Granular Thought Modes

Posted on 22 May, 2012 by odo

Equipment reviews are a ripe subject, bubbling and fragrant. Reviewers are very loquacious. They surely love the sound of their own keyboards. (Do they get paid by the word?) For the reader, it’s a mixed bag. If you can get through the first several paragraphs of pablum and fluff and the next bunch of bloated paragraphs about the physical description (that a couple of good photos could have done better), then you get down into the deep, deep doo-doo about the sound and the recordings used for evaluation.

Here are few sweet samples—

Though it has superior drive and pacing and low-bass extension, I now hear the [XYZ] as having a dry midrange, a lean midbass, and a treble that’s extended but ever so slightly grainy.

—Makes me thirsty just reading it.

But I digress. . .

—Really? Nah!

. . .the many drum crashes and orchestra tuttis [sic] throughout the first movement were thoroughly satisfying, as long as I didn’t turn the volume knob too far to the right.

—Scary. Turn up the volume at your own risk.

The [XX] was simply devastating in its ability to naturally present a voice or oboe without false resonance but replete with subtle plosives. I used the usual singing suspects: Sara K., Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Roy Orbison, etc. Each of these distinctive voices was, of course, instantly recognizable, but each was also definitively integrated as a single voice and source across its unique tonal range, though never isolated from the varied accompaniments.

—Huh? Decipher that for me. On second thought, forget it.

The [Guppies] bass extension went on forever, rivaling that of any other speaker—including subwoofers—

—They sure as hell better! He’s talking about an 800 pound, $65k pair of speakers! They better fly me to the moon too.

[MissD] had rather a grainy, forward sound quality on its high-pass outputs. The graininess disappeared after an hour or so and the forward character diminished, but did not disappear altogether. This might be a relevant factor in a system already somewhat forward in balance.

—I’m still scratching my head. Maybe some of that graininess will relieve the itch.

Grain has certainly become a buzz word. Where’s the grain coming from? Grain can be synthesized and I know what it sounds like, but from an audio playback standpoint, there’s yet to be a satisfactory definition of what, if anything, ordinary audio electronics can do to a signal to make it grainy. The power of vagueness makes it a good talking point. You can toss the word about freely knowing that it makes you sound as if you know what you’re talking about without truly knowing or saying anything of substance.

And as for granular thought, let’s get to the nitty gritty. It’s become a corporate buzz word too. (Ooo baby, I love business-speak.) There’s always a new word or phrase buzzing through the world of corporate management that’s supposed to encompass some new hot way of thinking. In every instance, it’s repackaging a same’ol, same’ol idea. Slap a new word on it, empower it with repetition, pretend it’s out of the box, take it to the next level and you’ve got a holistic, mission critic sustainability that’s an actionable win-win to incentivize.

What this reveals to me are the sandy thought processes of the talkers-non-thinkers. Reviewers and corporate cheerleaders, on the surface, left unexamined, put on a good show. Lots of trendy words, catch phrases and techie jargon generously chopped up with abstruse descriptions of nebulous nonsense keeps us reading (listening and parroting) with intense attentiveness, or more likely, a dear-in-the-headlights glaze.

It’s plain to see it’s been disintermediated [sic] into entertainment. Everywhere we look the news, reviews, reports, and documentaries are gradually becoming more and more entertainment first, information a far off second, analysis not even last, simply null. What’s next? Teachers wanted, Master of Physical Comedy and two years minimum standup experience, submit CV and video.

More on grain : [Granular Synthesis]

And : [Granular Thinking]

Posted in Discover, Thoughts | 1 Comment

Idea Challenge

Posted on 15 May, 2012 by odo

“Creativity is the residue of time wasted,” is a quote that has been attributed to Albert Einstein. Never heard it before, so I searched and searched, dozens and dozens of pages of Einstein quotes and found nothing even resembling that line. The only source of the quote I could find points to a single origin. RED FLAG! It’s being passed off by an author, who shall remain nameless, in a book he wrote, which won’t be mentioned, and repeated repeatedly in every interview with the author or review of the book. It’s astounding how one cute phrase, left unchallenged, and not all that brilliant to begin with, can, in a short few weeks, spread like the magic spell from an endorsement by Oprah. (Who also has been known not to fact check.) But in my search to verify the erroneous, fabricated quote, I came across a few quotes that are commonly attributed to the famous man. (No guarantee of authenticity, but at least these are much more clever.)

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Having fun. Reminds me of the saying attributed to Confucius, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” If you’ve spent any time in creative endeavors, the idea of intelligent fun will sing to your muses.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

I can’t discount the importance of knowledge. It’s necessary to build ideas and to feed the imagination. Knowledge is the food imagination runs on. Encyclopedias have huge amounts of knowledge—not one lick of intelligence. Knowledge by itself gets us nowhere. Intelligence is the application of knowledge through the transformative action of the imagination. Yes, we need to daydream.

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”

Too many examples of energy spent solving a problem that needn’t have been created in the first place. Look for the solution in front of the problem. It goes back to the old saying, which I’ll adapt to the 21st century, “a gram of prevention is worth a kilo of cure.”

This ties in with another quote attributed to Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” Genius is seeing and acknowledging the obvious. (And ignoring the trivial.)

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

My number one favorite. As both a student and a teacher, I’ve been in the situation of having trouble learning or conveying an idea. In every case, it was a shortage of a clear, concise understanding of the concept.

Ideas need to be challenged to test their relevance, to test their clarity, to test their truth. Challenging ideas spurs our creativity. It makes for a nice little feedback loop; challenge—think—create—challenge. . . Add a little playful imagination to the mix and new, unique ways of approaching the world emerge. This is the way of the artist; this is the way of the inventor.

It’s also been said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” The difference may not be obvious initially. Copying is duplicating. There’s no creativity in monkey-see-monkey-do. No matter how much skill it takes, it needs no imagination. Stealing ideas, or borrowing if you prefer a softer term, is taking the techniques and concepts from not just one, but many sources, mixing and remixing them with your own personal experiences to turn out a result as unique as a snowflake. Real creativity can’t emerge from a vacuum. The trick is to steal from everyone you can, but copy no one.

Challenge, imagine.

Posted in Art & Photography, Creativity | 1 Comment