On Wednesday November 30th, as I was
walking to the bike racks south of the Sidney Smith building, a young woman
walked in front of me that had her hair molded out on each side of her head to
look like the horns of a steer.
Professor Russell
had trouble setting up for Aesthetics class because his laptop was out of
juice. He asked some of the students if they had a power cord for a Mac but no
one did. He ended up figuring out a solution involving both his phone and
laptop at the same time.
We
continued with our talk on the subject of Design, but couldn’t have an iclicker
review question because of his technical difficulties.
Functional
elegance is functionality with the least complex form. It has less formal or
structural functionality. It has the same functionality with less visual
complexity. But it is boring. Functional elegance is just one kind of
functional beauty.
Formal
features are constrained by function. Simplification is one kind of constraint.
Function constrains possibilities.
Other
types of functional beauty:
Adherent
beauty.
Add
formal complexity, but it must be functional.
He
showed us the image of a fancy futuristic purple chair with curves that
function as armrests.
Apparent
Fitness
An
object that looks like it is suited for its function.
He
showed a papasan chair on a rattan bowl frame with an oversize cushion.
Apparent
Unfitness
Adds formal complexity to make product look
unsuited for its function.
He
showed a cantilever chair with tubular single base.
In
art there is no objective principal.
This
was the end of our talk on Design. At this point he gave us ten minutes to go
online and complete our course evaluations. I guess I could have used my phone
to do my evaluations but I prefer doing it at home and I have until December 8
anyway.
He
began talking about Music. What is special about music? The distinctive feature
of music is Syntax without semantics.
He
said he couldn’t find one music video that demonstrated what he was talking
about, so he brought two.
The
first was called, “Five Minute Music Theory Part 1: Intervals and the Music
Scale”.
Intervals
are the building blocks of harmony. The distance between two notes is an
interval. An interval is either a whole or a half step long.
Two
frets – two keys – two half steps.
Major
scale. The first note is the root.
The
steps are whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half.
The
other video was “Twelve major Scales on the Piano: a Free Piano Lesson in Piano
Theory”.
CDEFGABC
1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5
WWHWWWH
It doesn’t show what
happens if one does not follow the pattern. The idea of the scale is that it
follows this formula. When one composes music, staying in the scale is staying
in key. All notes in a song in the key of C will be in the C scale. Syntax is
the structure of the piece.
He gave an example
of semantics:
Donald Trump Has The
Worst Hair
Worst The Donald
Trump Hair Has
I said the second
one sounds like Yoda, but no one laughed.
The difference
between the two is a disanalogy with language because the words mean something.
Unlike music, language has both syntax and semantics. Music has grammatical
rules, special grammatical structures, but the notes don’t stand for anything
or refer to any kind of meaning.
After class I rode
up to Admissions and Awards at Bloor and St George to ask if my receiving the
other half of my grant in January would be dependant on the marks for my
Canadian Poetry essays being posted by George. He is not a technically minded
person and has no inclination of informing the university of our marks until
April. There was no one in line at all when I arrived. The woman asked for my
student number, but for the first time in years I’d forgotten it, so I had to
show her my card. She told me there was no problem if my professor is lazy,
because I’m registered into next year. I don’t think George is lazy, but I’m
almost surprised that he even uses email. It doesn’t look like he had an email
address before he was poet laureate of Toronto, which is what it says on his
email.
When I got home, I
decided that since I was still dressed, I’d go over to the liquor store to buy
a can of beer for dinner. I went back in the cold room and picked a can of
Creemore then I was just leaving the big refrigerator when a native guy with a
cane came in and asked me to do him a favour. He handed me a six-pack and asked
me to carry it to the front for him, because he was getting another, but
couldn’t carry both six packs. As we approached the cash counters he shouted
the name of the cashier over by the door to ask if she was open. Without
turning she raised her arm and motioned him over. He offered to pay for my
beer, and I accepted, but he wanted to buy me another and I said one was
enough. He almost insisted, and repeated his offer a few times, but I told him
I just needed the one. I guess I could have gotten another but I didn’t want to
go all the way back to the cold room. Maybe if he’d offered while we were still
back there I would have, but it was nice of him to buy me even one.
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