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Today I heard yet another talk at a research symposium in which the speaker, when asked about the difficulty of doing research involving both aesthetic invention and technological invention, responded by saying that artists and scientists need to collaborate.

I hate this answer. It suggests that there are two different species of being: “the artist” and “the scientist”.

Fortunately, another speaker later in the day pointed out that the artist and the scientist can be the same person. And I completely agree.

In fact, when it comes to research, it is far better if they are the same person. In industry the value proposition may be different, but in research, combining these two complementary forms of problem solving within a single brain is a huge win.

Yet I realize, thinking about it now, that we don’t have a good word for the person who is both an artist and a scientist. Maybe we should come up with such a word.

I’m open to suggestions!

Every few years I make sure to revisit the Musée Rodin. I love the great man’s sculptures, which are, as I’m sure you know, inspiring and magnificent.

But the real reason I have always gone is to see the work of Camille Claudel, his sometime student and sometime lover, and an artist whose work has breathtaking power and beauty, and an aesthetic subtlety that can be lacking in Rodin’s art.

Alas, during this visit I discovered that only the garden was open, not the interior of the Hôtel Biron, where the smaller works are traditionally on display, and which is currently under renovation. It is the Hôtel which houses the works of Claudel.

But then I found out, to my delight, that a selection of the works from the indoor collection are on display in a temporary structure that has been set up for just this purpose. Imagine my glee in discovering that I would once again be able to commune with my beloved Claudel sculptures.

Alas, whoever was charged with selecting works to display from the indoor collection had assumed that we clueless tourists would be interested only in Rodin alone. The work of Camille Claudel was nowhere to be found.

Fools.

Finally went to see Age of Ultron. Yes, it’s wall to wall action packed, with beautifully choreographed fight scenes, flip dialog between the battles, awesome visual effects, and split second editing to take your breath away.

But what surprised me is that it’s not, you know, an actual movie. Not in the sense that, say, Richard Donner’s Superman was an actual movie. Watching Ultron, I felt as though I had been dropped into the middle of something — and I guess in a sense I had been.

Yes, I know that at the level of an Avengers movie it’s less about gold statues, and more about gold. With a budget so enormous there is no margin for financial error. But for me the gold is starting to rust. I had somehow thought that Joss Whedon would find some way to surprise us.

Of course everybody sees a movie for different reasons, and you might like this one quite a bit. As a large screen action extravaganza it certainly gets the job done. So maybe it’s me — maybe I need to lower my expectations.

Or maybe by now Whedon is only doing the Avengers to buy himself freedom to work on smaller projects that he actually cares passionately about. And maybe that’s ok.

After the movie, my friend and I were comparing notes. I said “Well, that wasn’t Chaucer.”

Then I thought about it some more. “Unless,” I added, “you’ve seen A Knight’s Tale. In which case, that was Chaucer.”

Speeding across the European countryside on the TGV today, my trip was mostly uneventful. The day was clear and beautiful, and the scenery magnificent. I was even impressed by the lunches on display.

Europeans, possessed of a certain sense of style that we Yanks often lack, really know how to pack a picnic for a long train ride (the right wine is very important). All around me, people sipped their wine and enjoyed the rolling view outside, as they quietly conversed in French or German.

Then, around two hours into the ride, everybody started to notice a plaintive meowing. Conversation died down — the sound was unmistakable. Apparently a small kitten had gotten onto the train. Passengers started to look around, trying to figure out where it might be hiding.

Finally a man stood up, reached into the overhead luggage rack, and took down his backpack. At that moment we all realized the sound was coming from the bag. I was both astonished and dismayed. What sort of person makes a little kitten spend a three hour train ride inside a backpack?

All eyes were glued to the backpack as the man reached in with one large hand, digging around inside.

Finally, he pulled out a small black cellphone, which he handed to his young son, who was looking extremely sheepish and embarrassed. The boy switched off the alarm, then his father put the phone back into the bag, placed the bag back up in the overhead rack, and we continued on our way.

Today a colleague told me that she was impressed with something she had seen in the Oculus Crescent Bay demo — an interactive flying dragon. Not a real dragon of course. But because the virtual dragon was rendered in full surround VR, she said she felt a visceral sense of danger, even though she knew it was all make believe.

We then discussed the connection with the Lumiere brothers’ famous 1896 train sequence, and whether we might now be witnessing the last moment in history when anybody would be able to achieve that sort of effect in VR. In another few years it is likely that what she experienced may become as ordinary and expected as a shot of a train coming toward the camera.

She then told me that every time the dragon flew at her in the demo, she involuntarily dropped down, and looked for something to hide under — even though she knew intellectually that this made no sense.

Then I had an “aha!” moment. “Don’t you realize what you were experiencing?” I said.

“No,” she replied, “what was I experiencing?”

“That was an example,” I said, “of a dragon drop interface!”

On Saturday I was wandering through Dublin, and somehow I got myself turned around. I asked a stationmaster how to get to Trinity College, and he sent me in the general direction of a bus stop down the street.

When I got to what looked like the right location, I asked a portly and somewhat elderly gentleman whether this was the right place to catch the bus to Trinity College. He told me that the proper place was right across the street, but that I shouldn’t take the bus.

“Why not?” I asked.

“There’s no point in taking the bus,” he said, “when it’s near enough to walk.”

It was a nice day, perfect for a little walk, so I asked: “OK, how do I walk to Trinity College?”

Then the man smiled, a big broad happy Irish smile, and I can swear I saw his eyes twinkle. “With your feet, of course.”

I laughed, not so much at the joke as at his perfect delivery. Then he pointed me in the proper direction, and sent me on my way.

The next day I took a flight back to Paris. As I took the RER B to Paris Nord, and then the M2 to Villiers, I was struck by all the tense and somber faces. Everyone looked dour, wrapped up in their own private world.

Paris is incredibly beautiful, I thought to myself, but nobody here is going to make a joke like the one that guy told in Dublin.

And right there, I thought to myself, is the difference between Dublin and Paris.

Today, at the very end of my stay in Dublin, I decided to honor the long and illustrious literary history of that great city by doing a mini-tour of its bookstores. Not surprisingly, there are quite a few options for the avid bibliophile, from purveyors of rare and used books to Hodges figgis, just across the street from Trinity College, where it seems you can purchase just about any volume in print.

You see, I’ve always loved books. There is something about the physical book that sets it apart from any electronic equivalent. Yes I know the book is impractical, compared with its more modern competitors. It’s heavy and wasteful of resources, it takes up far too much space, and you can’t take your library with you when you travel.

But ah, the sensory experience! The feeling of opening the cover, riffling through the pages, the heft of a book in your hands, the wondrous physicality of black ink on textured paper, the very smell of it. All of these things contribute to a powerful sense of connection.

Some might say that there’s nothing even remotely rational about this view of books. After all, the act of reading is, by its very nature, a renunciation of the physical world in favor of a symbolic realm of pure information. Yet there it is.

But what to buy? Some neglected work by a great Irish poet? A play by Shaw perhaps? Maybe something written in Irish Gaelic, just for the sheer beauty of the words on paper, even though I wouldn’t begin to know how to read it.

In the end I chose a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick. Yes, I know, it’s not Beckett. But I think it still counts.^† 🙂

 

† Not surprisingly, PKD has cited Beckett as an influence. (see The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick 1938-1971. Grass Valley: Underwood Books, 1996, p 56).

Today, being in Dublin, I went on a little day trip to the charming seaside town of Dun Laoghaire (when you say it out loud, it sounds like “Dun Leary” — don’t ask). While there, I had a splendid time exploring the National Maritime Museum of Ireland.

I learned all sorts of things today about sailing, lighthouses, engine technology, nautical charts, shipwrecks, lifeboats, sextants, trade routes, and many other fascinating topics, far too numerous to list here.

But one fact in particular really stuck with me: In their hay day, every lighthouse flashed at a unique rate. That is, the motor that spun the light around was set to a different rate of rotation for every lighthouse.

And the reason for this was simple and ingenious: If your ship was lost out at sea, and all you had to navigate by was the faint pulse of a distant lighthouse, you could time that pulse and you would know where you were.

This concept is also the basis for heterodyning, the core technology behind broadcast radio and television — a more recent innovation whereby multiple signals can be distinguished by their differing carrier frequencies.

What I love about the pulse frequency scheme for identifying lighthouses is the way it shows that people are not getting more clever over time. People were always clever. It’s just that, at various times in history, they have access to different technologies for showing how clever they can be.