Mark L. Pederson
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Of course, there are many things that Graeme says ... that I just pretend to understand.
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Why can it be so beautiful?
- Thread starter Shawn Nelson
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Of course, there are many things that Graeme says ... that I just pretend to understand.
Totally agree Graeme. When we find that things can be derived from other things by mathematical functions, and find general laws for predicting the behavior of things along an independent variable, that's beauty, and generally you feel the power of the Universe when you are in this intellectual process. But in the mix, you need more than just Mathematics. Creativity is the most important ingredient in the mix (as for cinematography). Unfortunately Science students don't realize this. Do you agree?
Math is NOT a language. Mathematical notation may be considered a language, but not math per se. Math is universal. Languages are man-made.
Sanjin Jukic
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More about a connection between mathematics, philosophy, BEAUTY and art from
Bertrand Russell>>>LINK
Bertrand Russell expressed his sense of mathematical beauty in these words:
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry. (The Study of Mathematics, in Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays, ch. 4, London: Longmans, Green, 1918.)
QUOTE>>>LINK
This could be considered a philosophical question. I say "math is".
Graeme Nattress
RED Problem Solver
One of the most wonderful aspects of maths is that it is not created, only ever discovered!
And yes, creativity, whatever that might actually be, is vital! I mean, I believe that I'm creative, I just have no way of figuring out or defining what creativity is.
Graeme
And yes, creativity, whatever that might actually be, is vital! I mean, I believe that I'm creative, I just have no way of figuring out or defining what creativity is.
Graeme
- Banned
- #28
If "beauty" is sunsets, mountain ranges and waterfalls -- in a word, Academy Award photography, beautiful though it may be -- there are any number of serviceable explanations for human response: Platonic, Kantian, Darwinian, anthropological, neurological, etc. None are very persuasive, but they'll do, because nobody asking the question really expects to hear a convincing answer anyway.
It's the larger question of the pleasure of narrative and controlled artifice which (I'd argue) is the more interesting one. In this respect, Graeme is luckier than the rest of us. The bar to his chosen art is high enough that nobody gets there without internalizing its rules and a common language of discourse. But everyone in America is either a filmmaker or a movie critic. When there's no agreement on what's competent or serviceable, much less "beautiful", and the preceding 100 years of narrative film is largely unknown to most of the participants, how derive principles of aesthetic response? And how sustain an art form?
"Culture" and education may have once provided a mechanism to manage it, but today.... This could be one reason why there's so much "beautiful" photography in movies today, and so little actual narrative content to make sense of it.
It's the larger question of the pleasure of narrative and controlled artifice which (I'd argue) is the more interesting one. In this respect, Graeme is luckier than the rest of us. The bar to his chosen art is high enough that nobody gets there without internalizing its rules and a common language of discourse. But everyone in America is either a filmmaker or a movie critic. When there's no agreement on what's competent or serviceable, much less "beautiful", and the preceding 100 years of narrative film is largely unknown to most of the participants, how derive principles of aesthetic response? And how sustain an art form?
"Culture" and education may have once provided a mechanism to manage it, but today.... This could be one reason why there's so much "beautiful" photography in movies today, and so little actual narrative content to make sense of it.
Lauri Kettunen
Well-known member
Universe is.
Math and physics are models. In particular, math is the model of cause and reason we discover. But, platorians see it in a different way and Graeme's view is an example of that. No point to argue on this.
Shawn's question is still interesting.
Graeme Nattress
RED Problem Solver
But isn't that the beauty of it all - you can see it all in different ways, and it's that multitude of ways that adds to the beauty.
Graeme
Graeme
Math is not a model. Physics is. There are "mathematical models" that describe physical systems.
Do you think some extraterrestrial intelligent lifeform doesn't discover the same mathematics as we do? They may describe it differently, they may use different notations, but the basic rules will be the same.
But as you said - let's stop arguing about it and enjoy the beauty of cinematic pictures. :innocent:
Michael "Dorkman" Scott
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When my father went to MIT, he took an entire course on the philosophy of mathematics that addressed, essentially, this very question. How much of mathematics is, in fact, universal, and how much is just a human filter on universal truth? Is math in fact, as others have said, an appropriate model that suits our perception, and would extraterrestrial life forms necessarily have the same perception, and therefore same "universal" concept of mathematics, as we do?
Ultimately the question is totally rhetorical, since any model of the universe that exists outside of our perception or capacity for understanding is, by definition, inconceivable to the human mind.
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
AFAIK, a great deal of things in math are based on the premise of the number 1.
If you want to calculate something, you need to step on some definite things which are singular, and have "one-ness".
One apple, one star, one RED ONE camera, etc.
If you don't have one thing or a number of things which are one by themselves, you've got nothing.
But what are the boundaries of the apple, where does it's one-ness end?
Where does the apple begin and where does it end?
All this is conventional, therefore relative and therefore non-absolute. And the name "apple" is even more conventional than its one-ness.
The absolute one exists only in theory. Where can you find it?
And furthermore, even if we can define the limits of the one-ness of the apple - it changes all the time, like everything else - worms coming in and out, eating it, radiation, atoms floating around, quarks and sh*t. Panta rei. Everything is everything.
Where is the absolute and indisputable beginning and end of the damn apple? Even on physical level it's not 100 % certain.
I mean math is a language and a way of designating and grasping things. It's just a tool that works, and works great, BUT there simply has to be more to life than a series of digits and algorithms.
Common sense says that "Yes, this is one apple."
But if you want the absolute truth, sorry! I personally want more.
Remember in Beautiful Mind, what the mental buddy said to Nash: "Mathematics won't lead you to higher truth. You know why?.. Cause it's boring...".
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash mathematics, it is a great tool for science, but it simply cannot explain everything and it is not everything...
Or at least "I don't subscribe to this point of view."
And BTW,
What makes a woman beautiful? :sarcasm:
If you want to calculate something, you need to step on some definite things which are singular, and have "one-ness".
One apple, one star, one RED ONE camera, etc.
If you don't have one thing or a number of things which are one by themselves, you've got nothing.
But what are the boundaries of the apple, where does it's one-ness end?
Where does the apple begin and where does it end?
All this is conventional, therefore relative and therefore non-absolute. And the name "apple" is even more conventional than its one-ness.
The absolute one exists only in theory. Where can you find it?
And furthermore, even if we can define the limits of the one-ness of the apple - it changes all the time, like everything else - worms coming in and out, eating it, radiation, atoms floating around, quarks and sh*t. Panta rei. Everything is everything.
Where is the absolute and indisputable beginning and end of the damn apple? Even on physical level it's not 100 % certain.
I mean math is a language and a way of designating and grasping things. It's just a tool that works, and works great, BUT there simply has to be more to life than a series of digits and algorithms.
Common sense says that "Yes, this is one apple."
But if you want the absolute truth, sorry! I personally want more.
Remember in Beautiful Mind, what the mental buddy said to Nash: "Mathematics won't lead you to higher truth. You know why?.. Cause it's boring...".
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash mathematics, it is a great tool for science, but it simply cannot explain everything and it is not everything...
Or at least "I don't subscribe to this point of view."
And BTW,
What makes a woman beautiful? :sarcasm:
Brian Ferguson
Story Teller
Wow I just read all of these pages of high level thoughts, great stuff.
I think many of our responses to imagery are more in the primitive core of our brain. Like have you ever noticed how we all stare at a campfire and derive a almost shared collective memory from our core being, our primitive mind. There are certain shapes and shadows that are hard wired into our subconscious for reasons of survival. Sense of seasons, procreation - things we do from the core of our animal self. I think the images that relate to these triggers evoke the strongest responses.
- Banned
- #35
Hrvoje Simic
Banned
I love this thread.
Great words spoken here.
I'll try to be concise, which will be very difficult with a subject like this.
The logic of beauty
As Ace greatly put, semiotics - understanding of symbolism is essential in understanding our perception of "beautiful".
Design, architecture and all visual arts are based on laws defined by shapes/symbols and are essential literature in every of those fields.
There are subconscious mechanisms, a "software" on which our triple being (spiritual,mental and physical) is based on.
We are driven by these subconscious "programs" to reach our goals, things we yearn to as human beings.
One part of our software is given with instinct and the other programed by our environment.
The more complex our environment and mind becomes, the more complex and wider our perception of beauty is.
This can be good and a bad thing, but I won't go there now.
Technically, I see beauty as a combination of links to positive emotions.
Our definition of beauty exists for all of our senses, but I'll concentrate on visual, since its our most important one and the topic of this thread.
Nature attraction- the beauty of natural creation, attraction to the universal, connecting to our natural environment, elements and beings,
energy exchange, healing/balancing of our being, relaxation, concentration, one of keys to unlocking the channels to creativity.
Mostly driven by instinct. We are one with the universe, regardless of how much we are aware of it.
Social attraction - driven by a need to be a part of a community, to be accepted, to be a "link" in our closest type of environment.
The beauty defined in this is a combination of instinct (to be in the "pack" & "survival") and environment.
Procreation - procreation is the strongest attraction. Every living being is led by it. Life is primary. It must go on. The creation of another life.
The beauty of opposite sex (or the same in some cases) drive us. Your partner, your key to offspring is beautiful. Your child, the life you created is beautiful.
Essential. Instinct. Shapes and ratios of a human body or its elements can be seen in many (almost all) beautiful human creations.
Expression - unlike more primitive organisms on this planet, we are given (or have achieved with time) the another fantastic gift - a power of creation of something other than offspring.
Tools, art... if you made it motivated by love or creativity or both - it becomes beautiful or causes beauty indirectly. For many people or only for you.
Fake attraction - strictly created by the environment. It exploits the combination of natural human attractions (and definitions of beauty) to achieve the desired effect (mostly profit with humans), which again is moved by the mutated primal desire of procreation (mostly) or social attraction, or both.
We could also go much deeper than this.
The laws of our universe are essential part of primal "beauty". The circle, golden ratio, fractals, Fibonacci sequence etc... We like it because it is a part of us.
The logic on which we and everything we know is based on.
"desire to imitate "- all of our creations try to imitate The Original Creation, how ever one defines it - be they conscious or subconscious.
No matter which genre, movies are imitations of real life. Even Sci-fi is a combination of known and imagined. Abstract work is more subliminal.
Not only we try to imitate the "creation", we try to imitate the way of perceiving it.
We tell stories with copied elements through copied perception.
"desire for order"- in this case you could see a story as an order of events, a movie as an order of chapters, chapter as an order of scenes,
scene as an order of pictures, a picture as an order of symbols.
Like visual, this desire also exists to logical order, which is far more complex and subjective.
Priorities for these orders vary between people and this is why some very intelligent people live in the visual mess - because they see or need only logical order.
For a story to be good visual order is not enough. Logical order must establish the link between the visual.
Then there is timing. The rhythm.
A whole new topic.
Another essential factor:
Balance.
Great words spoken here.
I'll try to be concise, which will be very difficult with a subject like this.
The logic of beauty
As Ace greatly put, semiotics - understanding of symbolism is essential in understanding our perception of "beautiful".
Design, architecture and all visual arts are based on laws defined by shapes/symbols and are essential literature in every of those fields.
There are subconscious mechanisms, a "software" on which our triple being (spiritual,mental and physical) is based on.
We are driven by these subconscious "programs" to reach our goals, things we yearn to as human beings.
One part of our software is given with instinct and the other programed by our environment.
The more complex our environment and mind becomes, the more complex and wider our perception of beauty is.
This can be good and a bad thing, but I won't go there now.
Technically, I see beauty as a combination of links to positive emotions.
Our definition of beauty exists for all of our senses, but I'll concentrate on visual, since its our most important one and the topic of this thread.
Nature attraction- the beauty of natural creation, attraction to the universal, connecting to our natural environment, elements and beings,
energy exchange, healing/balancing of our being, relaxation, concentration, one of keys to unlocking the channels to creativity.
Mostly driven by instinct. We are one with the universe, regardless of how much we are aware of it.
Social attraction - driven by a need to be a part of a community, to be accepted, to be a "link" in our closest type of environment.
The beauty defined in this is a combination of instinct (to be in the "pack" & "survival") and environment.
Procreation - procreation is the strongest attraction. Every living being is led by it. Life is primary. It must go on. The creation of another life.
The beauty of opposite sex (or the same in some cases) drive us. Your partner, your key to offspring is beautiful. Your child, the life you created is beautiful.
Essential. Instinct. Shapes and ratios of a human body or its elements can be seen in many (almost all) beautiful human creations.
Expression - unlike more primitive organisms on this planet, we are given (or have achieved with time) the another fantastic gift - a power of creation of something other than offspring.
Tools, art... if you made it motivated by love or creativity or both - it becomes beautiful or causes beauty indirectly. For many people or only for you.
Fake attraction - strictly created by the environment. It exploits the combination of natural human attractions (and definitions of beauty) to achieve the desired effect (mostly profit with humans), which again is moved by the mutated primal desire of procreation (mostly) or social attraction, or both.
We could also go much deeper than this.
The laws of our universe are essential part of primal "beauty". The circle, golden ratio, fractals, Fibonacci sequence etc... We like it because it is a part of us.
The logic on which we and everything we know is based on.
"desire to imitate "- all of our creations try to imitate The Original Creation, how ever one defines it - be they conscious or subconscious.
No matter which genre, movies are imitations of real life. Even Sci-fi is a combination of known and imagined. Abstract work is more subliminal.
Not only we try to imitate the "creation", we try to imitate the way of perceiving it.
We tell stories with copied elements through copied perception.
"desire for order"- in this case you could see a story as an order of events, a movie as an order of chapters, chapter as an order of scenes,
scene as an order of pictures, a picture as an order of symbols.
Like visual, this desire also exists to logical order, which is far more complex and subjective.
Priorities for these orders vary between people and this is why some very intelligent people live in the visual mess - because they see or need only logical order.
For a story to be good visual order is not enough. Logical order must establish the link between the visual.
Then there is timing. The rhythm.
A whole new topic.
Another essential factor:
Balance.
- Banned
- #36
The trouble with rational explanations of aesthetic activity is that they fail to account for what's actually unique about art. You can say that the original cave artists painted those beautiful bison out of some magical conviction that the animals would be easier to hunt or from a desire to include them in the human community. But that doesn't explain the beauty and accomplishment of the lines, which must have taken generations, maybe even centuries, to refine. A much cruder representation would have worked just as well, if the purpose was simply practical.
Or you can argue that Beethoven composed masterpieces because what he really wanted, whether he knew it or not, was access to women and the opportunity of passing on his genes. But in actual practice the level of monomania and dedication required by his work made "normal" relationships, and passing on his genes, impossible.
The writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was also an accomplished naturalist, pointed out that the "mimicry" factor in nature -- for example, an insect whose wings have the markings of a leaf, complete with bore holes, to confuse a predator -- exists at a level of detail which far exceeds the perceptual capacity of the hunter. In effect, art for its own sake.
The motivations for human behavior may be simple, but the behavior isn't. Just as human language use is inherently creative, beyond any immediate expressed need for sex, community, food, etc., so are these formal arts. The reasons for starting the work may be very basic or primal, but the execution, and the work of art itself, never is.
Or you can argue that Beethoven composed masterpieces because what he really wanted, whether he knew it or not, was access to women and the opportunity of passing on his genes. But in actual practice the level of monomania and dedication required by his work made "normal" relationships, and passing on his genes, impossible.
The writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was also an accomplished naturalist, pointed out that the "mimicry" factor in nature -- for example, an insect whose wings have the markings of a leaf, complete with bore holes, to confuse a predator -- exists at a level of detail which far exceeds the perceptual capacity of the hunter. In effect, art for its own sake.
The motivations for human behavior may be simple, but the behavior isn't. Just as human language use is inherently creative, beyond any immediate expressed need for sex, community, food, etc., so are these formal arts. The reasons for starting the work may be very basic or primal, but the execution, and the work of art itself, never is.
Graeme Nattress
RED Problem Solver
There's a wonderful story from Bagpuss (favourite children's show of all time in the UK, stop motion animation) creator, Oliver Postgate (http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/seeing-things/) autobiography.
He was invited to teach at a film school, except they just wanted him on campus to "be" there and let his influence help students, or something like that... Anyway, he was attending a semiotics lecture, where some film studies lecturer was analysing the symbols in movies, talking about what the director meant by that etc and so forth. Anyway, as a director himself he had to laugh as the "symbols" that were pointed out were not put there by the director, and not intended, but were expedient solutions to shooting problems, or just happened. I'm sure I'm not telling the story well enough, and I can't seem to find my copy of the book, but it was a very telling story.
Graeme
He was invited to teach at a film school, except they just wanted him on campus to "be" there and let his influence help students, or something like that... Anyway, he was attending a semiotics lecture, where some film studies lecturer was analysing the symbols in movies, talking about what the director meant by that etc and so forth. Anyway, as a director himself he had to laugh as the "symbols" that were pointed out were not put there by the director, and not intended, but were expedient solutions to shooting problems, or just happened. I'm sure I'm not telling the story well enough, and I can't seem to find my copy of the book, but it was a very telling story.
Graeme
Ace
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Its a bit like art critics interpreting art pieces to the Nth degree, not realizing that often the artists are not that clever to think up what they thought they were thinking.. I think anyone that produces artwork will have experienced the odd critic or friend who tells you how genius and great the photograph you took of a blood stained toilet seat is.
But it does beg the question, even if the symbols that are in were inserted for reasons other than deliberate, the fact that they are in the film or artwork means they were not objected to by the artist and therefore have some degree of contextual legitimacy in finding their place in the medium.
Graeme Nattress
RED Problem Solver
I don't think the issue is as much interpreting symbols, but as interpreting them as what the "director thought". And indeed, even if the creatives don't object to a symbol that could be a reason for it being, but often many things later seen as symbols were missed at the time or production and just happened.
Wow! when I saw the first line in Shawn's post I immediately thought "because sex sells, and then I read further and decided that I should instead take the advice of that very great French statesman, Jacques Chirac and "not miss this very good opportunity to just shut up!"