Mea Vita: Carpe Diem

Pure art is nothing more than an expression of human consciousness for others to experience.
– Me
Apple announced upgraded MacBook Pros, this morning. That lead me to noticing their new commercial that's part of their "Behind The Mac" marketing campaign. Apple commercials sometimes have sticky songs such as in "The City," featuring "Sing to Me." (Both videos tell a story about a deep, curious, and budding love.)

What's unusual about this most recent "Behind The Mac" ad, embedded below, is the naive, lo-fi recording that accompanies the commercial; the song is "The Story Of An Artist," by the musician Daniel Johnston.

Johnston suffers from debilitating mental health issues. At one point, in his late 20s, when he was flying in a small plane piloted by his father, he removed the key from the ignition and threw it out the window. Amazingly, they escaped from their crash landing, in a forest, with only minor injuries.

For those of us who are older, it's the subtle, yet authentic, quality of Johnston's cassette tape recordings that bring a wave of something more than nostalgia; it brings saudade. We remember making the same recordings on our cassette players in our bedrooms and basements. Press play and record at the same time --- and don't forget to break off the tab if you don't want to mistakenly record over it.

Johnston's songs have a hauntingly raw simplicity underneath a sad kindness, as they are performed by a man whose sufferings are difficult to understand, let alone imagine. His lyrics aren't his words, instead, they're his unfiltered thoughts, feelings, and experiences ---  candid and exposed --- yet endearingly palatable in their message. 

In April, I wrote about a cheeky new art installation in my bathroom. Here's Part II, where it gets personal.

I have pictures of people pooping in my potty.

The Daily Duty art collection installation in my bathroom

Ok, I know that sounds weird, but it's true. I got the idea from Buona Forchetta, which has the most authentic Italian wood oven pizza in San Diego. Buona Forchetta (good fork) has large pictures of celebrities and heads of state on the throne in their public restrooms. You can't not notice it (apologizes to my English teachers). The first time I walked into the restaurant's bathroom, I immediately asked myself if this was tasteless. But, the artwork is so well done --- with fine creative taste --- that it inspires as it pushes the boundaries of art. Even my mother got a big kick out of artwork. After all, "art is what you can get away with."

Cristina Guggeri, AKA Krydy, Born In 1973

The Artist and Her Art

Cristina Guggeri, AKA Kyrdy, is the Sardinian-born artist who's created hundreds of photo-realistic pictures of celebrities on the throne. The collection, The Daily Duty, includes pictures ranging from the Pope to the Queen and Albert Einstein to Freddie Mercury. Rather than purchasing the prints, which you can do, she encourages fans to purchase the digital images to be printed, locally; and that's exactly what I did. The JPEGs each cost €22 – €27 (about $30) which I had printed on poster board. I installed this art collection in my bathroom with simple binder clips, thread, and thumbtacks. The poster board might warp a little from the humidity. If it does, then I'll velcro the bottom, which has worked very well for me in the past.

Cheeky or Tasteless?

Even though my socially conservative mother enjoyed this art collection, I still questioned its tastefulness. Would I want someone to display photo-realistic pictures of me, or my mother, on the toilet? The short answer is, "It depends." Like all art, its value is based on the artist who created it. While I wouldn't want random photos sold of my mother or me on the throne, I wouldn't mind at all if Guggeri created it.

  Why would someone record a scene of simply eating? Why would anyone want to watch it?

What is art? What is its purpose?

Those are questions I've attempted to answer for years.

Is a Lamborghini or Apple Watch art?

It's easier to answer the second question, first: Art’s purpose is to express consciousness. That's it.

Which leads us back to the first question, "What is art?" It's been said, "Art is what you can get away with" but that's a bit nebulous.

Simply put, art is anything we create for others that can standalone. Art does not need to serve any purpose, other than existing, like a sunset.

Is a diary or personal journal art? I'd say no, since it's private. Rather, art is that poem we wrote which we shared with others, but never intended to sell. It's a photo, prose, performance, or painting that captures the moment.

What about the iPhone? Is that art?
Again, I'd say, no, it's not pure art. Art, with function, isn't so much art as it is design.
Design is art with function. It's how things work from the outside in.
Engineering is technology with function. It's how things work from the inside out.

Art is what you can get away with.

I've debated whether coding is art.

Writing prose has a lot of similarities to writing code. Both activities require a lot of time spent inside a text editor. The key difference is the final product. When writing prose, the audience sees the final written letters. When writing code, the audience sees what the software does, not what it is in its raw form.

Coding seems more like a craft than an art when you consider that it's one key part of software engineering. This difference is even more pronounced when considering the Pulitzer Prizes.

The Pulitzer Prize board usually awards a prize in each category to a single person. Yet, there were a lot of people on the team who contribute to the winning book, news report, or editorial cartoon. Compare that to making movies or software which require large teams. Software released today is not written from scratch, like a book or poem. This is obvious when you consider the OS and code library dependencies.
Why is there no Pulitzer Prize category for blogging?

I wholeheartedly believe there should be a Pulitzer Prize category for individual blogging. After all, Pulitzer awards their prizes to individuals. Some of their prizes are for journalism and some are for art. Are the Pulitzer's about the content or the medium? Meta-blogs have won Pulitzer Prizes, such as the Huffington Post. But I would no longer consider Huff Post a blog, like, say, TechCrunch. Rather, HuffPo is an online journalism news source. There's a distinct difference.

Bloggers are doing important work. The Pulitzer Prizes should formally recognize this with its own category. When it is, I shall nominate the Scripting News blog. Not just for being around for 20 years, next month, but rather for defining what the true essence of blogging is.

If you agree, then please let the board of the Pulitzer Prizes know:
pulitzer@pulitzer.org

Whoever thought that nine hours of walking backwards, shown in reverse, could be so interesting?
Full story.


Author: Joe Moreno

One thing that motivates me to write is reading great writing. Whether I'm writing words or writing code, the ability to capture an idea and write it in an impactful way is powerful.

Hemingway – much like Apple – knew how to pare away the cruft to get to the heart of the experience.

When I first began writing fiction I read Hemingway's short stories for inspiration. The first one I read was The Snows of Kilimanjaro where he vividly described a scene without explaining the details.

...he and the British observer had run too until his lungs ached and his mouth was full of the taste of pennies...

This description hit me like a ton of bricks. In this single sentence I understood Hemingway's writing style. When someone's shooting at you the adrenaline deep in your throat tastes exactly like copper pennies. Hemingway had seen combat – he knew what adrenaline tasted like – so there's no need for him to explain it.

The West Wing: "You tasted something bitter in your mouth. It was the adrenaline. The bitter taste was the adrenaline."

A reference to the bitter taste of adrenaline is also seen in an episode of The West Wing. Josh Lyman is in denial about his PTSD after being shot. A Yo Yo Ma performance triggers a PTSD episode and a psychologist jump starts Josh's counseling session by telling him about the bitter taste.

Writing workshop

It's pure chance I came across Joyce Maynard's writing workshop, last spring, that lead me to her home in Mill Valley to work on my writing. There's nothing better than being taught by a woman who's earned her living as a writer her entire adult life. I'm writing this piece, today, because, yesterday, she pointed out that even the best writers have to handle rejection. And it's through Joyce I feel a connection to Hemingway since she lived with J.D. Salinger and Salinger met with Hemingway during WW II.

May 26, 2013 update: Dave responded to this post with a podcast.

I've written many lines of code sitting here, where I wrote this blog post.

Yesterday, Dave Winer shared a New York Times interview with Billy Joel where the Piano Man said, "I thought there was a mandatory retirement age at 40, but then the Stones broke that barrier."

Dave was born the same year as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Yo-Yo Ma. That means Dave is well past 40 years old which was thought to be the age when computer programmers (coders) were brought out back and shot. For most programmers, a successful career in Corporate America means up or out. You start off as a software engineer, then you become a tech lead followed by forgoing coding to manage direct reports.

People like Dave and I, who enjoy the trenches of coding past 40, are not the norm. A 30 year old software engineer looks upon a fellow programmer, 20 years senior, as out of touch. (Except, in rare circumstances, when they're looked upon as one of the greats who works close to the kernel meaning that they really know what they're doing.)

While Dave has successfully created and sold businesses, his first love is programing. A couple days ago Dave made a point that if he were a visual artist or musician then no one would bat an eye at the fact that he's closing in on 60 while still coding every day. No one asks, "Why is Yo-Yo Ma still playing the cello? Why hasn't he moved on to conducting?"

Elegant Code
Dave also asks, "Why can't people see that this [coding] is an art?" That's a very good question and I love Hugh MacLeod's comment, "Art’s purpose is to express consciousness." While software usually serves a process purpose, we still write it much like we'd write most anything else in a text editor such as a novel. But is it fair to consider it a form of art?

What is the purpose of art? To create. To inspire. To express one’s self. To make one aware of one's surroundings. To make life better, etc. There's no simple definition. To me, holding most any modern Apple product feels like holding art, albeit a highly functional piece of commercial art.

The problem with code, as a form of art, is that people don't see what was created, rather they only see what it does – its function. Code has function. Art has design. Code is a means to an end application. Fine art focuses more on aesthetics than utility. I cannot think of a form of art where the work created is not what's seen which is different from a computer program that gets translated into machine code. Consumers of code only see the interface, not the implementation. Again, this seems very different than, say, a movie since the general public critiques and studies the film, not how it was made.

Art is displayed or performed. Where would people observe code? In its raw form or its final application form? One could argue that an Apple Store is a museum for displaying products of art like a gallery, but the challenge with code as an art is it doesn't exist without a medium. While that's technically true of, say, a poem, I can still hold O Captain! My Captain in my hands in its final form.

The creative process of programming is definitely more art than skill, much like writing a story, suitable for someone to do at any age. Perhaps the ageism in high tech is due to the ever changing technology as more senior programmers stick with older, more comfortable, systems? But, in software engineering, like rock and roll, perceptions will change regarding age.

Chances are, though, if you're still coding on a daily basis, into your 50s, using current technologies, then you're undoubtedly very, very good. To Dave, I ask, "Who else, past 50, codes like you?" Maybe it's time for a Museum of Computer Programming with Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper inducted into the hall of fame.

I've always been fascinated by shadow art. This afternoon, I tried it for myself. I guess that I don't need to sign this work of art since it's self-signing.