tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688599.post116570465286764634..comments2023-10-12T04:54:05.108-07:00Comments on Deep Freeze 9: Testing theories of architectural intelligibilityJP (Pierre) de Vrieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02311009024575927588noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688599.post-1165882113163621332006-12-11T16:08:00.000-08:002006-12-11T16:08:00.000-08:00Thanks for stimulating response, Bret. Your point...Thanks for stimulating response, Bret. Your point that an algorithmically-variable system would only delineate known, and thus trivial, aesthetic bounds is a usefully provocative one.<BR/><BR/>One response is that a system with sufficiently many variables is likely to find unexpected boundaries. With only a handful of variables, and smooth variation, practitioners probably wouldn’t be surprised by where the edges lie. However, the transitions between clarity and ambiguity in a high-dimensional space are likely to unexpected.<BR/><BR/>Even with relatively few variables, one is likely to find that the boundaries vary wildly for different people. While it’s a commonplace that something trivial for the creator could be incoherent to many in the audience, one might find configurations where the creator is surprised by how intelligible a variation is to the plebs.<BR/><BR/>Finally, one might be able to explore useful new ground even with a few variables if they’re recombinant in the manner of genetic algorithms. Imagine that the model is driven by meta-variables that are combinations of sub-variables. Changing the combinations will the way the model behaves. One might even find “intelligibility vectors” in the aesthetic space be recombining meta-variables until they give the accepted answer for a given cultural milieu.<BR/><BR/>P.S. The Herbert Brün quote reminds me of what I apparently used to tell my mother at bed-time: “Tell me a story you don’t know.”<BR/><BR/>P.P.S. Sorry about the tiny text size of the comments. It’s a bug in the template, not an assertion of authorial dominance over commenters!JP (Pierre) de Vrieshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02311009024575927588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688599.post-1165759789628349312006-12-10T06:09:00.000-08:002006-12-10T06:09:00.000-08:00Hi Pierre, thanks for the thoughts on intelligibil...Hi Pierre, thanks for the thoughts on intelligibility and on wicked problems. I'm glad you have time to read this stuff and point me in the direction of yet more great books I wish I had more time to read...<BR/><BR/>This and the previous post set me to thinking about intelligibility, the ability to measure it, and how this might relate to art-making.<BR/><BR/>As a teacher of composition, including algorithmic techniques and avant-garde aesthetics, I'm often ruminating with students about this borderline between the intelligible and unintelligible. In the design of reactive-art, there seems to be a sweet spot between trivial directness of control and incoherent unpredictability. How to find it? And as a composer, (presuming traditional expressive goals), one has to be consciously aware that what constitutes intelligibility for oneself does not necessarily constitute intelligibility for an audience. How to step back and be objective about one's own work? (Or should one?)<BR/><BR/>So thinking about testing intelligiblity through an algorithmically-variable system... I wonder though, almost like wicked problems, if one can only base such systems in the case of known (and hence in some sense trivial) aesthetic bounds. I'm thinking of a quote from composer Herbert Brün once paraphrased to me as: "I write pieces that I haven't learned how to like yet." If we build an algorithmically variable architecture assessment system, the choice of variables will be based on presumptions about what variables are meaningful. So if the system becomes strongly used, it would preclude architectural solutions/innovations that require breaking of the assumptions.<BR/><BR/>Hmmm... I'm not usually one to groove on the (often self-pleased) rhetoric of creatives who declare their work as necessary to break closed systems, but I realize I just argued something to that effect!<BR/><BR/>Riding on the line between intelligibility and unintelligibility, -=BretAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com