Ability to Manage Chaos into Order

Devan likes to go off tangent just as much as I do. Here’s a snippet of one that came in a work email sent to me not too long ago.

“These are visions of cities as machines for making money, if not for turning the poor into the not-so-poor, which is what attracts the ambitious and the desperate to them in the first place. There are other kinds of visions that start, as so many urban visions have done, with an attempt to deal with the pathology of the city. Modernism, after all, was probably as much about notions of hygiene as anything else.

But there are other, less-tangible visions that no city can do without for long. In some cases, they are a reflection of the ways in which societies organize themselves, most clearly as manifestations of a cultural identity. It is that uniquely Japanese ability to manage chaos into order, for example, that makes Tokyo so different from many poorer Asian cities with similar basic structures. Tokyo is a city without an obvious urban logic beyond the great green void of the emperor’s garden at its heart. It has no rational street address or numbering system, a hugely crowded underground rail system, absurd traffic jams-and yet it is one of the most intricately and carefully organized cities in the world. In any other culture such a chaotic structure would be reflected in external, literal chaos. In Japan, apparently genetically programmed levels of social cohesion turn the same raw material that you might find in a slum into something entirely different.”

-Devan Saddic

The Art of Thinking by Jumping

What makes a good innovator requires an unusual combination of apparently opposing characteristics. The first logic, which assesses the problem and accepts the rules which have to govern the solutions. But you can be as logical as you like and still produce a dreary idea. What separates humdrum work from brilliant work is the second characteristic-not normally given much freedom by logical people-and that is intuition.

Intuition, derived from knowledge, experience and God knows what else, is the unpredictable human element that saves us from a world designed by computers. It encourages the mind to jump away from the expected, and helps to produce ideas that are surprises as well as solutions. And there it might end, veiled in a certain amount of professional mystery, expect that someone will inevitably back the innovator into a corner and say, “what made you think of doing that?”

Quite often there won’t be a precise answer. If good innovators have anything in common, it is that they all seem to be equipped with a subconscious sponge, capable of absorbing a wide and unrelated range of stimuli to be tucked away at the back of the mind for future use. A builder’s yard or a factory are likely to provide a fruitful scrap of inspiration as a book on Islamic calligraphy or a visit to the Louvre. But how did that scrap become part of an innovative solution? Logic? Intuition? Lateral rationalization? Maybe thinking by jumping is as close a description as we can get, particularly since innovators spend most of their working lives hopping back and forth between different contexts and dimensions and periods in time.

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Cogito Cadavre Exquis Ergo Sum

Surrealists play a game they called Exquisite Corpse which assembled words or pictures into a composition. A player would write a noun on paper, fold it over, pass it to the next person who would ass an adjective or verb, and then fold it over, and so on around the table. The last player unfolded the paper to reveal a bizarre unpredictable phrase – or image. Sort of a visual Chinese Whispers. Mundane contexts can also develop unlikely expressions.

Take the buttonhole. In past times the thread which reinforced button holes got ideas above its station. It began to decorate the edges. It then spread out to luxuriantly decorate tunics and create ceremonial military uniforms with gold braid, silver epaulettes, and elaborate trimmings – the scrambled egg of officialdom. From button hole to Brigadier. Then there is the intellectual play of Passing the Buck. Architect Rem Koolhaas utilized context in his design to house the Hague National Dance Theater. Sited in an ugly urban district the structure was deliberately conceived to echo the surrounding messiness. It was created piecemeal and at random in a calculated response to the constantly changing brief and specifications. Life is lived forwards but only understood backwards.

The significance of the last Supper was not realized by those around the table, but only by those who viewed it with the hindsight of what was to come. That is probably why the Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) is also known as Consequences

Inspiration originally meant receiving a breath of divinity. In modern parlance psychoanalysts refer to it as ‘a moment of insight’ and behaviourists ‘an act of intuition’; most of us rely on the metaphoric ‘bolt from the blue.’ Mine is more of the unannounced flashing of high beams behind me.

An experience when an unanticipated and spontaneous idea suddenly pops up into the head from nowhere. An unnerving sensation that, rather than us making something happen, something is happening to us.

Ever since Archimedes leapt out of his bath shouting ‘Eureka’-I’ve found it -recorded instances of creative lightening flashes have become legion. James Watt was struck with the idea of the steam engine while watching his kettle; Leo Szilard the sudden illumination of a neutron chain reaction (or how to make an atomic bomb) while waiting at traffic lights in Southampton Row.

How such connections spring to mind are guess work but they seem to favor those who have promiscuous curiosity and chronic attraction to problems.

The only certainty is that inspiration cannot be summoned up by an act of will. To labour towards it, is, in effect, to move in the opposite direction.

As Nietzche put it: ‘A thought comes when it wills, not when I will it.’

 

Adjust to suit the measures of human speech

The whale moves in a sea of sound:
shrimps snap, plankton seethes,
fish croad, gulp, drum their air-bladders,
and are scrutinized by echo-location,
a light message of sound
touching the skin.
The small, thoothed whales use high frequencies:
finely tuned and focused sound-beams,
intense salvoes of bouncing clicks, a thousand a second,
with which a hair, as thin as half a millimeter, can be detected;
penetrating probes,
which which they can scan the contents of a colleagues stomach,
follow the flow of their blood,
take the full measure of an approaching brain.
From two cerebral cavities in their melon-shaped heads,
they can transmit two sonic probes, as if talking in stereo,
and send them in any direction at the same time:
one ahead, one behind, one above, one below…
lengthening the sound-waves, shortening them, heightening them,
until their acoustic switchboard recieves the intelligence required.
Spoken to in English,
the smallest cetacean, the dolphin,
will rise to the surface,
alter its vocal frequencies to suit the measures of human speech,
pitch its voice to the same level as that of human sounds
when traveling through air – an unfamiliar medium  -
adjust the elastic lips of its blow-hole,
and then, after courteously waiting for silence,
produce a vibrato imitation of human language:

words, phrases, sentences….

Allegory of the Prcocess in Shibimu

FUSEKI
The opening stage of a game when the entire board is taken into account
⇓

SABAKI
An attempt to dispose of a troublesome situation in a quick and flexible way
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SEKI
A neutral position in which neither has the advantage
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UTTEGAE
A sacrifice play, a gambit
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SHICHO
A running attack
⇓

TSURU NO SUGOMORI
A graceful maneuver in which the enemy stones are captured

Taking Notice

Theoretically (the word THEORY derives from the Greek word ‘TO BEHOLD’) everybody is capable of remembering everything that ever happened to them and perceiving everything that’s happening around them. Luckily this never occurs. Exposure to information of such overwhelming magnitude would mean closing down our mind entirely or taking leave of reality altogether. A situation which strongly encourages us to only absorb what we want or need and block out the rest.

A scientific paper entitles What the Frog’s eye tells the Frog’s brain details how frogs were wired up to see what they see. Not much actually. Mainly a matter of light interference, a looming shadow of a predator or something edible flying by. The frog’s universe is screened down to the minimum needed for survival. For them there are no glorious sunsets, no leaves rustling in the wind.

We also only notice things which are directly relevant to our daily business. In consequence, we tend to reduce our environment to visual muzak-a perpetual symphony of colors, shapes and patterns.

Blinkered by habit we glance around rather that look with acuity. In effect the eye sleeps until the mind wakes it with a question.

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Where Did I Put Those Scissors

Paul Klee’s studio was once described as an alchemist’s lair, stuffed with the materials and instruments that he made and kept about him-homemade brushes, whittles reed pens, dental picks and razor blades fastened to improvised handles, gesso-caked cups and bent bits of wire to scrape, incise and abrade the compounded surfaces of his painting.

‘An artifact is an object suitable for attaining some end that a person intends to be used for attaining that end. The mixture of mechanics and psychology makes artifacts a strange category. Artifacts can’t be designed by their shape or their constitution, only by what they can do and by what someone, somewhere, wants them to do’
Steven Pinker

The tools designed by Marc Isambard Brunel to make ship’s blocks are often cited as the first instance of mechanical mass production. Priority might be given to clockmakers, or locksmiths, but the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth was the first large enterprise. Ship’s blocks are wheels encased in a wood housing, threaded with a rope, and used as pulleys to lift weights and furl sails. The introduction of these tool-made blocks replaced 110 skilled workers with ten unskilled men within a few months.

In 1867 Karl Marx made much of the 500 different kinds of hammer produced in Birmingham, each adapted to fulfill a specific task. He also neatly defined machines as ‘knowledge objectified’. Machines had become an extension of man. Previously we shaped tools, thereafter they shaped us. A profound change which meant that instead of wondering how to breed a better horse there were those, like Henry Ford, imagining a world without the horse.

We are fast reaching a point where technology will create a store of available solutions to supply instant solutions for all problems. The problem of the problem will have been transferred for how can I cut paper, to one where did I leave the scissors.

Word’s Can’t Be Trusted

Happily someone has suggested the word poetry has its roots in Aramaic (the language spoken by Christ) and expresses the sound of water flowing over pebbles. In the fairy story The Magic of Oz, by pronouncing the word PYRZOXGL – correctly – one could magically turn oneself into any animal one desired. Shrew or cat, werewolf or hushpuppy, or whatever. Why, I wonder, are there s may sh and gl words for light? Shimmer, shine, shone, sheen. Glimmer, glint, gleam, glitter, glisten, glow, glower. And so many sl words for unpleasantries like slink, sludge, slurp, slum, sleaze, slime. Xavier Ducoro is an unlikely character in n improbable story which takes place on a train on the London Underground. He has an obsession to turn Barkerloo Line stations into anagrams. He reassembles Waterloo into a Wet Rolo and Woo later, rearranges Embankment into Met bank men, and morphs Charing Cross from Char crossing to Scotch in rags to Crash so ring C. There are things that have names that I never knew had names. For instance the metal or plastic think on the end of a shoelace i called a aglet. The indent at the bottom of a wine bottle is a kick or a punt. The wire contraption of a lampshade is a harp. The prongs on a fork are tines. Then there are words which other people know and I’ve never heard of. I took some books to the coffee shop – just your run-of-the-mill-time-out-fodder-the kind of book you read if you’re slouching or lying down. Anyway, after I was settled and got into the first one, I hit a roadblock – diegeses. I forgot my Blackberry so I had to write it down. A few pages on, it happened again – hermeneutics. I wrote that down, too. Then suddenly it got out of hand – crepuscular, moidore, modadonic, muniments, syzygy, oleaginous, febrifuge, scilicet, descrials, onomastics, senescence, clerihews, exergues. When I got back home I took out the dictionary to sort out what meant what. The first page which accidentally fell open showed me DILDO on the top left corner of the page. Well, I know what that means, but I still took a peek at the definition – I was surprised. DILDO, the dictionary said, ‘is a word used in the refrain of ballads‘ or ‘refers to a particular tree or shrub‘. Words can’t be trusted.

Contemplative Rant

基本形一 of Strategy

Situation
⬇
Measurements
⬇
Estimates
⬇
Analysis
⬇
Balancing
⬇
Triumph
also known as:
Tsuru no Sugomori

If You Want the Rainbow, You Gotta Put Up With the Rain

If you’re in a hole don’t keep digging – look around. Then get the bits and pieces into some kind of order so as to point up to the problem. Sometimes it comes easy, other times it’s like confining jelly with a rubber band. Anyway, once achieved, the next move is to head off along the most promising route. The solution may become evident or you can end up in an exasperating period of hiatus when, despite trying this and that, the answer remains elusive. Hopefully he germ of an idea eventually peeps through, but before leaping on it with relief let it incubate for a while. Here the mind works on the idea in some mysterious way. Either the potential evaporates, in which case you have to start all over again, or it emerges (said Henry James) with ‘a firm iridescent surface, and a notable increase in weight’. Designing looks easy if you don’t know how, difficult if you do.