Back to a cube

So, after a month of sitting in the Presidential office, regarded the best office in the company, I am back in a cubicle. Yes, don't kid yourself, or let anybody fool you, it sucks.

First, how did I end up getting the Presidential office? Am I the President of the company? Ha! Well, it so happened that around the beginning of the summer there were some changes in the leadership of the company and the president's office was left empty. Lets just leave it at that. At that time I had all sorts of equipment and target machines, and development machines, and blackboards, and whiteboards, and mice (optical ones), and I was barely able to fit in my 8'x8' cube. So, one of my co-workers and a friend suggested that I ask for the Presidential office with the pretext that I needed the space (which truly, I did need). But of course he meant it as a joke. To me however it made sense. The office was empty, and I needed the space.

I walked in one morning in early July to see one of the managers who deals with these kinds of requests and asked him very politely if I may have the office next to my cube which at the time lay empty. He said he would look into it, and we left it at that. Later that same day he walked by my cubicle and realized then, that the office next to my cubicle was the mildly large office with two equally large windows overlooking Richmond Street, just east of Church Street. He let out a chuckle and inquired again as to my need for the office. I, with a movement of my arm unveiled the inhumane mess in which I was trapped. He nodded and left. The day after I was allowed to move into the office. This is one thing I like about this company, if you make a request, and you can convince someone that it makes sense it will be made possible.

And in that office, of long windows reaching from the ceiling almost down to the floor, with Sun light splashing on the walls, and a view of the city's bums, prostitutes, prominent business men and hotdog vendors, I basked in the formidable space. But the most brilliant thing of all, was that that office, as opposed to my cubicle, had a door! A door! Oh that slab of wood, oh boundary of the blessed! Thou hath left me, for now I am back in a door less cubicle.

How did I end up back in a cubicle?

We moved office buildings.

Now, one individual who knew I spent a couple of months in that office came and asked me how does it feel to be back amongst "the peasants." Aside from the inaccuracy of the remark, it borders on offensive. I never attached any personal achievement or merit to that office, I was still reporting back to the same people. Just as I do now. But I loved the space. Now, I am back in a cube, which to be completely honest it's not too bad and when I am submerged in my work I kind of forget the world around me. But from time to time, when I look back, I miss looking at the bums and the prostitutes, down in the street.

An artisan and an Artist

An oddity worth mentioning:

I find it particularly interesting and brain grinding the fact that since the beginning of civilization our technology has evolved, our intellect and ways of life have evolved. We no longer have slaves who fight to their deaths in coliseums. We no longer burn "witches" at stakes --at least not in free societies-- yet the process of cultural evolution remains the same; an individual or a small group presents a new idea, the idea gets ridiculed and shutdown with only a few revolutionary souls insisting upon it until slowly the masses begin to accept it. When this happens the new idea is the one formally adopted and the previous method is shunned and forgotten. It takes a few years, or decades, or centuries depending on the medium but eventually the furor and excitement of that, once new idea, dies down and freckles of the old system begin a come back as the old time "classic" and blend its influences into the now established medium only to have the whole cycle repeat itself again.

Early painters of the Renaissance basked in the arms of Realism making the subjects of their paintings, the sceneries, and their clothing depict reality as close as could be done on canvas and oil based paints.

During the Baroque period artists began to experiment more with light and paint itself, and towards the end, impressionism began to emerge. With impressionism light effects took over the scenery and became the subject of the piece, brush strokes became more visible and intricate.

From the Renaissance to Impressionism to Modernism we see a trend in moving away from reality and making the medium the subject of the arts; painting is now about brush strokes and colour.

A friend of mine was recently working on creating a 3D model of a car's dashboard dial for a car manufacturer which was moving away from using the analog dials to using the more futuristic 3d OpenGL dial. The 3d model had a glossy finish of metallic blue. The needle in the centre of the dial swung as though floating in the middle of some virtual magnetic field. He explained to me that it took him quite some time to figure out a mathematical formula that would yield a realistic needle behaviour. The dashboard dial he created was done so amazingly well that it would be hard for me to describe it except perhaps by referring you to any existing car with a round dashboard dial of metallic blue. And I think to myself, why work so hard and invest so much time to duplicate something we already have, be it in a different medium or not? Are we experiencing the Renaissance's of computer graphics? I see movies keep coming out where the actors are 3D rendered images which look more and more like real actors. I have worked on the software for airplane cockpits where the altitude and fake horizon dials are exact copies of their analog predecessors. I see all this and I wonder; why? Why spend resources, time and money in creating a 3D rendered image which looks just like my uncle Joyce, why not just call my uncle Joyce who is a very good actor and give him the role in the movie? Why create a 3D version of the same old dashboard dial?

We have the need to imitate reality. It's in ourselves to observe the surroundings and imitate it and that's what we do every time we find a medium that allows us to do so. In the dashboard dial scenario however, there is an extra psychological factor. We are not just replacing the analog dial with a software one. We are replacing the whole dashboard and we have become very good at interpreting the round dials with the needle in them. And since we are used to using that concept we preserve it in the software model. With time the computer graphics medium will evolve too and the art will be in the infinite possibilities that the imaginative mind can hold. It will too, hopefully move away from copying reality.

Yet, I myself can't help but wonder what it would be like if we weren't so sensitive to change. Imagine we didn't have to go through these cycles all the time. Computer graphics artists should stop drawing dashboard dials which are as freakishly realistic and esthetically stunning as the one in my dad's ten year old car. The beautiful thing about computers is that it is the tangible dimension of the imaginary. In the world of virtual reality the stuff dreams are made of can be seen, and almost touched. There is an infinite world in this medium where our laws of physics have no jurisdiction, and should not. Instead of copying what we see and having two exact just as realistic copies of the same thing, disrupt and distort them. Just because a concept has been used for 50 years does not mean it can't change, if anything it means it should change. A person that creates a 3D image of my uncle Joyce so detailed that the sweat beads falling down his sideburns augment each wrinkle or vein that falls beneath it, is not an artist, it's a great artisan.

An artist will show me something I have never seen, and awe me with it.