D Schmudde > Recent Status Updates

Pretty cynical thus far.

“Buddhism is lonely, a solitary struggle with yourself with the hope of nothing except the eventual aim of no longer being a self at all.
Obliteration of one's self out of being. All your struggle, just for that. All your years of trying to be a better self, only to be rewarded with that self's extinction.”

Currently transitioning from Great Britain to France

'There is a sense that the musical material he has left us is both complete and unfinished, and in thinking about the meaning of our performances we should recall the emphasis T. S. Eliot placed on “a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.” It is by anchoring it in our time that we re-connect with the timeless fertility of Bach's imagination.' pg 395

'The first work of internet art also came from an artist present at the conversation in 1974: Douglas Davis [...] sought to break down the media barriers between himself and the public in his own television works. In 1994, with The World’s Longest Sentence, he created the first art work for the World Wide Web.'

The first work of internet art in 1994? That's quite a claim.

“If realization were momentary, Mahamati, the wise world not be wise. But the wise are, indeed, wise.” A Buddhist’s preoccupation with impermanence obscures the permanent, unchanging reality realized by enlightenment.

It takes 250 pages, but Agre does finally plant his flag in the ground, “The kind of generality projected by current AI practice (representation as expression, thought as search, planning as simulation) simply cannot be realized. Every artifact or organism of any complexity relies heavily, by computational necessity, on the regularity and coherence of its familiar world.”

I’m not convinced Gardiner’s literary references add much to this book. They are sparse and often dropped in without context. Phillip Pullman being the most egregious example. References to “Dust” that have only the most tenuous connection to Bach go unexplained.

‘Entering a situation with a "mind of don't know" privileges process over outcome. The focus on process as an art medium is not restricted to socially engaged artists, but it does provide them with a useful vehicle for exploring the daily life of ordinary people. Process privileges time and relationships, giving activist artists a way to shape the non-traditional aspects of what they do.’

Page after page of the Buddha reminding that the path is not the purpose, the path is not the destination, the path cannot be taught because it cannot be grasped:

“My path is not a great path / nor is it instruction or words / nor is it truth or liberation / nor is it a realm of nothingness”

“Bach’s concerns revolves around harmony. Zedler defined universal harmony as ‘The conformity and harmony of all things, for everything in the world act together in respect to both cause and effect.’ Bach himself had this to say: ‘The through-base is the most perfect foundation of music ... that results in a well sounding _Harmonie_ to the Honor of God and the permissible delight of the soul.’”

An essential distinction in Computer Science: a precise language vs. a natural language: "My reflexive thesis is that predictable forms of trouble will beset any technical community that supposes its language to be precise and formally well defined. Awareness of the rhetorical properties of technical language greatly facilitates the interpretation of difficulties encountered in everyday technical practice."