I'm considering placing my sculptural masterpiece, Runaway Model, in a private collection. I have nothing against private collections. I've acquired from private collections several pieces that are in my apartment. I realize that many persons visit weekly private collections. Nonetheless, I would prefer to place my art in a leading public art gallery, such as the Tate or the Corcoran.
One of the leading monuments to twentieth-century bureaucracy is Tatlin's Tower. Planned about 1919, the Tower was to be constructed from iron, glass, and steel:
The tower's main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height [about a third taller than the Eiffel Tower], which visitors would be transported around with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain three enormous rotating geometric structures. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and congress meetings, and would complete a rotation in the span of one year. In the centre of the structure was a cone, housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. The topmost one, a cylinder, was to house an information centre, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across the clouds on any overcast day. [Wikipedia]
The three geometric structures within the main frame were to have glass-window surfaces, symbolizing transparent government. The Tower was meant to be the headquarters for the Third International (Comintern). It is a pioneering work of constructivism, whose influence can be perceived in a twenty-first century constructionism initiative. The Tower was never built.
Or at least most people believe that the Tower was never built. Perceptive thinkers and artists have started to challenge that belief:
are we sure that Tatlin’s Tower has not actually been built? Can this state of unconstruction be proven? Perhaps Tatlin’s Tower exists after all – but we’ve been looking in all the wrong places. There is, in fact, no logical reason to assume that Tatlin’s Tower, once built, would even be architectural. Indeed, there is no logical reason to assume that Tatlin’s Tower, in its full realization, its exact structural form, is something that can even be seen.
This month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats brings you an exclusive revelation: Tatlin's Tower exists. It's bureaucracy.
Preposterous, you say. Think again:
if the Tower was designed to be of the people, a monument to international popular sovereignty, then it is also in the people, and amongst them, literally: it is medically present in the space between cells, resonating in cobwebs of bone marrow, as much as it is traced again and again within the four dimensions of urban space by the passage of workday pedestrians.
It's not about intellectual enlightenment or industrial progress, even if you perceive that floating in the Albert Dock in Liverpool. The Tower is biological. The Tower is bureaucracy.
Atlantic Salmon at Save the Ribble reports that the Preston City Council is not being transparent about plans for river work, including barrage, on the Ribble. In Preston and elsewhere, the Ribble powered early-nineteenth-century cotton mills that helped to give birth to the Industrial Revolution. A decent respect for bureaucracy and history demands clear notice and public discussion of development plans.
Marc Andreessen at blog.pmarca.com sets out the Moby Dick theory of big companies. He explains:
The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside.
I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z".
Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue.
These statements are based on first-hand observations. However, they aren't consistent with the design of Tatlin's Tower. Mr. Andreessen, please reconsider your observations.
TeleBusillis declares that OFCOM is spiraling out of control. He reports a "growing trend of industry dissent at the UK Communications regulator and [industry participants] basically ignoring its judgements." That's terrible. Perhaps an OFCOM public-service publishing (PSP) initiative can help to increase awareness of the importance of communications regulation.
Tony Blair in a post from 10 Downing Street discussed "Our Nation's Future -- Public Life." Mr. Blair observes that the media is facing a "hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before":
The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. ... It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.
Bureaucrats could offer the media training on how not to focus on impact. Here at the Carnival of the Bureaucrats, we refuse to compete. We simply do our job with the utmost professionalism and pay no attention to impact whatsoever.
TherapyDoc at Everyone Needs Therapy recounts an outstanding accomplishment from teaching high-school psychology for two years. In order not to ruin the story, we won't report details. But we found the story personally inspiring. Bureaucrats around the world should read this story and consider the possibility of similar success in their own work. A procedural point: TherapyDoc's submission included the remark, "You don't always have to go by the rules, you know." On our own motion, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats reaffirms the importance of going by the rules. A Carnival of the Bureaucrats' submission that does not satisfy the rules will be rejected, unless we find a good reason not to reject it.
Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity presents "Lurita Alexis Doan: Good Management Meets Bad Politics." Politicians' lack of appreciation for bureaucrats' work has a long and illustrious history. In thirteenth-century France, King Louis IX would administer justice under an oak in the woods of Vincennes. An important work has documented:
"Often in the summer [King Louis IX] went after Mass to the woods of Vincennes and sat down with his back against an oak tree, and made us sit all around him. Everyone who had an affair to settle could come and speak to him without the interference of any usher or other official. The King would speak himself and ask, 'Is there any one here who has a case to settle?'" As an insightful scholar has pointed out, "ushers had good honest work to do." Ushers prevented "silly people from presenting sillier petitions to the king." More generally, screening, processing, and prioritizing requests is important bureaucratic work. In sitting down informally with his back against the oak and dispensing with bureaucracy, Louis was not efficiently administering justice.
Sadly, Mr. Yoest's post indicates some U.S. Congresspersons are also impeding the efficient operation of government.
Richard Posner at the Becker-Posner Blog discusses intelligence and leadership. He observes, in text appropriately edited in accordance with common journalist practice:
Knowledge in government resides in civil servants.... What is required at the top levels of government is not brilliance, but managerial skill, which is a different thing, and includes knowing when to defer to the superior knowledge of a more experienced...subordinate.
While recognizing the importance of editing, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats applauds Mr. Posner's insightful observations.
Mark Cuban at Blog Maverick discusses "My Colonoscopy." We do not find any relationship between colonoscopy and bureaucracy.
Sheppard Salter at salterblog reports on a British wine initiative: "Seems the British government is launching an all out effort to get the middle class to stop drinking wine. Their reason? The nanny state knows better." The health issues associated with drinking wine deserve careful study. Prior to issuing regulations on wine drinking, we recommend forming a special commission of government economists to undertake long-term testing of the effects of drinking wine.
Barbra Sundquist at HomeBusinessWiz submitted a post entitled "How to Make a Screenshot." We tentatively conclude that this post, and the respondent's blog, do not appear to satisfy the applicable regulations for the Carnival of the Bureaucrats. The record, however, contains two additional public interest factors which, in the standard, general-purpose legal balancing test, make this submission legal. First, this month the Carnival of the Bureaucrats received a submission which appears to be related to having oral sex on a beach. The respondent's submission is clearly much more relevant to daily bureaucratic practice than the before-mentioned submission. Second, the respondent has been in business for over forty years. She reports:
My first home-based business was selling Regal greeting cards at the age of eight. Believe it or not, my mother let me go door to door in our rural neighbourhood, entering the living rooms of complete strangers and doing my sales pitch. My favorite item in the gift catalogue was the baked potato gadget - a four-pronged thing that I now realize was basically useless to an experienced cook. But I must have been persuasive (or else they just wanted to get rid of me) because I sold a lot of them.
We applaud this business initiative and hope that others also begin paying income taxes at an early age.
The Skilled Investor at The Skilled Investor's Financial Planning Blog describes his horrible experience with Citibank / AT&T Universal card bureaucracy. While bureaucracy normally works well, certainly there are cases when it could work better. This seems to be one of those cases.
That's all for this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our Carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.
Tags: art, bureaucracy, constructionism, constructivism, human nature
As part of the 2007 Planet Arlington World Music Festival, Jack Sanders, Robert Gay, and Butch Anthony have installed solar-powered LED's, covered with plastic drink bottles, atop steel rods of varying length in the traffic island between N. Lynn Street and Fort Myer Drive in Rosslyn, Virginia. The work is entitled CO2LED. The Arlington Cultural Affairs Division explains:
CO2LED promotes the use of alternative energy sources as well as recycling and responds to Arlington’s environmental initiative, FreshAIRE (Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions). ... The use of energy-efficient, solar-powered LEDs, rather than conventional incandescent bulbs, has the power to significantly reduce the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment. Conventional lighting, fueled by power plants which generate energy through burning fossil fuels, requires far more energy than LEDs, resulting in increased carbon dioxide emissions. Being solar-powered, CO2LED produces long-lasting illumination, free of toxic by-products.
Robert Gay is an enthusiastic support of the Arlington arts scene, while Butch Anthony has already made a great contribution to Arlington with his magnificent bike kiosk.
Bicyclists breathing, regrettably, produce CO2. But the effects of all gaseous output from a local cycling team probably has less effect on global warming than does an equivalent number of cows farting. Economic analysis, by a duly certified economics Ph.D., indicates that, on balance, cycling is good for people and the environment. So get on your bike, ride past CO2LED, and breath some of Arlington's fresh air!
Tags: Arlington, art, emissions, global-warmingDC power-wielders gathered last week at artomatic for the April meeting of dorkbot-dc. Peter Blasser fired up his hand-crafted Sidrassi Organ as well as his Tri-Min. A young girl, who explained that when not in school she likes to do science experiments with her father, assisted with operation of the latter instrument. Tim Tate, Founder and Co-Director of The Washington Glass School, discussed his glass and video sculptures that are a huge sensation in the art world today. Jack Whitsitt gave a tutorial oriented toward helping persons to build art galleries in Second Life. All in all, the meeting offered weird science in service of aesthetic innovation.
[if you don't see the video, try here]
Tags: art, girls, weird scienceThe Anti-Humbaba Action Coalition has staged a few small and futile protests outside DC art establishments. Walking in ragged figures while holding poorly drawn signs, they chanted:
2-4-6-8
what do we want
to liberate?
Art Art
Art in action,
art in use
hanging on walls,
ain't no excuse!
Apparently disgruntled handicraft workers, they're easy to dismiss as cranks. But they offer a powerful critical perspective on Conversions, a juried group exhibition at the Ellipse Arts Center in Arlington through Sept. 29, 2006.
Most of the works in Conversion are attached to walls. Joan Sarah Wexler's "Tearooms and Restaurant Interiors" are photographs arranged on a wall, as are Susan Eder / Craig Dennis's work, "Which Image Never Fades Away?" Lisa Kellnor's "Oil Spill," constructed from pins with large yellow heads, is firmly tacked to the wall.
Amy Glengary Yang attached to a wall an array of cyanotypes (images made with an early photographic process) mounted in lightboxes. Protruding in front of the lightboxes is a bell jar containing a neon-lighted sea urchin skeleton and topped with an air pressure gauge. It's an enchanting work, set against a wall.
Some works, such as Michele Kong's "Reticula" and Amy Martin Wilber's "Three Fates," hang from walls to cover windows. "Reticula" is an exquisite lace of translucent glue. Kong made her boundary from wire. Only a few strands are oriented like a fence, while many are coiled around those few.
Tai Hwa Goh's luscious intaglio on hand-waxed paper hangs from a wall like ponds compressed into a multi-layered scroll. Yet when she moved her intaglio away from the wall, she formed it into cubes.
One work is attached to a free-standing panel. M. Sedestrom Guthrie's "Through the Glass" arranges photographs horizontally on one side of this panel. The photographs are views of a working window-washer through the glass of the window he is washing. The work also included some text. The text, which I've forgotten, was far too self-consciously serious for me to take seriously. I walked around the panel and found only a white plane on the other side. Life is usually not that disappointing.
Another work meets a wall in a more interesting way. Tomás Rivas's "Erechtheum Uno, Dos y Tres" features delicate carvings into the surface of drywall panels leaning against the gallery wall. I particularly liked that Rivas included penciled outlines, some uncarved. I see in the drywall panels effects of a mundane call for beauty, modulated by the unchanging, supporting wall of the gallery. According to his biography, "His ongoing investigation of the representation of space addresses the complexity of art production today, where the 'center' and the 'periphery' vie for political clout within the mainstream." Indeed!
One work offers a view into a long, narrow room. Kathryn Cornelius' work "Address" lines this room, which is only about five feet wide, with roughly twenty white plastic chairs attached to the walls about four feet above the floor. Projected onto a wall just outside this room, a video evokes mass-market clothes hanging in a retail outlet.
An art reviewer writing in The Washington Post described "Address" as "making a statement about the violence and trauma that occasionally underlie the quiet domestic exteriors of our homes." That's a hackneyed interpretation. My sense is that this work evokes the tedium and worthlessness of many jobs. Working in retail, like blogging, forces you to confront ignorant and annoying opinions of ordinary persons. Just buy that one -- it looks best!
Even worse are jobs involving endless, meaningless meetings. Cornelius has arranged the long, narrow room to provide a critical viewpoint on the center of this enterprise -- the long, narrow table of the board room. Imagine if your family's livelihood depended on an address that you had to make to lines of empty suits strictly ordered around the bored room table. You'd want to scream like you were on a amusement park ride. But if you did that, you'd be fired. March forward through the marble corridors of power, and do your job!
(Views of Renee Butler's "Movement in B Flat")The best work in the exhibition, it seems to me, is Renee Butler's "Movement in B Flat." Forms with different shapes and reflective properties hang from the ceiling and break up video projected from orthogonal points. The effect is to ramify points of view on the projected (mundane) scenes and make those points of view physically explicit. At the same time, the whole ensemble, including the rectangular tiles and grated florescent light fixtures in the ceiling, forms a pleasing, dynamic harmony.
In the room containing "Movement in B Flat," two couches rest against walls near where they meet in a corner. They signal a shift in viewing modes: from "look at art on the wall" to "watch television." These are not the only possibilities. With care and respect for the construction of "Movement in B Flat," you can move around it and even into it in some places.
Persons moving challenge the idea of points of view. Mobile phones have integrated space-annihilating communication with persons moving through the real world around themselves. Artists interested in spatial interpretations and points of view should take seriously this distinctively modern experience of communicating.
Get off the couch. Go see Conversions. And be sure to walk through "Movement in B Flat."
(if you can't see the video, try here)
Tags: art, Conversions, exhibition, movement, reviewIt seems that The Structures of Letters and Symbols throughout Human History Are Selected to Match Those Found in Objects in Natural Scenes. This is a large-scale example of ecology shaping communications technology.
This sort of effect also occurs at a much smaller scale. Compare the geometric patterns in the paintings in the Morgan Picture Bible of Louis IX to those in the Marc Chagall Bible Series. The artists that produced the Morgan Bible primarily illuminated books. Marc Chagall primarily produced individual paintings. Not surprisingly, the Morgan Bible’s paintings look a lot like text, while Chagall’s don’t.
Tags: art, communicationOnce there was Beat Poetry. Now there's Geek Poetry!
Note: Updated video and link.
Tags: art, geeks, next-big-thing, poetry, video
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