On Our Taste in Music and Sociological Explanations with Michael Walsh

Dr Michael Walsh, Sociologist at the University of Canberra

Dr Michael Walsh is a sociologist at the University of Canberra. I asked Michael how sociology explains our musical preferences, what our preferences say about us, and about the future of music in a market-driven, high-tech world.

Michael mentions two sociological greats who have waded in on the discussion of music in society, Max Weber and Theodor Adorno. 

When it comes to sociological explanations of music in society, I was curious about the following:

• What is sociology? What does it mean to be a sociologist? How does music fit in with sociology? Is there such a thing as “Sociomusicology” and what is it?
• What did Max Weber have to do with the "Sociology of Music"?
• Pierre Bourdieu argued, “nothing more clearly affirms ones ‘class,’ nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music”. Bourdieu was like an individual publishing machine. Can we trust his judgement or is it true? I like Rose Tattoo and AC/DC, but I love John Adams, Mahler, and Brahms, not to mention Woody Allen soundtracks and Bob Dylan. Does that all mean I am a cashed-up booner?
• Why did you get into the sociology of music, and what music do you like and why? Do you see yourself enjoying the music you like on the basis of the European critical theory, or is it based on rational choice theory? And if someone listens to Katy Perry, are they an economist’s persona waiting to buy the next contrived musician? Or is that just my new-found class status speaking?

The curly questions about European critical theory and rational choice theory and how these relate to music were ring-ins. In my Google searching (not research) about the sociology of music, I found these two terms and just threw them into the interview. Michael took this in his stride.

Getting my podcast groove on...

"Saint-Germain-des-Prés - Paris" 2017, oil pastel on paper by Margarita Georgiadis

The picture above is a work by Margarita Georgiadis. It is in with the framer and will look like a million dollars when we get it back later in the year. When thinking of a picture for this podcast, I thought of all the linkages this photo provides.

The building pictured above also happens to appear in a Google images search results for "le flaneur". I don't look gift horses in the mouth anymore, I just go with the flow. Here is the same building in a painting by Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877 (see below).

Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. Public domain via Wikimedia.

In putting together these test podcasts, I am drawing on years of learning, hours of time in the chair in front of the screen, trial and error, heartache, disappointment. But was any of it wasted time? I don't think so.

Years ago I was using Facebook and wikis and blogs in my teaching - this was back in 2008. The something happened with an upgrade to the learning management system and I lost all interest in doing it again. 

But after a decent break and a revamp of my teaching philosophy and my research philosophy, and a little bit of work on being grateful for the opportunities I have had to learn, I can see a way to reconcile the competing demands of modern life with my ideas of the pastoral lifestyle that escaped even Virgil.

Enter the podcast. Doing a podcast by oneself is a lonely thing. I daresay it isn't very interesting for others either. But I need to work through the process. I am using a number of old faithful applications plus a few new ones. 

The biggest issue is the latency when I use the microphone. One must have headphones on, which means one then needs to monitor the microphone through the headphones. It is a catch-22 dilemma.

I have some interesting music which is licenced with Creative Commons. Some I found from the Free Music Archive. The track at the end of this podcast is Beaconsfield Villas Stomp by Doctor Turtle and is licenced CC BY-NC 4.0.

The sound effects are from AR Sound Effects on YouTube. The Terms and Conditions tell me I can use an MP3 converter so I used Youtube to MP3 Converter. it works really well and the sound effects are great.

In this podcast, I try to weave too many things together, as there wasn't much thought put into it. I was really just thinking out loud while getting a workable system happening. I have a while to go but it feels much smaller than the massive hulk that had me cringing at the thought of honour my own commitments to myself that I could easily have ignored because nobody else knew. But that is hardly the examined life.

The talk with John Laws happened before I was in the embargoed journalists' meeting with the then Communications Minister and now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and former Telstra legend Dr Ziggy Switkowski, for the launch of NBN Lite after the coalition's election victory. The Conversation asked me to go in and get a story out as soon as the embargo was lifted. Here is a link to that article.

I remember thinking that to be a real academic, one had to be on Tripel J's Hack. I got two guernseys on that show, but John Laws, even in retirement, really took the cake. To be talking to the man who I had listened to almost every day forty years previously was certainly a career highlight. I daresay this podcast may not be. it is heartfelt, but its main purpose is to be my audio lorem ipsum so I can get a decent podcast technique happening. But I do I hope you enjoy it.

Credits:

Sound effects: AR Sound Effects, YouTube. Royalty free, see Terms and Conditions.

Music: Beaconsfield Villas Stomp by Dr Turtle, CC BY-NC 4.0.

Instructions: Marziah Karch, Lifewire.

Art is Dead (again); or, The coward within Art is momentarily resurrected, then dies one of its ten thousand deaths...

Art is Dead. Long live Art!
Photo: Flickr/Peter Bihr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

I believe that my work must be guided by a philosophy, and not just any philosophy, but one that begins at my beginning and hopefully stands the test of time, or at least my time. This week I insisted with some colleagues that having a clear philosophy was important. Not everybody can see the importance. But when things go wrong, or we disagree about a particular direction, our arguments become philosophical.

I had decided that my task as a philosopher must be to compose a theory of representations, which would be a philosophy of what it is to be human (Arthur Danto).

Take Andy Warhol as an example. Art or not? Well. Arthur Danto played a big part in bringing out the philosophy of art.

Andy Warhol and art is dead? Again, it is the philosophy that makes art and thought and music live.

A bunch of brillo pads isn't art, but a painted wooden box made to look exactly the same is art. Why? Philosophy.

Watch Synecdoche, New York. Does it make sense now?

RSS and Podcast Renaissance: Tom Kantor, Pulsar Music, and Rail Dynamics

Sunblessed from Ebden-Small on Vimeo.

The AK-47 of Phones and Dodo Birds

I remember buying the Nokia 6210 WAP phone for a cool $800 back in the early 2000s. Bob Geldof called it the AK-47 of phones and was still using one in 2014. WAP was hopeless. it was a complete waste of time and money. While I am pleased 'Sir' Bob got his money's worth, I really thought that RSS and podcasts were in a museum of popular culture somewhere as a reminder of the olden days.

I remember iPodder. It never worked. Not once. Then just a little while ago, RSS and podcasts were back! So here's a little story about the Renaissance of RSS and podcasts, and some interesting discoveries I made using these old school tools.

The Renaissance of Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary for purists)

I often commute for up to two hours per day, and this has opened up the whole old world of podcasts, which has opened up a whole old world of RSS. I say old world because I thought RSS and podcasting would have gone the way of the WAP phone by now. But no, RSS and podcasts are experiencing a renaissance.

I used RSS years ago and I had almost forgotten about it until I listened to a podcast. Good old Feedly was recommended, so back I went. I have dropped out of social media several times (except this blog), and each time I rationalise all the apps and social media sites I use, and Feedly (along with iPodder, which is now Juice) was an early casualty. 

One of the things I have been doing unsuccessfully is subscribing to a number of websites. But my personal email ends up as a stack of unread emails about things I might be interested in but rarely get the chance to read unless I print them out or let them sit in the inbox or open on tab in my browser for an eternity.

When Twitter first came out (I was an avid user back then, not so much now it is over-run by trad media. Twitter has been a casualty of rationalisation several times), I remember the discussions about how it was a stream, like a river where everything floated past and you might look at things of interest, but if you missed it and it wasn't popular, then c'est la vie.

Email is like a dam - it fills up and fills up until it either explodes or you have to open the flood gates and let the stored energy disappear in a rush. Either way, you miss out on things. C'est la vie.

So Feedly it is. I find myself unsubscribing to all the email subscriptions that clutter up my inbox and I daresay I miss out on more than I do using the RSS aggregator. When I unsubscribe, I am providing feedback to say that I am still following on RSS. 

Occasionally, I find websites that I want to follow but there is no ready RSS feed. They are stuck in the Middle Ages I guess.

So now I subscribe to various RSS feeds through Feedly. I simply search for what I want, delete what I don't. For example, if it has 'Trump' in the title it gets deleted. Instantly. It makes no difference to my current affairs knowledge and I stay remarkably happier. 

Not because I care about Trump. I just don't care about Trump. Whenever anyone says they are a world beater, I say let them have a go. They all go the way of the WAP phone. I don't need to read about it every second of my short life.

Occasionally, I stumble upon really interesting things. The video made by Tom Kantor at the top of this page is one example. Filmmaker Tom Kantor, died too young, son of philanthropist Anne Kantor, sister of Rupert Murdoch; Tom's sister runs the Poola Charitable Foundation.

The film is haunting. It provides the sounds of my childhood. A sound so familiar I pretend to cringe in case anybody notices. And the haunting scenes of familiar brands and that empty landscape, always present, unpaved, the new discarded upon the ancient. The rich kid who went to Swinburne TAFE, and they who have unknowingly educated angels. Brilliant.

Podcasts are great. And I am learning so much I simply must use them in my teaching

For listening to podcasts, I find Stitcher suits me best. I was thinking of using Stitcher for my own podcasts, but I cannot seem to login to their content provider portal and they aren't answering my emails, so maybe not. But for now, Stitcher will do.

My favourite podcasts are Art of Manliness and Lapham's Quarterly. But the more I commute, the more I burn through the episodes. Some times there just aren't enough.

Last week I stumbled upon the Smithsonian Institution's podcast "Sidedoor". It's great. Here are two of great discoveries:

Pulsar Sound: An app that makes music out of the stars. Turn the app on, point your phone at the sky, and it makes music based on the frequencies emanating from pulsars. Or something like that. Bet that won't work on your AK-47, Sir Bob.

Rail Dynamics: Emory Cook basically created Hi-Fi. That's not a typo. And he is most famous for his cult hit record, Rail Dynamics. This is a bunch of recordings of steam trains. I can listen to it while I read and write, much like my other favourite composer, John Adams. It is like a naked Pink Floyd album. Just brilliant.

And to top it all off, I found some new music, while trying to put together my first podcast, I stumbled upon some new music. A Russian band, Stoner Train, with a Russian, blues throcalist. Now I have heard it all. And the cover depicts a train, so it's on theme, too.

Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Virginia Woolf novel I have read, but I have read her work before, specifically A Room of One's Own, where Ms Woolf writes about writing and feminism, and I found this interesting, even though Ernest Hemingway, my favourite author, didn't like Ms Woolf, and I wasn't sure whether this was because she was a rival or because she was a woman, and given her feminism and her love of women, more generally, I was not surprised that Hemingway, in his obvious then-contemporary male chauvinism, might not like Ms Woolf's views, but of course this was before I had read Mrs. Dalloway, which really is an interesting work, and rivals Hemingway's themes, at least in terms of the psychological impact of war, but Ms Woolf also covers the "war and society" aspects that Hemingway tends to ignore, outside of his protagonists' meanderings through society, so in this regard, at least, Ms Woolf's work differs, yet tends to be gender-focused in its own way, and that is not to say that it is bad, for it isn't, or that I found it difficult to read, for it wasn't, but there was something about it that made it difficult to read in bits and pieces, and it would be much better suited to a long sitting, if one could find the time, because it tends to read a little like James Joyce, even though Ms Woolf and her husband (notice I use Ms as I am sure 'Mrs' Woolf would have done, even though the New York Times referred to her as 'Mrs Woolf' in her obituary, which was, interestingly, only a 'believed dead' obituary because of a suicide note and her missing body, which is also interesting given that Hemingway, who really didn't like her so much, also took his own life), Leonard, were unable to print Ulysses because it was too big for their printing establishment, known as Hogarth Press, and all this from reading what is, comparatively, a rather short book, almost a novella, but if I were to record what I gleaned most importantly from this book is not so much that Woolf was a good or bad writer, for surely her work is very good, but that the reason Hemingway didn't like her had nothing to do with their polar opposites in terms of gender and so on, for surely even in death they were alike, but the thing that is most striking is the difference in their prose, and it is for this reason, I believe, that Hemingway didn't like Woolf, not for the aforementioned issues, but mostly because her writing leaves one feeling rather frantic and out of breath, which may well be a deliberate technique, and it surely works, as in leaving one breathless, but what I am not sure about is whether this has anything to do with the content or the simple fact that Ms Woolf's sentences are just so bloody long.

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New music livens up Old Courthouse

The String Contingent, Old Courthouse at Gunning, 19 March 2017. Photo by Gunning Focus Group

The String Contingent, Old Courthouse at Gunning, 19th March 2017.

The String Contingent, presented by the Gunning Focus Group, arrived at our village on Sunday 19th March 2017. The trio performed to a packed crowd of more than 60 people in the Old Courthouse at Gunning. According to Mike Coley, this was a record crowd for the Gunning Focus Group, which has been bringing fine artists to Gunning since 1998.

Consisting of a double-bassist and a violin player (both graduates of the ANU School of Music) and a guitarist (from Scotland), the group have recently completed a residency where they composed a whole suite of new music. Many of the new pieces were on the ticket and the composer of each piece explained the concept and the importance of the composition before its performance. This was far from a dry affair, with bassist Holly sending the audience into fits of laughter with her antics towards her colleagues, Chris and Graham.

The String Contingent is an award-winning trio focused on original music in the developing genre of acoustic chamber/folk. One should never underestimate the aural power of a trio, and these three young musicians did not disappoint. If you are tired of the same old music, and don’t know where to look for something different, then you can check out The String Contingent at their website at http://www.thestringcontingent.com/.

The fact that you can discover new music in the village of Gunning is an added bonus. If you’d like to support ongoing musical performances in our village, you can join the Gunning Focus Group by visiting http://gunningfocusgroup.com/contact-us.

The next performance will be by Adhoc Baroque, performing at St Edmund’s Anglican Church, Biala Street, Gunning, on 23 April 2017 at 2pm.

Theatre

Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Maugham's work is easy to read, not because it is simple, but that he is a story teller. Many subtle nuances permeate the prose, and topics including art, poetry, politics, and sexuality, amid class consciousness, are as near or far as the reader wishes them to be. A few themes that resonate with me recently include the notion of solitude. I often think of the 2007 film La Vie en Rose and how Édith Piaf's character at the end says words to the effect of "we all die alone". When I tried to find the precise quote, I stumbled upon a review of the movie in The Guardian from 2007 that indicates the movie was "empty". Yet for me, I had shuddered at the prospect of dying alone until some time after I "unDisneyfied" myself in my forties. In the review, a quote from Olivier Dahan reads that the movie provides "the perfect example of someone who places no barrier between her life and her art". Julia Lambert, Maugham's protagonist, occupies exactly this same space. Although this book can be considered either a tragedy or a comedy, depending on how you look at it (is this even possible?), there is a strong theme of solitude, as in being alone with one's thoughts while being part of society but remaining autonomous from family and friends - as if there is no bond beyond mere convention (Marxist maybe?). Out of the entire cast, Julia Lambert's son emerges as the one intelligent being among a crowd of self-seeking and emotionally greedy individualists who by the end are all likeable but rather annoying (think of Agatha Christie's Poirot and how even she tired of his conceited dandyism - he was a bore). In some ways, an alternative title might even be How to be or not be a Bore. Not that the book is boring, but the characters and their mutual disregard for each other certainly make one think about one's own level of boringness as highlighted by these characters. I think that while audience sympathy for Piaf makes all the difference in the movie, Lambert's rich life of high culture doesn't allow the same leniency. But what is clear is that we live and die alone, whether we think so or not. Theatre leaves me wondering to what extent I bore those around me, live selfishly without noticing, and think I am better than everyone else. To err is human, and Maugham points out that our propensity for being boring, selfish, and judgemental mean that we can only ever err in this regard. Lambert shows us how far we can push it in the guise of blurring life and art. There are a couple of quotes that I find brilliant. First, on acting and poetry: "You had to have had the emotions, but you could only play them when you had got over them. She remembered that Charles had once said to her that the origin of poetry was emotion recollected in tranquility. She did't know anything about poetry, but it was certainly true about acting" (p. 290). Second, when Lambert's son is telling her how he perceives her: "When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there" (p. 261). The former is true in my experience, but I have never said it so elegantly. The latter is what concerns me more now than dying alone. I can accept that as a future fact, but if I were to be, as Lambert's son does to his mother, peeled back like an onion, would there be anything of substance? In Poetics, Aristotle makes clear distinctions between tragedy and comedy. It seems an absurdity that a story could be both. But I think that is what Maugham achieves. That he does this in a book called Theatre in a story that focuses on actors makes it possible, and, like I said, you could read this story as a comedy and think "those crazy artist types", or, you could read this as a tragedy and think "do I do that with my life?" In either mode, Maugham displays his genius.

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Defending the Enlightenment with the Knowledge Illusion: Or, Why our desire for parsimony ensures we know diddly

What do we know? Photo by Linda Tanner CC BY 2.0

There are many statements about new knowledge and how, if you cannot explain something in so many words or less, then you do not understand the thing at hand. Or when senior executives want complex issues reduced to dot points to reduce their reading time.  Here I begin a critical examination of the opinion essay entitled "The Enlightenment's legacy is under siege. Defend it." by Damon Linker from The Week.

It would appear that our understanding of things, based on the academic desire for parsimony in developing new knowledge, has created an extreme that is ripe for the plucking by those who only think they know. If you are asking "Please explain?", then allow me to do so. But if you want my answer in so many words or less, then just go off and live your life as you please. It won't bother me.

What I want to do here is to not only critically examine Linker's essay, but to cross-examine the piece by superimposing a review, appearing in the April 2017 edition of Psychology Today, of the book The Knowledge Illusion, which is due for release soon. Obviously I cannot have read the book, but I will draw on the information provided in the review which touches on some key issues I wish to explore in the near future.

But first, let us begin with "Occams' Razor". Occam's Razor refers to the principle of parsimony in scientific research. In effect, if you are looking at two competing hypotheses, then the simplest is deemed the most likely. But we might also consider the hypotheses on a spectrum, with Occam's Razor on one extreme, and a Sherlock Holmes-style balance of probabilities on the other. Tania Lombrozo explains this far better than me. But apparently, Occam's Razor + Sherlock Holmes = Clever Kid.

Eyeball razor blade scene from Luis Buñuel's 1929 film Un Chien Andalou

When I read Linker's essay, I see Occam's Razor in action (a term which, incidentally, gives me the image of Luis Buñuel's eyeball razor blade in Un Chien Andalou). As I have not read Linker's other work, I can only examine the evidence presented, but, if I am to believe what is written about one of his major works, The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders, then he is not simply all for science and against everything else.

Nevertheless, Linker divides society into those for the Enlightenment, in a liberal arts or liberal democratic sense, and those who rejected Enlightenment thinking and have now come back to instigate Brexit, Trump, and here in Australia we rolled over the dead horse and flogged the other side of that other red-headed clown. 

No middle ground and a belief that "you're either with us or against us". Parsimonious, easy to put into dot point format, but oversimplified and wrong.

It may well be a case of heuristics, where the rule of thumb in Australia remains Labor = unionist, Liberal = silver-tail, and Greens = professional protestor who looks forward to state-led socialism. Of course, this is sometimes true but too simplistic to be useful in developing policy.

It is the same with Enlightenment versus counter-Enlightenment thinking. In The Knowledge Illusion, Sloman and Fernbach argue that the Dunning-Kruger effect is running rife in politics. Put simply, the effect explains "how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments".

And so it is with Linker's essay. Not Linker, but the people "out there" he is writing about. If we look at the issues of globalisation, free trade, immigration, and so on, it is not the theory that has been disproven, but the way it has been done. Here are two of my favourite anti-globalisation cartoons:

The cartoon on the left shows the worst kind of tourist. People who go to other cultures like they would to a zoo. And on the right shows the worst kind of trade, where multinationals drive out choice by driving efficiencies.

None of this is new. The Greek and Roman Empires did the same, be it democracy or administration, as did the Mongols, the Ottomans, the British and so on. But in the grand scheme of things, it is a misnomer to equate globalisation with Americanisation, or to think that the American Empire will somehow outlive history. 

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time (Aristotle's Physics, 221a).

I doubt the momentum of globalisation will be easily reversed. Nationalism cannot be the solution to all future problems. Brexit will not create jobs for underemployed Britons, Trump will not help the US economy by removing the ten or so million illegal workers who do all the dirty work without ever claiming social security benefits or receiving a tax refund.

Yet Linker draws on Heidegger and Nazis and tries to put Rousseau back in his illiberal box. I notice too that Linker has written a book entitled Theocons, so I suspect he is clinging to a New Right view of the world. Dare I say Orientalist.

So what is my point? The division of people into Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment camps is problematic because it relies on a two-dimensional divide. It also hides behind a thick veil of the Dunning-Kruger effect based on cultural competence. 

Which is why I say that you cannot just review one article and forget about bringing other things in for the sake of parsimony. The world is far more complex, and complexity is best fought with complexity. The graph below indicates that the less you know, the more competent you think you are, and the more likely that you have an opinion on climate change based on the principle of parsimony but you had to look up the meaning of parsimony.

Indeed, Gary Drevitch's review (Psychology Today, April 2017: 44-5) of The Knowledge Illusion uses climate change as one of the major examples of confident incompetence presently in vogue. So is it possible that Linker's view is not that of an "indifferent spectator"?

Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, used the concept of the "indifferent spectator" in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to arrive at the conclusion that our "social psychology is a better guide to moral action than is reason". I suspect that Linker is not indifferent at all but also doesn't know that is the case.

And surely Adam Smith, one of the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment, is using counter-Enlightenment thinking by arguing for a social psychology over reason in matters of morality? Linker has no answer to this problem.

I see this same hardheadedness in the I Fucking Love Science crew I regularly see on Facebook. Sure, science is great, but please don't pretend that science has all the answers or that, if you looked hard enough, you couldn't find a photograph of a relative who received blood-letting as a medical treatment. You may fucking love science but the knowledge illusion is still very real.

How do we overcome this? I think we need to revisit the principle of parsimony. I don't think it helps with complex problems. And, like reviewing one thing at a time for an orderly review, it does not illuminate biases or enable a triangulation or cross-examination of the issues at hand.

This has been an interesting activity. Linker points to many areas I am under-read in, and Psychology Today is proving to be, pardon the pun, an enlightening magazine. But complexity needs complexity, and binary solutions to systemic problems are not the answer, either in practice, or in our thinking.

Uncanny Valley: A compass for a digital morality?

Mannequin in Old Melbourne Gaol. Photo: Flickr/GSV CC BY 2.0

As a child of about seven or eight years old, I recall visiting the Old Melbourne Gaol, and feeling completely creeped out by the mannequins, especially when seeing one in a cell through the peephole.

Tonight, I saw two different mannequins, dressed as a male and a female. Although less irrational than when I was younger, I felt no less creeped out.

It turns out that there is a term to describe this unease: the "uncanny valley".

I don't want to spend all day explaining the concept, so the short version is that, in 1970, Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist, developed the hypothesis that human-like things are creepy, depending on how true to life they are.

Put simply, nobody gets creeped out until the thing gets closer to looking like a human (whether stationary or moving), but where it is not quite right. Think of those creepy "time out" dolls.

But apparently, it gets less creepy after a certain point (I am not convinced by this - to me it's all creepy). Below is the diagram explaining why it's called a "valley".

Uncanny Valley: Nobody cares until it starts to look like, but not quite be, a human. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

I rediscovered this feeling recently when reading an article in the Paris Review about Duane Hanson. Hanson made creepy human figures and then took Polaroid photographs of them. Just looking at the photos in the article creeped me out. I am so glad I am not Duane Hanson.

Then I remembered why the idea was so fresh in my mind. In Adelaide last month, I visited the SA Gallery and saw the work Woman with Laundry Basket. It creeped me out. I didn't know this until just now, but it is one of Hanson's pieces.

But I had just been at the SA Museum's "Curious Beasts" exhibition which had a number of examples of vintage "mermaids" and other bits and pieces of fantastic scams created by taxidermists for parlour tricks. I found these creepy, too.

After the exhibition, I walk into the stuffed animals of Africa part of the museum. Looking into the eyes of tigers and lions and hyenas and other beasts that once feasted on my rather distant ancestors put the wind up me, too. Around the corner, and there is an enormous lion sitting in a glass case. AND ITS BLOODY TAIL MOVED. 

Turns out it has a car windscreen wiper motor in it, and it flicks the tail every 45 seconds or so. Creepy.

So when I walk over to the museum and see the pregnant woman with the laundry basket, dressed as many women did when I was seven or eight years old, I was on creepy high alert. In the South Australian Gallery, you can walk right up to the figure. 

You can see the details of her veins. If she had moved I would have died of fright. Thank goodness there were no windscreen wiper motors in sight.

The difference between moving and stationary in creepy factor is slight, but between moving and stationary, moving increases the I-am-going-to-die-of-fright factor considerably. Thank goodness none of those mannequins in the Old Melbourne Gaol were mobile.

Do you want to see what a contemporary freaky creepy moving but stuck in the uncanny valley thing looks like? Check this out: http://www.cubo.cc/creepygirl/. If you don't trust me, then go to the website and use the link from there. And then tell me this isn't creepy.

So why is this of interest? It turns out that DNA could solve the data storage problem. What?

Data can be stored on DNA, and DNA can be stored on a CD. I am at maximum creepiness. And this I learn from the CSIRO.

That's right, the human genome takes up only 3.3 gigabytes. We could have put ourselves on hard-drives years ago.

This reminds me of the atomic bomb. We don't know how to save the planet, but we do know how to destroy it. That uncanny valley is just getting wider, isn't it?

One area that political science is only just starting to address is the concept of a digital morality. Having grown up with computers and the internet, I have come full circle. I've adopted technology early on, reached saturation point, and most recently, gone into slow mode. The other is not sustainable.

Yet scientists are driving us into a digital Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch), by George Bernard Shaw. In Shaw's self-proclaimed, often over-looked masterpiece, some people learn how to live until they are 1,000 years old. Not through scientific advancement, but through individual maturity, or wisdom and experience.

The trick was that people only needed to know how to live long lives. The "short-livers" did not have this capability and could barely survive in the presence of "long-livers". 

If we are to believe commentators of Shaw's work, his theme is political, where short-livers need government, but once humans can live for 1,000 years, they are, as competent individuals, capable of living without government.

But what if we can live for 1,000 years, not because of our wisdom and experience, but because of machines that not only interact but become part of people?

This sounds far-fetched. But the CSIRO has already made "bits" of humans, using 3D printers, that are surgically implanted.

Much like atomic bombs, we don't know how to live for 1,000 years, but we may do so anyway because of machines. I've come a long way from being creeped out in the Old Melbourne Gaol. Now I am falling down the uncanny valley and bashing my head all the way down.

Which brings me to my point. Why do we feel creeped out by human-like things? Is there some instinctual warning going on here? Is it a new thing? Have we, as humans, developed new instincts to warn us of the danger we are heading towards?

While I do not have the answers, I do suspect that there is something in the uncanny valley hypothesis that might provide a compass for developing a philosophy, an ethic, or maybe just an idea, of a sense of a digital morality.

While I have long hoped to be dead well before all of this became plausible, each new day makes the case for a concept of digital morality ever more urgent. 

Otherwise, like the atomic bomb, we will be capable of doing something before we know whether we should even be capable of doing such a thing in the first place. Regrettably, I don't hold much hope for the future.

Book Notes: "Surrealism" edited by Patrick Waldberg

Surrealism by Patrick Waldberg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


At first I thought this book was an old high school art text. But after a while, it was obvious that the book is a collection of original works by Ernst, Dali, and in particular, Andre Breton, written for a number of surrealist magazines over several decades. The references to Rimbaud made me think of Bob Dylan, and the fascination with Freud, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx and Engels, and many other great thinkers threw me. The development of surrealism from the early 1920s well into the 1960s was also a surprising discovery. The fascination with automatic writing makes me wonder to what extent Jack Kerouac was influenced by surrealism. There are many colour and black and white photos of the artists and their work, and the notes and biographical details are helpfully comprehensive. I must admit that I knew little of surrealism beyond Dali, and it is interesting for a movement that, to some extent, was a revolution against academe, was so very much academic despite its reputation.



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Book Notes: "Early Impressionism and the French State" by Jane Mayo Roos

Early Impressionism and the French State by Jane Mayo Roos

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This work makes a great deal of sense once the history of the period is put into perspective. I found myself discovering more about European history (when coupled with some reading on the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 and Lenin's view of the Paris Commune), especially Courbet's role in the Paris Commune I found fascinating. This was not an easy read as the material was so unfamiliar (aside from an interest in Impressionism more broadly) but it is worthy of a second read if one is so inclined. Very much an academic book for academics, but no pulled punches and plenty of depth in both notes, references and analysis, this work was well worth the effort.



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Book Notes: "Picasso" by Gertrude Stein

Picasso by Gertrude Stein

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is the first of Gertrude Stein's work I have read. You can definitely feel the intention that quite possibly influenced Hemingway's style, but I can't help thinking that Stein was one of those many intelligent people who cannot write very well. If anything, I shall probably remember her classification of Picasso's various periods simply through her repetition. It is a very quick read expedited by the various useful pictures of Picasso's work and a handful of photographs. Nonetheless, I doubt I would have bothered to read this if the subject matter wasn't of interest and Stein had not been a part of Hemingway's early development.



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