Non Functional Elegance

            On Wednesday November 30^th, 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.