art
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Aftertouch
Johannes Vermeer, A Young Woman seated at a Virginal (c. 1670-72) In MIDI parlance, aftertouch refers to MIDI data that’s transmitted when a key or pad on an electronic controller is held down after the initial attack to control parameters such as volume, vibrato depth, or filter brightness. One of the first synthesizers to incorporate… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Martin Gayford’s “Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy” (2021)
“Each time I do a still life, I get very excited and realize that there are a thousand things here I can see! Which of them shall I choose? The more I look and think about it, the more I see. These simple little things are unbelievably rich. A lot of people have forgotten that.… Continue reading
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Art Is Artisanal
AI’s incursion into art-making raises the question, What defines the artist’s skill set? Artists are artisans and art is artisanal. Building on this, consider six qualities of art’s artisanal-ness and how AI fails to achieve them. Art-making is by hand. Playing music, writing, painting, dancing, cooking—art contains and expresses traces of the body that made… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: “The World According to David Hockney” (2024)
“New ideas often seem to go against common sense” (57). “You can’t have art without play. Even a scientist has a sense of play. And that allows for surprises, the unexpected” (69). “Painters must, to a certain extent, analyze their work afterwards. I’m sure the Cubists didn’t plan it, they didn’t down and say, ‘Well,… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Richard W. Hamming’s “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn” (1997)
“How are you to recognize ‘fundamentals’? One test is they have lasted a long time. Another test is from the fundamentals all the rest of the field can be derived by using the standard methods in the field” (9). “Creativity seems, among other things, to be ‘usefully’ putting together things which were not perceived to… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Samuel Arbesman’s “The Magic of Code” (2025)
“Enchantment and the belief in nonsense never disappeared in our modern scientific age. Similarly, the worlds of enchantment—or really, wonder—and disenchantment have existed alongside each other in the realm of computing. The utilitarian road of staid and corporate coding has always run beside the path walked by those delighted by the marvels of these machines,… Continue reading
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