Tim’s Vermeer–Art History Meets Technology

Penn and Teller’s new documentary, Tim’s Vermeer, is about Tim Jenison, founder of NewTek, a man with no drawing skills, deciding to paint a picture equal to one by Johannes Vermeer by using technology to aid him.  Jenison was inspired by David Hockney who wrote Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, which developed the Hockney-Falco thesis.  Basically, Jenison attempts to completely recreate a Vermeer to test this theory, and David Hockney appears in the film to judge his results.  Jenison decides to paint The Music Lesson, and goes so far as to recreate Vermeer’s studio in a warehouse, use the same handmade pigments Vermeer used, and grind his his own lenses to exclude modern technological advantages.   The film is about the years it took to prove a Vermeer like painting could be made using the Hockney-Falco like techniques.

I found the film dazzling for several reasons.  First, Tim Jenison is an inspiration for anyone with big ambitions.  Second, and most importantly, I loved seeing the Vermeer paintings blown up to the size of theater screens.  Third, the film shows just how tedious it is to paint a picture.  Fourth, it’s just so damn far out to see how technology works.  It really doesn’t matter if you believe the hypothesis or not, because the documentary is a wonderful example of how inventors works.

Here is the original Vermeer.  Click to see larger version.

the music lesson

Here is Jenison’s painting.  It’s different because the studio and models he used were different.

jenison-the-music-lesson

The trouble with the hypothesis is it can’t be proved.  We have plenty of contemporary painters who paint dazzling photo-realistic paintings that don’t use similar optical technology.  Tim’s Vermeer’s feat of invention just proves that photo-realistic painting can be painted by a non-artist using technology.  Essentially, Tim Jenison became a very slow photographic emulsion.

The hypothesis contends that beyond a certain point the eye can only see so much and the Vermeer paintings represent something beyond human capabilities.  I’m afraid they are misjudging the capabilities of the mind.  Just study Oliver Sacks.

Look at this video about Stephen Wiltshire’s ability to see, remember and draw.

 

Or look at what modern painters can do, such as Alyssa Monks.

monks_smirked_450

 

Or watch this painting of Morgan Freeman being made on an iPad by Kyle Lambert.

If you want to know more, please read:

JWH – 4/2/14

Time Reborn by Lee Smolin–Why Time Actually Exists

What is time?  Philosophically and scientifically, that’s a hard question to answer.  Can anyone even tell us how many books have been written about time?  Here are some of my questions: 

  • Is there one eternal now that exists everywhere, throughout all of reality, in this universe, and all the other universes of the multiverse? 
  • Is time just the 4th dimension?  Does the first three dimensions move through a fourth?
  • Does time actually exist, or is it just an illusion?
  • Why and how do we feel time?
  • What is the smallest unit of time? 
  • If something has been ticking since the Big Bang, what is that tick?
  • Is time mental or physical?
  • Will time stop if the average temperature of the universe reaches 0 degrees Kelvin?
  • Is time just change?  The motion of atoms, the turning of the Earth, our orbit around the sun, the unfolding of existence since the Big Bang?
  • Is the astronaut traveling near the speed of light, 300 hundred years ahead of us, time traveling?  How could two twins move into two different nows? 
  • Is the now of this space-time different from the now of another space-time universe somewhere else in the multiverse, or is there one universal now in all of reality? 
  • Are the past and future illusions? 
  • Is there a beginning or end of time? 
  • Is time travel possible? 
  • Are there beings that see all of time at once, as if we’re looking across a vast three dimensional space? 
  • Is there anything outside of time?
  • Do animals sense time?
  • Would time exist without us?
  • Is it possible to have two nows? 
  • If there is only now, does it matter what time it is?
  • If we didn’t measure time would we think it existed?

time reborn

Time Reborn by Lee Smolin, is a book about physics by a physicist who makes a scientific case for time to be real, and what that means philosophically and for physics.  If you are not a physicist, or a fan of popular science books, I’m not sure if I can recommend this book to you as fun reading.  It is hard to comprehend all the subtle implications involved with the physics of time.  However, if you have a philosophical bent, it might be worth considering.  Smolin is making a case that time exists, that it has a direction, and that reality is evolving. 

Classical physics always models the universe in mathematics, and quite often time either doesn’t exist, doesn’t matter, or the equations work regardless of the direction of time.  Ever since Einstein, scientists have searched for a grand unified theory of everything, hoping to find elegant equations that explained reality.  Smolin rejects this goal by making a case that the universe can’t completely be described in mathematics.

To the average person, with common sense, they will reply, “Duh!”  Isn’t it obvious that time exists.  Isn’t obvious that time has a direction.  Isn’t it obvious that mathematics can’t explain everything.  Our everyday reality is very far from Big Bang cosmology and quantum physics.  Physicists are trying to explain everything, and often it’s easy to ignore the immediate world.  When you’re number crunching complex equations to explain reality it’s easy to think time can be ignored, or even space.  But black box simulations of the universe aren’t modeling the real universe.

It’s hard to know exactly what Smolin is saying because he gives us so many possibilities to consider, but the epilogue suggests why he wrote the book, to make a philosophical statement.  What I got out of the book might not be what Smolin intended, but here’s how I read him.

Smolin wants us to accept time.  He wants us to reject the siren song of the timeless.  He warns us to be wary of timeless concepts of the universe, whether it’s religion, whether its a mathematical expression, whether it’s a simulation, or even Platonic ideals.  Mathematics can approximate some features of the universe, models can simulate some features, but ultimately, people like Max Tegmark and Juan Maldacena are wrong.  And reality is neither a creation of God or solipsistic dream.

If time is real, and the universe is evolving, either from the Big Bang, or earlier causes in the multiverse, and there is a universal now, with a past and a future.  Smolin doesn’t say it directly, but reality isn’t about us.  He’s against the anthropomorphic principle.  Realty would have existed without us.  We just accidently happened to evolve in a universe that is suitable for life – it wasn’t created for us.

Ultimately, there are limits to what science can see or detect, and to understand.  We can’t know why there is something rather than nothing.  We have a lot more we can learn about this universe, and we may even learn something about the multiverse, but the ultimate cause of existence is probably beyond physics.  To say that time exists does not mean we can prove time origin and end.

That’s the problem with humans.  Our religious and philosophical natures want timeless answers to the big ontological questions.  Physicists want timeless equations to explain everything.  The implication is, if time really exists, then timeless answers don’t.

Ever since I’ve finished this book I’ve tried to meditate on time.  To slow my thoughts and focus, hopefully to catch the ticking of time passing.  But I can’t.  All I can do is notice the slightest changes of things around me.  I feel if nothing moved, time would stop, but there’s always something moving.  We live in an eternal now. 

We have no recollection of events before our existence, nor will we be aware of things after we’re gone. 

We can only be here now.

JWH – 3/31/14

Twenty Feet From Stardom–Six Films About Wanting to Make it Big in Music

Have you ever wanted to be a star?  Have you ever wanted to be on stage in front of thousands of admiring people?  That fantasy is a nightmare for me because I’m so shy, but some people crave the limelight.  Recently I’ve watched five films and read one book with a related film about people getting very close to music stardom but not being famous names to us all.  For these people, this can be crushing, especially the ones who get inches away from achieving their dreams.  Some of these people chronicled in these films actually liked being twenty feet back.  Not every studio musician or backup singer wanted to be front and center on the big stage, but many did.  These films are:

Twenty Feet From Stardom is about backup singers, Standing in the Shadows of Motown and The Wrecking Crew are about the musicians that played on most of the hits of the 1960s.  Searching for Sugar Man and Big Star are about three artists that made artistically great albums in the early 1970s but were completely ignored by record buyers.  And finally, Inside Llewyn Davis is a fictional account of a folk music singer during the heyday of the folk revival who painfully could not grab the brass ring no matter how hard he tried, or how many people he used or hurt.

The gist of these films are about people climbing Mt. Fame, and even having the talent to get within sight of the summit.  Failing to achieve stardom after getting so close creates a psychological crisis that all of these people dealt with in different ways.  To me, the most tragic was Chris Bell of Big Star.  Sixto Rodriguez’s story in Searching for Sugar Man is so unbelievable that its stunning, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s the reincarnation of the Buddha. 

After seeing Darlene Love, Marry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Táta Vega, Patti Austin, Judith Hill and many others in Twenty Feet From Stardom I went to Rdio and played their records that I could find, and surprisingly, there were many.  There are so many records out there that never make it to the top of the charts that are still worthy of your ears.  This is the true value of Rdio.  But this also teaches us something.  Evidently there are more great singers than there are hit songs.

Watching Standing in the Shadows of Motown and reading The Wrecking Crew, both about studio musicians who played on the defining songs of my teen years back in the 1960s, just crushed me emotionally.  These guys never even got liner credits for the most part, yet all the wonderful riffs and melodies that are burned deep in my soul were created by them.

All of these people deserve more fame, and luckily we have film makers that are helping them to finally get the spotlight.  And like I said before, there are more great singers and musicians than there are hit songs.  A hit song, the kind that tens of millions will notice, are a combination of songwriters, singers and musicians.  But what makes a star?  Time and again in these films they talk about the drive and ego it takes to become a star.  These films are about many people who had talent, but the lacked something to go the last twenty feet.  What separates Bruce Springsteen from Chris Bell and Sixto Rodriguez?  What separates Aretha Franklin from Darlene Love?

Standing in the Shadows of Motown was illustrative.  It had the original musicians playing the original songs, but got other singers to sing them.  This showed both the importance of the musicians and the singers.  If you’ve ever listened to recreations of original sixties hits it’s so apparent that something is off.  Hit songs are extremely hard to make, and most often it’s accidental I think more than intentional.

Thanks to YouTube, I can give you a taste of each of these films.

 

 

 

My favorite song from Standing in the Shadow of Motown

 

 

 

My favorite Chris Bell song.

 

 

I hope The Wrecking Crew comes out soon because I’m very anxious to see it.  I’m curious if younger people will like these movies, because essentially all of them are about people from the baby boomer generation.  I’m sure one day there will be films about Katy Perry’s musicians and backup singers, but for now, these are the stories we have.  And I’m grateful to Netflix, because documentaries are not widely distributed.

JWH – 3/28/14

Focus–Finding My Flow

I’ve always been too lazy to be successful.  My ambitions have always been greater than my ability to focus, so I’ve lived a life of quiet desperation (for those of you who remember your Thoreau).  The constant rationalization throughout my adult life was I had to work and thus didn’t have the time and energy to pursue those ambitions.  Of course that’s bullshit.  Successful people always find the time to pursue their dreams no matter what situation they find themselves.  And now that I’m retired and have all my time free, I have no rationalization to protect myself from my own crapola.

A song to play in background while reading this essay.

What’s required to be successful at any goal is focus.  People who can concentrate to the point of getting into the zone and finding their flow have a much better chance at being successful.  However, relentless focus isn’t the only answer, many people on the autistic spectrum can focus obsessively, and just ordinary people with decent hobbies can find flow for escaping reality.  Success is focus, 10,000 hours of practice, and a creative awareness of the past with the ability to imagine something new and different.  Of these three qualities, I believe I have little of the first, a fair amount of the second, and quite a bit of the third. 

My will is flabby, but my ego is buffed.  (I’m sure all us Walter Mittys can say the same.)

An astrologer once told me that there are two kinds of people – those who create and those who consume.  I’ve spent my life consuming thousands and thousands of books, documentaries, essays, stories, songs, movies, television shows, and so on.  This is my 765th essay for this WordPress blog.  In my life I’m sure I’ve written over a thousand essays.  That’s a long way towards my ten thousand hours of practice.  I’ve been working on both fiction and nonfiction books, but I can’t focus enough to stick with them.  I can write these little short blog essays, but that’s about as far as my mind can focus.  To break through my concentration barrier will require changing myself quite a bit.  I don’t even know if that’s possible.

Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows I’ve written this essay before.  I write essays like this one to talk myself into changing, but I never do.  At age 62, change does not come easy.  I’m a man who loves his rut, so it’s odd for me to even desire change.  But I’ve known all my life that if I want to succeed with my writing goals I have to change.  I assume I never will, because I never have, but the desire to write a book never changes either.  It’s an odd Catch-22.  And the funny thing is I know exactly what I must do.  I must give up all my distractions and focus on a single goal.

Like many times before, I have to tell about the parable of Destination Moon, a movie made in 1950 about the first trip to the Moon.  Like Neil Armstrong nineteen years later, these movie astronauts had to do some last minute maneuvering when they went to land, but unfortunately they used too much of their fuel.  They landed okay, but didn’t have enough propellant to take off.  Eventually one of the scientists figures out if they jettison enough weight they’d have enough fuel for the return trip.  They had to throw out all their collected samples, their scientific equipment, their radio, all the unnecessary rocket control instruments, even their space suits.  Getting back to Earth was an all or nothing gamble.  That’s how it is with ambition – you have to jettison all the extra weight to be light enough to take off.

There are writers who published bestsellers by getting up two hours early and writing before they have to hit their nine-to-five job.  I never could do that.  I never could eat just two cookies.  It was always all or nothing with me.  When I read books like The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin that took seven years to write, or The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson which took ten, I realize what it means to be a writer, you have to be dedicated in a way that most normal people never can be.  Wilkerson interviewed 1,200 people.  And the source material Goodwin had to read would have taken me more than seven years just to read.

It’s easy to fantasize about doing something, it’s hard to actually do it.  That’s because success takes unswerving focus.  Last night instead of watching Nature, Survivor, Nova, Nashville and part of The Glass Bottom Boat with Doris Day, I should have been writing, or at least researching.  Yesterday afternoon instead of reading News360 and listening to music, I should have been writing.  Instead of reading Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, I should have been researching.

Sometimes I wish I could just commit to four hours of dedicated work, say from 9am to 1pm.  But I can point to two of my recent blog posts that show you how distracted I am:  “Reading: A Compulsion, An Addiction, Or Obsession?” and  “Too Many Distractions While Running in a Thousand Different Directions.”

Now that I’m retired, and have all my time free, it’s all too obvious just how little discipline I have.  The momentum of my life feels like I’m the Titanic and I see the iceberg, but to change course with all this momentum behind me is impossible.  If I could ever write my first book in my sixties, I’d be the poster geezer for late bloomers.  I still have hope though.  Even the tiniest course changes can affect the destination of a big ship hundreds of miles out.

I  figure if I keep writing these essays nagging myself to change, I just might.

[By the way, did you get the ironic humor of the song?]

JWH – 3/27/14

Who Is Watching Us If There Is No God?

One of the prime appeals of religion is a father figure who watches over everyone and everything.  I’m a lifelong atheist, so I don’t think about a personal God who listens and watches over me.  Yet, I know that the faithful need a higher power they feel is watching over them.  That desire to be noticed is very important to most people.  People cling to the concept of God for just a few reasons despite all the endless varieties of religions and their verbose theologies.  They don’t want to die, they want to be protected, they want someone to always care about them, and they want divine justice.

Last night I watched TB Silent Killer on the PBS documentary series Frontline.  This incredibly intense show on drug resistant tuberculosis in Africa was very hard to see, but I think very important not to miss.  Follow the link to watch the show.  It answers my question:  Who is watching us if there is no God?  We have to watch each other, either personally, or by films like this, or on the news, or by any other form of journalism, and even by the Internet and smartphones.  People have always wanted a God to watch over us, but as we evolve and learn about the scientific nature of reality, it’s obvious there is no father figure watching us 24×7.

What people want is to be saved from death and suffering.  The people in TB Silent Killer suffered greatly for months and years, and often died.  They felt no one was watching, that no one cared, and most importantly, no one would rescue them from their fates.  And they hated the unfairness that they were sick when others were not.  It wasn’t a just reality to them.  Watch this film to see how deeply you care, and contemplate possible answers.

As a self-aware species, and as we become enlightened and realize there is no magic in the sky, we have to learn how to create substitutes for all those hopes we put into God.  We really do want a superior being that cares for every sparrow that falls from a tree.  I can understand that desire.  I believe the human race has to become its own father figure.  We have to care for everyone else on Earth, and for all the animals too.  We have to learn to answer each other’s prayers.

frontline

At end end of the show they asked each person what hope they had.  Most of the people were waiting for death, for after years of suffering, their hope of being rescued was long gone.  But the little girl they featured, Nokubheka, said she wanted people to invent safe pills that would cure TB.  She had been taking highly toxic medicines for months.  And she was right.  The way to answer her prayer is for science to find a cure for TB.  That should be something everyone wants because TB is airborne and it’s fast becoming drug resistant.  The show teaches about MDR TB (multi-drug-resistant TB) and XDR TB (extensively drug-resistant TB).  Remember how AIDS began in Africa, well it was a hard to spread retrovirus.  TB is very easy to spread, and it’s airborne.  You don’t have to have sex with the infected to catch it, just stand near them.  Yes, you should watch this show.  You should care.

While watching the show I also wondered how else we could help these people, or anyone that suffers a horrible disease like them.  All the victims in this documentary talked about being lonely, afraid, isolated, and bored.  Because of their contagion, they have to be isolated, but I wondered if they would have been happier if they had the Internet or smartphones.  Maybe a charity could be created that provides a social network for the sick and dying – one that would create a sense of being watched and cared for.  Call it The Sparrow.  It might even be a substitute for the desire to have a caring father figure watch over them.

When it comes down to it, we can plead for magic from an invisible being, or we can answer our own prayers with our own real abilities.

JWH – 3/26/14