BUILDING WALLS

No one might know their age, or who built these dykes, but they are there, crisscrossing the island for kilometres. These dry stone walls on Unst, Shetland, are simply accepted as being there, as forming a part of the natural patterning of the landscape. It is not until one pauses and considers the process and effort involved in constructing these walls that one becomes astonished. This is not just a matter of stacking stones to a preferred height along an alignment.

The rocks must have been gathered up in the clearing of the fields, and thrown into piles ready to be placed. The technique might sound simple and straightforward, merely a matter of persistent work and time, but constructing these walls involved a true skill and thoughtful care.

Out of a pile of randomly gathered stones, the dry stone waller has made perfectly straight walls with a perfectly true face on each side, even taking the time to ‘finish off’ the work with a stone capping, all neatly arranged to become a true coping, as precise as any on a cathedral, but all made just from the collected rocks, and with the ‘extra’ effort to cap the wall off; to make a ‘proper job’ of it.

The more one considers the wall, the more one admires the skill, care, and effort that went into its making. It is good work, as E.F. Schumacher spoke of it in the book with this title - HarperCollins, 1979. The wall still stands as assuredly unyielding as the day it was built, after years of buffeting by snow, storms, and rain.

This is the work of a true craftsman. One thinks of the lines in Robert Frost's poem,

Mending Wall:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

One can see the dyker thinking and feeling as the work is done, such is its wondrous beauty that even includes the idea of the dentil corbelling of the stones with a remarkably accurate, subtle delicacy, all created from rubble, with stones that have been thoughtfully selected and carefully placed, the rule being that a rock picked up is never put down except into its place in the wall: some wall - consider the stones.

AI GUESSING

We had driven to within 5 km of our destination only to find the road flooded and closed. There had been heavy rain overnight. We turned around and drove home. Later in the day we were wondering if the water levels had dropped, so decided to see what AI could tell us by asking Google - or is it Gemini now? - if the Boonah road was still closed.# The response was surprising and worrying: It began by picking up on the information that had been given to it* by suggesting that perhaps there had been an accident, and that the road might soon be cleared, etc , etc. with additional, bland, 'helpful' sentences that contained every cliché one could put together about car crashes and delays and possible clearance times.

In short, the response was rubbish - a mere guess prompted by the question, followed by useless, misleading, pompous blurb that expanded on the original assumption as though one had asked for a reply in a minimum of one hundred words. The best answer should have been a simple: ‘I do not know.’ AI is structured to respond as though it might be a knowledgeable, living person - a helpful friend: creating yet another aspect to the illusion this algorithm seeks to present - and we are encouraged to believe in this!

Why is there such hype about AI when it is merely a set of routes for assembling a set of items/units/letters as directed by the rules? One thing that AI is incapable of seems to be apology, true humility to acknowledge the shame of being completely wrong. One might get the letters, but this will only emphasise the nature of the system one is dealing with; it relies for its credibility on us; on our blind, praiseworthy acceptance of it as a 'genius,' knowing everything. We must remember that, as with the television set, there is an ‘OFF’ button for us to use.

The gesture is used to make us remember that robots 'think.'

The Thinker, Auguste Rodin

Even when it does acknowledge that it does not know something - does it really 'know' anything? - e.g. the new First Nation names for the Art Gallery of NSW - it comes up with suggestive propositions stating what is usually the obvious, that this might be that; or could be something else, as though it was trying to be helpful, believing the interrogator knew nothing at all. In this sense, AI is bombastic.

The point to always remember is that AI needs to be queried; challenged; questioned; doubted; and turned off as required. We have to overcome the mindset that we are being pushed into: that we are inferior, lesser mortals than the superior being, the mystery genius known as AI that is really just a tool for gathering bits and pieces in response to certain inputs. AI is like a complex set of rail tracks; an array of switches that directs current to an assortment of destinations.+

One might argue that the human mind - or is it brain? - works with a similar mechanism; that the only difference is finesse, being able to engage the full complexity of integration that is the human body - and that this will only be a matter of time. Again, it is up to us to believe in order to support this position, that even predicts that our creations will eventually take everything over.

Perhaps they will, but only if we let them: we have to remember this. We seem obsessed with the idea of creating man: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/10/in-our-own-image.html. Is it a desire to ‘Know oneself’? The associated Delphic phrase, ‘Nothing in excess,’ needs to be heeded too: never overrate AI. It is a simple tool, and, as with all tools, has its wonderful uses and many limitations. It is really only as good as us, as good, or as bad, as what we might choose to make it.

#

It was after this search that the Queensland Government Transport site was discovered. This site, although awkward to manipulate as it covers a large state, identifies sites across Queensland that have issues using graphic markers. This site indicated that the Boonah road was still closed. It took 24 hours before it was reopened. There was also another site, that of the RACQ, which was also rather cumbersome, but useful once one had found what one was looking for.

*

It is a little like the expensive consultant called in to give advice: ‘He comes in, takes your watch, and tells you the time’ - only, in this case, the watch that was not working was picked up.

+

The digital world is singular, managing everything one by one. We are becoming similar to this way of understanding: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/05/architecture-is-not-singular.html. Modernity is singular, lacking the immediacy of the integration of understanding and experience that earlier ages knew. It is this situation that we approve of as being ‘rigorous,’ that causes the great schism between what we might call ‘the First Nations’ world’ and ours: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html.

MEAGRE MODERNISM - MOLEHILLS & MOUNTAINS

Be prepared to be amazed at the modern magic!

Soft As Stone: 50 Sculptures That Defy The Laws of Physics

see: https://www.boredpanda.com/soft-stones-sculptures-jose-manuel-castro-lopez/

If you’re curious to see one of the biggest oxymorons in material form, you must be introduced to the collection of sculptures created by José Manuel Castro López. This artist seems to manipulate stone shapes as if they were made of soft gum, making them act like an elastic skin or other soft forms. If this doesn’t make much sense to you, we’re not surprised, but we invite you to explore the collection of sculptures we’ve selected for you today. The Spanish artist once shared that his relationship with stone is not physical, but magical. We must agree that the result of this relationship is indeed full of magic, defying the laws of physics and leaving all viewers amazed.

The world expresses amazement that the sculptor José Manuel Castro López can make stone appear soft and flexible - to defy the laws of physics; as if this might be an artful stroke of genius; a true miracle of the 21st century; magic: so progressive; truly astounding! Has the world forgotten Greek sculpture, the astonishing gowns draped over the bodies that inspired Henry Moore, revealing subtle profiles in the gentle falling folds of fabric, all in stone? The modern sculptor is showing repeated snippets of tiny portions of what Greek sculptors, and others, e.g. Michelangelo, have achieved on a totally different scale and complexity, with a different intent, context and meaning, making today’s sundry parts appear a very meagre, almost tawdry offering.

Yet we rave on with an over-enthusiastic, hoo-ha blurb about this Spaniard’s work, as if it might be spectacularly unique, true magic, attractive and intriguing to the modern eye, when it is actually minuscule, even trivial, when seen in the context of history, reading like a sculptor’s trial pieces; perhaps the training efforts of a struggling novice being tutored by a master.

Louis Sullivan's decoration.

Sculpture detail, Chartres cathedral.

Is Modernity’s problem its egocentric satisfaction, its apparent inability to be self-critical and humbled, with piecemeal fractions, tiny bits’n’pieces of parts happily being presented as wholes that are not equal to anything we see in skill or intricacy in historical sculpture, art, and architecture - c.f. Louis Sullivan’s decoration, Chartres cathedral, etc. - all as modernism argues for what it sees as a superior, intellectual stance promoting nothingness, clever nakedness, encompassed in single-idea quirky forms – c.f. Nouvel’s Abu Dahbi Louvre dome and the Doha Museum’s desert crystal - catchy expressions that dominate as a concept, shrouding what really is just raw Modernism, a little like Windows overlaying dos to improve the appearance of what was a crude, unsophisticated operating system embarrassed by the canny Apple offering.# The ideals of Modernism remain alive but latent within the dramatic diagram of different form made possible by the computer – c.f. the Doha Museum’s floor that is identical to Frank Lloyd Wright’s floor in the Guggenhein Museum in New York. This effort to do everything in one concept is like the current desire to do everything by doing nothing, with self-drive cars and robotic everythings, etc. Why bother with complexity when the words can argue for unlimited depth in these ‘magical’ works? Are we attempting to disguise our lazy lack of care and skill with quirky forms mangling the concealed Modernist ideals as an excuse for our lack of rich complexity in meaning? Do we create mere complexity as muddled confusion in a new ‘fusion’ art and architecture as some kind of pretence?

Chartres cathedral.

Jean Nouvel's National Museum of Qatar, Doha - floor detail: completed 2019.

Frank Lloyd Wright''s New York Guggenheim floor: completed 1959.

Jean Nouvel's National Museum of Qatar.

Jean Nouvel's Louvre, Abu Dhabi.

We rave on about an intellectual minimalism and AI in architecture with that quirky, meaningful deformation by digital distortion using the ‘magic’ of algorithms or whatever - our new tools - to give us outcomes that even surprise the manipulator, a response that, in itself, is used as a gauge for the genius of the ‘idea.’

This piece is even much less than a tiny portion of Rudolf Nureyev's grave.

Nureyev's grave.

. . . and this piece too.

The Greeks had their basic hand tools and managed astonishing complexities and beauty. A reliance on technology for easy ‘progress’ is never the answer; it has merely become an excuse for our lack of understanding, perseverance, and skill. We need to be far more ambitious, less careless of ideas and effort, and complexity in art and architecture as we seek an integrating wholeness rather than quick, impressive, grand bespoke displays that ‘defy the laws of physics.’

Instead of the complexity that is just juggled AI forms distorted, deformed, mangled, and intermingled, we need a complexity in ideas to overcome modernity’s determined, rational singularity – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/05/architecture-is-not-singular.html. Modernity seems just too keen to lock on to the limitation of one small aspect and eulogize this as wonderment. The Spanish sculptor highlights this circumstance which looks astonishingly naïve and simplistic when seen against the achievements of the Greeks who have given us kinks and folds and swirls that define the body they cover in an integrated display of ideas and talent that all confirms the physics and science of art, not treat it as the work of a special, individual genius defying universal necessities.

More than just an 'interesting' bump.

Modernity is self-centred, self-asserting, and arrogantly self-promoting in doing and being this. It also limits itself to looking only at singular items, as if trying to make a world out of nothing but a grain of sand in a naïve attempt inspired by Blake’s subtle words, as if they might be physically reversible in their intent, like complexity itself.

Modernity’s no decoration, nothingness, just 'substance' is expressed as singular buildings, projects with one idea, morphed into the wonderment of one ideal ME, MY bespoke creation, knowing little of multi-meaning and its layered richness, being extremely happy if it can manage the singular and then claim the world and beyond for such an achievement. Even knowing the work of other ages induces no shame or humility.

Place this stance and its limitation in the context of the cleverly shrewd games that promotion plays with words and images, texts and photographs, then we have to wonder about the conceit of the deceit in art and architecture today; its impact on our understanding of piecemeal outcomes that are said to be singularly special and meaningful for us when they are far from either.

#

One can also liken the situation to our mobile phones. They hold an amazing presence with all of their clever interfaces and easy access to information, but open up the gadget and you are confronted with another image of electronic bits and pieces that present a whole new image of the gadget as an ordinary working tool. Little wonder that the transparent mobile phone has not made an appearance. The style of this object is its core significance and it is promoted as such; the reality is irrelevant: such is Modernity.

One does have to wonder if our scientific, analytical mind might promote singularity in, e.g. thinking and research: note how specialised PhDs have become. Might our digital world only further reinforce this methodology for understanding that handles everything singularly, literally bit by byte.

MORE IMAGES

and there are as many again on the site:

https://www.boredpanda.com/soft-stones-sculptures-jose-manuel-castro-lopez/