1. 11 May 2007

    Timeless Beauty

    John Lane

    515 days ago

    We have come to talk of music and drama and art and architecture as if they were technical words for remote abstractions or exceptional luxuries, but what is civilization for, if it is not to produce poetry, music, beauty and courtesy? These things are nothing in themselves unless they have a use for life… William Richard Lethaby, 15

    Keats: Negative Capability 24

    Speech is not of the tongue, but of the heart. The tongue is merely the instrument with which one speaks. He who is dumb is dumb in the heart, not in his tongue… As you speak so is your heart. Paracelsus, 44

    The greatest thing that a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and to tell what it saw in a plain way. Hindreds of people can talk for one who cna thing, and thousands can think for the one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, philosophy, and religion – all in one. John Ruskin, 48

    Although human ingenuity makes various inventions, corresponding by various machines to the same end, it will never discover any inventions more beautiful, more appropriate or more direct than nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous. Leonardo Da Vinci, 55

    On the novelty of landscape, John Ruskin, 56

    For the Native Americans, art and religion, art and life, were not separate; nor were the beautiful and the functional. Art, beauty, and spirituality were so firmly intertwined that words neither existed nor were needed to separate them. This wholeness was a function of the fact that everything in their universe worked together: poetry didn’t exist apart from ritual, and ritual didn’t exist apart from vision and meditation and even healing. This philosophy of relating all life and all materials permeated even the simplest of objects, a Pawnee drum, a pair of slippers or a Crow medicine bag. 73

    The earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with god. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 102

    Fritz Lang: Metropolis 139

    We must draw our standards from the natural world. We must honor with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence. Vaclav Havel, 143

    The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wander, not longer marvel, is as good as dead. Albert Einstein, 155

    Walt Whitman on religion, 158:

    Heaven was here on Earth and the physical and the spiritual could not be divided; they were, are, and always will be the same. [...] The future would see a spirituality of meditation and the contemplation of beauty.

  2. 04 January 2007

    Machine Beauty

    David Gelernter

    642 days ago

    I thought this was going to be more of a look at HCI, but instead it’s beating the drum for beauty and technology. Preaching to the choir a bit, as I’ve already decided the issue for myself. Being written in 1998 dates it a bit, but an interesting read nonetheless.

    Complexity makes programs hard to build and potentially hard to use; beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. 22

    “to hell with mathematics; let’s teach our programmers about beauty” is what we ought to hear. 27

    The mark of a well-designed interface is that, as soon as you see it, you immediately form guesses about how it works, and the guesses turn out basically to be right. 88

    Lifestreams as diary (111) – I think this is really what I’m going with this here website. It’s sort of a slice of what I’m about right now. I’ve cut down ‘past’ by only putting one article on the main page and making it a bit of a pain to go back through old stuff. But just a quick portrait of myself through the things I’ve said/linked/listened/done lately.

    Great technology is beautiful technology. If we care about technology excellence, we are foolish not to train our young scientists and engineers in aesthetics, elegance, and beauty. The idea of such a thing happening is so far-fetched it’s funny – but yes, good technology is terribly important to our modern economy and living standards and comfort levels, the “software crisis” is real, we only get from our fancy computers a tiny fraction of the value they are capable of delivering: we are a nation of Ferrari drivers tooling around with kinked fuel lines at fifteen miles per hour. 129

  3. 20 November 2006

    687 days ago

    You have noted the calming effect that the experience of cute things has on you. Beauty has the same effect, perhaps even more so, since too much cuteness can be grating, whereas the beautiful seems never to tire us. This calming aspect is key, many think, to the importance of beauty. Friedrich Schiller said that “the inevitable effect of the beautiful is freedom from passions.” Some things make us happy by satisfying our desires (a chocolate bar, the Leafs scoring), but beauty doesn’t work this way. This makes the experience of beauty special in a consumer-oriented culture. It isn’t only that negative images stress us; even the things that make us happy involve stress, since we spend so much time and energy trying to (a) figure out exactly what we desire and (b) obtain that. Beautiful things, in contrast, make us happy in and of themselves. Beauty can actually remove us from our desires, taking us beyond our personal wants and calming the spirit.

    Glenn Parsons

  4. 05 July 2006

    Saksun

    825 days ago

    There’s definitely something special about the Faroes. I was there a few years ago, and really would love to go back. Just look at this!

  5. 05 December 2005

    1037 days ago

    Rails and Django meet in Chicago

    This presentation from David is spectacular.

    Kjell Olsen1037 days ago

  6. 15 June 2005

    1210 days ago

    FLlWHall

    A photo of Wrights Marin County Hall of Justice before additional landscaping work was done, jesus christ it looks sweet. via landandliving’s followup to this earlier post on the subject.

    via Kjell Olsen1210 days ago

  7. 09 May 2005

    1247 days ago

    Timecatcher.com - Experience The Beauty

    Great (landscape) photography site, “dedicated to the beauty this planet has to offer”.

    via Kjell Olsen1247 days ago

  8. 02 February 2005

    1343 days ago

    Veer: Ideas: Lightboxing

    Lightboxing – ultra cool design awesomeness. I wish I could do this.

    via Kjell Olsen1343 days ago

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