrios, were funded by the savings that accrued after the decision to build the TransMilenio system—a much more cost-effective solution than building the massive highway that had previously been proposed. There are 84km of exclusive corridors in the TransMilenio system. 1.7 million people are transported every day. 7 million people live in Bogota.

Many of the inhabitants of these squatter towns had never been outside of those places. These bike/ped "roads" coupled with the bus system allowed them to get out, get jobs in town, go to school, university etc. The storefront businesses that sprung up along the paths changed the communities in other ways, not only by creating jobs—people began to be more motivated, feel better about their situation, and about the future chances for their kids. My point to the architects was that here were fairly cheap and simple improvements that (coupled with some other changes described below) radically transformed people’s lives.

In order for these "townships" to receive basic city services—sewage, city water, electricity, schools, etc.—the settlements had to be legalized. Usually, previous city administrations would legalize about 12 of them a year but under Peñalosa and Oscar, they legalized 600. To kick the process off, the city would buy some of the vacant land and sell it to developers, as well as putting in some infrastructure such as the bike paths, pedestrian walkways, and public parks—all the stuff the “developers” in those zones would not ordinarily put in but made the areas attractive and more livable. The developers, seeing that clients were drawn to those amenities, began to advertise their future developments as having those features. Here is a developers’ billboard—their advertising features apartments with public spaces and green zones:

The public education in these areas was terrible. According to Oscar, that was partly due to the unions, who were mainly interested in holding onto their positions and increasing their benefits. The city took an initiative and began to build schools and then open them up to bids for private management at the same cost allocated per kid in a public school. In other words, if a kid were allocated $500 a year for a normal public school education, that was what the bidders would receive—but often under private management they could accomplish a lot more for the same amount of money.

It was a way of getting around the unions, and it was very successful. Some of the management of these schools was by Catholic schools that do not really aim to make a profit on their schools the way others might—breaking even is considered OK by the religious schools. The grade results and SAT scores are now equal those in the established private schools.

Critics say this system is privatizing education—a dangerous precedent, but Oscar counters that the parents don't have to pay tuition as they would in a real private school. It has brought a vast improvement in the quality of education to these poor neighborhoods. My friend Sally wrote me: “The education stuff sounds dangerously close to arguments made here for charter schools and the evils of the teachers' unions; I would say [to you] to be careful and be specific, but then again I am wary of such semi-private endeavors in education and you may not be...” I too am wary of the privatizing of education—it could turn into something driven by profits, like prisons are in the US. Can you imagine if a basic service like water were privatized—as is being discussed in some places? Scary. However, Oscar claims in this situation it worked because the education remains public for the children and the city pays the same per student. What changes is the administration, teachers and program—all managed by the private schools and universities that won the public bid.

Next we toured Biblioteca El Tintal—which is a library, auditorium, meeting rooms and cafeteria complex that was built on the site of former garbage dump. In the past, the trucks would go up the ramp and dump their loads, and the resulting heap was eventually carried off to the distant landfill. It was an unsightly dump, and certainly didn’t make the area attractive. These new library complexes—and quite a few were built based on this model—are usually located near a bus transit hub and surrounded by green. They were built by respected local architects and were the sort of eye-catching buildings any city would be happy to have downtown, but here, they were being built in the poorest neighborhoods. Needless to say, besides being a social, educational and cultural center, these places became sources of pride.

Here is an aerial view—the library complex has now been there for a while, and as a result the shanties that used to sprawl out in the area have been replaced by apartment blocks and row houses—all still linked by bike paths and pedestrian walkways:

(Image Source: Oscar Diaz)

Peñalosa fought to keep the former garbage truck ramp as a reminder of what it once was. When it was built there was not much around here—the illegal communities were springing up all around in a kind of squatter anarchy. The parents in those days would plop their kids in front of the TV. Now, the kids are going to schools and can use computers at this center—and teach their parents how to use computers as well.

Here’s an inside view:

Here is one of the other libraries in another outlying area:

(Image Source)

This concept of the library as community hub, and as a transformative catalyst in a community was also picked up by the former Mayor of Medellín, Sergio Fajardo. His realized version was even more spectacular looking, though the effect was similar.

(Image Source)

He brought in Giancarlo Mazzantito as an architect to build Biblioteca España on the edge of a hill, as part of a funky barrio, Santo Domingo, that had been dangerous and was considered a sort of dead-end for its citizens. The newly created plaza soon became a place for folks to meet, mingle and shop in the kiosks that sprung up—a focal point the barrio didn't previously have. The library became both a local and international architectural landmark, and is an example of both how architecture can transform a community, as well as being an example of serious architecture being introduced into a poor neighborhood, as opposed to where it usually is—in city centers where the well-to-do are entertained.

Fajardo did something similar to the BRT bus system connection as well—he linked this formerly isolated community to the main city by public transportation. Though in this case, it wasn’t possible to tag a bus line onto existing roads because the way up that hill is too twisty. So, instead, they made a gondola that takes folks to and from town.

(Image Source)

From Judith Ryser’s Urban Thinker blog:

Fajardo managed to transform Medellin from a place of squalor and despair into a liveable open city. He resorted to architects and urbanists, many of them Colombian (Rogelio Salmona, Giancarlo Mazzanti who designed the Parque Biblioteca Espana, Alejandro Echeverri who was responsible for the spatial development strategy, Sergio Gomez for the Botanial Garden), to realise “our most beautiful buildings in our poorest areas.”

His strategy was to begin in the most deprived areas, gain the trust of the poorest with the lowest chances of succeeding in life. Santo Domingo Savio which houses some 170,000 people was the starting point of the regeneration of Medellin from where it has spread elsewhere. Places for learning, schools, a library were deliberately designed as landmarks to signal a brighter future. Parks (of Wishes, of Bare Feet), internet facilities, an art gallery and a day care centre form part of the public realm open to all, together with new connections to the city at large. Converting dilapidated spaces into places where people can meet without fear and the very young population can play triggered improvements to the precarious abodes.

Openness and, most importantly, beauty was brought to these areas, for which the inhabitants started to feel civic pride.

The locals participated actively in these transformations. Youngsters and the unemployed were given the opportunity to learn building trades. Not only were they able to improve their own abodes, but their skills provided them with jobs and a new lifestyle.

Oscar and I had lunch with Alexandra Rojas, former Deputy Secretary of Finance, who is involved in a program of national accident prevention. She was also involved in a big campaign (Fondo de Prevención Vial—FPV) to reduce road, pedestrian, bike and car accidents. She said that the prevailing attitude is that accidents are destiny—that they come upon us at random and unexpectedly—black swan events that we can’t predict. There is a feeling that you, therefore, can’t do anything about them. Their program, fronted by a very well known TV presenter, was called Epidemic of Excuses. Interesting that when they tested they found that this presenter had a credibility rating of 80%—so she was perfect for getting this difficult message across.

Rojas says all studies show the opposite to the prevailing perception of accidents as random or fate—it showed that traffic accidents, and especially those involving pedestrians, are indeed mostly avoidable, and therefore preventable. However, to prevent them, there would need to be some compromises for drivers such as driving slower (which may mean more traffic jams, though), along with additional crossing stations, more lights, etc. The number of lives that would be saved is not random—it’s completely predictable. Janette Sadik-Khan is figuring out how to do a similar program here in NY to get drivers to slow down. In Colombia, as in the US, it’s an uphill battle. In Colombia, 80% of the population does not have cars, but, as in the US, most of the infrastructure budget goes to accommodate the other 20% who do own cars. As Peñalosa and others have pointed out, these fiscal policies are counter democratic—they privilege a minority, a wealthy minority, of course, over the bulk of citizens. It would be as if sections of public parks were lopped off to create helipads for wealthy businessmen, or as if hire cars were allowed to stop and park wherever they wish. As in many parts of the U.S., lots of roads in Colombia have no place for pedestrians—there is no sidewalk. If you don’t have a car, tough luck. When the largest part of a nations funds go to accommodate a small, wealthy portion of citizens (the drivers, in the case of Columbia), democracy and the rights of the citizens are being subverted in the most profound way—at the level of the pocketbook.

Back in the U.S.A.

In a similar effort to those that Peñalosa, Salas, and Fajardo have done, an organization named Studio H has been active in North Carolina. I read a piece the other day that Alice Rawsthorn wrote for the NY Times in which the organizers were quoted as saying that, similar to Fajardo’s scheme, they focused on young folks becoming involved in the building effort. Many of these folks were around 17 years old and had never made anything in their lives—never held a hammer or sawed wood. So this was a big step that not all of them wanted to take, but for those who did their sense of self was radically changed.

Here is a farmers market they made:

(Image Source)

10.22.2011: The Subjectivity of Perception

2011-10-22T13:04:00-04:00

Ryan and Trevor Oakes at the Cue Foundation

On Oct. 22, I went to an event at the Cue foundation on 25^th St. that featured Lawrence Weschler interviewing identical twins Ryan and Trevor Oakes. Weschler interviewed Ryan and Trevor about their investigations regarding visual perception and their artwork that has resulted from these investigations. The twins, still in their 20s, make some remarkable proposals regarding how we see. Some of these proposals are quite profound and some are also funny—for example, they claim we actually see our noses (and our eyebrows) all of the time... but our brains edit it out.

(Image Source)

If you cover one eye, you’ll notice that you can see your nose poking into the lower corner of your visual “frame”. We’ve all seen this. What the twins deduced, and it seems obvious in retrospect, is that we see our noses all of the time. Our noses always intrude upon our field of vision. Unless you adjust your focus, your brain (the other visual sense organ) conveniently edits this intrusion out—I should say intrusions, as the nose pokes into the field of both eyes. Because we have binocular vision, there is overlap in what we see with our right and left eyes. What is obscured in one eye is partially seen by the other. The brain uses this overlapping information to edit out the information that isn’t usually of much use to us—for example, the view of the tip of our own noses. The twins propose that we always “see” our eyebrows as well—that there’s a ridge that intrudes into the top of our visual field, just as the nose lumps intrude, on the right and left sides.

The twins have collected reproduced works that include well-known artists over the centuries. The paintings all seems to have blurry nose shaped regions that intrude the lower left and right corners of the nose. They surmise that these painters have trained themselves to pay close attention to their visual perception.

The twins realized that our depth perception is limited to that which both eyes can see. Though we have a pretty wide field of vision, which includes our peripheral vision, it is only the region that both eyes can see simultaneously that allows us to see in true stereo 3D. They discovered, by moving an object (like a pencil) around and noticing where it falls out of view from one eye, they could determine exactly where the 3D field ends. The 3D field is vaguely shield shaped.

(Image Source) Ryan’s depth-of-field/effect-of-nose drawing.

The shield narrows because our noses prevent both of our eyes from seeing the indented left and right side simultaneously. Weschler suggested that this might account for the shape of shields because holding a shield in front of your enemy effectively blocks them from having 3D vision of you and your sword, making it harder for the enemy to gauge exactly where your sword is in space… especially if you strike from around the side of the shield that is outside of the range of their stereo vision.

During the event, the twins had us hold our fingers in front of our faces and squint. Weschler describes this exercise in a wonderful piece he wrote about Ryan and Trevor:

Or, all right. Try this: See that tree over there in the distance? Close one eye and with your extended thumb block it out of your field of vision. Straightforward,easy. Now, close that eye and open the other, and your thumb will seem to have shifted a few inches to the side; bring it back over and you can block out the tree again. Okay, now leaving your thumb extended like that, open both eyes and you will notice that you can see the entire expanse before you. Even though your thumb is manifestly blocking the scene, you can see the tree and everything to either side with perfect clarity. And in fact you’re not seeing your thumb. Or rather, your thumb appears as a transparent double ghost of itself. (And it’s by way of little experiments like these, rigorously plotted and pursued with redoubled single-mindedness, that the Twins have recently begun making some of the most original breakthroughs in the rendering of visual space, and in particular that of three-dimensional perspective, since... well, actually, since the Renaissance.)

Rather a big claim, but who knows?

Speaking of the Renaissance, the twins noticed that our field of vision is not flat—as it is portrayed in painting, photographs, maps, and almost everything else since the Renaissance—but spherical. They believe that what we see is a portion of the inside of an imaginary sphere—not through a flat grid or virtual window.

Ryan and Trevor created a sculpture made of curved, corrugated cardboard that demonstrates this phenomena. . If you stand in one specific spot when viewing the sculpture, the lines of sight from your eyes see right through the object (through the holes in the cardboard that describe this curved plane). If the object were flat, our sightline wouldn’t go through it.

Here is a side sculpture of the view:

(Image Source)

and here, more or less, from the best viewing spot:

(Image Source)

The twins were set on finding a way to represent the world as we actually see it. I will give you the short-version of the in-depth explanation Weschler provided. Basically, they made a machine that limited their vision and simultaneously restrained their head movement to keep their vision consistent. Then, they used curved drawing paper to capture, with the hand, what the eye was seeing. Here is one of them using the device in Chicago:

(Image Source)

That’s not a hat; it is actually a rotatable plaster head-holder:

(Image Source)

They explained that light from the sun travels down to earth in a unidirectional fashion. Then, the unidirectional light bounces off of everything and splays out in countless directions. If the light didn’t disperse in this way—if it bounced off more like pool balls hitting the edge of a pool table— then we’d only see things from specific angles.

It seems our eyesight is like this too, but in reverse. Imagine light from everything we see arriving at the lenses of our eyes—two focal points where all those light rays converge. We see portions of the interior of this boundless sphere.

The twins describe the myriad of splaying rays of light as “light foam.”

Here are some quoted phrases:

"light is velvety"

"there is no such thing as glossy—all light is matte" (they explained that even shiny parts of objects that appear glossy to us are actually matte—and if one could visually isolate those bright spots then this fact would be obvious)

Eve Sussman

After the Cue foundation, I went to back to a gallery I’d been to earlier in the day to see more of a film that the artist Eve Sussman created.

A couple of reviews compared it to The Clock—the amazing, and incredibly popular piece that Christian Marclay did. But, the process in Sussman’s piece is completely different. What's similar that the audio tracks overlap scenes in both pieces that were completely unrelated—which has the effect of rendering them perceptually contiguous. As a viewer, it soon becomes obvious that both pieces create a narrative out of something that even though you know in advance that there is not a narrative… it is still engaging and sucks you in anyway. I’ve heard this described as “the will to narrative.”

Here’s an excerpt from the gallery press release that explains it:

An expedition to the banks of the Caspian landed Rufus Corporation [Sussman’s production company] in a dystopian “future-opolis” that became the location for their experimental film noir. Pushing the envelope of cinematic form, the film is edited live in real time by a custom programmed computer they call the “serendipity machine”. whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir delivers a changing narrative—culled from 3,000 clips, 80 voice-overs and 150 pieces of music—that runs forever and never plays the same way twice. The unexpected juxtapositions create a sense of suspense alluding to a story that the viewer composes. Driven by key words, the work seamlessly comes together as a movie—that is not a movie.

You see scenes of a man in a hotel room in a city in Kazakhstan and sometimes, you seem him wandering the town. There are scenes around a massive soviet-era building in remont (Russian for renovation—during certain eras, everything was in “remont”):

(Image Source)

You see other views of the town—its streets and surroundings. All of it is Soviet-dystopian-looking with funky machinery, archaic gadgets and plumbing. In one scene, the man (an actor) talks to a woman on the phone and asks her where she is. She says, “off shore,” and he asks where that is. She follows with, “I can’t give you that information, sir, I am offshore,” very much like a dark future that would have been imagined some years ago.

About one hour into the film I began to see shots I'd seen before and hear bits of dialogue I'd heard before, but re-combined over completely different images. There were new images, voiceovers, music and dialogue appearing as well, but now they were mixed with elements of what I’d seen before. And it still made "sense!"

This was the cool aspect—beside the attraction of imagining a dystopian story taking place in Baku or some weird Russian oil city we never see—we, the viewer, began to instinctively put together these puzzle pieces of a familiar narrative in our heads that was also emotionally compelling. It is sort of amazing that our minds have this ability to be drawn into something that we know that we’ve seen, but is recombinant and contains no actual narrative.

Our brain’s ability to patch together a coherent visual field and construct a seamless looking image that we know is imaginary (there are noses and trees and thumbs blocking parts of our eyesight) is similar to the propensity to construct a narrative—to imagine a chain of cause and effect out of almost random events. What we see and what we experience of the world is largely a lie, made up by us to satisfy some deeply evolved needs and tendencies. We might know it’s a lie but, still, we are helplessly drawn into these perceptual tricks.

9.14.2011: And The Winner Is

2011-09-14T17:39:00-04:00

Last week I was in Lido, adjacent to Venice, where the annual Venice Film Festival is held. I had been invited to be on the jury and, naively thinking it would be a kind of summer holiday—Venice and movies? Why not?—I agreed to participate. It was hugely enjoyable—Marco Mueller, the festival director, and his team gathered an amazing selection of movies for the competition—it was almost too much of a good thing for us on the jury, so many of the films were worthy.

We watched 23 films in about 10 days, which actually meant 3 films a day on many days, as the opening and closing days were just one film each. There were some breaks—time for local wine and Venetian cuisine—but in general time was tight. I did get to spend a couple of days exploring the art Biennale, which is still up.

I reserved some bikes, as Lido, the island where the festival takes place, is absolutely flat and has few canals. There's an abandoned hospital complex at one end, completely open, WWII bunkers, and even a farm down at the far end of the island.

Most of our time though was spent watching movies, along with the public, sometimes with the filmmakers, actors and producers not too far away.

We were pledged to secrecy, a policy that Jury president, Darren Aronofsky, articulated at our first meeting. He had some previous experiences with leaks and rumors when Black Swan had its debut a year ago, so our meetings after many of the movies were intentionally set apart from others and we never had our big jury meetings at restaurants, as other patrons might overhear our comments.

The jury was a wonderfully mixed bunch; Darren, already mentioned, director Todd Haynes, actress Alba Rohrwacher (I Am Love), theater and film director Mario Martone, director Andre Techine, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, a fine artist who works in film—and myself. Surprisingly, we agreed on most of our choices and favorites, and though there was some dissension, there were no absolute splits or divisions—no animosity.

The choice of winners was hard—there were some great films that could have been included and hopefully those will not vanish or remain obscure for long. Though we tried to be objective, it is a subjective task. Despite claiming we were not prejudiced against popular films or big US productions, we ended up with a pretty artsy selection—very rigorous films that play by their own rules, which we felt all did so beautifully once that world and its rules were established. Many of these are not "easy" movies and I hope we didn't pick them because we thought they were "deserving" or would get overlooked otherwise... or to show how refined and arty we are.

Here we are, at a particularly difficult moment— happily resolved—though I look pretty annoyed in this photo! Maybe I was just squinting in the bright sunlight. (Thanks Alba for forwarding this.)

Here are the winners:

The Golden Lion Award—A re-imagining of Faust using much of the original German text by Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov. I met the actor who played Mephistopheles, the devil, after the awards ceremony—he was a dancer, not an actor and used to play in a band. Sokurov made an impassioned speech at the press conference in which he pleaded for more state and foundation support for the arts and humanities, saying that if we lose our deep culture we are nobodies, nothing. He ended by saying, and this could be a bad translation "We don't need the audience, the audience [the public] needs us!" It bordered on arrogance, but he's certainly got a point.

After the awards he got calls of congratulations from Putin, the first of which he didn't pick up, so Putin called again! Word has it that he said the same things to Putin—that without support, much art and culture will not survive.

The Silver Lion Award went to People Mountian People Sea by Shangjun Cai. It's a film that follows the lead character's descent into Hell in search of the killer of his brother. We see a side of China most of us have never seen before—junkies, shantytowns, illegal mines and a criminal underclass—so not surprisingly this film was not announced in the running until it was certain that the director and the film had made it to Venice. Even so, the first screening was cancelled due to glitches in the download of the film file from China, the second screening was interrupted by a fire scare in which the theater was evacuated and the third screening was interrupted as well, for technical reasons. One might be tempted to look for a conspiracy...

Special Jury Prize (effectively 3rd place) went to Terraferma by Emanuele Crialese. This was the most accessible and popular of our selections, a film that deals with changing economics on a small volcanic island off the coast of Italy and the influx of African immigrants/illegals. A timely subject and beautifully shot. Many of the "actors" were real fishermen and recent African immigrants who had gone through similar experiences. One of the main actors, an older man, is, in real life, a clown. The young male lead was worthy of a prize, though we decided early on to "spread the wealth" and not double up prizes.

Best actor went to Michael Fassbender for his work in Steve McQueen's Shame. As with his work with McQueen on Hunger, Fassbender goes places most actors wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. This film is about a sex addict, so you can imagine. Carey Mulligan is surprising as well, miles from the sweet girl we've come to know in recent movies.

Best actress went to Deanie Yip for her role in A Simple Life, a film by Ann Hui. In this film she plays an aging woman (much older than the actress) who is cared for her doting son in a Hong Kong retirement home.

The Marcello Mastroianni Award for best new young actor went to Shota Sometani and Fumi Nikaido for their roles in Sion Sono's Himizu. This film, as Todd said, captures the violent mood swings and alternately inflated and deflated world of adolescence in a way that is sometimes crazy, sometimes brutal and sometimes funny. The film also reflects the increasing disaffection and alienation that young Japanese feel for their elders and their government, especially in the wake of the tsunami and the nuclear events that followed.

Best technical award went to Robbie Ryan for his work as DP on Andrea Arnold's new radical reworking of Wuthering Heights. If you've seen her previous films, Red Road and Fishtank, you know she has strong visual ideas and Ryan has been instrumental in realizing the varying looks in all of those. This one, set on bleak moors of England, was stunning.

Best screenplay went to Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou for Alps, Lanthimos' film about a secretive group who offer to substitute themselves for the deceased for grieving parties. Anyone who has seen his film Dogtooth (which I loved) will know what they're in for. Fairly affectless acting and lots of serious ideas about identity, acting, and some very dry humor as well. Pretty much unlike any film you've ever seen.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from our jury meetings. Maybe I will reveal the film and author of the quotes later. Maybe not.

“It gives the point of view of the occupied, using the visual codes of the occupier.”
“A film in a straightjacket.”
“It is an autistic film.”
“I liked his head shape in profile.”
“It keeps stroking the same spot.”
“It's about what is visible and what is hidden.”
“Messy, combustible and out of control.”
“It captured my bad LSD experience very well.”
“ET as the ideal Italian woman.”
“A chicken leg, well done.”
“In Italy we have problem with the mother.”
“A fairytale in reverse order.”
“The bum stroking represented a kind of contact with nature.”
“The end of the world happens every time somebody dies.”

07.31.11: Bouba/Kiki Thought Experiment

2011-07-31T12:53:00-04:00

Went to Bar Pitti last night with Malu and Will, and at some point one of them asked, regarding the many waiters running in and out, “Do you have to speak Italian (or be Italian?) to work here?”

I replied, “Imagine if they weren’t. Imagine if the menu and the specials scrawled on the little backboard were all in English—and there’s no reason they couldn’t be—would it be the same experience?”

I wasn’t making a value judgment—I hope. I wasn’t saying it was right or better somehow that this restaurant, and many others, are about way more than the food. Or, that the food is any more or less tasty because of the faux Italian ambience. But what difference does it really make? If the wait staff were all NYU gals and the menu said lamb shanks instead of stinco, would they taste any different? Would our enjoyment having dinner be lessened if the quasi-theme park illusion were shattered? How much of an illusion is enough? How much is an enhancement? And when, if ever, does it slide into an over-the-top Vegas simulation, in which the Eiffel tower and the gondolas and canals of Venice are thrown in as well? When does a little bit of illusion connote authenticity to us by enhancing our enjoyment and our experience (illusory as it might be)? When does it either not ring true at all or go so far and become so perfectly accurate, as to enter the creepiness of the uncanny valley? (The theoretical place where robots and animation are almost good enough to pass as real, but just a hair shy—in which case they totally creep us out.)

I’d argue that some ambience does enhance our dining experience—and we are prepared to pay extra for it, as well. I’m not just talking about noise levels, or whether the wait staff is rude or attentive— I’m thinking more about the physical context. A re-creation of a country inn or a trattoria in Roma is bogus—it’s bullshit. It doesn’t really make the food any better. It is even somewhat inconvenient (having to have the blackboard specials translated), but I think we have to admit we love it.

Would a rose smell as sweet by any other name? It seems Shakespeare’s Romeo was partially wrong. Out of context, the smell of a rose (accurately rendered, chemically, and presented in a glass vial) wouldn’t evoke quite the same feelings. How about Juliette? Would she be the same if she were not forbidden fruit? Hardly. That’s to say nothing of the bouba/kiki effect:

This picture is used as a test to demonstrate that people may not attach sounds to shapes arbitrarily: American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India called the shape on the left "kiki" and the one on the right "bouba". (Source)

This research seems to imply that maybe the names of things aren’t arbitrary and switchable—not always. But there are shadings and gradations of restaurants’ (and other institutions’) illusory authenticity—and how do those work? How do we read those? A dumpy storefront restaurant off Roosevelt Ave. in Queens, or in a strip mall in Los Angeles, might have the best Thai food in town, or so we believe. In which case, the banal setting acts as a kind of reverse authenticity indicator—it’s got to be good because the place looks so bad. There’s the McNally brand (Pastis and Balthazar)—over the top recreations of French brasseries that are accurate to a fault. The carefully chipped paint, worn lettering and aged mirrors are often shipped over or painstakingly art directed. In these places, we enter a movie set and we’re the actors living out a scene with our friends—and a few hundred extras, some of whom we might even recognize. Those are extremes, but there are hundreds of less elaborate recreations all over town.

My friend Sally thinks that if these semi-faux places don’t change, if the details and food stay as we remember them for years and years, then they become something else. They enter a meta layer of illusion. They become ‘real’ because they are a part our own histories—part of our personal memories, but we still know we’re not a restaurant on a street in Rome or Paris. That may be true for the places in NY (and elsewhere) that have stood the test of time, but I’m just as interested in the ones that do the blackboard menus, exposed brick walls, some imported country knick knacks, and European staffs that are more ubiquitous and sometimes transitory. These are everywhere. There is the Greek equivalent, the Spanish, the French, the Mexican, and, wait—where are the faux British country pubs?

We have homemade versions as well—faux diners, roadhouses and barns. A lot of American diners were shipped off to Russia, I heard. Little virtual worlds, where taste, smell, music, language and décor evoke a distant (and sometimes long gone) world, transported to four corners of the globe. A constantly shifting shell game of cultural virtual realities—a bit of Mexico now in Osaka, a bit of China in Lyon and a bit of Russia in Manhattan.

This love of illusion applies outside the world of restaurant interiors, too. One form is called a skeuomorph (thank you, Danielle), which is when one material mimics another—usually older and originally functional material. These elements of design serve no useful purpose, but they make the object, even a virtual digital object, feel familiar and comfortable. Plastic items often would imitate the metal, leather or ceramic original (I have plastic sandals in which the “weave” imitates the earlier leather version). Fake wood grain counters, fake marble in many fancy houses. Skeuomorphism is not new—the ancient Greeks and Romans added architectural details to their houses and temples that were fake versions of earlier practical elements, but which were no longer needed.

Digital and web-based skeuomorphing is rampant, especially at Apple—the fake brushed aluminum of the old iTunes screens (some ‘aluminum’ elements have been retained), the drop shadows and shadings of app logos to make them seem like 3D objects, the buttons that look like little round lights, sunken into a virtual panel (which has shading around the edges to make it seem to float on top of the panels/windows ‘underneath’ it), the desktop folders (also shaded and with drop shadows) and the sounds of email—whooshing into the ether. The amount of work that goes into all this is not inconsiderable, and the time these elaborate virtual surfaces take to be rendered must lag a teeny tiny bit as well.

The digital music world is rife with this kind of stuff. Software that emulates the harmonic distortion of a guitar amp (itself evidence of a desire to sound comfortable and familiar) is often designed to look like a physical guitar amp—with knobs and switches and lights that go on when it is in use (that part is actually useful). Other bits of gear mimic pedals, tube limiters, vinyl and other bits of coveted archaic gear.

Maybe those early friendly user interfaces on Mac computers that used icons, folders, and drag and drop motions to imitate physical activities got us hooked. Our intuition leads us to know what to do with these familiar shapes and objects—push a button, open a folder, stretch a picture, turn a knob. How much do the skeuomorphed aspects of the design actually help us? Does creating the illusion that we’re dealing with physical objects make the experience more satisfying?

Wouldn’t you have thought we’d slowly and gently ease ourselves out of the world of illusionism—of digital fake aluminum, virtual buttons and faux wood panels, at least? That a design sense would emerge that is completely unique and integrated with digital interfaces and computer (and phone) software? It hasn’t. Maybe it never will. Maybe these interface designers realize that we function best in our illusory words, be they restaurant interiors or the virtual buttons and bits on our phones. Maybe videogame controller designers will find that what we’re most comfortable with in their world are controllers that resemble the sticks, bows and spears we evolved with—or at least devices that mimic those motions and require those skills.

-DB
NYC

7.29.11: Susana Baca, Peruvian Minister of Culture

2011-07-29T13:47:00-04:00

Pretty amazing! Not only is she not a big pop artist, she's Afro-Peruvian—so even further out of the mainstream. When Luaka Bop began putting out her records, she was pretty much unknown, even in Peru.

Here's an article from Peru (in Spanish).

And here's one from T Magazine (in English).

07.20.11: Lima, Peru

2011-07-20T15:41:00-04:00

Bernardo and I arrived Sunday night and were met by Scott Muller, who works for the Clinton Foundation here. They’re involved in projects that combat global warming. Part of that effort involves advocating for more efficient and sustainable transportation (that’s where I come in) and for use alternative energy sources (geothermal and methane from landfills are 2 possibilities there).

We checked into the hotel in Miraflores, the upscale district overlooking the beach and then we headed out to a local restaurant on some folding Dahon bikes we were leant. Chilean wine and local ceviche—one almost can’t go wrong food-wise in Lima.

One major strand of Scott’s lunch conversation was that Lima is in a real pickle. A former president allowed the importation of a lot of cheap used cars and combis to be used as taxis and buses to combat unemployment -also a kind of populist vote-garnering move—they now have one of the largest per capita taxi fleets in the world! All of these vehicles ran on diesel—really low-grade diesel. The emissions from these vehicles with their super low-grade fuel are 100 times higher than anywhere else. That combined with a few other factors—the extent of the sprawl here, the lack of transportation alternatives (like bikes), and more BRT bus lanes or rail—has resulted in a huge amount of particulate pollution. The pollution rose up, blew east and landed on the glaciers in the Peruvian Andes. One glacier in particular melted super fast as a result—it is now nearly gone due to rapid melting, and that particular glacier was the principal source of Lima's water supply. It took 200,000 years for the glacier to form— a generation to lose. They're now looking at plans to recycle wastewater for irrigation. I'll drink to that.

These places are being forced to take climate change and energy and water issues really seriously, if they don't they are totally fucked—if they aren’t already.

Peru also semi-privatized their water—under Fujimori or his successor, I'm not sure. This didn't raise any flags among the public here, until a Chilean consortium tried to buy the privatized part. Only then did the Lima folks suddenly realize their lives would be at the mercy of a gaggle of Chilean investors whose primary interest would be to see a profit on their investment. 1.5 million residents of Lima don’t have access to piped water.

In reference to the incredibly rapid melting glaciers in this area of the Andes, I was sent a paper detailing the issue. It's from some heavy-duty glaciologist, Lonnie Thompson, in Ohio. Having this stuff made concrete in a place like this makes your skin go all funny.

That, and some other similarly tragic stories, and one can see that places like this—rapidly expanding or already expanded urban regions in countries without deep pockets—are going to get hit by these environmental changes really hard and fast. It's going to happen way sooner than most of us think, and it's going to be more tragic than we can imagine. Lima is home to 8.5 million people. Can you imagine if a city that size that you know—Tokyo, NYC, Mexico City—were suddenly faced with having no water? The Peruvians have therefore been forced to initiate a lot of fairly innovative programs—more on that later. Many of the places on this tour don’t have the financial resources that the U.S., for example, used to have (the U.S., as we know, doesn’t have those resources either, not any more). In New York, we used to build massive and very expensive highway systems, tunnels, underground trains and Tunnel No. 3 to bring water from upstate. Europe and China are spending, or have spent, the cash to upgrade their rail and other systems, but I suspect the U.S. doesn’t yet have the political will to do that. War spending has taken precedence.

Anyway, many of these countries, not having funds to draw on, are forced to find cheaper alternatives, and to be somewhat more innovative and imaginative. Here is their relatively new BRT system-the Metropolitano, the high-speed bus line that goes from Miraflores and other districts into the center city—very quickly. We took it once—it’s fast and it runs on time. As in other cities, it eats up two lanes of an existing highway and the median strip, but runs as fast and efficiently as a train or subway—and is many, many times cheaper to install. The Metropolitano runs on 100% domestic source CNG (natural gas).

OK, one more bit from Scott’s lunchtime download—due to this same rampant use of low-grade diesel, the asthma and lung disease rate here is astronomical. As pointed out by the Mayor, three kids die daily from air pollution or some horrible figure like that. The fog + pollution combo is atrocious, and the new president, Ollanta Humala, is the first one to stand up to the various lobbies and say, “Look, this is happening—we need to respond to it and not just accept it as the price of rapid expansion.”

The car that Scott used to pick us up from the airport runs on compressed gas. They're trying to get a methane extraction system working here, as the piles of garbage on the outskirts of town generate tons of it. At a later dinner we met Matt Evans, a garbage expert from HDR Engineering in Minnesota. He stuck a tube into the landfill and lit it with a lighter and it burned. Needless to say, that same methane is currently leaking into the atmosphere, so tapping it is a great option. Not every landfill is a good candidate for methane extraction—some are too dry (no fermentation/breakdown) and some too wet (in danger of suddenly slipping and shifting), but the climate here seems to be suitable. It doesn’t pour rain very much in Lima, but the sky is light gray and overcast for many months of the year (a look that is referred to as “donkey’s belly”), and there is sufficient dampness to keep the breakdown of waste going.

Scott was an Olympic kayak guy, and later on he used to lead kayak tours in northern Greenland (!) for enthusiastic adventurers. Apparently there are Nazi weather stations up there that are completely intact.

The next day we agreed to go surfing—or have lessons, more accurately. The beach is right next to Miraflores. It’s below a crumbly cliff that runs along the coast—exactly as in Santa Monica.

There is a nice park and bike path that runs along the top of the cliffs, which is not of much use as a mode of transportation, but it is safe and scenic. We rode along it for a few miles to a lunch spot after surfing. There’s the beginning of a similar park n’ path down below, along the beach, but much of that awaits development. As with Santa Monica, much of that area was given over to a narrow highway that runs along the water.

It gets choked with traffic a few times a day, so occasionally there are murmurs about the road being widened. This, of course, would not solve anything, as it would cost a fortune and usurp public land from the beachfront. The few existing developed areas are hugely popular—people hang out, bring picnics and up above there’s a lovers park, too. In a country like this one where a minority own cars, usurping public spaces for cars is in effect privileging a minority of the population over all the others. It’s stealing from the lower larger portion to allocate the smaller wealthier group of car owners.

As we drove along a road coming in from the airport, Scott pointed out the streetlights, saying there’s a huge opportunity to switch out the sodium for LED lights. Then, further on, spying a clump of LED traffic lights, highlighted that they use 90% less energy than incandescent, and won’t burn out for +10 yrs. Here’s a quote from the C40 (a group of large cities committed to addressing climate change) website:

If all 220 million street lights around the world were retrofitted to more energy efficient technologies, we could reduce their energy consumption by 50 percent; cut carbon emissions by more than 40 million metric tons each year; and save approximately $8 billion dollars annually in energy costs.

The surfing was fun! It’s winter down here, so I’m happy to report that the wet suits worked. The “beach” is stony, so getting to the water was painful without booties. Surfing uses a whole different set of muscles and breathing than jogging, so after about 1/2 hour I was totally winded. This time, I managed to get one leg all the way up and the other part way—caught a couple of long rides, so I did a little better than my first attempt in Oz when a group of us went surfing on the last tour.

On the way back to our hotel (we biked to the beach), it was pointed out how far the water receded after the Santiago earthquake—about 1/2 kilometer, I think—and it stayed out for about 20 minutes. The expected tsunami never arrived (there are tsunami evacuation routes posted here). The crazy locals rushed out, scampering over the rocks to gather the fish that had been left flopping on the seabed.

Later, we got onto the ingredients in Inca Cola (which is foul, bright yellow, and tastes like bubblegum), and then ayahuasca and other hallucinogens found here. I was told that that one, at least, is bound to the culture—the preparation is elaborate and requires combining two substances derived from roots and vines—so it unlikely it was travel or be easily exported (though it will probably be synthesized). The name means “spirit vine” or “vine of the souls.” (I like that second translation better—it’s way creepier.) Speaking of synthesized, there was talk of other drugs that are sold as incense (K-2, it is called) in the U.S. and it’s catching on with teenagers in the meth belt. You can buy it legally. There’s also another substance being imbibed in the U.S. sold as “bath salts,” though the users and sellers know it’s not for getting yourself clean.

Bernardo and I rode off along the malecon on Tuesday morning, as I was scheduled to do a TV interview overlooking the water. The new mayor, Susana Villaran, dropped out of doing the intro at our presentation—which is a shame, as she's great and has initiated a lot of good projects, but my guess is she had to make an appearance at some football-related event, as the whole country was waving flags with Peru in the Copa America semi-finals. Even if they don't win, they'll be thrilled they made it this far. The “big” Latin American teams have all been knocked out—Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela— and Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay are left standing. It’s rumored that the superstar players on the other teams have forgotten it’s a team sport.

We rode back along the malecon to an early lunch at restaurant named Sonia—a little family owned place (Sonia is sitting a table near the entrance).

It’s in Chorillos—a less upscale neighborhood than Miraflores (which is nice, but Miraflores does feature mysterious casinos that we all think are mainly for money laundering) or more bohemian Barranco.

A street in Barranco, almost a Peruvian Greenwich village:

The place is all about seafood, of course. It seems the big chef in town—Gaston, who has several restaurants in Lima, two in Bogota and one in San Francisco (hint)—also has a cooking show here, in which he visits small family-run restaurants all over the country, highlighting unique dishes that each one features. Naturally, these places immediately become hugely popular. We had an early lunch so hardly anyone was there at first, though some North Americans arrived, so this place must be in the guidebooks or food blogs or something. Nothing spectacular, but really nice and totally unpretentious—they let us bring our bikes into the restaurant, and I don't mean into a back room—into the restaurant proper.

The meal was (as was typical with most meals in Lima), some assorted ceviches and then some cooked fish and shellfish.

Here is how the coffee is served.

You get a cup of hot water, and of course you immediately think "Uh-oh, here comes Nescafe," but, then comes this from the Peruvian science lab—super duper strong brewed coffee. You just pour a little in your hot water, and you've got a cup as strong or weak as you want it to be. It tasted great. Milk was not offered.

Sonia was not as good as the place the singer Susana Baca and her husband, Ricardo Perriera, took us to on Tuesday night. It’s called Rafael. It was described as "fusion," though what that meant no one could say, but you could sense Japanese influences (Fujimori, right?) with the local fish, ceviches and seasonings. Really amazing food, one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Apparently Rafael is a protégé of the well known chef mentioned above—Gaston, who put Peruvian cuisine on the world map not too long ago. Roberto, a local graphic designer who is also involved with all this transport stuff, said his kid, and many of the others his age, have two ambitions—to be a skater or a chef. Those are the only cool options here.

After dinner we stopped by Susana and Ricardo’s house and had a discussion that began with mention of the current generation of youthful protesters in Chile—kids whose parents were either too timid or too beaten down to rise up publicly. It’s a special moment. Ricardo asked me, “What happened in the U.S.?” He was referring to post 9/11, the Afghan and Iraq invasions and now the financial meltdown.

Wow, I thought—was that the last time I saw them? Susana was in New York, at a studio in what is now the meatpacking district recording a record, when the planes hit. I lived nearby, and after sorting out some family matters, I biked over (there were no cabs downtown) to see if they were all right. Did they want to go home and recommence recording at a later date? No, was the answer. “We’ve lived with Shining Path for decades. This is not enough to stop us.” They finished a beautiful record that week. I rode home and saw people sitting in a sidewalk café—oblivious to the cloud of asbestos and human remains that I could see drifting their way across a lovely blue sky.

I told Ricardo that since then there is a lot of wonderful work being done musically, though much of it isn’t massively popular. There is a lot of art being made too, though much of that world has to be taken with a grain of salt, as there is a lot of money and posturing there. I said that a generation of talented and creative graduates got seduced by the quick power and riches of the financial sector. A smart kid could make a fortune overnight and not have to really make or create anything. It was a waste of a generations’ talent, I told him. But there is still great stuff being made, sung, written, danced and created.

A few days after leaving Peru, I got an email from Scott notifying me that Susana was just named minister of culture for Peru.

07.17.11: Santiago, Chile

2011-07-17T17:21:00-04:00

There have been a lot of huge demonstrations in Santiago recently. Most of them are focused on education—the government wants to begin charging for public secondary school and universities. Public education, higher education in particular, is often very cheap in much of Latin America. As a result, there are at least a few generations of very well educated folks. One piece of graffiti I saw on the street said, in rough translation, “If we had the copper, we wouldn’t have to pay.” I had to ask what this meant. Minerals in Chile are big business—part of the reason President Salvador Allende was toppled by the U.S. decades ago was because he nationalized the mines. And don’t forget the trapped Chilean miners from a few months ago. Anyway, the copper mines have been at least partially privatized after the Coldelco Law was passed in 1992, so the profits from them don’t go to the government. Much of those profits don’t even stay in Chile—they go to multinationals, as in many other parts of the world. Hence the wording of the graffiti, which ties together the privatization of the mines with the lack of a budget for education.

The demonstrators are incredibly creative here. They don’t just shout, make speeches and wave banners. One group organized thousands of people to dress as zombies and learn the choreography to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. The zombie image links to the education system, since they view it as dying and rotten. Here's a zombie/thriller demonstration link:

Local TV reported that there were three thousand students dancing. In the news clip below one can see a few of the ubiquitous Santiago dogs, lolling about as the zombies dance around them. The city seems to be filled with feral dogs. In India and elsewhere such dogs are usually small and fairly emaciated, but here they’re large Mastiff and German Shepherd blends. It’s a frightening sight if one is used to aggressive and crazy street dogs—crazy with hunger or abuse. However, these seem gentle—most simply lie around, peacefully. One tailed us for a bit. I saw a man in a black cape, a gaucho hat and ponytail reach down and pet one—something I’d never risk doing with a street dog, but maybe these have learned to be docile, and the locals treat them accordingly.

The other things the demonstrators do are what is called a ‘besaton’— a kissing marathon. Here’s a photo set. And they do a jogging thing, where they run circles around the palace.

Sally and I went out in the evening to a local fish restaurant. There is fairly abundant seafood in the Pacific coast of Chile, and the seafood menu is like a wine list. The fish are listed according to whether they are deepwater, shallow water, river fish or caught around a group of nearby islands.

The next morning we decided to go find out what a local breakfast is. Seems we picked the wrong time—Saturday morning. We made it all the way into the old city center and nothing was open, except a funky diner on Plaza des Armas. So that’s where we went. The waiter asked us which we wanted—brewed coffee or Nescafé. As we headed back to the hotel, and I to my tech check, a few places were beginning to put out chairs on the sidewalks for a brunch or lunch crowd.

The event was held in a spanking new cultural center called Centro Gabriela Mistral or GAM for short.

It has a story behind it—a political story, naturally. On this site was once a cafeteria that also served as a small cultural meeting place. When Allende took office, he made that cultural element official, and it was outfitted to be more accommodating as a cultural center for all classes of people. After he was overthrown by General Pinochet and the Americans, it was remade as a headquarters for Pinochet. Then, after a return to democracy, it burned down. Now, it has been returned to its previous incarnation, but much improved. A well known architect, Christian Fernandez, designed this new incarnation that houses multiple theaters, cinemas, rehearsal rooms, art exhibits (a show of photos of Neruda and his circle was up) and, of course, a cafeteria. The ministry of defense towers above and behind the cultural center—a not so subtle reminder.

The event was early, as it occurred on a Saturday. I got some laughs (good), and I have begun to incorporate more images of local initiatives that have transformed various Latin American cities. The incredible library that former mayor Sergio Fajardo had built in a poor barrio of Medellín, the super graphics that Hass & Hahn, the Dutch artists, did in some favelas in Rio (both of these were featured in the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City earlier this year). I plan to add more as I visit other cities along the tour—the rapid bus system in Quito, the libraries in Bogota (the inspiration for Fajardo’s initiatives) and other projects that generally improve the quality of life in various districts.

Patricio Fernández, a writer who is one of the founders of the magazine The Clinic spoke last, and both Bernardo and I found him very eloquent. The Clinic is a satirical magazine that began publication when Pinochet was captured—at a clinic in London, hence the title. It’s a cross between The Onion and Private Eye maybe—more on The Clinic later.

After the event, we took the metro (very clean and quiet) to a bike shop run by Claudio Olivares, one of the panel participants, to pick up loaners and find a place to have lunch. In the metro we saw a diorama of the first encounter between the Spanish and the indigenous Chileans.

Their last minutes of innocence:

A few minutes after picking up the bikes, we were off. I couldn't help thinking—are there bike lanes? How hard is it to ride here? I didn’t remember any lanes networking though the town proper from previous visits, though there are some that border the park alongside the river. There is a BRT (bus rapid transit system) here, which Loreto Araya, the organizer here, complained about—though it seems to be busy and there are lots of busses. We stopped for lunch in the Recoleta neighborhood—an area of low buildings that used to be a red light district, but is now filled with cool restaurants and sidewalk cafes. My lunch was a giant seafood stew, and Sally’s, a massive chicken strew. Delicious, but could have done with just one order and shared. A highway threatened this neighborhood not too long ago, but there was resistance from the residents and others. In the end, the big highway that runs through town is now buried and runs in tunnels alongside the river. Grassy lawns cover much of the top of it—FDR drive, take note.

After lunch, Sally and I took off on our own, roaming aimlessly though other parts of this neighborhood and past lots of Bavarian looking houses, but with tin roofs.

Then we wandered into another mostly residential neighborhood—Conchalí—that features other architectural styles that I can’t identify. How would one describe this style? Hobbit deco cottage?

Mental Maps
No, not loony maps, or maps of how our brains function, but maps we construct in our heads as we become familiar with a place.

The Bavarian homes above might seem slightly incongruous looking here, and slightly puzzling, unless you know the immigration history. The Law of Selective Immigration of 1845 encouraged middle class Germans (and some Austrians and Swiss) to settle and colonize the ‘undeveloped’ southern parts of the country. They blended in after all those years, and many of the leading artists, musicians, business people and tennis players were of German descent. The British settled a little earlier, around Valparaíso, and one of the big avenues here is called O’Higgins. They got involved in saltpeter (used for gunpowder) and the Atacama mines.

Some of the Austrians who settled in Chile were fleeing Prussian persecution. Later, waves of German Jews were fleeing the Nazis, and only a year ago Paul Shaefer (not the Letterman guy) passed away. A former Nazi accused multiple times of child abuse, Shaefer founded a religious utopian community (Colonia Dignidad) with the blessing of Jorge Alessandri who was then president of Chile (1961). Shafer had abused two children at another religious ‘charity’ organization he founded in Germany. He disappeared from Colonia Diginidad after twenty-six kids accused him of abuse. He died in prison.

On a wall were plastered a grid of collages, like the ones that might be seen in a young person’s bedroom. But there they were, proudly displayed, someone’s private loves and obsessions, made totally public.

It was nice to have a chance to ride on the side streets and through the neighborhoods, as my past experiences of this city were almost exclusively of office buildings and generic, almost North American, looking edifices. The only structures I saw then that retained some character were downtown. I’m seeing more this time—even though it’s another quick visit. As was the case in Sao Paulo, I’m unconsciously forming a mental map of this place that is very different than what existed in my head previously—an expanded and more complete version than it was previously. The bikes help with that. Walking or cycling gives one a sense of the physical, visual and other relationships between the neighborhoods—how the river runs through the city and where the landmarks are. It’s amazing how fast that mapping process happens—how quickly one develops a sense of where neighborhoods and landmarks are, and how they connect to one another. After just two days I could almost get around Santiago without a physical map and just rely on the one that has appeared in my head.

Sally flew back to NY on Sunday morning and that night there was a dinner for the event participants and others at The Clinic. Not the magazine offices, (though that may be here too), but at a lounge, bar, and now a restaurant that has spun off from the magazine and is like nothing I’ve ever seen anywhere else in the world. It’s a really interesting mix of an obviously hip or fashionable club (no one dressed like what we might imagine as overly fashion oriented, though they did seem to all be wearing black), combined with the intellectual and political satire that the magazine is known for.

The walls are painted black, with blow ups of wittily captioned old B&W photos on the walls (a giant one of Allende), as well as humorous statements and collections of quotes from politicians and others painted in white type—a Joseph Kosuth installation turned into a bar, but funnier. Where else would one find this mixture?

Outside there was a blackboard with a 'quote of the day' scrawled across it.

When I left around 11pm, to walk back to the hotel, there was a line outside waiting to get in to the lounge on the ground floor. If it isn’t clear yet, it should be—politics is very much alive here. The trauma of the years of dictatorship, combined with the now relatively successful economy and high levels of education make for a potent mix. It’s manifested in the humor and politics of The Clinic and the Thriller dance as a creative form of protest. There’s an optimism and hope here that won’t be squashed—it keeps resurfacing over and over.

Speaking of creative protests, Chile isn’t alone there—the protesters in Belarus, one of the last truly repressive Eastern bloc dictatorships, have resorted to standing still (!), spontaneous clapping, strolling or arranging for their cell phone alarms to go off simultaneously. The government there has adopted new measures to enable them to throw folks in jail for protesting in this way.

Monday Morning
I ate breakfast in the hotel and then went off for a quick ride around before my flight to Lima. Sally’s friend, Daniel, emailed her a list of spots in Santiago that he checked out when he came down for Lollapalooza here earlier this year. Maybe The Clinic hadn’t opened yet—as it was significantly absent from the list.

There’s a great farmers market alongside the river and the park adjacent to it. Look at the size of those stalks of celery!!

I rode on, through a relatively upscale neighborhood, with houses that could have been lifted from any North American suburb.

On to another zone of high-rise offices, with more of them on the way, and the Andes in the distance—a rare view, given the usual amount of pollution here.

The mountains are close to Santiago. There was a tremor the morning we arrived, somewhere near Valparaiso, on the coast. It registered around .6, so no one here paid any attention. Part of the protests concerns a proposal for a hydroelectric damn in a pristine area. Chileans are proud of their amazing countryside—the Andes, the Atacama Desert, the beaches. So, a giant damn with high-tension wires strung across the pristine landscape is a hot and very symbolic issue. It fucks with people’s image of what their country is, what it represents—even if they only see those pristine areas rarely and sporadically. In the U.S. it might be likened to building a damn in the Grand Canyon that caused the canyon to disappear, or building a lucrative casino around Old Faithful.

I biked back to the center of town, to Bellas Artes—the Beaux-arts style museum here (the contemporary museum is behind it). Free entrance. Some rooms of contemporary Latin artists and others filled with colonial portraits. Hardly anyone here (so I can take pictures!). A silent temple for contemplation. Here are some of those immigrants mentioned earlier:

07.15.11: Buenos Aires, Argentina

2011-07-15T12:10:00-04:00

LeeAnn, from my office, returned to NY from Sao Paulo—having helped in Brazil (and having helped coordinate this whole thing from NY). Planes have been cancelled getting in and out of Buenos Aires recently, as the Chilean volcano, Puyehue, erupted not so long ago. The ash cloud blew east, first over the Andes, and then dropped massive amounts of the stuff in the northern Argentine part of Patagonia. Bariloche, the ski resort in that area, is now buried under a few feet of ash. I was there with a local band some years ago—it’s an incredibly scenic spot, and this ash drop likely killed their yearly ski season (which is now). Oscar Diaz, one of the organizers of this tour, was held up in BA for two days, a week or so ago, so we’re all checking the plane situation—we don’t want to get stuck there. It’s fine so far, though the volcano isn’t quiet just yet.

I arrived in BA and was met by Bernardo Baranda of ITDP Mexico—he, Oscar Diaz and LeeAnn put this little tour together, with help from local book publishers, the Flip festival and many others. I had dinner with some of the panel participants, including Guillermo Dietrich, who is commissioner of transportation here—if they had such an official position. We went to a Peruvian-Japanese fusion restaurant in Palermo Hollywood district—which looks a little more like the meat market area in Manhattan than it used to. Peruvian-Japanese cuisine has been sweeping the continent, more on that when we get to Lima.

A blonde woman who is a city council member joined us and sat between Guillermo and I. She asked me what this is all about, why I’m in BA and a million other questions. Eventually Guillermo pulled out his show-and-tell of the bike lanes they’ve created here, and images of a limited bike share program that he has been instrumental in introducing. When I was here some years ago, there was no one—absolutely no one—on a bike. The city is flat as a pancake, more or less laid out on a grid, and the weather is fairly temperate (it’s winter now, which means not snow, but fall jackets, and maybe a sweater). So, one wonders why no one has taken to bikes, especially as Porteños tend to follow a European lead from time to time and enjoy being more ‘European’ than their Latin neighbors. So, what Guillermo is doing is a major first step. It’s way more advanced than Sao Paulo, for example, where grass roots support is growing, but there's no political will at all. Sao Paulo will wait until the city locks up before doing anything—the wealthy will always have their helicopters. Guillermo’s also done a BRT (bus rapid transit) system here, so the refrain that he’s a car dealer and anti-public transport isn’t a totally justified argument. His family is one of the main car dealers in Argentina, so we got some emails saying he was compromised. He’s done some good stuff, and wants to do more, so we were trying to encourage open thinking, rather than coming in with pre-set attitudes.

Guillermo showed us more bike lane images on his iPad, and some of the bike share system. He explained how it works—unlike Paris or DC or Minneapolis, here the bikes are kept in little sheds manned by young assistants who log you in and out. In other cities it’s all automated. These kids presumably are on top of the repair needs and coordinate shuttling bikes from stations that get too full or others than get too empty. I’m not sure about that though. The sheds and the manual operation might limit the scale and expansion of the operation I fear, but they’re worried about theft I think. The councilwoman made fun of Guillermo because there are a lot of photos of him in his iPad photo folder. Guillermo does look like a works out a bit and his dress shirt is very nicely tailored—maybe he’s getting ready to run for something soon?

There was just a mayoral election here, and the result was close enough for a runoff, which will take place very soon. The mayor, Mauricio Macri, is Guillermo’s boss, so all of these folks are in campaign mode, sort of.

The next morning, Bernardo and I biked past the ubiquitous dogwalkers that crowd the sidewalks here in the Recoleta district, and stopped into El Ataneo—a bookstore in a former theater, with the theater balconies and fly space still in place. The stage is now a café, but why they have covered the front of the stage with heavy and hard to move bookracks is a mystery, as the place would be amazing for readings and other events (the café tables and chairs could be moved easily to clear the stage area).

Image Source

We biked on to a meeting with the mayor, which turned out to be more a photo opportunity for him. He’s campaigning. Always. Shake hands, pose for pics, and he’s gone. To be fair, the meeting place was changed at the last minute, and Bernardo and I mistakenly went to the previously agreed spot (which wasn’t very photogenic to be sure, but did at least contain a bike share station), so we arrived a few minutes late. That was bad. We headed over to the new meeting place in a nice pocket park. The mayor left and the photographers snapped me heading out on a bike.

Guillermo lead the group on a ride towards the port area—Porto Madero, an area where the roads, the train tracks, the docks and former warehouses all converge. I have to say the little bike lane they’ve put in (it’s a narrow two-way bike lane—not quite wide enough, but hey, it’s a start) is a vast improvement over what I remember going through in this neighborhood some years ago. It was scary then. Bravo. We dropped the bikes at a bike share station and walked to La Boca neighborhood.

We had lunch at El Obrero (the worker), which is a kind of working man’s place in a funky area, but with white tablecloths and absolutely amazing food.

The walls are covered with pictures of cars, football banners, drawings of clients and bullfight posters. The waiter remembered that I’d had lunch there with my friend Amelia—almost 10 years ago! Huge bowls of fresh greens and parmesan (there were lots of Italian immigrants who settled in BA) and amazing fried calamari. Then we split some steaks—we become carnivores, as one does here. I’m not a huge meat eater, but the meat (chicken is not even considered meat here) is maybe the best in the world, and much of it can’t be exported to the U.S. because it doesn’t meet many of the USDA and FDA requirements.

The event was held at what seems to be a funky alternative rock venue called Konex. I arrived first, as I usually do at these things. My presentation is essentially a subjective introduction to the subject, a summary—how we got to where we are, and my own experiences of the situation our cities are currently in. I end my bit with some examples of alternatives to automobile dependency that are being tried in various places around the world and various ways the communities and cities are being revitalized. I sensed that I should have edited my presentation a little more here and there, and all of the panelists rambled on a bit—so after a while there were some walkouts. Uh oh.

Guillermo showed examples of what his department has been doing, but he slipped into campaign mode. He complimented the mayor maybe a little too much for this crowd. He got heckled, more than once, and I started to feel bad for him—though he should have known better with this crowd. The mayor he compliments, who is seeking re-election in this runoff, leans to the right and is not popular with this youngish crowd. Many of the other programs and policies this mayor is involved in, I am told, I would indeed find fault with. But the bike lanes, the share program (however small it is), and the BRT initiatives are commendable. Porteños are notoriously combustible though. One of the folks I am to meet in Lima used to have a Porteño girlfriend, and she was in the habit of throwing printers at him. He went through a lot of them.

I have a number of friends here—musicians, filmmakers and writers—so rather than going to a dinner with the panelists after the event (I did have dinner with Guillermo the night before, after all), I suggested we all meet somewhere and share some wine and appetizers. We ended up at a place called Dada—where we shoved a bunch of tables together, passed bottles of wine and starters around and table hopped.

This morning, the plane out of BA was delayed. Its departure point was shifted due to the volcano—we had to leave out of another airport. There wasn't much information, the assembled passengers were apprehensive, but eventually a boarding time got posted and everyone cheered.

Last week’s cover of El Pais Semanal (the Sunday magazine of the Spanish daily that is distributed worldwide) featured a long article (and some nice photos) on how the cycling revolution is part of a global trend to increase the quality of life worldwide. They're making some pretty grand claims in this cover piece—be nice if they're right.

I'm in the midst of this Latin American tour of bikes, cities and transportation events, and I can say there is some momentum here, but it hasn't caught fire with most of the city bureaucrats down here yet. But soon it will—it's cheaper than building more highways and is also a way of dealing with the congestion and fumes in many of these cities.