Beauty

So as some of you may notice, I have changed the header image for my blog.  I apologize in advance for its blurriness, it wasn’t caught on an expensive DSLR camera; it was taken with my Tilt.  For those of you that are curious, it is from the Cai Guo-Qiang – I Want to Believe Exhibit that was showing at the Guggenheim when I went to go visit last year.  

So why did I choose to add this picture to my blog and how does it represent me?

I think that one of the most important differentiators of man from other animals is our ability to create.  Now yes, other animals can create also, but human innovation and creativity far surpasses any other (that we know of atleast).  I absolutely loved the exhibit.  It was amazing.  Its this kind of out-of-the-box thinking and search for more than what our senses tell us that captures me.  In this way I relate it to the evolution of data in Information Technology.  Data by itself is meaningless.  It is only when we add context and quality to it that it becomes information.  It is much like how we perceive our surroundings.  There is an object in the distance.  That object is a tree, a tall oak tree.  Upon closer inspection we see scorch marks and carvings.  This tree has a story.  There is beauty in it all.  This is how I imagine Cai Guo-Qiang came up with much of art in his exhibit.  In it we see “paintings” made from scorch marks from fireworks and we see fierce tigers pierced by wooden arrows.  We are great because we can find beauty in everything.

PS:  I used Jing to capture this image.  Right now i’m typing in the computer lab upstairs in Bauer.  I didn’t want to try to install a program on a lab PC so I installed in on my Dell Mini running Leopard.  I’m not sure if the interface is the same for Windows but it is incredibly simple and responsive.  I think by itself, Jing would be more or less an “another “screen capture utility” but it’s the partnership with screencast.com that really makes it work.  Another testament to the pervasiveness of Web 2.0 with us constantly pushing things into clouds.

PPS:  “I don’t want to set the world on fire” by The Ink Spots is on at Starbucks.  I love this song.

-Andrew

~ by Andrew Tong on February 3, 2009.