Pretentious Art Commentaries (More)

I don't usually link to someone else's work, but in this case, it's just so apposite to the recent Tate Modern post about BS commentaries accompanying art. It's a post by the legendary Dave Trott (okay, legendary if you know the UK advertising business) and it's about the same subject, but from a participant's point of view.

It's here.

Calling Bullshit - Bergstrom and West

I read Bergstrom and West's book Calling Bullshit recently. It's the latest in a long line of books about how various people attempt to confuse, mislead, mis-direct and otherwise bullshit us for their own nefarious ends. The line started with Darrell Huff's immortal How To Lie With Statistics and Bergstrom and West do a good job of updating it. They still believe in p-scores, but at least they describe p-hacking well enough that you likely won't trust p-scores again.

My inner analytic philosopher feels they fold too much into the idea of BS. Lying, deception, manipulation, gas-lighting, mis-direction, and numerous others, are distinct types of mis-communication, and we lose some insight by treating them all as aspects of one underlying thing.

Harry Frankfurt wrote his famous little book On Bullshit because he felt that bullshit was something new. He realised that all the hitherto forms of mis-communication were attempts to conceal the truth, and were deliberate, insofar as the liar knew they were telling a lie. The BS-merchant does not care whether what they say is true or false. They don't even care if it makes sense. Nor do they care whether you know the truth already. Their concern is to block the communication channels with their noise. This was what Frankfurt wanted to highlight: that our BS-filled media consists mostly of noise intended to keep other noise out, and that process corrupts the media, since it becomes concerned only with whose noise they transmit.

Recently a doctor in America claimed that it was within the scope of her Hippocratic Oath not to treat people who would not get vaccinated. Her claim that the Hippocratic oath is very science-based and that the "science" said being unvaccinated was a threat... this is not bullshit. It is either deeply cynical or deeply deranged, and it needs to be treated as such. The deliberate attempts to create an atmosphere of fear in Spring 2020 by almost every Government's PR agencies, were not bullshit. It was propaganda intended to dupe the citizenry, and that is not on the same moral plane as a PR campaign for soap.

However responsible and measured what Bergstrom and West say is, you and I don't have the time, and we don't have the resources of a pair of academics, to fact-find, investigate and provide evidence for our claim that today's report about, say and, a hot topic in the UK at the time of writing, how it is essential that the Government allow Eastern European truck drivers into the country to fill the alleged 100,000 shortfall in the number of drivers.

This example is special pleading with a helping of BS on the side. The BS is a) the estimate of the shortfall, and b) that it can only be filled by Eastern Europeans. How do I know these things? Am I an expert on the Logistics industry in the UK? No, and I don't need to be. I am familiar, as anyone over the age of forty is, with the attitudes and behaviour of the people who run the UK's larger businesses. They don't want to train anyone, they don't want to have to pay a market-clearing wage, and they don't want permanent employees. They have shown these behaviours for decades. So of course they want to import ready-made drivers who will work for less for all sorts of reasons.

Those are the kind of rules-of-thumb that ordinary people need. Here are some more of mine.

Any subject with the word 'Science' in its title, most likely isn't, and nor are any of its claims. Hence, any research about the benefits or faults of lifestyle-choices can be ignored. (Bacon is bad for you, red wine is good for you, you only have to walk three times a week...)

Anyone who says 'The Science is In' does not understand how science works. Newtonian physics was "in" right up to the day in 1905 when it wasn't.

Projections, forecasts, models and other forms of computerised number-generation are mostly hokum. The Met Office has been trying to forecast the weather since before I was born, and it's still mostly wrong.

If the cui who bono's from saying it, says it, nobody should be surprised. Hence, you can ignore all those reports from charities, NGOs or professional bodies showing that whatever it is they are trying to stop has got worse and they need more money.

Never trust any process that generates revenue as long as it doesn't solve the problem.

Real experts know how little they really know, and how inadequate that is. As a result they will never work for or advise a) Governments, b) big business, c) International NGOs. Those "experts" being quoted in the Press? Mostly they aren't.

Insiders are not going to explain what really goes on to outsiders, and most journalists, academics, civil servants, politicians and regulators are outsiders, so none of them have a clue.

Governments listen to the advisors whose advice backs up the desired policy. When the desired policy changes, so do the advisors.

Scientists and experts have very, very narrow fields of expertise. Once they start talking outside that, say, about public policy, they are likely as ignorant as you or me.

Percentages and other comparisons are meaningless without context. That context is carefully with-held in the publication and press release.

Watch for odd phrases and metaphors, as well as stock phrases, cliches, suddenly fashionable phrases, dog-whistles and other oddities of language.

The graphics are probably there to create an impression, not provide information. Best not look at all.

Anything that sounds too good or too bad to be true, probably is. (Props to Bergstrom and West for that one.)

Faced with profit claims by a company, check how much tax they are paying. If they aren't, the Inland Revenue doesn't think they are making a profit. (Props to Terry Smith for that one.)

If a Government knows something is Bad, it bans, restricts or protects against it tout de suite. Or it makes you take precautions, like wearing seatbelts. If all it does is fine or tax you for doing it, then the Government knows it is actually pretty harmless.

Never trust anyone whose advice will result in job losses and inconvenience for other people.

Only believe it after it has been officially denied.

The majority of press articles are advertising or PR of one form or another. Journalists do not leave the office now. They work with what comes to them - it wasn't a journalist who found the Panama Papers, or the Great MPs Expenses Scandal. Journalists re-cycle press releases, official announcements, and the Press Agencies.

The media does not care about content. It cares about clicks. The purpose of the media, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the others, is to provide user / reader / viewer attention to advertisers. The "content" is there to draw in that attention, whether or not the content is true. So almost everything in the media is BS (that is, its truth or falsity is irrelevant to the editors). It was always a bit thus, but it is now almost all thus.

Finally, if you want to see a melt-down, ask Karl Popper's Question: "under what circumstances would you give up that belief / policy / law / judgement / theory / hypothesis?".

What do you do if someone pulls some egregious BS, gaslighting, manipulation or other such on you?

Friends don't BS friends. So whoever it is, they aren't a friend. Which means you act politely, change the subject, remember a pressing appointment, and otherwise leave. They won't miss you and you won't miss them. Fellow employees, however, BS each other all the time, but a lot of that is work, and you have to BS them back. It's expected. What you do when faced with a snowflake, I'm not sure, but the current consensus is: unplug your laptop and run to a safe space.

Why Some People Are Not Going Back To The Office

It seems that Civil Servants and the staff of retail banks, insurance companies and other large office-based employers are not rushing back to their offices.

The usually-cited reason they should is this, from a letter to the Daily Telegraph:

For the employee, interpersonal contact in the office promotes problem-solving, communication and the generation of ideas. It reduces isolation.

To which I say: BS. Or rather: that may be true in some places, but I haven't worked in any of them for the last twenty years.

Isolation is what you feel:

when you cannot talk, write, or even use a facial expression, without first estimating its reception by the audience

when you are surrounded by people who feel they can police what you say and how you say it

when there are corporate policies encouraging certain styles of communication, and penalties for failing to go along

when the decisions affecting you and your work are made by people you never meet for reasons that have nothing to do with any of your concerns

when you are in the middle of an over-crowded open-plan office, and for days on end, everyone you need to talk to is on a conference call, in a meeting, or just doesn't have any time to help you problem-solve and generate ideas

when the people you need help and replies from, can reject your request because they "don't have the resources"

when you cannot get a budget for the things you need to do your job

when you cannot get the support for the things you need to do your job

when you are the only person in your team using the skills you use and have the knowledge you have

This was the daily life of most of those Civil Servants and other Big Office workers in 2019

Why? How? 

A lot of employers spent much of the years between 2000-2019 making their offices less and less pleasant places by spending less and less on the buildings.

Where once there was a seat for everyone, now there is a seat for just over half of them.

Where once everyone had their own place, now nobody does.

Where once Directors and other Big Beasts had their own offices, safely away from us Little People, now they are scattered around the floor and we Little People can't relax, communicate and be creative, in case we're doing it in the wrong way.

Where once you sat with your team, now total strangers can perch amongst you for a day. They never introduce themselves and avoid eye contact, so nobody talks all day because it might be someone from HR, Audit, or some other internal policing group.

The quality of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) got worse and worse, because the requirements are based on building size, not occupancy.

The offices smelled of food from 11:30 to 14:30 every day.

Don't even ask about the toilets.

This too was the daily life of those Civil Servants and other Big Office workers in 2019.

The horrible quality of office life in 2019 was the main reason people packed up their laptops and went home so willingly in March 2020.

Nobody is talking about this.

If "working in offices" was so beneficial, nobody would need to make people do it. But they do, so it isn't.

Fear of Music: Why We Like Rothko But Not Stockhausen

I read David Stubbs' Fear of Music and Mars by 1980 recently. The second is a history of electronic music in the West, focussing heavily on the bands of the 1970's - 1990's. The first is an attempt to understand why Basquiat sells for millions, but David Bailey is pretty much broke. (You know who Derek Bailey is, right? See, that's his point.)

 

(Why you don't know who Derek Bailey is)

Stubbs love of this kind of music, from Edgar Varese to Sonic Youth, is sincere and deeply woven into his youth. He knows whereof he speaks.

So do I. I have a special section in my CD collection, where I keep Ligeti, Xenakis, Boulez, John Cage, Penderecki, Edgar Varese, Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and even Sally Beamish. Anyone interested in music should know some of this stuff, and my dutiful listening was well before streaming. (You should stream it. Most of these people are dead, have academic jobs or quite enough money.) The only recording made by Mirror/Dash is in my Quboz favourites. I commend Olivier Assayes' film Noise to you: I was rooted to the sofa. As an undergraduate I went to the only performance at my university by Derek Bailey. I have heard Iskra 1903 on late-night Radio Three programs. In the right circumstances, I do like a bit of noise guitar. Those circumstances are not frequent, but Stubbs' book has made me think I should devote a little more time to the genre over the next few months.

 

(Stockhausen's Kontakte: I found it so you don't have to.)

A little bit of theory.

There are two broad business orientations: producer, and, consumer. The producer makes something, tries to sell it, and then blames the public when they don't buy it, or tries to get a Government grant to subsidise his operation. The consumer finds out what he can provide that the customer wants, checks that the customer is willing to pay an economic price, and provides it. Producers tend to think they are mis-understood and the audience doesn't want to put in the work to appreciate their challenging work. Consumers tend to follow the money and can have a wilting effect on high culture.

Old-school publishing houses used to do both: they had an imprint for books that the public would buy but were not what anyone would call fine literature, and the money from that subsidised the low but prestigious sales of the fine literature. The publisher had social cachet from supporting well-connected authors, paid for by books the public wanted to read. It worked fine until the conglomerates came along, and dumped the fine literature imprints, because why lose money?

The Romantic conception of the artist is pure producer. The artist has their vision, is driven to produce what they have to produce, and it's the public's task to understand it, like it, and buy it. Otherwise the Romantic artist either starves to death, or gets embittered or cynical while living off a private income.

What is striking about the development of noise / electronic music up to about 1970 is just how much of it was supported by universities, Ministries of Culture, and State broadcasters. Everyone from Stockhausen to Delia Derbyshire was paid for by the taxpayer. After that, it seems to have moved into the private sector, with the invention of the Mood Synthesiser and its successors, until a simple Mac Air has ten times the music-making capabilities of the entire European avant-garde scene in (say) 1960, and with a friendly user-interface. State subsidies is very producer.

Stubbs is a producer. He likes weird noisy music and can't understand why the rest of us don't. He thinks it's our fault - after all, we can take Jackson Pollock, so why won't we listen to Edgar Varese? Why does Warhol sell and Xenakis doesn't?

 

(Ameriques by Edgar Varese. David Stubbs loves it.)

For one thing, the comparison is off. The pictorial analogue of a lot of the music he is taking about, is not Rothko or Pollock, but an especially impasto'd de Kooning at his misogynist peak, or a raw meat paintings by Chaim Soutine. Not what anyone wants to look at just before lunch in the restaurant at the Tate Modern. Or afterwards.

(Xenakis is more like this)

For another, the expectation is off. Avant-garde music is not the only art-form with small audiences. Go to a fringe theatre in London (when this nonsense is over). (I have been in one where there were more people in the audience than on the stage.) Morvern Callar, one of the best films of 2002, had a total first-run audience of about two thousand people in the whole UK. Unless they are an established name, a poet is lucky to sell fifty copies. So are some novelists. Many papers in science and mathematics are comprehensible to perhaps ten people in the world. All those people beavering away in Head Offices producing powerpoints, are doing so for audiences of less than twenty.

Small audiences are the norm. Large audiences need an explanation.

The avant-garde music scene is nowhere near as socially sexy as the avant-garde art scene was and the pop / contemporary art scene is now. The rich gather and network at Christies and Sotheby's, not at the Wigmore Hall. The reason is very simple: they can buy art, but they can't buy music.(*) The era of the court composer is over - blame the repeal of the Corn Laws.

The arts are not an examination that the audience has to pass. With some exceptions. If you don't like the music of J S Bach, you can say so and not listen to it. If you say that it is bad music, well, you would just be wrong. Audiences show their dislike of Luciano Berio by staying away. If they say it is bad music, well, they would be wrong about that. If they said it was wilfully harsh, discordant, and lacked a decent groove, could anyone disagree?

And then there's the whole attitude thing. Here's Evan Parker, a legend of the British avant garde music scene.



You can't dance to it. You can't **** to it. You can't study to it. You can't play along with it.

On the other hand, here's Kim Gordon, who has been doing this stuff for literally decades.



You can't dance to it. You can't **** to it. You can't study to it. You can't play along with it. But I couldn't stop watching and listening.

In an earlier post, I said that, amongst other things, art had to be self-sufficient. A piece had to stand on its own. Another thing art has to do is fascinate, a verb that descends from 'bewitching'. It has to reward our attention and focus, to let us sink in to it. Maybe we sink in meditatively, as before a painting in the National Gallery, or we give ourselves up to it, as with a favourite dance track.

A lot of avant garde music is intentionally off-putting and detached. It doesn't let us in, but keeps on slapping us about with sudden noises and shocks. Most people don't respond to that: I don't. Perhaps David Stubbs does. But he is in a minority.

And that's the answer to his question.

(*) The exception, and it's the only one, is the one copy of a Wu Tang Klan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin. Its history is worth reading.

Thoughts After A Visit To The Tate Modern

I went to the Tate Modern recently. I had to book, but I don't mind. It stops me changing my mind when I wake up and the weather is c**p (again).

It's a very different collection of exhibits from the last time I went, in the Before Times. A few of those exhibits were accompanied by some socially-significant rhetoric, but mostly it originated from the artists. (*cough* Joseph Beuys *cough*)

But now, it seemed to me, everything has to relate to one of a well-known handful of Good Causes. Pollution; climate change; all the complaints of feminism; war; poverty; immigration; capitalism and its related -isms, such as consumerism; Britain leaving the EU...

Just one example, a 1952 photograph by Mitch Epstein, taken in West Virginia.

And here's the blurb that goes with it.

I will spare you a line-by-line review. I wrote one, but it's more painful to read than it is to write. Its implication is that the photograph is valuable as a work of art because the photographer addresses Good Causes in the right way.

I demur.

To ask the timeless question: what is art? Anything can be, because of or despite its creator's intentions. One condition is that a work of art should be self-contained. It can refer to other cultural items, as with Claude’s 1648 Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca

and the viewer's appreciation of it can be enhanced by knowing the references. I have no idea who Isaac and Rebecca were, and why they might be in that landscape, but I can look at Claude's painting for quite a while. The landscape alone holds my attention.

My appreciation of the painting as art does not and should not depend on the references.

Epstein's photograph is, for all its technical skill, not an image I find engaging. Knowing that it had one social message for him, and that the curator has linked it to others, may make me look a little longer to see if I agree, but I've moved on in a couple of minutes.

Claude's intention was to produce a decorative and absorbing landscape, and he threw in the marriage group to give it a sense of scale, and because maybe it would mean something to the client who commissioned it. Epstein's intention was to produce what amounts to low-key agit-prop, and if the picture was captivating, then so much the better.

Claude is an artist, Epstein is a journalist. And to re-affirm: journalists can produce art, but despite their intentions, not because of them.

The difference between museum blurbs and those of auction-house catalogs is striking. If you've never read a contemporary art auction catalog from Christie's or Southeby's, it's quite the revelation. A major work for sale is put into the context of the rest of the artist's output; the circumstances of its creation are set out; any cultural references in the work are tactfully noted, as if jogging the purchaser's memory; it may be compared and contrasted to work by other artists; and, of course, its provenance and exhibition history are carefully noted. Those guys know how to sell a painting.

If I'm going to spend money on it, I want to know that the painting is genuine, and what is its story. And I need to like it as an image. Because my interest is the image, not the interpretation, I do not care about the artist's views on this week's social issues, or his or her morals. I care about the quality of the work.

The "Good Causes" approach puts the artist's opinions and moral character front and centre: artists with the 'wrong' opinions, or an unfortunate period of their lives associated with the wrong causes, don't get shown. The quality of their work is not judged on its ability to hold and entrance the eye, but on the "issues" it "addresses".

If you really cared about pollution, you would put the money towards cleaning it up or preventing it, not buying an art-work that tells you what you already believe. If the Tate really believed it, maybe it could donate some of its vast riches to cleaning up some pollution, and leave a blank space on the wall with the blurb "We spent your taxes on preventing this beach getting dirty again, instead of buying a photograph of it when it was dirty, and leaving it dirty."

Though, if we put up the documentation of the work clearing and protecting the beach, wouldn't that be a performance piece?

Sounds like a win-win to me.

The Search For Headphones 2: Entry-Level Strikes Back

A pair of Meze Empyrean will cost around £2,800. The Sennheiser HD800S cost around £1,400.

Audiophiles. They must be bonkers.

Here's a thought that came at me from left-field. My new speakers cost three and a half times the old ones - even allowing for the sale price on the LS50's and an additional subwoofer. The amp+CD transport cost about the same multiple of the original amp + cd player + Dragonfly Black for streaming.

The HD650 cost about £400 when I bought them. That's more than I paid for the amplifier I was using.

Applying the 3.5 rule, I get £1,400. Applying the "more than I paid for the amplifier" rule, I get around £2,000, since that's what an H120 costs (but that includes DACs which the previous amp didn't. Take the cost of a comparable DAC out, and we're back to about £1,400). Apply the "pay more than the amplifier" rule and... no, I just can't justify it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the HD650 started sounding much better. Especially after I replaced the ear pads, which had been getting a little soft. That made a real difference to the sense of space in the sound. These are just fine, I told myself, what do I want to change for?

(A couple of weeks later)

I went through this exact process with the amplifier + CD player + external DAC combination, before getting something way outside of anything I'd been looking at before. I would listen to the Marantz and telling myself that it was just fine and didn't need changing. (It is just fine, but it did.) The HD650 are darn good headphones, but they weren't quite the sound I was looking for. Those things are intense. Seriously.

I realised I wanted something more... open, relaxed, something along those lines.

I watched a few more YT reviews.

And went back to Audio Sanctuary in New Malden, with a new list to try.

Meze 99 Classics. Hifiman Sundara. Audeze LC-1.

Yep. All "entry-level hi-fi".

I can't hear anything over about 11kHz. I have "entry-level" ears. Years of 60dB-70dB noise from trains, tubes, traffic, offices and passing aircraft will take its toll.

The Meze 99's are comfortable, have nice tight bass, and are easy to drive, but there was something...

The Audeze LC-1 sounded okay. At these price levels "okay" doesn't cut it. I didn't like the fit over my ears. Put to one side.

The Hifiman Sundara fit just fine. And had a clear, wide sound. The bass wasn't quite as snappy as the Meze 99's. But they had something.

Acid test. A Bruckner symphony.

No contest. The Meze were probably not even designed to handle orchestral music.

The Sundara's did just fine.

We have a winner. At £299.

I'd say the Sundara's are closer to the monitor-like sound and clarity of my LS50's. The HD650 are darker: clear, good definition and detailed, sure, but as I said, also intense. I have the Sundara on now, and I'm thinking, "yep, this is the sound I want".

Turns out I didn't want better (and even if I did, I could justify the expense), I wanted different.

The Sad Story of a Three-Times Faulty Pro-Ject T1 Turntable

I am assured that Pro-Ject make excellent turntables.

Lots of hi-fi stores seem to agree, since some stock little else.

I bought a white T1 from Sevenoaks Hi-Fi recently as a present for Sis, who has shelves of inherited vinyl and no deck.

Drove it half-way round the M25 to Sis' place. Installed it.

Was the drive spindle supposed to wobble like that?

(How was I supposed to know? It could be a design feature.)

Called Sevenoaks Hi-Fi on the day and asked them. They said they would ask Pro-Ject's UK distributor.

Nobody gets back to anybody for a couple of weeks.

The drive belt fell off when Sis tried to play a 45. That's not supposed to happen.

Drive half-way round the M25 to collect it for return to Sevenoaks. Who send it to Pro-Ject's UK distributor.

Who tighten the screws on the motor mount.

And return it to Sevenoaks Hi-Fi a couple of weeks later.

The spindle is still wobbling. In fact, it's worse.

Because one of the screws is in a soft patch of wood (or some other such flaw) and vibrations of any kind loosen it.

Back to the distributor.

A week or so later it comes back. The spindle was secure.

They had shifted the motor round and re-secured it in new screw holes. (I know because I called the distributor and spoke an incredibly helpful member of staff.)

Drove it half-way round the M25 to Sis' place. Installed it.

The belt fell off when we tried to play it at 45.

Called Sevenoaks immediately and said "That's enough. I want my money back".

Drove it half-way round the M25 to return it and get my money back.

Like Sis said: why didn't the distributor just say Send it back and we'll send you a new one in the first place?

I don't think it would have made a difference. I think there are design flaws.

The screws securing the drive unit to the plattern are small. Way too small.

The drive spindle has a wide lip top and bottom of the 33 rpm section. The belt is not going to fall out of it. The lip on the 45 rpm section is way too narrow.

Finally, each unit is not tested before delivery. The parts might be, but the assembled unit is not. Otherwise they would have found the loose motor mount before the unit was even shipped.

Which is why Sis does not want another Pro-Ject. (Personally I hope she takes a liking to a Technics DJ deck....)