The Design of Unusual Things

In this ten minutes of fame right now, a photographer has declined a prestigious award because the picture was made using AI.

Please don't ask me which photographer? which picture?, which award? which AI? because I don't know.

I read the headline and it more than quelled my interest.

Then I saw another headline about it.

And another.

Lots of them in fact, that's just the nature of my internet news stream. Most of the headlines I see, no matter how many times repeated, aren't worth my paying attention to.

I am not saying they aren't worth your paying attention to. The story I didn't read might seriously change your views and I mean that in all seriousness. Not for me doesn't mean not for you.

What  struck me about the story of the photographer, the picture, and the award was how much more traction it had than news about traditional methods of making art.

Statistically, news stories about new paintings are Spockishly "vanishingly improbable" to which I would assign a causality of "because statistically no one  cares."

I'm investigating using floppy disks again.

Not exclusively of course.

But when I want to reify small data and that data is not text.

Someone says "But single micro-SD can hold all your small data And all your other data too!".

That's the distraction of metadata management in the form of a labeled file hierarchy  not a feature. I don't need to wrap my head around as many layers of abstraction.  

When a floppy disk is fast enough and big enough and durable enough, I think I might rather have its mechanical feedback.

I realize I'm ok with having some ambitions that will fit on a floppy disk, and I'm ok with admitting that to myself.  For me 120k-what-will-I-do-with-all-that? is still a bit truthy.

YMMV

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Appendix 1

Things I did not say:

+ I did not say I am buying a Mavica to replace my digital cameras that use SD cards.

+ I did not say I don't use SSD's.

+ I am not saying I don't use cloud storage

I only said what I said.

[Old man yelling at the surf]

Notes:

I toss my notes in a shoebox and stick the shoebox in a cupboard. [1]

Eventually, I stumble on the shoebox, look at the notes and throw them out.

Ideas:

"Idea" is a four letter word.

I start on the thing I am thinking about or I let it go.

Ideas that I am not acting on aren't worth holding onto.

Knowledge:

I remember where to look should it be useful.

Or I Google it again.

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None of this was true when I was younger.

Back then, I behaved as though my notes and papers would go to an archive in a prestigious museum. As though ideas were valuable and rare. As if there was a multiple choice test on the-material on Tuesday, the 25th.

I made these things ends in themselves.

Now I just make stuff instead of taking notes.

This makes it clear whether or not an intellectual interest is an entertaining rabbit hole or something I can act upon.

The hard part is to accept that there are many many interesting things that I can't participate in. Like compiler internals, space exploration, and DIY sawmills.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34880402
[1]: Boxes are better than notebooks and file folders. Each of which is better than bits.

In November, I eBay'd a "For Parts" Yamaha QY100, and yesterday I got around to finishing up the repairs by adhering [1] new conductive rubber pads to each of the 52 silicon rubber buttons. It still reflects someone using it until twenty plus buttons had worn to failure and the headphone line out jack was wobbly and intermittent.

But it now plays great, even though it won't win a cosmetic award.

Rather I would say it plays great in the way Yamaha's instruments are genius. But the Yamaha approach to sequencing/MIDI recording just doesn't work well for me, even though I wish it did. Yamaha's design aesthetic falls more toward the planning-thinking end of the spectrum while I sit more toward listening-reacting.

The QY100 interface is great at creating a composing experience and most of the time, Usually my spark is wanting to jam and although the QY100's amp simulations might make it attractive solely as an effects processor, the interface isn't ideal for that.

It's all buttons and menus and zero knobs.

Sure I could MIDI program one or more controllers to allow listening and reacting in real time. But programming MIDI doesn't feel like making music to me. I've learned from hands on experience needing MIDI programming is not a limitation that drives my creativity. Once I go into the wouldn't-it-be-cool-if headspace, my listening-reacting experience dries up.

Wouldn't-it-be-cool-if  doesn't feel like one of my flow states. [2] Programming MIDI is the wrong kind of problem for me. When my MIDI programming doesn't work, it doesn't work in the wrong way for me. It doesn't create a sound I can listen to. And when it does work, technical contingency and interintendency create a fragility that means it works in the wrong way for me. MIDI programming requires me thinking in the wrong abstractions.

How I programmed the MIDI is not an interesting story. It's a non-musical metatext.

For me, I think the same is true for the DAW. The story of making music with a computer doesn't interest me. Mostly because computers are fungible. I mean creating music with a Raspberry Pi or Ableton is mostly an interesting metatext in proportion to Raspberry Pi or Ableton interest level.

The story of computer abstractions takes up space that might be occupied by musical abstractions. I think DAW's are cool. Just not right for me. It's a high impedance paradigm. I high impedance interface.

I get more out of the abstractions of hardware.

[1]: cyanoacrylate  after using a primer for cyanoacrylate.

[2]: repairing things is a flow state though.