Re: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R

["Barney Quinn" <Barney.Quinn@noaa.gov>]

Kit,

Please slow down for a minute. Take a breath and listen. Music and Photography
have in common that they are both art forms. But, they are also very different.
One of the three key elements which make up music, Rhythm, is, beyond doubt,
accessible to deaf people because it involves physical sensation and physical
motion. A deaf person can think up a rhythm and tap it out as well as anyone,
and this can be easily demonstrated. A blind photographer and a deaf musician
just aren't a comparison which is exact enough to be useful in this case. A deaf
musician can meet the classical definition of art. A blind photographer can't.
If you want to switch ground a little and argue that there is far more to art
than classical, high western art, then I would say fine. I agree.

Beethoven just isn't a good example here. He learned his trade before he went
deaf. He knew he was loosing his hearing. He knew that his playing was
deteriorating and was frustrated by it, so much so that he destroyed more than
one piano while playing it. Music is far closer, IMHO, to dance than it is to
photography and painting. I will tell you, as a cellist, that you feel what you
are doing every bit  much as you hear what you are doing. The second you stop
listening to your body your tone tends to go right through the floor. When you
are playing the feed back you get from your body is as important as the feedback
you get from your ears. You can often FEEL that a note is off before you hear
it. The so what is that Beethoven could, as can any musician, feel-  meaning
physically sense - that his playing was off the mark even if he couldn't exactly
hear it. It is, at best, an uphill battle to maintain otherwise. Music is
tactile. Photography isn't. That's what makes them different and what makes your
comparison problematical.

I agree with you. There is no right or wrong in art. But, Classical Music isn't
a comparison which is going to win your argument for you. Like it or not there
are standards in classical music performance. Don't think so? Try going on stage
some night and playing the Dvorak Concerto a half step sharp and a beat ahead of
the orchestra and see what happens. Trust me - it's not going to be excused away
as performance art. You, I think, have ended up in a bit of a culture clash if
not a cultural war because Classical Musicians who have spent twenty years
learning how to play in tune and on the beat get quite crazy when they people
try to convince them directly, or indirectly, that all this time and effort
doesn't matter.

It seems to me that you would like,  rightfully, for your views to be taken
seriously, and that you would like to have them respected and listened to. OK.
But, turn around is also fair play. Some people who live in Beethoven's world
have tried to explain, perhaps a bit roughly, that this world is perhaps a bit
different than it seems to you. Perhaps it would be a good thing if we all did
something which Beethoven couldn't at the end of his life - namely listen.

Barney

Kit McChesney | acmefoto wrote:

> 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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