FENDER AND THE BARNUM PHILOSOPHY

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:45 am

Good point.

Do you think I'd get sued by Fender for violation of right to abuse?

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:24 am

On top of being appalling (you could build a hospital in Gaza for the money some b*stards put out for guitars, as I think I've pointed out here a few too many times), this is just the kind of cheezball **** that's killing our culture. 'Kids nowadays' don't need to learn to draw with a pencil to make 'art' (or, chillingly, 'architecture'); nor to play a drum kit or play in a drum section to produce 'beats'; etc., etc...Now they don't even have to play the guitar to own one that makes it look like they've spent the years required to become a top-notch player. (I'm not going to go into how even the Battlefield has taken on the aspects of a couch-played video 'game'...)

One of these decades in the not-too-distant future, some kid is going to look up from his reading and ask his father, "Daddy, what's a callous?"

(There, does it feel like I'm back?)

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 12:46 pm

It's gettin' there...

Welcome back.

geddeeee · Post by **geddeeee** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:05 pm

Have all the Fender lovin' killjoys left?

Good to see some forthright opinions. Aaaahh!!!

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 2:49 pm

You're hopefully kidding, Mark...this Forum is open to all walks and stumbles of life. Loving Ricks is usually not monogamous, and we all either play Fenders, too, or have friends who do.

Hooray for diversity and down with Harvard MBAs, OK?

simer4001 · Post by **simer4001** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:05 pm

Dane, My oldest draws very well. A few years back I was the president of a fraternal organization. At the end of my term I ordered certificates for those who were of help to me. Instead of running them through my printer, my son did them all by hand in calligraphy. Everyone appreciated the time he took to complete them. Some of us are still old school. Even a 24 year old kid.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:20 pm

Beautiful, Brian...I firmly believe the talent's still there in the next generation, but it's being short-circuited in a lot of cases. Glad to hear your son's of the old school, too...does my old heart some good...

simer4001 · Post by **simer4001** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:48 pm

Anything we can do to help. One other thing. My youngest, 8 spent 0 time with his video games today. Actually the few that he has are usually Madden games or baseball. He had both football and soccer games today and then an outdoor birthday party. Plenty of sunshine and with the wildfires clearing a bit, clean air. We just started a school project this evening too. Not only was he not on the couch, I don't think the TV was lit today.

geddeeee · Post by **geddeeee** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 6:29 pm

Yes, I am joking... Even though some of these discussions can get a bit heated, it's great to be able to air opinions on things.
Most of my posts are usually tongue in cheek and a bit cutting. It's probably my British dry sense of humour. A few people take it too personally when it's not meant to be... Ho hum!

simer4001 · Post by **simer4001** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 6:40 pm

British! Dry Sense of Humor?

geddeeee · Post by **geddeeee** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:31 pm

I know it's hard to believe, isn't it?

winston · Post by **winston** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 8:06 pm

Mark,

I see from your profile that you reside in my old home town. As a very young child I used to live on Regents Park Road in Shirley and when I was 4 my parents moved to Millbrook. I left Southampton in 1965 for Canada.

sowhat · Post by **sowhat** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:52 pm

Um. My 9 years old never played video games, and she's not much interested in computers. But she plays guitar - not a virtuoso yet, but much better than i am, - draws, does some beadwork and overall, when not at school, spends most of her time playing with her best friend or reading. A few years ago, parents complained about their children preferring computer games over books, but now it's different. Kids found interest in reading again. Partly due to these "fantasy" books - the one about Harry Potter is the most popular among them - but then again, that creates possibilities for them to improve their spelling, grammar, etc. Personally, i don't "dig" this kind of literature, but i think it's better than nothing! And, in a few years, they may switch to "classic" science fiction or anything else. The most important thing to me is that kids like reading as such! So, i hope it's not that bad. Or, at least, it's definitely not that bad here where i live.

henry5 · Post by **henry5** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:22 am

Quote -'Kids nowadays' don't need to learn to draw with a pencil to make 'art' (or, chillingly, 'architecture'); nor to play a drum kit or play in a drum section to produce 'beats.'

Hmm. Art and craft, whilst often being inextricably linked, do not have to go hand in hand. I studied Fine Art for 4 years, and have been an "artist" (whatever that is) all my life. The important thing to me is creativity. It's quite possible for someone to be dazzlingly creative without having much technical skill at all, and anything that frees up the creative process is good IMHO. I do not believe that in order to have any value as an artist or musician you have to have technical skill, as opposed to creative skill. It may be the icing on the cake, and it may be a wonderful thing in its own right, but I know many technically gifted musicians who could not write a decent piece of music to save their life, and many technically gifted artists who are only able to act like a camera, with no true sense of creativity (something I have been judged guilty of myself in the past). Take Photo-Realism and compare it to Impressionism, or Expressionism.

If technology enables a child (or anyone for that matter) to be more creative, then that's fine. If someone can sit at a computer and write a wonderful piece of music that's fine also, whether they are technically able to play an instrument or no (it could indeed be argued that a computer can be a musical instrument in itself, albeit not in the traditional sense). It may be that this person with "no technical skill" has a far greater imagination then the person who has spent years honing their craft. I've seen technically wonderful "musicians" who can't play without written music in front of them. I suspect Mozart couldn't play every instrument in an orchestra, but it's not relevant. It's all about the music he created, not how he created it.

Whilst we can all bemoan the passing of craft (heck, I love playing guitar as much as anybody, and have spent many years attempting - and failing- to perfect my craft in both music and painting), if technology opens doors for creativity then I don't see anything but a positive. This may not be a popular opinion as many people with "hard-earned" technical skills guard those skills jealously; as a guitarist friend of mine once said when were discussing this very point, "it's not fair that someone can come in without spending years working at their instrument and just write or play something". He considered learning the instrument a rite of passage; and so it can be, but it doesn't HAVE to be. And of course it can be argued that whilst a child may not be able to draw well, and thus hasn't a technical skill in that sense, he or she may be a wizard with a computer, which is a technical skill in itself. It's certainly a technical skill I don't possess!

When I was a child I wanted to be the next Ray Harryhausen. I got distracted along the way, as people do, and so never got close to achieving my aim. Now I look at CGI and see flaws and possibly a lack of "realness", of mass and density, that stop-motion was better at capturing. But CGI is allowing people to visualise things that were never able to be visualised previously, is likely to get better and better and address those problems to the point where they don't exist. It is already able to do things that stop-motion could never do. And of course some stop-motion artists are probably not very happy about this, although many have doubtless jumped ship to put their own skills to good use in the newer field. And of course along the way people do become technical experts, but using a different medium.

In a perfect world, both are extremely important. There is little gives me joy in the way that seeing something beautifully crafted, be it a painting, sculpture, or even a guitar does. But for me, creativity is the most important thing and whatever helps to open the doors to creativity cannot be underestimated or devalued.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings and back to the original thread...

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:13 am

Your ramblings are quite welcome.

My own feeling is that, had you trained to be the next Harryhausen (has this banner been picked up by Nick Park, one wonders...Nick is the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts), would you have soon tired of the tedium? Almost all traditional forms of animation (claymation and hand-rendered/painted) has moved to Asia for the majority of its "trench" work, due to the high cost of labor here. In doing so, of course, it has lost its cultural ties with America and picked up a good deal of stiffness, IMO at least.

CGI is only in its third or fourth generation. I look at "Shrek" and can only see a bright future. (I try not to look at "Shrek 2".)

I agree that computers are well-used in the service of art. My own department at the University has no problem in teaching the two skill sets side-by-side. After a brief flirtation with the "computer-created car" (Toyota Echo, and it shows), where the entire object was created within the virtual reality of the Alias program, automakers have reconfirmed their commitment to traditional rendering, visualization, and modeling skills, with the grunt work of development in both 2D and 3D being allocated to computers. This puts them in the position where they belong, and can do the most good--as helpmates in the creative process, not substitutes for it.

Sheena, would you happen to be a "classic" SF fan? I detect a bit of prejudice toward childhood escapist fiction in your comments about Harry Potter. Personally, I find it to be intriguing and fantastic stuff. My daughter has just begun to read Potter (in order, of course) and I've finished three of Rowling's books myself. I especially like the fact that because it was written by a Mom, it eschews all the technobabble and testosterone-infested hyperbole that much of the "classic" SF of my day featured.

I got into SF in 1961, when good friend Gus lent me a copy of one of the pulps edited by Hugo Gernsbach (sp?). Anyway, three stories and I was hooked. The first full-length saga I ever read--and I read it three times in one year--was "Flight to the Misty Planet" by Mary Patchett. No tech, lots of character and plot development. A potboiler/swashbuckler sort of Robinson Crusoe novel. Then I got into Heinlein, first reading his Young Adult series, and then his adult stuff. I stopped reading him when I found encoded in his novels, a political view that I found oppressive. But there were many more, then and since. I stopped reading SF in about '75, when I got too involved in running my own business to have time for much recreational reading. Since about '85, I've been heavily in pursuit of "classic" detective fiction, and have read all of the Nero Wolfe novels three times, and everything ever written by Robert B. Parker, in addition to Jonathan Gash and Colin Dexter and hundreds of others. Even began to write one of my own until about Chapter 12 (out of about 36 intended), when I got bogged down...

Art VS craft: a debate since the Medicis? Morris has a lot to say on this, but it's rusty in memory. My very first posts on this Forum were on this topic, ironically in the same Fender vs. Rick vein. Perhaps we should say "art VS craft VS mass production".

I exist and balance my own output in the typical Industrial Design trinity of Art, Craft, and Commerce. Toss out any one of these foci, and you have an object, but not a designed and producible object. Do the combinations in your own head here...