The incompetent computer programmer

Unless it has a hardware fault, a computer only ever does exactly what it is instructed. If it gave an error message, it was instructed to do so. Frustration at that is absurd. Frustration arises in the experience of not being able to identify which instructions should be corrected. So frustration at error messages, programs or computers is an error of perception. The object of such frustration, if any, would more correctly be somebody’s incompetence. If the chances are that this incompetence is ones own then the frustration is especially unhealthy. Meditation might mitigate the frustration at and, more importantly, aid acceptance of ones inevitable incompetence.

500px. What is fine art?

Welcome to #photogeeks, the home of “Tough Love” school of photo critique

11:52 thefsb   nFFF: don’t get me started on teh 500px “house aesthetic”

11:52 virhilo   and be well done in all other ways not neceserty post

11:52 thefsb   i really don’t like it

11:53 thefsb   it’s often more digital fine art than photography

12:05 Morinaka   what’s their house aesthetic?

12:09 virhilo   thefsb: just curious(not native english) what’s difference between fine art and art?

Good question.

First: What is art? Hard to say. A few concepts I personally find useful:

All art is human artifice. All art is an attempt to communicate something ineffable. Anything perceived as art *is* art.

No tangible object can be said to *be* art. Art comes into temporary existence only through the act of perceiving it, which may also be while it is being created or imagined. Like truth, art does not exist in any materialist ontology except in the minds of humans considering propositions.

Next: fine art is a tradition in two and three dimension visual arts. It is not really categorical although polar opposites such as illustration vs. fine art do exist. Good examples (that I love) include Breugel’s Icarus, both Vellasquez and Bacon’s Pope Innocent, Ernst’s L’Ange du foyer, Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa.

Various things that can be art but not fine art: poetry, music, decorated pottery, the photography of Weegee, Cartier-Bresson, Graham Watson.

Regarding 500px, there appears to me to be a coherent aesthetic emerging from the front page of that web site. I can’t easily describe it. The photos are highly proficient in their technical aspects. Extremely dramatic. Unnatural and/or hyper-natural in general appearance. Very digital-looking. The flow of this stuff has been accelerating in recent years as various tools (both hard and soft wares) have become affordable. As a meme, this aesthetic has taken root in many photogs’ minds and is replicating rapidly through the available population.

This is an aesthetic of fine art through digital manipulation (of digitally captured high-res images). Consequently it is less “photographic” to me.

And I don’t like it.

I am also into music and the current situation in digital photography reminds me of when Pro Tools became affordable and everyone was overusing the same popular plugins. You could distinctly hear them. That’s when I found it necessary to distance myself from digital enhancements and refocus my efforts on creation and originality.

Well, it should work.

When I moved to the USA and got a job at a big corporation I got my first experience with IT support people. They would come to someone’s desk, ask to sit down at the computer, do some things and then say, “Well, it should work.”

I always loved that.

Since I worked at tech firms, there were usually people around who liked to show off their computer skills. And you could often get them to say it too. Naturally what these people really want is to demonstrate that they are skilled and you are stupid—oneupmanship, after all, is one of the few true joys of office life. So getting them to say “Well, it should work,” while demonstrating their skills was just the best.