Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 05:31:02 01/13/99
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On January 12, 1999 at 21:03:33, Will Singleton wrote: > >On January 12, 1999 at 18:56:47, Fernando Villegas wrote: > >>Dear Don: >>Thanks for your kind words about my "artistry". Sure I would like they were >>fully truth :-) Respect your reasonning, I see in it some flaws because of your >>examples and perhaps, if you used them as mental models to create your own >>reasonning, that's the reason you are somewhat mistaken in this point. Let me >>explain: >>To produce a product is not the same to compete. You produce or can produce >>something adding things, efforts, etc. In fact, that's the esence to do >>something. To compete is to decide which product or perfomance or whatever is >>best according a criteria, so it is something enterily different. In the first >>case it is obvious some process of aditions can be -not neccesarily, but it can >>be- useful for the final product; in the second case it is obvious that not >>adition counts, but just comparison between isolated competitive elements. The >>fastest man of the world IS the fastest, no matter if all population of the >>earth compete against him. And so and so, including Gary againts all genuses of >>the world, including you and me :-) But if adition is the point, even the best >>guy in the world to use the showel cannot create a deepest hole as a million >>guys could do. >>Now, I think that a chess program cannot be catalogued as a piece of art and so >>programming cannot be catalogued as an artistic process. It is based in >>techniques that are known, that accumulates in times, that can be compared each >>other in terms of eficacy, etc. So chess programming approach a lot more to a >>clasic technnological enterprise AND THEN AND SO the addition process gets great >>importance, if not decisive. You cannot say that a Charly Parker jazz >>improvisation is "better" than one by Coleman Hakwkins, because a real work of >>art is something individual, uncomparable, valid in itself for ever. But of >>course you can compare between chess programs. CM2000 is not a piece of art >>valid forever, just a piece of software valid until a better one made of it a >>piece of obsolescence. >>Yes, some tech. enterprises can seems to be an art craft because the initial >>isolation of the creators, some fuzzyness of the techniques, etc, BUT that is >>not enough to think that will be the way to do things forever. I am sure that >>Curie was a talented man, but I am sure that sistematic work in any modern >>commercial laboratory produces tenfold more ideas and approaches that what weas >>done by Curie all his life. In this, sciences, it is matter of critical mass, >>specially when this "mass" is highly skilled people. >>Fernando > >Fernando, > >You make a couple of points I would disagree with, in your thoughtful >message. You say "To produce a product is not the same to compete." >In the context of the discussion about Microsoft, one cannot produce a >product without the prospect of successful competition, almost by >definition. Here we go into a tricky matter that would need a long semantic debate. Of course the product is made or can be made to compete, as MS does, nevertheless I concentrate my analysis NOT in the final use of the product, BUT in how it is done. Once a product has been done adding many talents, material, techniques, etc, and so, once it is finished and nothing more is added, then and only then it competes and so then and only then addition disappears and comparison emerges. The "prospect" to compete of course is and addition too: the motivational impulse to do the best thing you can get. In the broader scheme of things, which includes pure >research, you are of course correct. But not in a business environment. > >With respect to whether a computer program is a piece of art, I must >say I could not disagree more. Let me turn it around. > >(Will as Fernando): >Now, I think that a jazz performance cannot be catalogued as a piece of >art and so playing an instrument cannot be catalogued as an artistic >process. It is based in techniques that are known, that accumulates in >times, that can be compared each other in terms of eficacy, etc. So >playing the sax approaches a lot more to a clasic technnological >enterprise AND THEN AND SO the addition process gets great >importance, if not decisive. You cannot say that a Bob Hyatt program is >"better" than one by Don Dailey, because a real work of art is something >individual, uncomparable, valid in itself for ever. But of course you can >compare between sax players. Parker is not a piece of art valid forever, >just a bunch of fast riffs strung together, played over and over, valid until >a better one made of it a piece of obsolescence. >[ end of transposition ] > >Actually, while that was fun, I believe that both chess programming and >jazz can be mechanical, or they can be artistic. Depends on who's >doing the programming, and also on who's judging. The process of >creation and art can exist in the most mundane appliance, or even a can >of soup. > >Will Of course you have a shadow of a point in this, but also is a tricky matter, again. You can decide that even a chair is artistic, but the essence of a chair is jut to be an appliance even if some features added to it can make an estetic impression. I mean, the chjhais is a chair because you can put your ass over it and that supposes to satisfye certain minimal requeriments of technical proficience. Once that has been fulfilled, the chair exist even if it is the ugliest chair of the world. The artistic objet, on the contrary, is esentially oriented to produce that kind of emotion and intelecctual reponse we call estetic, so if it is not capable to produce it, it fails, it does not exist, it is a failure. It is no art, but just a failure. If you play mechanically the sax, you are not going to ghet an artistic result and so you are not playing jazz, you are trying to deceive yourself. Sounds are produced, some people even can believe they are lessoning jazz, but it is not the real thing. Just as a n appliacen should comply with technical minimal criteria to exist as such, no matter what, art needs to comply with certain minimal requerioments of does not exist as such. So we have discrete level that must be reached and surpassed to become one thing or another and so we have an objetive base to saaY THIS IS ART OR NOT. In that sense, chess programming is not and cannot be art, although of course, beyond technical capabilities, we can see into it a great amount of wit. Sometime people saym, facing a math formula, that it is "elegant". Nevertheless, we know math is not part of the fashion industry. We just use such expression if the formula is very simple and comply with its purpose. Anyway, this is a fuzzy fuield of discussion Iand I do not pretend to have about this not the last neither the first word. A pleasure Fernando
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