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For What It’s Worth: A Review of Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”
- im3w1l 11y agoIf I had it, I would use it to entice famous people to have tea with me.
- rboyd 11y agoThat's basically exactly what happened with Allie Conti in his Vice interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g). Only it was red wine and not tea.
- roywiggins 11y ago> This is like someone having the scepter of an Egyptian king The point of a scepter is that you can wave it around in front of your subjects, not leave it in a vault somewhere all the time. It's more like the actual grave goods the Egyptian kings were buried with, maybe. > Sol LeWitt is an unusual artist in that he rarely painted, drew, or sculpted the art you see by him. Instead, he wrote out instructions for artwork, and then left it to “constructors”—often art students, museum curators, or others, to do the actual work of fabrication. LeWitt liked to be a recipe writer, not a chef. So. Algorithmic art, except executed by humans instead of the traditional computer. "calculate z_{n+1} = z_n²+1 for each point repeatedly; color it black if it converges..."
- keithpeter 11y agoI think you would need some randomisation in there to simulate a Sol LeWitt. The Mandelbroit set is (very) complex but deterministic.
- dagw 11y agoWhat makes LeWitt interesting is the ambiguity in his instructions. Give the instructions to 100 different groups and you'll get 100 different works with no way of knowing which, if any, match what LeWitt had in mind. "calculate z_{n+1} = z_n²+1..." on the other hand will always give the same result no matter who implements it.
- bwilliams18 11y agoI had the pleasure of spending a week at MassMoCA a few years ago, it's a unique institution and is a treat to visit.
- recivorecivo 11y agoIf you had no ego, you would just say Mandelbrot set. If Mandelbrot had no ego, he would have just called it "calculate z_{n+1} = z_n²+1 for each point repeatedly; color it black if it converges...". Ponder this. Without ego, there is no judgement. And no judgement of those who judge. The cycle breaks.
- roywiggins 11y agoThe instructions are more useful. If you don't already know how to calculate the Mandelbrot set, "Draw a Mandelbrot set!" is meaningless to you and presumes knowledge you don't have. It also doesn't specify how to color it; maybe you end up coloring it black if it diverges instead! Addendum: The artist in the article specified the algorithm (“Within a circle draw 10,000 straight black lines and 10,000 black not straight lines. All lines are randomly spaced and equally distributed.”) and not the result ("Somehow, incredibly... an infinite field of stars emerges"). So I described another algorithm that produces an incredible, unexpected result- one that we use silicon to calculate rather than people. Further addendum: the Chaos Game is an interesting way to approximate a fractal that you can implement with pencil, paper, ruler, and lots of time on your hands: 1. Draw three points. Best results if they're roughly the vertices of an equilateral triangle. 2. Pick a point at random inside the notional triangle and mark it 3. Pick one of the vertices at random and mark the midpoint between your chosen point and that vertex 4. That midpoint is your new chosen point. Return to 3, rinse and repeat.
- brianberns 11y agoMandelbrot didn't name the set. It was named after him by the mathematicians who first studied it seriously.
- johnloeber 11y agoI don't think this is about ego -- this is just about naming for convenience. We say "Mandelbrot Set" rather than "calculate (...) converges" because the former has four syllables and the latter has thirty-two. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're getting at w/r/t/ judgement and cycles.
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- Artoemius 11y agoPeople are infinitely fascinated by scarcity.
- dave2000 11y agoIt's not as simple as that otherwise they'd just record their own CD, write their own game etc. This is more like hoarding; either related to grief (can't let go of a loved one but can keep hold of random shit) or just good old consumerist "you'll be a great person if you buy this". It's pathetic but hey, we're in a late capitalist, consumer driven society where owning a small piece of plastic is more important than saving tens or hundreds of lives.
- icebraining 11y agoReminds me of the short story by SMBC: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2834 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2834
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoA lot of the commercial value of art comes from the social signalling that says "I can afford to own this unique and holy relic of personal productivity." It's the individualised capitalist equivalent of medieval churches competing with each other to buy fragments of the true cross - or some lesser holy knuckle bone, if they weren't in that league. The Wu Tang Clan album probably exists as a master tape/file somewhere, and possibly also as session backup files, unless they deliberately destroyed everything. Nice box though.
- BWStearns 11y agoI just looked at HN right after pulling up Wu-Tang on Spotify. I realize that it doesn't fundamentally add much to note that, it was just a fun coincidence and I thought I'd share. It is fun to think about the meta-art of manufactured scarcity. It's fun trying to articulate a rigorous reason for the value difference of Wu-Tang making an album that only one person will get to hear versus me (a decidedly untalented non-musician) making one, when they both sound exactly the same to all of us (unless that dick Shkreli is reading). That said I would trade all the idle but-what-is-value-really-man musing for Shaolin monks or an unscrupulous Fed to exfiltrate and share the album soonish.
- elevenfist 11y agoIs it really fun? Or is it just a marketing gimmick to get people talking about the artist.
- pandler 11y agoIs it not both?
- BWStearns 11y agoYou're doing it, presumably unpaid, on a Saturday night so hopefully you at least find being cynical about it to be mildly fun :) I'm having fun doing it, but also I'm dog sitting for my parents out in the boonies.
- elevenfist 11y agoI upvoted this, :) But I didn't spend much time on the article.
- darawk 11y agoHonestly it doesn't seem like a marketing gimmick to me. They almost certainly could have made more money by actually releasing the album, and they've no real need of increasing their visibility. Whether or not you agree, it seems pretty clear that they did this because they thought it was a cool and interesting thing to do.
- mirimir 11y ago> Then, in one of 2015’s greatest moments of schadenfreude, especially for those who care about the widespread availability of quality healthcare and hip hop, Shkreli was arrested by the FBI for fraud. Alas, the FBI left Once Upon a Time in Shaolin in Shkreli’s New York apartment. So why doesn't the FBI take the bloody thing, and auction it? They sold DPR's Bitcoin, no?
- onewaystreet 11y ago> So why doesn't the FBI take the bloody thing, and auction it? Shkreli hasn't been found guilty of anything yet (and he put up his $45 million E-Trade account to secure his bond).
- amock 11y agoWhy would the FBI confiscate and sell his property? Just because he was arrested doesn't mean he's guilty, and even if he his that doesn't give the FBI the right to confiscate his property.
- mirimir 11y agoWell, they sold DPR's Bitcoin before he was convicted. Cops do that. It's partly how they fund themselves. I was responding to the precious "maybe we'll never know" aspect of the article. I'm not saying that civil forfeiture is legitimate. Far from it. But it's pretty common. Edit: Also, the article basically suggests burglary as an option. So ...
- the_mitsuhiko 11y agoTo which DPR agreed.
- mirimir 11y agoReally? That I did not know. Why? Plea deal?
- keypusher 11y agoOf all the people that could have bought this album, the fact that it was Martin Shkreli continues to amaze me.
- byuu 11y agoFrom being in the game collecting scene where I've witnessed people spending tens of thousands of dollars to own the single copy of specific unreleased games/prototypes for the sole purpose of ensuring that no one else can ever play the games but them, and even drafting sales contracts when selling these games for massive profits that the next owner is not allowed to distribute the game either ... I can say that Martin Shkreli is exactly the kind of person I'd expect to have bought this album =(
- kamilszybalski 11y agoWhat amazes me is the number of people who dislike Martin Shkreli...most of who can't even tell me why.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoIf you're trying to troll on the sly you'll need to be a bit more subtle than that. I'd suggest most people who dislike Shkreli know that he massively jacked up the price of a drug that there were no legal alternatives to, even if they don't know or can't remember the exact details. For those that want to learn more, search online for daraprim. EDIT: alex95, your comment is flagged as dead, many people reading this won't see it. I know the excuses Skreli gave, about using the revenue to fund new drugs, but I don't buy it, and the reason I don't buy it is because he jacked up the price so much he was putting the life of some people in danger. That doesn't strike me as a move someone who cared about improving healthcare would make.
- mtobi 11y agoAFAIK the drug was free for everyone without insurance, so the only ones who felt the actual price increase were the insurance companies. Am I wrong or there really is some merit to Shkrelis explanations?
- blaze33 11y agoIn France we have a legal definition of what constitutes an original work of art. For instance you can produce up to 8 original copies of a sculpture, that's art. Wanna sell 9 copies, you're no longer an artist but an artisan. That also applies to furniture, I couldn't track down what the actual law says, there are many exemptions and edge cases but basically that's the idea. Here, this album fits the criteria for being numbered 1/1.
- Grue3 11y agoSo, music or film aren't considered art in France?
- erelde 11y agoThat must be in the caveats, music, films, writing, code, all that is "conceptual" in nature...
- blaze33 11y agoWell, the actual disk you buy in the store, no, that's mass production. Nonetheless music, movies, books are still covered by intellectual property laws and considered as intellectual works, but yeah that's not legally art. The laws I was referencing in my first comment are more concerned about what is sold in an art gallery. A limited edition album would have its place there (even if it's a terrible one), not an album from Prince that sold millions of copies even if the later is socially recognised as a piece of art.
- keithpeter 11y agoThe OA has a partial quote from Ellsworth Kelly taken from the New York Times obituary [1]. Below is the full quote, which I found useful. >> “I think what we all want from art is a sense of fixity, a sense of opposing the chaos of daily living,” he said. “This is an illusion, of course. What I’ve tried to capture is the reality of flux, to keep art an open, incomplete situation, to get at the rapture of seeing.” << [Perhaps the GI Bill at the end of the second world war provides us with an idea of what could happen if we had a basic income.] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/arts/ellsworth-kelly-artist-who-mixed-european-abstraction-into-everyday-life-dies-at-92.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/arts/ellsworth-kelly-artis...
- beloch 11y agoPerhaps this album just wasn't very good, and Wu-Tang (or their managers) realized they could make more money by boosting their fame with this stunt release than they would by actually releasing a crappy album.
- IshKebab 11y agoThat actually makes a lot of sense. At most it must be mediocre. If it was amazing they'd definitely want to release it and make money.
- michaelt 11y agoIf they'd just released the album, I don't think it would be on the front page of HN getting compared to Ai Weiwei, and covered in forbes, the guardian and the atlantic. Perhaps they value the publicity (and resulting discussion of their work as "serious art") more than the extra money a regular release could have brought.
- 59nadir 11y ago> Perhaps they value the publicity (and resulting discussion of their work as "serious art") more than the extra money a regular release could have brought. ... which is exactly what the previous posters said: The album isn't good enough to sell great and would likely hurt them in the long run and so a gimmick release will at least have positive publicity and wouldn't ruin the brand. If it was good enough, that publicity would outshine the gimmick release and would also bring in more money short-term.
- michaelt 11y agoNo, the previous poster said at most the album must be mediocre. It's possible the album is really great, but they place an exceptionally high value on the publicity.
- oldmanjay 11y agoAt most it must be? Have you ever heard the story of the fox and the grapes?
- ComodoHacker 11y agoThe site is down.
- fluffysquirrel 11y agoWhich apparently has nothing to do with Xiaolin Wu's algorithm.