jorge.cortell.net

After posting graphs and cold data (quite ilustrative, I believe), and the discussion it has generated (people, why don’t you use the “comment” instead all the other unstructured methods you are using?), please let me write a caveat about graphs and cold data.

In my high-tech gym, you have the option to have a lot of data collected, for your own, private and personal use. It seems like a great idea at first. For example, I can access via a secure web site real time stats of my workouts, such as the “fitness balance” (which shows my emphasis in weight lifting, and then swimming -some data greyed out for privacy purposes-):

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Not that fast.

The following graph (Workout Log) allows me to see how many times I have worked out. Since I tend to go to the gym everyday (but it is not always possible), an average of 4 times per week sounds reasonable, but what is that max. 8 times per week number? Why is there such a dip in mid February?

Data often needs to be contextualized, otherwise we might end up with the wrong conclussion (those 8 workouts per week happened to be visits to the gym to do a personal assesment and training routine design, added to my regular workouts; and the dip… just a long trip!).

But even worse things can happen:

In this case, an obviously strange abherration is showing in the graph. Somehting to be concerned about? Not at all: the scale of the axis make a slight variation (less than 1%, less than a pound) seem like a huge shift. And variables such as measurement thresholds, electronic glitches, etc must be taken into account when considering the validity and presentation of that data.

Let’s just keep in mind: however great quantification and visualization tools are (and I do like them a lot, and believe they can be very beneficial to the way we make decissions and understand the world and ourselves) they must be used with care. After all, this following map might show all the places I have traveled to… but it can not tell you about the experiences lived there…

Government debt does not explain it all:

Unemployment is, indeed, quite inapelable:

And minimum wage:

So, perhaps, taking all those (and the last “devastating evidence” one) graphs into account, French and German governments have tricked, via manipulative markets and rating agencies, ignorant technocrat Spain’s PP government into cutting social spending (like education and health, which in turn becomes productivity, and minimum wage and job stability, which promotes spending and growth) so we go deeper into the hole, and they take advantage of our excellent engineers at a low rate, while speculating with debt and making sure Spain does not become a strong competitor…

Don’t they realise that with a monarchy that “shoots itself in the foot trying to hunt elephants and hiding corruption and scandalous ties”, a media that is so self complacent and ass kissing that feels more like brothels, politicians so entrenched in the corrupt game that with two degrees of separation you could not find an honest Spaniard anymore, a starch church mingling in public affairs, and a population so absorbed by soccer, celebrities and fear, they do not need to do that? Spaniards doom themselves! We always have, damn religious guilt, envy, fear, pride and inferiority complex!

Since I could not get a hold of tickts for New Museum’s Seven on Seven, I decided to make the most out of my day yesterday (defying my cold), so I even had time to visit the NYC anarchist book fair, at Judson Church (Washington Square).

I wish I had had more time to devote to exploring all the literature (great and aweful) on display. But at least I had time to notice:

• How little people attending knew about anarchy (imagine those outside)
• How deliciously ironic that it took place in what used to be a church
• How much anarchy is related to art (indeed, as a matter of fact, one of the books I purchased was NAASN‘s “Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies 2.2011″)

Map + Newspapers + Translations = Simple and AWESOME!!

Newspapermap.com

On September 28, 2011, Hou Hanru, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute said on a lecture (Curator’s Perspective) in New York:

I think the worst exhibition in the world is the exhibition that is organized like a book. We see this a lot, an exhibition that takes the artwork as an illustration of a concept. I think an exhibition is not necessary for this: frankly, it’s too expensive. Through exhibition making we must spend the money, time and energy to produce a language that can not be replaced by other forms.

Interested by this argument, I watched the recordings of The Critical Edge of Curating conference held at the Guggenheim Museum November 3-4, 2011. Here are some more thought provoking quotes:

For many curators and artist working today, the exhibition no longer serves as the culminating manifestation of their work. For some, it is a mere step along a trajectory of research and planning. For others it has become an entirely dispensable model.

Anton Vidokle  (e-flux) said:

I see the artist as someone who sees art as an integral part of human social life and who can discover or renounce a social identity in his or her encounter with art.

I think that in the future, the art of our time may very well become incomprehensible because of how incredibly historically contingent contemporary art seems to be. In order to understand today’s art in the future you may have to reproduce the very specific context of our time in minutia. TV shows, fashion magazines, Hollywood movies, popular music, comic, supermarket circulars, and so forth, which is something far beyond what a didactic museum wall text does for the Renaissance paintings, for example.

Peter sends me this (thanks!):

Created by: Paralegal.net

Amalia Pica's Venn Diagrams, photo seen in capitalnewyork.com, by New Museum

One of the multiple interesting pieces currently being exhibited at the New Museum’s The Ungovernables is Amalia Pica’s Venn Diagrams. The text under this piece says:

During the period of dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s, gatherings of citizens were closely monitored as they were considered a threat to the government. At the same time group theory and venn diagrams were banned from primary school programs as they could provide a model for subversive thought.

Brutal and ignorant as any other dictatorship (or even more if you wish), I knew Argentinian Military Junta was capable of something as absurd as this and more (like banning Sigmund Freud’s doctrine and exterminating psychoanalysts… in Argentina of all places!), but since it seemed so shocking, I went on and researched a little.

Here is a detailed account of what happened: Who is afraid of a vector? By Mauricio Schoijet.

When discussing Art as Political Discussion (even more than when discussing Art), there is never enough context.

Do you want to improve your online privacy? Go ahead, install HTTPS and Collusion.

On Monday, I met the Chief Information Officer of a large US Government Administration in Washington DC.

His office was surprisingly small and functional compared to European “big government” offices. A nice reminder of how European bureaucracy and public sector spending in administration itself is burying us. But what caught my attention the most was the largest picture in the office: it was not Obama’s, a diploma, a family picture, a flag… it was this:

I wish European (particularly Spanish, and particularly Valencian) public servants were so aware of and sensitive to the realities and constraints that should be ever present in their duty.

Embarrassing. We should all be ashamed. At least we can access his words.