RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R

["Kit McChesney | acmefoto" <kitmc@acmefoto.com>]

Well, you may say that my statements are distorted, but I disagree. So what
if Beethoven was deaf before he started making music? Can one never imagine
music at all if they've never heard it? Don't blind people see images in
their heads, even if they've never actually "seen" something with their
eyes, as you've seen it? As to criticisms of his later work, criticism is
ephemeral, as everyone knows. I doubt if anyone would say today that
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was a disaster. And if he could not handle
dynamic range in his later work, do we know that was due to his deafness, or
to artistic, creative choice? There are many composers whose work lacks
tonal range, but do we say their work is bad because it does not? As to
"much better," that's a subjective judgment. I may think Beethoven's Fifth
is better than his Ninth. You may see it differently. Our differing opinions
mean nothing, and have nothing whatsoever to do with some standard of
"quality" that makes either one better or worse. There is no standard in
art, as there might be in engineering, as to what is good or bad, not in the
21st century. Those debates were carried out long time ago in the 19th
century. Many artists whose work was revered not long after their deaths was
reviled during their lifetimes. He was born knowing how to draw like a
master, and spent the rest of his life learning to draw like a child. He
needed to get the weight of officially recognized technical mastery out of
his way so that he could actually go on to work creatively and explore the
nature of what it means to see.

Granted, as one person said, we should not hang cameras on birds or cows,
and treat those works as equal in quality or imoprtance to the works of
artists, but the Dadadists certainly probed those issues in the 1920s, as
did the Surrealists, with their "exquisite corpse" works .. each person
would add an element to the image and continue around the table until the
image was finished. That process was described as the "encounter of a sewing
machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table." Sound like nonsense? Well,
yes it does. They were questioning the fundamental beliefs of the art
establishment that said that there were standards of beauty, standards of
quality, that could not be violated, otherwise a work could not be
considered art. Questions of agency, of who "makes," and how they "make,"
and who is the "maker" in the work of art. All these debates about
"critiques," what is "good," and "judgment" are so much hooey. People are
unwilling to consider the work of art from someone who is blind because they
are threatened by the idea that someone who can't see might just be able to
make an image that as compelling than theirs, even with their supposedly
"superior" equipment--their functioning eyes. That ability to perform
technically somehow overrides intuition. If an airplane wing isn't designed
properly, it will most certainly fail. Art doesn't work like that. What did
Picasso say? Without the intuitive, without the part of art that you can't
see, an image made with a camera is nothing. Not much better than an image
made by a camera flying by the neck of an albatross!

Still, I say look at the images in question and say they aren't compelling
images, and that if you did not know that the artist was blind, you be
unable to distinguish them from images made by someone who can "see."

Harrrumph! ;-)

Kit

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Adam Bridge
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 12:20 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R


On 3/12/03 Kit McChesney | acmefoto  wrote:

>
>The point is, Beethoven "heard" the music in his head and made notations on
>paper which was later translated into sound by an orchestra. What is the
>difference between his doing that, and someone who can't "see" with their
>eyes creating an idea in the mind, and "representing" it on a piece of
>photographic paper using a camera as a tool for drawing? And suppose
someone
>could create a digital image in a similar way, and later "translate" that
>digital information into sound, into a musical representation of the image?
>If Mozart "thought" up his music and wrote it down, how does that differ
>from a blind artist's "thinking" an image and using a camera to represent
>that thoughts? Conceptually there is no difference.
>

Well there are some seriously distorted statements here.

First, of course, Beethoven wasn't deaf from birth. He composed a
substantial
amount of his work when he could hear. Many criticisms of his later work
involve
his inability to handle dynamic range, esp in the 9th Symphony. He did much
better in his small work.

Music, of course, is fundamentally abstract.

I'm going to make a distinction between "blind" and "visually impaired".
There
are many legally blind who can still make out light/darkness. I was taking
"blind" to mean those who cannot see or distinguish any measure of light and
darkness at all and perhaps those who never could.

BD has it right, I think. If you have never seen light, never perceived
value,
color, visual texture, then working with a photograph is potentially a
curiosity
but I'm not sure it qualifies as anything other than performance art.

If I hear "politically correct" again in this context I'll barf. Screw it.
Just
let the blind person be the judge of the work, critique it, and improve it
based
upon critiques of the blind.

I think it's no different than having me attempt elegant mathematics. I KNOW
I
no appreciation for it and no ability and no insight into it. I'm "blind" to
it.
It's just a fact of life.

Adam Bridge
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