GOOOOOOL!!!!!!

The World Cup's here and in full swing, and I'm mighty proud that it's held in South Africa. I'm a big soccer fan, and even though I'm pretty busy and miss most of the live matches, I still save every match I can to watch later (God bless whoever invented DVR).
If you got any favorites, please share; as much as I'd like South Africa to win - or anyone from Africa, really - I'll settle for a more realistic choice in Mexico and the Netherlands; they're both really good teams, and both deserve at least one win. I'd like the US to get high, if only so that soccer might become more popular here.

Math and Beauty - Part 2: Brevity

Many many moons ago, I had the idea of writing a series of blogs documenting how I defined beauty by recourse to mathematics...and have since, apparently, forgotten all about it. I won't bore any viewers with half-hearted excuses on why I've been gone for nearly a year, but needless to say, I'm back, and I hope to continue the series with some regularity. So, with that out of the way...

Most of us know the standard definition of brevity; it means, in short, to be brief, or concise. Brevity is considered "the soul of wit", since its qualities are deemed pleasing to the ear when expressed in a short, biting apothegm. However, brevity doesn't belong to wit's domain alone; I hope to show that brevity is also the fountainhead of artistic beauty, and an important consideration in the creative process. How, you may ask? I'll try to be brief...

Now, take a look at the following:

E^i*pi+1=0

This equation - known as Euler's Identity - is regarded by mathematicians the world over as arguably the most beautiful ever produced. The reasons are manifold, but there's no doubt that it's short form and simplicity play a big part in it; accustomed as we are to the idea that mathematicians love large tracks of arcane equations, in reality they prefer short statement like the above. It's not hard to guess why; something like Euler's Identity is much easier to remember and communicate to others, which was really the point of creating the thing in the first place (well, not really, but let's roll with that for now).

You see, many people - including artists themselves, unfortunately - seem to forget that art is useless if it fails to communicate something - that "something" being all the dreams, ideals, and definitions of beauty which fog the creative mind on a daily basis. Brevity is, in essence, good, concise communication; no matter how long the novel or sonata movement, or how vast the mural, such expressions are but the end product of a vast and murky process of the creative spirit.

Hm... on reflection, this post can hardly be called "brief"; still, I hope it opens a door into thinking about all these little faucets of artistic expression and beauty. Next topic will be a bit more abstract, but don't worry - I'll try to be bri-

...Oh, never mind.

Math and Beauty - Part 1

A while back, I had briefly stopped at the age-old question of beauty's place in art - and, just as quickly, walked past without so much as a backward glance. However, I have now regained my bearings, and feel that I am ready to tackle this juicy question full on. So, I will make a fool-hardy attempt to construct a composite view of beauty by breaking it down and applying it to one art form in particular - mathematics.

Okay, so now you're probably wondering "Why math"?

Well, no...more likely, you're probably wondering "Holy crap! Since when is math an art!?"

Yes, dear reader, it is true, though it may not be recognized as such due to its long-time association with science - not to mention failed tests, bad report card marks, and skinny nerds in coke bottles and suspenders. However, to mathematicians, schools have been going about things the wrong way; no one who really enjoys math pursues it because it's useful - they pursue it for its own sake, because it brings beauty and pleasure to their lives. True, math has nudged its way deep into the sciences, economics, and other applied fields, but just because it can be useful in a few applications doesn't mean that's all it's good for. Take graphic design, for instance; its use is primarily practical, but beneath its polished, Type-A pedigree lies a shared lineage with the great works of Dali, Picasso, and other titans of creativity.

However, that said, math is distinct among the other arts in one crucial manner - it is, in essence, a "discovered art", as opposed to a "created art". Mathematicians will say that they are deducing art from the natural (or imaginary) world via the rules of mathematical logic. It's all very left-brained, to be sure, but theirs is an approach that suites nicely our purposes for defining beauty; since mathematicians "discover" their art, it's much easier to peg down rules for identifying beauty as it manifests, as opposed to - say - a painter, who creates and redefines art and beauty with every passing style and generation.

The above should not be taken as a formal defense of math as an art, nor as a complete explications of its methodological differences with the other creative arts - those would require far more space than I'm willing to allocate here. Still, from there we can move ahead to consider beauty's role in art since, believe it or not, mathematicians are obsessed with beauty. We won't tackle all this in one go, but rather distribute our thoughts over four posts, each centered around what I believe to be the primary components of mathematical beauty: brevity, symmetry, profundity, and truth. The question of why these four will, hopefully, be answered over the course of the discussion, starting with brevity and ending with the familiar (and tantalizing) junction of truth and beauty.

Any artists/writers/mathematicians/musicians - feel free to dive in with your own ideas on what beauty is and how it relates to art. So until next time...

Quatrain II - "Autumn to Winter"

Do dead leaves rail when our sharp, mashing soles
Weld dust to vein, and stop earth in their holes?
What good is protest when voices are cut,
And Life's Long-shadow ensures they stay shut?
___________________________________

This little thing actually gave me more trouble than I had expected, but no matter - what do you think? The title gives a hint as to what I'm saying.

Quatrain

Yo. I've decided to alternate between sonnets and short-line poems; I'm doing quatrains
(four line ) for now, and maybe a couplet here and there. There's always been a strange law of inverses at work when it comes to writing; the shorter and more restricted the medium, the harder it is to make something that sounds halfway coherent, let alone pleasing. And, true to form, quatrains can be a pain since every word and punctuation needs to contribute to the total effect. I'll probably post a couplet and/or sonnet later this week, but for now, enjoy this little tid bit:


Candle Dance

But wonder! Does a burning flame
Know that its dance is one of pain?
But dance! You wrest from sunset's keep
Your joy in pain - sans silent sleep.
----------------------------------
This was actually the last four lines of a longer poem, of which this - it shames me to say - was the absolute best part. Let me know what you think!

Scored a freelance gig!

I just found out yesterday I landed a not-for-profit freelance writing job at my local chamber of commerce! It's once a month - which will leave me(I hope) plenty of free time to finish up school and continue with my current writing projects - and provides a much-needed stepping stone to other freelance possibilities. I hope I can balance it with everything else I'm working on, so wish me luck!

On perceptions of beauty - or, how the ugly truth ain't so ugly, after all!

What is your approach to "art"? How do you go about the creative process? What do you put into your work? What kind of responses are you hoping to get? Will this string of rhetorical questions ever end? Maybe? If they don't, would you leave? Okay, I'll stop now...but seriously, I do wonder how all of you artists out there (and I use that term very broadly as applied to artists, musician, writers, and mathematicians) view your works, particularly on that often-nebulous concept of beauty.

I won't go into all the philosophical hoopla that's been swatted back and forth about beauty for the past three thousand years; however, I think most of us agree that beauty is a prime directive for any artist hoping to live up to the moniker. Beauty is that wisp of emotion, that faint spark igniting the rush - however great or subtle - that eventually leads to fountains of praise, exaltation, or even a fair but glowing review. However you see beauty, however it's defined, it's always there, and it's respects must be paid for you to get noticed.

But hark! so goes a voice in the crowd. Surely, beauty isn't the force behind all art! Where lies the beauty of a war photograph, or the frantic, twisting bodies of the dead? Beauty has no place there - truth is their one true guide!

Hm...well, aside from flair for the dramatic (who uses "hark" these days?), our friend from the crowd does bring up an interesting point - what place does beauty have in a work clearly trying to tell a truth - one of either our violent natures, or our own mortality? For that matter, are the two mutually exclusive?

Way back in the year dot, it didn't matter - truth and beauty were wrapped into one seamless whole; the best storyteller was the one who relayed the "truths" of the tribe's history in the most pleasing and entertaining manner. Likewise, the visual arts have never been far from depictions of gods, great mortals, and other beings that peppered the thoughts of the ancient world. However, the past few centuries have seen great strides made for the sake of distinguishing "true" art (or art for art's sake) from "functional" art. Poetry, for one, is said to have fallen into two camps following the time of Shakespeare - one group lyrical, melodious, and beauty-focused; the other, intellectual, argumentative, and geared towards making a point.

Still, is it fair to draw such a sharp distinction? Can't art be both beautiful and truthful? Are the very distinctions themselves false, a dim reflection from binary minds obsessed with categorizations? After all, it's wise to make a distinction between the ugly and the grotesque - can't the truth, however ugly, still strive to beauty by another name?

Maybe. *shrug*. Hell, I don't know.

I'll probably go into much greater depth at a later date with what I believe is the connection between truth and beauty, but for now, it stands that I've always felt that the best artists are the ones who incorporated both ideals into their work. As a poet by inclination, this has lead me to believe that good poetry should be one part Ralph W Emerson, and one part Oscar Wilde. Emerson was a serious, instrumental philosopher whose works - while lacking anything resembling grace - got his point across loud and clear. Wilde, on the other hand, was the poster child of "good art is useless", and as such created works of great beauty and flow without saying anything remotely close to an argument. I've always been weary of either extreme, and sought a synthesis of the two in my own works.

Maybe later, I'll share my thoughts on how that went :). But for now, I would like your opinions: how do you approach art? Is any particular ideal in focus, or do you just move with the flow and not worry about those things?