I'm hoping my subject line error--"Re: off list: FYI: Logic, Rigor, and Bias"--disappears. It reminds me of the Echoplex, a tape-based delay device that allowed an echo effect for guitarists in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a very cool thing except when you hit the wrong note. In that case, you got to hear your mistake replicated until the echo faded completely.
Speaking of "wrong" notes, nobody will be surprised if I quibble with Terry:
On Dec 26, 2013, at 10:36 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 'Wrong' (injurious, unfair, unjust) has a sense of morality and ethics
> about it, regardless of its mis-use in education to mean 'not correct'.
Yes. It has a "sense" in that the echoes of every association exists. Terry's surname will always have romantic associations for English speakers and my given name will always have violent ones but those associations are, I assume, generally overwhelmed by stronger associations. Weaker associations between my last name and large water fowl are even quieter noise in the semiotic echo chamber (as are associations between fowl and bad smells with another spelling. . .)
The use of the term "mis-use" is, however, wrong (if you excuse the expression.) The use of the word "wrong" to mean "incorrect" is the first or second definition depending on what dictionary you choose (with the moral judgement taking the other position) and is very common usage by native speakers of English. The word does have its origins in the Old Norse "rangr" (which meant "awry" or "unjust") but so does "wring" and I suspect that nobody feels like a reprobate for squeezing water out of a rag. So it has "a sense" but is not a "mis-use."
No, I'm not even more off-topic than usual. This directly connects with recurring list arguments about the use of terms like "design" and "art." Words have differing meanings and it makes no sense to claim any definition has exclusive rights to the use of a sound or an arrangement of letters. It is up to users of words to make clear what they intend by the use.
So if I mean to be clear I should say that Terry was wrong (in the sense of "incorrect") so that nobody thinks I mean that he was wrong (in sense of immoral.)
Ken quibbled with my evoking DJ Davis McAlary's theory of creolization from the TV show 'Treme.'
On Dec 27, 2013, at 1:37 AM, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Gunnar suggests optimistically that we will all be happier human beings if we listen to the Basin Street Blues. Spencer Williams’s 1926 version emphasizes the fact that this is a dream world:
[snip]
> A lovely song, but I’m not sure that folks are meeting there unless they belong to the elite. A quick look at demographics and economic figures suggest that New Orleans is not the mythical, musical paradise of the Basin Street Blues.
Happier than some alternatives, anyway. At least I was happier listening to it than I was during the last many weeks of Christmas music.
Yes, the song's world was a dream (or at least an already-nostalgic vision.) The reason that Basin Street was the place where a variety of people met was that it was the main thoroughfare of a center of sexual commerce. The setting for the song had been sociologically complex but by the time it was written, the Storyville red light district of New Orleans had been shut down for almost nine years. The cutting edge of jazz had long since moved up the Mississippi River--generally to other places of illegal activity.
Okay. What does that have to do with design?
The illicit nature of the commercial activity allowed music that wasn't "proper" which in turn promoted a creative freedom that was the basis for much of the best of our musical heritage. The control freak tendencies of many (most? Certainly me sometimes) designers can tend to close the cracks. And the cracks are where the great things (as well as the truly awful things) start. A certain amount of sloppiness is a prerequisite for progress.
There's also the thing about "art" people accusing designers (especially graphic designers) of being similar to the women of pre WWI Basin Street. I assume that they mean viscerally appealing and the center of cultural change.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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