Comments on: Sex and Greebles

By: Steve H

Steve H — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:14:39 +0000

Arse Longa, Vita Brevis Est?

By: MarcL

MarcL — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:36:48 +0000

Yes, I had to check the website when Rudy first posted this, but it all makes sense.

http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/about.html

By: Rudy

Rudy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:35:51 +0000

No this event where I’m speaking really IS called “Arse Elelectronika.” As I understand it, the name is a kind of pun on the more proper one that you refer to.

By: Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:17:55 +0000

Greebles are where it’s at, dude.

I’d suggest properly respelling that august event as “Ars Electronica” before the
city fathers in Hitler’s birthplace have a fit…

By: Steve H

Steve H — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:05:48 +0000

Certainly there’s a connection; natural stuff has natural greebles. The random casualness of scattered pebbles on a beach tells our eyes that this is real and not a movie set. If you paint a picture of this beach, or reproduce it using ray-tracing software like Bryce, you will work hard to reproduce that randomness well enough to be convincing.
Sex without greebles? Hmm. Depends upon whether or not Lara Croft is your idea of a hot date. Idealized women are often depicted sans greebles, smooth and shiny as plastic dolls, piping hot and airbrushed to a golden tan. Always seemed creepy to me.
Gerard Manley Hopkins addressed one of his prayerful poems to Pied Beauty:

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
I wouldn’t go THAT far, but it’s nice to have textures in things, and it fits with your discussion of the Singularity. Intelligence has gnarls and greebles instead of being a smooth flow. E=MC, um, did I leave the frying pan on? Naah. MC squared, that’s it.

By: nick

nick — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:43:24 +0000

I believe that’s Ars Electronica not Arse Electronika. you hentai guy!

By: Kelson

Kelson — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:39:46 +0000

I just got chills at the thought of a bridge between the two. I’m sure it wasn’t just the AC kickin’ on, either. Pushing inward, deeper into gnarl-ville, would you have a fractalization of greebles? That was the direction-sense I was getting from your post. And if each of those little gnarly greebles originated with a simple, autonomous program (microdots of CAPOW, perhaps?)…goodness, that feels electric.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:04:43 +0000

Kelson, good idea! Sound greebles are what make live drums more interesting than a looped drum track. Taste greebles are why we use spices. Touch greebles are what makes it nice to touch certain things like skin or stone, and why plastic feels so UUgh. Smell greebles are what makes the outdoors smell nicer than the inside of a sterile lecture hall. Intersting motions have greebled elements of little bumps or non-linearities.

I see a connection between greebles and gnarl, too…

By: Kelson

Kelson — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:55:32 +0000

There could be greebles for the other senses as well, yes?

By: Kelson

Kelson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:19:30 +0000

Beyond a pavlovian kind of response? I don’t think it would be.