[HN Gopher] FedEx shipping damage creates fractured artworks
___________________________________________________________________
FedEx shipping damage creates fractured artworks
Author : talonx
Score : 234 points
Date : 2021-01-20 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kottke.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kottke.org)
| legerdemain wrote:
| FedEx owns the box design and dimensions that these glass pieces
| explicitly imitate. FedEx also significantly contributes to the
| value of these pieces by applying unique and creative forms of
| rough handling during shipment.
|
| Does FedEx own this art, and should the credited individual be
| paying them a share of the money earned from its display?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > FedEx owns the box design and dimensions that these glass
| pieces explicitly imitate.
|
| The glasses pieces don't imitate the box dimensions - they go
| _into_ the box dimensions. They 're smaller than the boxes.
| Applejinx wrote:
| That's another level of Duchampian right there.
|
| If a work like this actually sold for a significant value, I
| would argue that the FedEx person who threw it about and broke
| it SHOULD be compensated for their contribution to the work,
| all the more since their unknowingness was absolutely part of
| the nature of the artwork (it wouldn't be the artwork if just
| the artist put the thing into a box and then dropped it).
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| > Does FedEx own this art
|
| Do the producers of brushes, paints, and canvases own any of
| the art that their products make possible? Does the owner of an
| art gallery own the photos I take during my paid visit?
| legerdemain wrote:
| > Does the owner of an art gallery own the photos I take
| during my paid visit?
|
| Yes? Paying for a ticket does not grant you a license to
| reproduce the art.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| Does the act of paying for admission sign away my rights to
| the photos I take while inside?
| butt_hugger wrote:
| Most often yes, but it depends on the gallery. The ones
| that have the big "no photography" signs are a giveaway.
| luisfmh wrote:
| It would be so cool if they did not just shipping to art
| galleries, but also mass produced it so you could get your own
| fedex shipping box art at home.
| comboy wrote:
| That is a great idea. It has some appeal. Prepare it from some
| thin sheet of glass but on something which will hold it
| together, maybe add some fluids separated in a ways that are
| easy to destroy with acceleration. You receive something that
| nobody else saw before and completely unique. With interesting
| enough design people would be posting pictures of these so you
| have marketing covered.
|
| And then there are returned products: "My item was not damaged
| at all"
| dawnerd wrote:
| Or just laminate the glass?
| comboy wrote:
| Yeah but I mean it would be nice if you could have some
| kaleidoscopic effect. Or something like a Rorschach test.
| Just broken glass won't go viral.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Personally, I judge art purely on the final result by principle
| and refuse to consider the artist itself, his stated intent, or
| the process by which he made it, as well as the source material
| whereupon it might be based: -- it must stand on it's own merit.
|
| In this particular case I find the cracks to not be terribly
| unaesthetic but not spectacular either, and consider it largely
| an inferior form of _Wabi-Sabi_ design.
|
| I do not like how much the art world is about the artist rather
| than the art itself, and how a story must accommodate it such as
| the novel production technique of shipping it as such.
|
| It is essentially a world of hero worship where one's name is
| more important than one's productions.
| tosser-8675309 wrote:
| So sad to see this getting downvoted. I think it a very
| reasonable assertion to make whether you consider yourself an
| avid art consumer or casual passerby.
|
| Nothing about this statement compels you to come to the same
| conclusion. I personally agree, and think a good metaphor is
| telling a joke. If you have to explain the punchline... either
| you've got the wrong audience or it's just not funny.
|
| And let's be honest: like it or not, some art (... "art"?) is
| made for artists and they have no desire to appeal to non-
| artists.
| vaughnegut wrote:
| In fairness, removing the context from art removes a lot its
| value. This would be akin to reading Animal Farm and ignoring
| its allegory about Communism and judging it purely on its merit
| as a story about some animals staging a revolution. This is
| also like reading Shakespeare in high school without one of
| those copies that explain a lot of the jokes and references
| that aren't obvious to the reading 500 years later.
|
| Context is what gives art a lot of its power, the downside is
| that you need this context to understand it. I'm not a huge art
| person so I view most art superficially, but always enjoy when
| I get an opportunity to learn more.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _In fairness, removing the context from art removes a lot
| its value._
|
| It removes the value for the unobjective man who cannot free
| himself of such biases and judge matters on their own merit.
|
| > _This would be akin to reading Animal Farm and ignoring its
| allegory about Communism and judging it purely on its merit
| as a story about some animals staging a revolution._
|
| No, it would be akin to reading animal farm without knowing
| anything about the auctor, or the conditions and process by
| which it was written.
|
| Art providing a commentary on an external event, and being
| judged upon how well it does so is an entirely different
| matter.
|
| Of course, the artist can also be considered if what the art
| attempt to do is to provide some kind of commentary on it's
| own artist.
|
| The argument you raise here is tantamount to that refusing to
| consider the auctor of a physics paper as well as how the
| research came to be in judging it's merit, is tantamount to
| not considering how well the physical results in it model the
| physical realities they attempt to describe.
|
| > _This is also like reading Shakespeare in high school
| without one of those copies that explain a lot of the jokes
| and references that aren 't obvious to the reading 500 years
| later._
|
| And this is exactly why I believe judging Shakespeare by
| modern readers is praetentious.
|
| A modern reader can never truly have _Sprachgefuhl_ for 1500s
| English. He may be able to read it, but it 's hard for him to
| truly be capable of assessing whether language truly sounds
| beautiful.
|
| > _Context is what gives art a lot of its power, the downside
| is that you need this context to understand it. I 'm not a
| huge art person so I view most art superficially, but always
| enjoy when I get an opportunity to learn more._
|
| It is what gives art power to the unobjective, biased man who
| cannot compartimentalize and judge matters on their own
| merit.
|
| This does not limit itself to art. You will find that the
| same same man who judges art by the artist, will also easily
| be convinced that the exact same dish tastes better, if he be
| told it was more expensive.
| depaya wrote:
| _> This does not limit itself to art. You will find that
| the same same man who judges art by the artist, will also
| easily be convinced that the exact same dish tastes better,
| if he be told it was more expensive._
|
| If someone perceives the exact same dish as tasting better
| because it was more expensive (and/or in a fancier setting,
| with fancy table linens and silverware, a live quartet
| playing classical music, etc) then to that person it IS
| better. Perceiving something as being better is literally
| all that matters.
|
| To look at it another way, removing one's sense of smell
| will make the same dish _taste_ worse. Smell is a factor in
| one 's perception of taste, as are other environmental
| factors.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _If someone perceives the exact same dish as tasting
| better because it was more expensive (and /or in a
| fancier setting, with fancy table linens and silverware,
| a live quartet playing classical music, etc) then to that
| person it IS better. Perceiving something as being better
| is literally all that matters._
|
| Perhaps it does, but it also makes him a poor food
| critic, which was the relevant issue here.
| kuter wrote:
| Reminds me of the Japanese art Kintsugi/kintsukuroi which is the
| name for repairing broken pottery with lacquer and gold silver or
| platinum powder.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I think it's the opposite of that.
| danparsonson wrote:
| The opposite of something can still evoke the thing it
| opposes :-)
| aketchum wrote:
| The thing I love about modern art is that initial instinctive
| reaction of "Anyone could do this!". I have absolutely zero
| training in art so this might be a infantile opinion, but I am
| delighted by the pieces that makes me realize "Anyone could do
| this, but no-one did until now."
|
| All that to say, I really like this series of works.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Yeah, but for a lot of modern art, I think the claim many
| people are making is both that "anyone could do it" and "people
| already have and just didn't make a big deal of it". Ex. When
| people say "my kid could paint that" they mean "something very
| similar to that is already hanging on my refrigerator".
| jweir wrote:
| Some modern art does not stand on its own. It requires the
| expert explanation to transform it from garbage to art. For
| myself this is "clever art" and has little cultural value.
|
| Damien Hirst once had a work on display and a janitor threw
| it out - because he truly thought it was garbage. My toddler
| daughter once "ruined" a Mathew Barney work on a wall - it
| was a smear of black jelly that she smeared some more. The
| guard quickly looked the other way while motioning us to
| leave.
|
| Working in the gallery world I would read the epic
| descriptions of works for sale. A lot of ink went in to
| creating and describing the value of art works that had no
| apparent worth. It is fashion to be sold and adorn and tell
| your friends about.
|
| Not all modern art is like this, some works can be
| appreciated for its intrinsic properties. But this requires
| more skill, and dedication, and is rather rare.
|
| I value art similar to the rule about food - if your
| grandmother would recognize it as art then it probably is, if
| not then maybe not. And all things art - it boils down to
| opinion. This is mine.
| eindiran wrote:
| > My toddler daughter once "ruined" a Mathew Barney work on
| a wall - it was a smear of black jelly that she smeared
| some more.
|
| That's a great story and gave me a good laugh. But with a
| lot of these pieces, there is a strong sense that the
| object isn't _really_ the artwork, in the same way that a
| program isn 't _really_ the exact bits on my machine.
|
| Recently SFMOMA put up a Sol LeWitt, one of his "Wall
| Drawing" pieces, which involved some employee of the museum
| carefully painting it on the wall. At the end of the
| exhibit, the whole wall got painted back over. In my
| opinion (and that of the curators of SFMOMA), they weren't
| actually destroying a Sol LeWitt; the actual piece is
| something more abstract, including but not limited to the
| instructions used to paint it onto the wall.
|
| In the same way, most of the wall drawings of Matther
| Barney are about the act of drawing, not really the
| artifact that is the result:
| https://d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.net/uploads/Matthew-
| Barney...
| u678u wrote:
| > Damien Hirst once had a work on display and a janitor
| threw it out
|
| Actually I thought it was Tracey Emin, I searched for it
| and it was both - and more other occurrences in other
| countries. https://www.bing.com/search?q=cleaner+throws+awa
| y+art&first=...
| petre wrote:
| Oh that's the woman with the messy bed. Stuckists would
| like a word with YBA.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Nicholas_Serota_Makes
| _an...
|
| No wonder the janitor thought it was trash and threw it
| out.
| teddyh wrote:
| The same sentiment was also described here:
|
| http://absurdnotions.org/an20020724.gif
|
| http://absurdnotions.org/an20020731.gif
|
| http://absurdnotions.org/an20020814.gif
|
| (Images taken from (http://absurdnotions.org/page104.html)
| and (http://absurdnotions.org/page105.html))
| petre wrote:
| Art is also about communicating ideas, concepts. Most
| abstract expressionists could paint photorealistic scenes in
| detail, but they just found it boring and went on with soak
| staining or squeezing tubes.
| andmarios wrote:
| I think they couldn't really. If you look into modern artists
| they are extremelly talented and their unique style that
| seems like _anyone could do it_ comes in later stages in
| their life.
|
| It's a bit like coding, where simple and elegant solutions
| only come to you after you reach a certain level. People
| looking into your work might think that the solution is
| simple enough that even a junior could do it, but it's not
| the case. It takes another good engineer to spot one. :)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Coding seems like a bad example, at least for me. I'm a
| professional coder with several years of experience, but I
| routinely encounter code or software architectures that
| very much impress me and make me think "not just any coder
| could have come up with this, at least without a great deal
| of thought and effort."
| kansface wrote:
| > I think they couldn't really. If you look into modern
| artists they are extremelly talented and their unique style
| that seems like _anyone could do it_ comes in later stages
| in their life.
|
| This is incorrect (although I don't know anything about the
| artist in question). Contemporary art degrees are heavily
| moving away from teaching craft or even consider it a valid
| aesthetic or criterion for judgement (along the lines of
| rejecting the notion of good/bad/better/worse). Was there
| any identifiable craft involved in this piece? Did the
| artists remove from circulation the boxes that weren't
| broken in just the right way? Is the art more interesting
| to look about than to talk about? Marginally... I find the
| pile of boxes sorta aesthetically pleasing, but its not
| clear to me that was even done by the artist (and not the
| gallery).
|
| What part of this piece are you proposing that a total
| outsider/complete amateur couldn't create on a first pass?
| The form of the glass looks to be haphazard, (ie,
| unimportant the artist). The boxes are off the shelf. What
| else is left?
| cwmartin wrote:
| > Is the art more interesting to look about than to talk
| about?
|
| That is an interesting perspective. I have always judged
| art by its aesthetics and its ability to elicit thought /
| conversation equally.
|
| In my view art becomes shallow when it is purely visually
| appealing with no conceptual backing or purely conceptual
| with uninteresting visual components.
| jsw97 wrote:
| As it happens, this has been done before:
| https://skrekkogle.com/projects/postpost/
|
| Not that this incarnation isn't clever as well.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Sure, anyone could do this, just come up with a meaningful
| idea, learn how to make large glass objects, procure glass
| panes of exactly the right size, attach them together, test the
| rigidity of the structure, probably some test shipments, make
| arrangements with museums to receive and display them, place
| them in the boxes, ship them, receive them, unpack them, take
| some photos, publish a website, done!
| renewiltord wrote:
| It also sometimes matters who it is: (apart from the
| straightforward joke)
|
| _A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning
| the power off and on.
|
| Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You
| cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
| understanding of what is going wrong."
|
| Knight turned the machine off and on.
|
| The machine worked._
| btilly wrote:
| This is based on a true story. And the required understanding
| was that the power had to be gone for long enough that it
| actually shut down completely.
| renewiltord wrote:
| A problem I have never really found a satisfactory answer
| to. On some computers in some places, I have found that
| occasionally one has to disconnect them from mains to get
| them to power up occasionally. Some people have said I
| needed to discharge some capacitors but that never felt
| satisfactory. Very heisenbuggy.
|
| Like Tom Knight, I was able to fix a broken machine by
| slowly power-cycling it :)
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| "It's obvious in retrospect"
|
| True of all good design - Art and Software included
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| You do not know whether no one else did.
|
| Art is showbusiness, and success is largely the result of
| flukes and many of the great names of history would easily have
| been unremarkable if it hadn't been for several fluke events.
|
| It's entirely possible that many did such things before, but
| never became famous with it, and one did, and largely became so
| as a fluke simply because, say, an influential critic came
| across it by chance, and decided to write a positive piece,
| after which the ball was set in motion.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Isn't it more like "no one thought to do it before who isn't
| sufficiently famous, well-connected, or lucky to get noticed
| for it"?
| lanewinfield wrote:
| I am reminded of the work in equation form by Craig Damrauer:
|
| Modern art = I could do that x Yeah, but you didn't
|
| https://design-milk.com/images/2010/11/modern-art-craig-damr...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Ha! You turned sum into product and have now produced a novel
| derivative work.
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| It reminds me of logo design. Anyone could draw the Apple,
| Pepsi, or Microsoft logo in a minute. However, if any of these
| brands approached you, would you have been able to deliver a
| logo that's as iconic? It's unlikely. You might get lucky once,
| but you wouldn't be able to do it day after day as a career
| unless you're incredibly talented.
| tshaddox wrote:
| When people say "anyone could do that" in reference to art,
| they're usually not just saying that anyone could _copy_ that
| after having seen it. Of course most people could take a
| famous novel and type out all the same words. They're saying
| (regardless of whether they're correct) that the actual
| conception of the new work doesn't seem like it required
| significant creative effort.
| SilasX wrote:
| Okay, but then none of the actual artists are making iconic
| logos day after day either, and when they make any at all,
| it's not from some artistic genius that us philistines could
| never understand, it's because they make a ton of variants
| and then a whole crew of marketers refines and A/B tests it
| before settling on "the" icon.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This might be your whole point, but what your comment inspired
| in me was the excitement that art is accessible to anyone. That
| we're not out of "easy ideas" with only "hard ideas" left.
|
| Which touches on one of the disenchanting things about
| technology (that is probably not actually true, but how I
| feel): it feels like we've only got "hard ideas" left, most
| accessible to the experts, those with resources, those with a
| lot of time.
| beamatronic wrote:
| There are layers of meaning here - truly a reflection of modern
| times.
| ableal wrote:
| This may be the starting point:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
| oehpr wrote:
| One thing to keep in mind is the context you're observing this
| in.
|
| Imagine instead, someone makes a post on
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/ about how they connected some
| glass panels together and shipped them in fedex boxes. Then put
| them in their living room on top of the boxes they shipped in
| as an art piece.
|
| The next place that post would end up is DIWHY. The reason
| anyone thinks its a truly inspired meaningful commentary on
| modern times is simply that it's being presented as such. It's
| on a clean floor, with professional photography, with a news
| article about it. The context, the author, and the opinions of
| the people around you, all work to subconsciously influence
| your opinion.
| dash2 wrote:
| If you did it as DIY, yes, but not all modern - really,
| contemporary - art is done by Important People who get
| magazine interviews. A colleague of mine at a web design shop
| had done his degree in fine art. He was into minimalism and
| Arte Povera, and his main work was a large ball of grey paint
| which he had kept with him for years. He would grind down
| stuff from his daily life and mix his own paint (which he
| named after himself) to add to this ball. It just kept
| growing and growing.... Weird, but fun.
| mFixman wrote:
| The reason why /r/DIWhy exists at all is because people find
| weird objects interesting.
|
| I could totally see the top post in the subreddit with the
| carpet-pedal bike as part of a season exhibition in the Tate
| Modern.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Often I think anybody could make it, but only a privileged few
| have the elite social connections to make a career out of it.
| theklub wrote:
| Well this is hacker news and I'd consider this an art hack.
| rootsudo wrote:
| It seems fantastic, I love the idea and goes to show how out of
| touch something can become by involving multiple people/workflow,
| etc.
| mmastrac wrote:
| This seems unlikely - you can register an exact dimension?
|
| > As for the corporate dimension, I was aware that standard FedEx
| boxes are SSCC coded (serial shipping container code), a code
| that is held by FedEx and excludes other shippers from
| registering a box with the same dimensions. In other words, the
| size of an official FedEx box, not just its design, is
| proprietary; it is a volume of space which is a property
| exclusive to FedEx.
| conradev wrote:
| Yeah, I'm confused as to what is meant by that. I bought a
| 20x20x12 box from a FedEx store last Wednesday, but I could
| just have easily bought a bunch from ULINE?
|
| https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-4210/Corrugated-Boxes...
| jt2190 wrote:
| Hmm... I'm not sure the article is correct. It seems like the
| Standard _Serialized Container_ Code (emphasis mine) is meant
| to track an individual box or palette, not a "type" of box. [1]
|
| It seems to be useful for processes that require an item to be
| FedEx'd from place to place _in the same box_.
|
| [1] https://www.morovia.com/kb/Serial-Shipping-Container-Code-
| SS...
|
| (Edit: I'm not sure about my statement of reusing the
| container. The specifications are at
| https://www.gs1.org/standards/id-keys/sscc if you want to take
| a crack at answering that one.)
| dementik wrote:
| As SSCC is managed by GS1 and their standard for SSCC does not
| include sizes the quote probably is at least inaccurate.
|
| You can buy prefix for your own SSCC codes and then you can
| form your own serial numbers - based on size or whatever
| parameter you want.
| dfox wrote:
| In fact SSCC is simply and unique identifier for particular
| logistics unit (ie. the one indivisible thing that you send
| from point A to point B) and does not in any way describe
| some kind of class of things sharing the same geometry. In
| the global logistics context GS1 managed SSCC namespace tends
| to be used only for "large" items (ie. pallets and LTL
| outsize boxes) while typical package services use either
| completely proprietary labeling or something that vaguely
| follows UPU rules for labeling of registered mail. IIRC the
| Code-128 barcode on FedEx packages contains GS1-128
| datastructure that purpotedly encodes SSCC, but I'm not
| exactly sure that it in fact is correctly formatted SSCC and
| not just some kind of fedex-proprietary number.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I took an experimental art course during my undergrad and
| this exact issue drove me insane. We went though dozens and
| dozens of examples of experimental/digital/interactive art,
| and each time the piece would really engaged me up until the
| point where I read the artists rambling justifications for
| their work. They just couldn't shut up and let the works
| stand on their own.
| sparky_z wrote:
| Yeah, that jumped out at me too. What could possibly be the
| reason for that? Who would enforce it?
| rgovostes wrote:
| The USPS gives out flat-rate boxes for free. The assumption
| is of course that they'll recuperate the cost when you buy
| postage. But I have wondered if FedEx would accept a USPS
| box, and this "proprietary box size" thing makes me think no.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I've had an eBay order arrive via Fedex in a flat rate box.
| I doubt anyone at Fedex cares as long as the label scans.
| I've also seen USPS labels printed on the free "UPS USE
| ONLY" thermal labels.
| Alupis wrote:
| The USPS flat rate packaging actually says "Property of
| United States Postal Service. Misuse of this packaging is
| unlawful", or something to that end.
| wyldfire wrote:
| While that might cause the USPS dismay, the question was
| whether FedEx would accept/ship the package. Would FedEx
| reject the package for fear of frustrating USPS?
| jeromegv wrote:
| Canadian perspective, I have used those boxes within the
| Canadian system with Canada Post. This law is not
| applicable in Canada so once those USPS box make it all
| the way here, there's nothing they can do to prevent it
| from being used.
| rascul wrote:
| Exact wording:
|
| This packaging is the property of the U.S. Postal
| Service(r) and is provided solely for use in sending
| Priority Mail(r) shipments. Misuse may be a violation of
| federal law. This packaging is not for resale.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| > Misuse may be a violation of federal law.
|
| Why does it say "may". Is it or is it not? I guess
| depends on the misuse?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I understand it to mean: "out of likely misuses, some are
| actual violations of US federal law - so think twice
| before you decide to do something clever with this box".
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| A guy actually used a bunch of FedEx boxes to furnish his
| house. FedEx was not amused. I kinda remember even the
| Simpsons had and episode with something similar (they built
| a fort from UPS boxes).
|
| https://www.wired.com/2005/08/furniture-causes-fedex-fits/
| tyingq wrote:
| _" As for the corporate dimension, I was aware that standard
| FedEx boxes are SSCC coded (serial shipping container code), a
| code that is held by FedEx and excludes other shippers from
| registering a box with the same dimensions"_
|
| Surely that's not right? What value is brought by only allowing
| one entity to register a 10"x2"x8" box, for example?
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| "Rather than thinking in terms of the Duchampian readymade, which
| is most often understood as operating iconically..."
|
| I got a real kick out of this line. At first I thought it was
| pure nonsense. After a bit of searching I found out that Marcel
| Duchamp was an artist that made some art called "readymades."
| Then I realized that what I thought was just pure nonsense was
| actually someone talking normally, but it was about a field
| totally alien to me.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| That's quite interesting as I would consider Duchamp as modern
| art history 101 and his readymades are the prototypical
| examples of subversive art / anti-art.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Duchamp's art also (arguably) marks the beginning of the
| transition from modernism to postmodernism - our current era.
| It's definitely modern, but it has little hints of
| postmodernism in it.
|
| I've never taken an art history class, but I do know of
| Duchamp, and I do think his name is known by anyone with even
| a passing curiosity with the world of art.
|
| The fact that he's relatively unknown here says a lot about
| the users of this site: highly knowledgeable folks, whose
| knowledge is probably much more specialized that they
| realize.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Given the state of arts funding at least in the US, and
| depending on how old you are, people tend to forget these
| things.
|
| The last art history class I took was my sophmore year of
| high school. I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to
| forget particulars if it's that long ago.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Then I realized that what I thought was just pure nonsense
| was actually someone talking normally, but it was about a field
| totally alien to me.
|
| I want to thank you for commenting on this. It's been said
| before, but: technologists have a tendency to attempt and
| derive every other field from their own first principles and,
| when they fail to do so, discount fields as "pure nonsense."
|
| We all (non-technologists included) benefit from not falling
| into that mode of thought.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Do you have any evidence of this tendency outside of SV?
| stemlord wrote:
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=STEMlord
| chaboud wrote:
| There are technologists outside of SV?
|
| (Kidding)
|
| Having worked in technology in the Midwest, the Pacific
| Northwest, and SV as well as working regularly with (and
| at) teams on the East coast, in the south, Japan, Taiwan,
| China, India, Europe, the UK (it ain't Europe now!), I've
| found this tendency of those in technology, and especially
| software, to discount the complexity and systematization of
| other fields, disproportionately common.
|
| I was well and truly familiar with the classic "why don't
| you just..." way of speaking before I'd ever even visited
| the bay. Similarly, I'd witnessed (and participated in)
| mocking of domain-specific jargon when I was younger, and I
| see it still today.
|
| It's not data, but my experience in the space strongly
| supports the suggestion that a dismissive, reductive, and
| aloof posture is quite common in tech. It's one reason that
| I regularly tell team members that engineers should be
| professional pessimists, especially about themselves and
| their ignorance.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I have a natural inclination to do that every now and then.
| I live in the EU. I present myself as evidence.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Sure, your own comment.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| On nearly any comment section on this website that gains
| any meaningful traction about a field outside of tech.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't have any hard evidence, sorry. I've also never
| spent any significant amount of time in SV or engaging with
| SV culture (besides this website).
|
| What I have is anecdotes and idle thoughts: most of my STEM
| peers were laser focused on their majors and avoided the
| humanities (and even other STEM topics) like the plague.
| The university I went to enabled and even encouraged this,
| since it makes their alumni statistics look great and kept
| the four-year-graduation-to-tech-job machine well-oiled.
|
| I have a difficult time assigning immediate blameworthiness
| when talking about this: it's frustrating to hear tech
| people disregard things just because they fail to adapt
| them, but it strikes me as a failure of education rather
| than a solely personal failure.
| cozzyd wrote:
| ever met a physicist? :)
| snakeboy wrote:
| What exactly are you expecting OP to provide as
| satisfactory evidence here? Anything anyone says is gonna
| be anecdotal.
|
| Personally, probably a solid third of the guys I knew in a
| college CS program were insufferably close-minded and
| reductionist about non-"hard stem" fields of study.
| notJim wrote:
| I studied aerospace engineering and the same was true. I
| suspect it's the case in many engineering and science
| fields.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| Replication crisis is real. It's at least somewhat likely
| that large chunks of the research output in those non-
| stem fields is just the result of p-hacking. Go ahead and
| try to replicate studies in Psychology. Good luck.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| >What exactly are you expecting OP to provide as
| satisfactory evidence here?
|
| I like how this is phrased. It's a more pithy question
| than the one I generally use with people who have loosely
| defined interrogatives or claims, which is:
|
| "What proof would you need to make you believe otherwise"
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of people I know who are outside of
| stem also don't view non-stem fields in a shiny light.
| It's not a phenomenal inside CS. We as a society value
| stem fields higher and pay them more on average.
| manigandham wrote:
| That's how any field would be if you don't know the jargon,
| history and technicalities. Is it the fact that it's art that
| led your first thought to consider it "pure nonsense"?
| sharkweek wrote:
| If I listen to my psychologist friend talk with their other
| psychologist friends about the DSM it's total gibberish to
| me.
|
| Same goes for anytime I need any work done on my car other
| than an oil change.
| grenoire wrote:
| Sometimes I read expert-written blog posts or articles,
| targeted at a demographic the author is familiar in
| communicating with.
|
| My brain will literally just turn off and I will go into a
| reading trance where I don't _understand_ the text because my
| brain simply says 'yeah this is nonsense, don't get it.'
|
| Very interesting phenomenon.
| abathur wrote:
| When I was working on my MFA thesis, I came to a realization
| that feels like it might overlap with what you're describing.
|
| It's a little hard to put a bow on the idea (and why it isn't
| trite...) at this length, but basically: I felt a connection
| between the experience of trying to parse some intentionally
| difficult/impenetrable ~modernist texts, and the experience
| of trying to parse older texts where the phrasing is dated.
|
| They're too unfamiliar to parse with _fluent_ ease, and the
| experience of fluent reading is just fundamentally different.
| In one case, the text is like a Rubik 's cube, and in the
| other it's hard to even realize it exists _separately_ from
| your instantaneous understanding of it.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's also important to understand the context of any artistic
| movement. Dadaism was a response to futurism and other pro-
| industrial artistic movements that were very popular during the
| lead up to WW1. Dadaists were part of an artistic recoiling
| from the horrors of WW1 and anything that even smacked of the
| sentiments that were felt to have lead up to such a
| catastrophe.
|
| This far from WW1, the whole thing seems a bit silly because
| we're not part of the time and mental place that made such
| movements tick originally.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| They kind of had to mention Duchamp since the artwork is
| slightly derivative of one of Duchamp's famous artwork which
| features glass panes broken during transport:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuf_GHmjxLM
| bobthepanda wrote:
| For more context, Duchamp literally submitted a signed urinal
| to an art exhibition.
| [deleted]
| StavrosK wrote:
| To be fair, it is pretentious writing. Who uses "Duchampian"
| instead of "Duchamp's"? That paragraph can be written much more
| simply without losing any nuance.
| nulbyte wrote:
| I would imagine there is considerable intersection between
| people who say Duchampian with people who say Orwellian,
| Freudian, or Kafkaesque. It seems to me a fairly normal
| English construction.
| StavrosK wrote:
| It depends on the context, you wouldn't say "I read an
| Orwellian novel" when talking about 1984.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Of course you wouldn't, because being Orwell, it's
| Orwellian by definition. But you could call another
| author's book Orwellian. Just as the quote in question
| was probably referring to things that are Duchamp-like,
| as opposed to just Duchamp's.
| datameta wrote:
| One can imagine a context where the qualities referenced
| aren't specific or limited to 1984. In such a case it
| would be perfectly apt to reference Orwell's writing
| style or body of ideas more globally.
| [deleted]
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Duchamp's readymade and Duchampian readymade don't mean the
| same thing. A skilled imitator could create a Duchampian
| readymade, but it wouldn't be Duchamp's work.
|
| https://www.perrotin.com/artists/Maurizio_Cattelan/2/another.
| ..
| StavrosK wrote:
| How much skill is required to make a readymade? Isn't the
| whole point (and the origin of the name) that you don't
| alter it at all?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's like with coining a joke or a funny meme. It's not
| hard to string a few words together or slap a caption on
| a picture; everyone can do that. The skill is in the
| ability to string the _right_ words together or slap the
| right caption on the right picture, and perhaps create an
| extra ambiance around it.
| biztos wrote:
| As an artist, and one of the many who studied Duchamp in school,
| I love these. But I wonder if they aren't potentially endangering
| the FedEx workers who transport them. Is there not some danger of
| getting a shard of glass sticking through the box?
|
| The obvious Duchamp reference here by the way is not to his
| readymades but to his Large Glass:
|
| https://smarthistory.org/duchamp-largeglass/
| ansible wrote:
| I was worried about something similar.
|
| I was wondering if the artist at least applied some tape or
| something to the inside surfaces of the glass to prevent the
| shards from separating.
| BenFeldman1930 wrote:
| I wonder if the works fall under copyright laws, when the result
| does not depend on artist intervention.
| kube-system wrote:
| IANAL, but I would think the artist would have copyright as
| normal for a couple of reasons --- the involvement FedEx did
| was for hire --- and FedEx's actions were used as tool in
| creating the work that they didn't even know was being created.
| The artist still caused it to be created.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Interesting! It's not really about the glass cube, but about the
| shipping process and what that shipping process does to the
| things it ships. It highlights the brutality and scale well. It's
| almost like a QA relic put on display. I wonder if there would be
| other good examples.
| lisper wrote:
| It's also -- importantly IMHO -- about the fact that the
| dimensions of Fedex shipping boxes are proprietary. (Assuming
| that's actually true. I'm a little skeptical. But that's what
| the article claims.)
| musingsole wrote:
| The project then seems to embody how FedEx treats its own
| space.
|
| It'd be nice to find a megacorp that treats its tools with
| love.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by space or tools. I think
| someone could see this work as a dig at fedex package
| handling, but personally think this is a pretty shallow
| take.
|
| For me it is a window into the world of package
| transportation that few are aware of. this is probably
| biased by my background, having worked for a megacorp with
| an entire department dedicated to packaging design and
| validation. it even included glass fracture experts that
| could write 100 pages on one of those boxes!
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