trisected

Tag: thought

  • The Tragedy of Happiness

    There was a man who sought joy and happiness. He searched high and low. He painted himself with attractive bright colors to appear happy and joyful. Then he started to seek thrills, sought success, sought money, power, and fame. He tried everything and anything.

    As he sat down one day, exhausted in his search, he observed a family nearby. They were smiling, but wearing poor clothing. They had each other’s company and enjoyed it, but the man was alone, because he had exhausted everyone else in his search for happiness.

    These people were not the smartest around: they spilt food that was preciously bought, they offended each other with miscommunication, and yet, they were still happy. He saw it in their eyes. They had cared for each other, and they were happy. They even gave food happily to the stray cats nearby.

    He sat there and envied them. They had no hopes of being rich, successful, or powerful. But they were happy. He envied them for their lack of achievements, for their contentment with the present. He grew insanely jealous, as he observed all that they were happy with. He sat there, stewing in frustration, while the family continued to frolic in the sun. He sat there and planned something. He knew there and then, that if he could not have the happiness he wanted, he would take it from everyone else that had it. At least then everyone would be miserable together.

    He took the money he earned, and bought over their houses. He emptied out the other families that lived in the building, and replaced that with offices; for work, for profit, for chasing after his versions of happiness. He found little bits of fun that they still tried to have for themselves, and he bought those over as well. Whatever he found that was out of his power to buy, he ordered laws against them and made them criminal.

    Bit by bit, he took happiness away from everyone else. He sat again, at the same spot, again exhausted, but now from removing happiness from everyone. The family was no longer there, replaced by a franchised store, selling knick knacks at marked up prices. As he sat down, and decided that he was happy, that he had removed happiness from everyone else. And there, he found his happiness.

    (I published this story first on Medium – medium.com/@trisected)

  • The Apple Generation

    Steve Jobs who designed Apple for the current generation 

    Reviewing the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

    Another draft post from 2017. I honestly had loaded up quite a few draft posts then, thinking that I was going to be blogging often and all that. If I’m right, it was because I had come back from a holiday trip and I was really in this motivated mood to keep creating. I really have these ups and downs in my creativity. It’s a little frustrating when it’s down, but it’s so tiring to keep when it’s actually on going.

    Did Apple shape the world, or was Apple shaped by the world? Meaning was it a range of factors that led to Steve Jobs developing the company the way that we currently know it? Or was it this new way of thinking that Apple introduced into the mainstream?

    The biography on Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson covers a lot of interesting ground. I personally enjoyed the thought processes and how Isaacson had portrayed Jobs in the best and worst light. The influences from his childhood and teenage wandering years really showed that there was a huge possibility of how things could grow in the years to come. Perhaps it was the way that Isaacson had put it, an event causing something to change in Jobs, which led to more events, and more changes. The cause and effect of the world on Steve Jobs: disappointments, achievements and successes. The pure madness surrounding the man as well. It really spoke volumes, and I still remember large portions of the book, four years on.

    Apple’s effect on how we see the world right now gives us a clear understanding that people do appreciate the appropriate amount of simplicity. There is such a thing as oversimplifying, within the engineering and design realms. And at the same time, there is a chance of it being over designed, where something is unnecessarily complicated. Both are areas to easily fall into, but the bare minimum that Apple gives is usually enough.

    “Enough“ is a term that evaded a lot of computer hardware developers at that time, and even now. There’s always this statement I hear whenever comparing a Mac build to a PC build, “For the price of the Mac, I could build a PC with much greater specs.“ That statement is definitely true. But it holds some other assumptions: you need to build the PC yourself. That’s something a lot of people are not willing to get into, especially in a very simple consumer market. It’s the same reason people look at me funny when I build custom keyboards. Why do you want to put yourself through the hassle? So it’s not that I don’t understand the need for customizing, I am happy to pay the price for a Mac because at its build level, its enough for me. In fact, if Apple chases the top tier graphics and processing speeds, they end up chasing the wrong crowd. They’re here to make sure their computers provide you with just enough to get your YouTube career going, for you to play enough games within their Apple Ecosystem. The aim is not for overclocking your PC or to run a server, although both are possible with a bit of research.

    To echo the sentiments stated in the biography, the home brew crowd that were building their own PCs then were so frustrated and upset with Apple for developing a system that could not have added integrations, and was a one piece self contained unit. That was the mantra from the beginning. Right to repair or not, Apple did not want you to touch their carefully engineered equipment that would fit snug right into the chassis of their choice. The freedom of choice you got from the beginning was to choose to buy Apple or not.

    I found that the simplicity of design that Apple brings, gives reason for a lot of other companies to either simplify, or just go to the tech extremes. Recent phones and tech coming out have become a lot simpler, but without their own issues. The simplicity forgets that Apple designed with the consumer in mind, the person who might not have any idea how to do what they would want to do. That latent need that would be fulfilled through Apple alone. That’s how the simplicity works towards.

    Some companies are getting it, because now it’s been a long time since Apple started. Working on the latent needs of a consumer could be put through AI, which is what Google is doing to us now. We have our data mined, and the computer gods give us our algorithm based decisions. That’s a good try, a nice attempt at trying to understand the human mind.

    But at the end of it, Steve Jobs made his things because he wanted something like that himself. He himself was the consumer that he was trying to reach out to. From the onset, he was never the computer developer. He was the kid who was hyped about the computer things, and he enjoyed his life, somewhat. At the heart of it, if the companies do not want the items for themselves, and want it as the best product they could think of, it would not be easy to develop that latent need. It’s something that one really has to want. That’s something that either a lot of self reflection can get, or a lot of self dissonance will reveal.

    Do we know what we want though? As the current generations who have had their latent needs fulfilled, are we sure we know what is going on? I, for one, have no idea what I would love to see, and I try my best to dig deep often to figure out. I have tried and I constantly dive into multiple new hobbies, only to come out broke and still unsure if that’s the right thing for the future.

    But I still live as a consumer, thinking about what is nice and fancy. There are products that are just enough, like the Mac I’m typing this into, with the keyboards that I currently have. There are products that remain good enough, like my iPhone SE1 and 2. I might want the next few Apple products, but I still struggle to see the need to get a PC, other than for the games that I might want to play. Those aren’t needs, but they’re still at the back of my mind somewhere. Maybe one day, I would go towards a fully custom everything in life. Right now, I’ll enjoy my Apple Ecosystem.

  • What and Where

    When thinking about what to do, I’m always stuck with this issue: What should I do, and where should it go?

    “What to do” is always an easy one to start with: Paint a picture, write a blog post, cut a video together. But then when you pair it with “Where should this piece go?” then you get into this huge question of what’s the best approach, how do we get as many eyes on this as possible, and the list of it goes on.

    But today, like the past few days, I’ll just make these things for myself. On places that I’ll see, and where I’ll appreciate. Hopefully, that helps me to get back to making things easier. Simple. I hope.

  • Abstraction

    1280
    Untitled (Red) 1958 – Taken from the NGV Website
    How does Rothko make a Rothko? I was reading this and really processing. Would I cry if I stood long enough at a Rothko piece? I remember I was almost tearing at NGV when I saw the Rothko piece there, but that was from the pure happiness of actually seeing a Rothko piece.

    Did the abstraction miss its point, in the intended emotional response?

    On a return trip, however, I actually avoided the Rothko, for fear of dealing with an intended response from the artwork. It was as if the piece was standing there, asking me to express or read an expression from it. “How do I make you feel today?” I evaded the question, and sped ahead to another exhibit.

    Now, considering my somewhat cowardly response toward an artwork, I come to that question: Can my artwork produce a response? Being trained in visual communication, I would think that crying because you saw my work would mean a few things. One would be horrible use of color or typography. Another could be a hidden memory, awakened from the past.

    I ask this, perhaps because, I am rarely moved by art these days. My girlfriend would point this out to me clearly, as I speed through galleries, gathering as deep an impression of 20 seconds at most. I blame neither the quality of artwork, nor the artist’ in his or her thoughts, but that challenging question: “How do I make you feel today?”

    Would a Christian respond to art differently? During a local exhibition, I saw the scene of Christian and Jesuit martyrs in Japan. This gave me great thought, and I did pause for a lot longer than 20 seconds. The country I admired, sacrificing people of my religious beliefs and truths, for doing the very things that I do as my work. Would I be one of them?

    “How do I make you feel today?” Scared, terrified in fact.

    But I digress. This abstraction, the emotions felt without a clear imagery or reference. Just colors, textures, applied over surfaces. Emotions were poured into it, and yet, there is no obligation for the viewer to emote in response. Is that process of art abstract in itself?

    Despite all my ramblings and thought, I guess at the end of the day, my question in my artwork would be: “Could you feel anything today?” and if you do, then I hope I was not to blame for it. Artistic abstract expression, you’re not the one at fault. It was probably me.