via ted.com
Not the best-delivered talk I’ve ever heard — and he definitely loses it a bit towards the end — but still, it’s interesting.
I’m sure I’ve heard the artistic ‘limited by the shape of the vessel’ argument before, I’m just not sure where.
I guess a portable MP3 player is simply a tool. Much like a painter’s work extends beyond the canvas, to the frame, to where it will hang.
And if you agree — if form really does limit function — then surely that puts engineers above artists.
I wonder if Michelangelo would’ve invented the chisel, if someone hadn’t done it before him…
AGD
Jun 19, 2010
Particularly during the bird section, he was pretty twitchy but I thought this was one of the better ones. OK, the last minute or so seemed a bit like it was chucked in to make up time.
Form enables function just as much as it limits. Neither puts engineering above art; the art has its end in itself, whilst the engineering is a subservient technique which cannot create value in itself.
sebastian
Jun 19, 2010
You didn’t just use a definitive catch-all for a topic as broad and as important as engineering… tell me you didn’t!
I don’t think the first bridge, boat or road builder was considered ‘subservient’ to any other school/sphere. If anything, we are subservient to the world that engineers build!
AGD
Jun 19, 2010
I was following your lead, so ‘engineer’ their meant ‘engineer of the kind of thing relevant to the TED talk’, though I do think the point holds for any species of designed construction (i.e. any kind of techne). Bridges, boats, etc are all things made for-the-sake-of some activity or other and so derive their value only from an end which is outside of themselves.
Now, this isn’t, strictly, a matter of subservience of the kind you suggest; the idea that we could or should be subservient to the `world that engineers built’ is a bit on the terrifying side. Things are things only for us and for the sake of us, from whom all meaning and use is generated.
sebastian
Jun 19, 2010
The problem is, the moment that something is created, it is given a human value and meaning.
Like, Michelangelo might not have been trying to improve the beauty of Florence with his David — but the moment it was completed, that became its purpose.
A bridge might have been made purely because the creator wanted to SEE if he could make it — but once it’s made, it obviously has some ‘meaning and use’.
Another way of looking at it is a world without engineers (presuming they are a certain caste, a certain breed). Er — you can’t want what doesn’t exist, perhaps? (Engineers are enablers.)
Though, to be fair, I don’t see how you can accurately ascribe a value or meaning to any given engineered creation.
(How’s that for three streams of consciousness? I hardly understand it myself…)
AGD
Jun 19, 2010
I think we mostly agree, though I don’t think the purpose of David is beautification but the expression of an ideal; its subsequent adoption for other ends doesn’t really touch on its initial end, which is adequate to it.
You make a good point about things built ‘just to see if you can’; they do have the ends in themselves, even if they don’t work.