6 ms·

Why wreck a blank canvas?

89 points by gr366 16y ago

InfinityX0 16y ago
So.. we should just think about doing our work and not actually do it. Because imagining, and not reaching the finished product, is the most fun? Uh.. right. I like the implementation in his house, but it doesn't apply to business or creating things. In some ways, what he's done is created something by creating nothing - but very rarely does that occur elsewhere.
- misterbwong 16y ago
  I think you might have missed his humor. It was his way of getting you to imagine something and then create it. Translating it to be a bit more explicit... The blank page starts with unlimited potential. But each word you add reduces its possibilities. Same thing with that business idea you've had forever. Or that beautiful person you haven't spoken with. <sarcasm> So maybe you should just leave them in your imagination, where they're at their best. </sarcasm> OR... MAYBE... The one thing that would be even better is if you...
nikcub 16y ago
this is why I submitted my YC application without filling in a single field
- jjcm 16y ago
  Hell I took it a step further - I didn't even submit mine.
  - jbail 16y ago
    I thought about mine a lot though. It was awesome in my imagination.
  - nikcub 16y ago
    then your application and idea is as good as the limits of pg's imagination :)
kristiandupont 16y ago
But then, google "creativity constraints" and see how many people talk about using constraints to foster creativity.
- G_Wen 16y ago
  By imposing every possible constraint, not being able to do anything, you can, ironically, achieve unlimited potential.
- stagas 16y ago
  A canvas' borders are its constraints.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Your creativity may be fostered, but your potential directions and outcomes become limited, which is what his article was about.
seltzered 16y ago
Because you end up spending your life with no memories other than a blank canvas, and because you won't stay alive with only a blank canvas. "Happiness is only realized when it is shared." Communicating ideas without a few wrecked canvases never works. As far as i know, most artists continuously start with blank canvases. The "wrecked" ones are the ones everyone buys to help the artist eat.
alexyoung 16y ago
Reminds me of John Cage's 4'33", a composition where no notes are played and instead the audience is expected to observe the sounds of the environment.
- leviathant 16y ago
  It's funny you should bring that up... My wife and I visited the Guggenheim a number of years ago, and came across Robert Rauschenberg's "White Paintings", which even as I am a fan of minimalism, seemed kind of silly. All the while, we decided that we would one day duplicate the paintings for our own house. If it's good enough for the Guggenheim... A year or so later, we bought four canvases, some gesso and some white paint, and made four white paintings, and upon hanging them up, found that it actually looked really nice. We did some research on the original "White Paintings" series, and discovered that John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg were friends, and that 4'33" was "a direct response" to the White Paintings. http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/audio/aop_tour_404 http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/audio/aop_tour_404 It was doubly cool because while I've worked in the visual arts, my wife is a composer. These seemingly silly paintings have come with us to our new house, and hang in the living room, and I'm quite fond of them, even though they required fairly minimal effort for my wife and I to create. Hooray for minimalism!
  - khafra 16y ago
    I think you should add an old-fashioned victrola underneath the paintings, constantly playing 4'33".
Eliezer 16y ago
Study enough information theory, and it will start seeming obvious on a gut level that a library containing all possible books has less information in it than a library containing one book.
- achompas 16y ago
  Can you expand on this please, so I don't clutter my own personal bookshelf (so to speak)?
  - seltzered 16y ago
    I think he's relating to the "book of five rings" / "art of war" way of writing books. Theres many big long books that are merely churned out, or are written before an author has reached a point of completeness about the subject he's writing on. Worse, they could be written as "wines of fear" where they are written not to directly offend anyone. On the other hand, there are a few beautiful books that are short, yet establish mental frameworks that cover all the other books. The book of five rings is touted as one. Personal example: There's volumes of business books that all harken back to people being some mixture of evangelist, maven, or relater. Books like "the human fabric" or religious books like the "bhagavad gita" establish the same framework.
  - dandelany 16y ago
    I'm not well-versed in information theory, so this may be a misinterpretation. But this strikes me as a beautiful truth that rewards careful pondering. A library containing all possible books may contain all the gems of knowledge in the world, but it also contains far more nonsense: Books full of random letters that mean nothing, as well as real books with changes made to them, both unnoticeable and noticeable. Such a library, though containing all information, would not contain any information about which books contain real information and which do not. A single real book, though, while it may contain factual errors, can at least be guaranteed to contain the beliefs and assumptions of its author, which is more than you can say about the infinite library. Look at it this way: an infinite list of strings containing all possible strings (or even a finite list of strings containing all possible strings shorter than a given length) contains less information than a program or essay that I wrote, because the infinite list gives no indication about which strings are "important", "informational" or "useful", while my one essay or program contains concise, easily-extractable information intended for a particular purpose. One more example, just for fun: Imagine I'm a stupid bank robber who keeps all the plans for my heists and the names of my partners in one Word document on my hard drive. If the police arrest me, they have enough information to send me and my partners to jail. However, imagine that I've written a program that makes a million copies of my secret plan and changes the names and locations inside all of the copies to random values. Now, if I get caught, without knowing which document is real and which are fake, the authorities don't have any useful information.
achompas 16y ago
Awesome, awesome post. The great Ze Frank has a similar video [1] where he calls this "brain crack" (because your mind is addicted to the idea more than what you actually accomplish...or don't accomplish). [1] http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html
dzuc 16y ago
Frank Stella said (during a 1964 radio interview): "I knew a wise-guy who used to make fun of my painting, but he didn't like the Abstract Expressionists either. He said they would be good painters if they could only keep the paint as good as it is in the can. And that's what I tried to do. I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can."

89 points by gr366 16y ago

So.. we should just think about doing our work and not actually do it. Because imagining, and not reaching the finished product, is the most fun? Uh.. right. I like the implementation in his house, but it doesn't apply to business or creating things. In some ways, what he's done is created something by creating nothing - but very rarely does that occur elsewhere.

misterbwong 16y ago
I think you might have missed his humor. It was his way of getting you to imagine something and then create it. Translating it to be a bit more explicit... The blank page starts with unlimited potential. But each word you add reduces its possibilities. Same thing with that business idea you've had forever. Or that beautiful person you haven't spoken with. <sarcasm> So maybe you should just leave them in your imagination, where they're at their best. </sarcasm> OR... MAYBE... The one thing that would be even better is if you...

nikcub 16y ago

this is why I submitted my YC application without filling in a single field

jjcm 16y ago
Hell I took it a step further - I didn't even submit mine.
- jbail 16y ago
  I thought about mine a lot though. It was awesome in my imagination.
- nikcub 16y ago
  then your application and idea is as good as the limits of pg's imagination :)

kristiandupont 16y ago

But then, google "creativity constraints" and see how many people talk about using constraints to foster creativity.

G_Wen 16y ago
By imposing every possible constraint, not being able to do anything, you can, ironically, achieve unlimited potential.
stagas 16y ago
A canvas' borders are its constraints.
sliverstorm 16y ago
Your creativity may be fostered, but your potential directions and outcomes become limited, which is what his article was about.

seltzered 16y ago

Because you end up spending your life with no memories other than a blank canvas, and because you won't stay alive with only a blank canvas. "Happiness is only realized when it is shared." Communicating ideas without a few wrecked canvases never works. As far as i know, most artists continuously start with blank canvases. The "wrecked" ones are the ones everyone buys to help the artist eat.

alexyoung 16y ago

Reminds me of John Cage's 4'33", a composition where no notes are played and instead the audience is expected to observe the sounds of the environment.

leviathant 16y ago
It's funny you should bring that up... My wife and I visited the Guggenheim a number of years ago, and came across Robert Rauschenberg's "White Paintings", which even as I am a fan of minimalism, seemed kind of silly. All the while, we decided that we would one day duplicate the paintings for our own house. If it's good enough for the Guggenheim... A year or so later, we bought four canvases, some gesso and some white paint, and made four white paintings, and upon hanging them up, found that it actually looked really nice. We did some research on the original "White Paintings" series, and discovered that John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg were friends, and that 4'33" was "a direct response" to the White Paintings. http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/audio/aop_tour_404 http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/audio/aop_tour_404 It was doubly cool because while I've worked in the visual arts, my wife is a composer. These seemingly silly paintings have come with us to our new house, and hang in the living room, and I'm quite fond of them, even though they required fairly minimal effort for my wife and I to create. Hooray for minimalism!
- khafra 16y ago
  I think you should add an old-fashioned victrola underneath the paintings, constantly playing 4'33".

Eliezer 16y ago

Study enough information theory, and it will start seeming obvious on a gut level that a library containing all possible books has less information in it than a library containing one book.

achompas 16y ago
Can you expand on this please, so I don't clutter my own personal bookshelf (so to speak)?
- seltzered 16y ago
  I think he's relating to the "book of five rings" / "art of war" way of writing books. Theres many big long books that are merely churned out, or are written before an author has reached a point of completeness about the subject he's writing on. Worse, they could be written as "wines of fear" where they are written not to directly offend anyone. On the other hand, there are a few beautiful books that are short, yet establish mental frameworks that cover all the other books. The book of five rings is touted as one. Personal example: There's volumes of business books that all harken back to people being some mixture of evangelist, maven, or relater. Books like "the human fabric" or religious books like the "bhagavad gita" establish the same framework.
- dandelany 16y ago
  I'm not well-versed in information theory, so this may be a misinterpretation. But this strikes me as a beautiful truth that rewards careful pondering. A library containing all possible books may contain all the gems of knowledge in the world, but it also contains far more nonsense: Books full of random letters that mean nothing, as well as real books with changes made to them, both unnoticeable and noticeable. Such a library, though containing all information, would not contain any information about which books contain real information and which do not. A single real book, though, while it may contain factual errors, can at least be guaranteed to contain the beliefs and assumptions of its author, which is more than you can say about the infinite library. Look at it this way: an infinite list of strings containing all possible strings (or even a finite list of strings containing all possible strings shorter than a given length) contains less information than a program or essay that I wrote, because the infinite list gives no indication about which strings are "important", "informational" or "useful", while my one essay or program contains concise, easily-extractable information intended for a particular purpose. One more example, just for fun: Imagine I'm a stupid bank robber who keeps all the plans for my heists and the names of my partners in one Word document on my hard drive. If the police arrest me, they have enough information to send me and my partners to jail. However, imagine that I've written a program that makes a million copies of my secret plan and changes the names and locations inside all of the copies to random values. Now, if I get caught, without knowing which document is real and which are fake, the authorities don't have any useful information.

achompas 16y ago

Awesome, awesome post. The great Ze Frank has a similar video [1] where he calls this "brain crack" (because your mind is addicted to the idea more than what you actually accomplish...or don't accomplish). [1] http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html

dzuc 16y ago

Frank Stella said (during a 1964 radio interview): "I knew a wise-guy who used to make fun of my painting, but he didn't like the Abstract Expressionists either. He said they would be good painters if they could only keep the paint as good as it is in the can. And that's what I tried to do. I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can."