The Third Book

The third Farbriano Sketch book was finished in the begining of January this year.
The plan is to do four a year from now on. This year will be tough, because moving to the new house took a big chunk of time, during which I did very little drawing. I even felt like I needed to get back in form and have filled a couple Moleskins to avoid dirtying the pages of a Fabriano book.

Here are a few samples from book 3.
and here are some more, in my Picasa album.















I Keep meaning to go in and fix the CSS here.

The 1rst of Three Questions.

In the future, how will we communicate?

Asked 100 years ago, this question would have resulted in a fanciful reply that projected wide spread use of the telephone, (envisioned as a wooden box), radio (envisioned as a wooden box) and airmail (Involving biplanes). No one would have imagined the telegraph would become obsolete. Looked back upon from now, such speculations are almost always laughable.. Asked 100 years before that, it would have resulted in a blank stare: "The same as now! How else?"

Having reflected thus, and with speculations reigned in on the one hand and set loose on the other, I will suggest that in the future, our communications will be a guaranteed and unrestricted right and delivered via ubiquitous, freely available means wherein the dependence on actual, clearly definable devices diminishes with time, and where the the overwhelming abundance of information available to be communicated is not an impediment to accessing it.

The telephone in my parents' house when I was very small was in fact, a wooden box on the kitchen wall. It was a party-line and you had to speak to an operator to make a call. If I wanted to make a call, I also had to stand on a chair. The telephones of my children, far from the most elaborate on the market, fold up to the size and shape of a good skipping stone and are can send and receive voice and text communications, access the Internet, store all the address and phone numbers they can use, store and play numerous pieces of recorded music and solve just about any mathematical problem you'd need to solve and tell the time. The technologies being employed become so sophisticated that they near the point where different applications amount to different surface treatments of the same thing. An MP3 player is just a cell phone that is differently enabled. So, where is there to go from there? Better ergonomics? Different colours? More buttons? fewer buttons? Differently conceived buttons!

Those amazing tiny gadgets people now hold to their ear as they walk around the malls, talking about nothing in particular, stopped impressing many of us long before they were invented, back when they were still just props in Sci-Fi movies.

Before long, with achievable extremes in miniaturization and nano technology, we will see the virtual disappearance of devices such as cell phones, I-pods, Palm Pilots, etc. They will be replaced by microscopic chips embedded in fabrics, and other everyday articles and powered by ambient energy.

Hand in hand with this we have to ask what on earth do we really need to communicate, and why? How many things do we do simply because we can do them.

We've heard the complaint that we can talk all the time, but never communicate. I think the real challenge will be how to get past eyeballs and ear drums. The "how" of transferring information from one person to the next is just a part of the process. The part of the iceberg that's visible. It's the easy part. Dissemination of information will doubtless become more efficient:Smaller, bigger, better. We are on the part of the curve that graphs possible and probable improvements in communications, from hollow log and sticks to i-phone and beyond where the level of incline rapidly diminishes.

Language - in all it's forms, both verbal and non verbal, including expressions, gestures, smells, and timing are an other part, but the largest, I think, is how language is perceived both before and after it is transferred. - Are you saying what you think you are saying, and are you hearing what think you are hearing. We know that, as well as one person can construct a statement or question, another person speaking the exact same language can misinterpret it.

This may simply be a biological or Psychological limit. A wall we won't get past.

On the other hand, technologies move on many different fronts towards a common centre.. Once there was biology and once there was mechanics. Physics and psychology. The one had nothing to do with the other. - Now, we have Bio-mechanics. Even Nano-bio-mechanics. starting with what is, even at this time, known about chemical communicators such as pheromone's, auditory and gestural cues, stimulating the brain with low frequency electronics and so on ans so forth, I do think it will eventually be possible for me to know exactly what you mean when you ask. "How we will communicate?" without the filter of language.

I would hope the roll of design here would be to figure out how to avoid the dystopic implications that would attend this level of intimacy. Now is probably a good time to start.

gold leaf

It has occurred to me to apply some gold leaf to this painting. (no visual pun intended.)

Thinking Through Drawing

The following quote is by the Keith Miller for Times On Line.

Thinking through drawing

Kettle's Yard, Cambridge

"When John Ruskin set a room full of stevedores to work drawing leaves and pebbles at the Working Men's College, he was not trying to empty the Pool of London and cram the garrets of Chelsea with a new breed of artist. Drawing was an epistemological tool, a way of coming to know what something really looked like; but it also had its moral aspect, since the thing seen and understood became visible and understandable to others through its rebirth as a drawing.

("The greatest thing any soul can do is to see clearly, and say what it has seen in a clear way": Ruskin.) If the results were beautiful in some sense, if they sparked an unfamiliar tremor in the breasts of the WMC's students, then so much the better. But truth, ceteris paribus, was more important than beauty.

The interesting thing about drawing, however, is that in truth it rarely tells you what things really look like. The conventional tools of drawing -pen, pencil or silverpoint, charcoal, chalk, the longtailed Chinese brush -all produce a very imperfect incarnation of something which anyway, according to some, doesn't strictly exist, namely the line."

It is interesting that drawing on the one hand does not "tell you what things really look like" and on the other is the most readily available, most accurate and reliable way of doing so. In part because of the ability to limit and restrict information, and because one learns to draw with the same faculties we use for everything else. In a photograph this same sorting of the relative relevance of the parts of the subject matter is left to the viewer.This may be more democratic, but it is less informative and useful.

Our interpretation of what is in a photographic image and how we read it, it seems, must be subject to the same filtering that is used in drawing an image:

"The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced." (Jean Baudrillard )

Our Universe is not only an illusion, Its also artificial.

Snow

Yeah, top-posting. Do please stop. This isn't how E-mail works.

I was recently chided in an email for thoughtlessly replying to an earlier email in a form the originating author didn't like: I "Top-posted".

I was slightly annoyed by this chiding . Who needs to be scolded for something as commonplace as top-posting in a business email. What else should one expect from a petit fonctionnair, such as myself? I deal with dozens of emails everyday. They come to me in every format except the one that net-savvy "Internet pioneers" such as himself, would like.

Of the many things I do so poorly as to warrant criticism, this isn't one I'm going to worry about. I'm not going to convert everything to plain text, trim or preface my comments by cutting and pasting the part of their message it is in response to , and I'm not going to try and keep track of occasional email purists so that I can reply to them in kind. Messing with my correspondents' formats isn't helpful to them. It's just confusing. I've certainly never got the impression it is appreciated. I will therefore, without apology or remorse, continue to simply add my reply to the top - Where people expect to find it... And leave their message intact below so that no one on any current or future CC list can form the impression I may have filtered content.

I had briefly considered replying directly to the remark, but, its usually best to keep one's immediate reaction to one's self. A rule to live by... Besides, the imaginary replies kept expanding as I thought of different ways of explaining why I had no intention of following his advice. The following imaginary replies may not be all that funny, but I did have fun writing them:

On Tuesday, February 27, Anno Domini, 2007, at 4:18 in the afternoon, Mr. --- ----- wrote:

>Yeah, top-posting. Do please stop. This isn't how E-mail works.

Citing Parallels from History:
Reminds me of how General Weygand might have lectured De Gaulle in the spring of '40; "Yeah, rapid massed-tank assault with heavy air support. Boff! Je vous interdis! That's no way to win a war."

Empathy is Always Good:
I understand your frustration; my grandparents were pioneers too. They not only baked their own bread, they grew their own wheat. They too viewed with disdain the degradation of standards that seemed to go hand in hand with the conveniences and quickened pace of the civilization they had helped to build. Things as basic as daily door to door mail delivery were taken for granted by their children. For my grandparents, it was a 2 hour buggy ride into town to pick up the mail. As the resolve and toughness of their day became things of the past, the next generation seemed soft by comparison.

Blaming the tools:
When people consistently misuse a product perhaps the problem is with the product and not the users. Then again, maybe it's not a real problem. Perhaps it's those same users who've defined how it should be used, even if only based on how they have become accustomed to using it, because it was a faultily designed product to begin with. (Is that also circular logic?)

When in Rome... Life as it's lived:
In a world of top posters, you must learn to top-post. Doing otherwise confuses people. In practice this is no different from writing a letter. The original would not likely be included with the reply but if it were, it would be stapled to the back. Intact.

Anecdotal Statistics - Who can argue with those?
Of the hundreds of people with whom I've communicated via email in the last year or two, there have been exactly two who did not "top-post", both of whom I'd class as pioneers of the Internet. In practice, it would seem, this is not how email works for over 99% of those people who use it everyday. To rip off a quote from Eric Gill, "[readability (or usability, or etiquette...)], in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to." (The other person who didn't top-post in an email to me was Erik Spiekermann. I respectfully replied to him in kind)

Designer Words:
Top-posting is good information architecture: Chronological hierarchy is respected consistently and in reverse order, like any good filing system; from most recent to least recent. Previous posts are kept intact. Do my readers really need to re-read their own words before reading mine? No. But if for any reason they do, they know where to find them; right there, below my signature, complete with date, time and subject line. Usually in a different colour and indented, just to make the difference between one message and the next even more obvious.

Obliquely Suggesting He's Simply Not All That "With-It":Possibly Even Un-Canadian.
"Newly coined nonce words of English are often spelled with a hyphen, but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people used to write ``non-zero'' and ``soft-ware'' instead of "nonzero'' and "software''; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop using the archaic spelling ``e-mail''. Think of how many keystrokes you will save in your lifetime if you stop now! The form "email'' has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. "
(Don Knuth)

Regards,
Russell.

This non-top-posting etiquette, ( Netiquette? - Please! Manners are manners.), is simply one of those odd behaviours left over from the "early days" of the Internet, when it was new, exciting and didn't work very well, email was not so utterly ubiquitous and there were no forums. People used email lists to carry on discussions. It was necessary to trim and preface comments because a person could otherwise receive hundreds of emails with dozens of correspondents' posts piled one on top of the other and out of sequence. Before long there would be multiple conversations under the same subject line, and most comments would be something like "I think --- ----- is full of crap." with no easy way of find out what --- ----- had said to trigger such a passionate dismissal.

Now-a-days, there are on-line forums that manage such chaos quite well. The only people who use email lists anymore are either so backward they don't notice the chaos and are still awed by fact they don't have to kick off their slippers, pull on their black and rust-red wellies, walk down the muddy 200 meter driveway and across the concession road without looking left or right, because there'll be no cars and thus no point in doing so, to collect the mail, or else, they are web designers and programmers to whom the chaos is invisible, because they grew up with it. Like good mechanics they know how to keep an old clunker going and all they see is that it is still going. Obviously they also get a kick out of the anachronism of it all. These same people have, (or wish they had) ring-tones on their phones that perfectly mimic the bells on rotary dial phones. I know this to be true, because I myself once received about 250 emails a week from Usenet lists I subscribed to, and - If I had a cell phone, it would have the deliciously rich tone of a classic black Bell Canada Model 500 dial phone.

Plain text emails, trimmed content and posting the question or comment being responded to , together with the author's name and the date posted and indicated by a corner bracket ( > ) above the reply are meant as courtesies to the reader. This is a generally agreed upon and expected form, commonplace to many who have communicated a great deal via email, and it works well. However, in a world where I would be the only person doing this, why would I do it? It is, after all, a burden that I would bear for the benefit of my readers. They, however are not returning the favour. The agreement in the Corporate and Civil Service Office world, as I have come to know it, is that it's the reader who brings order to the chaos. The author just adds to it and everyone seems to be fine with that. It's the same burden either way and it's fair.