My brother, I feel, is pretty lost when it comes to coffee. He had never really been one to titillate over the small stuff, the margin notes that some claim to be the qualities that constitute a life well-lived. That has changed some since moving to London (UK) six years ago for a career transfer. He became enamoured by the esteemed character found in high-end mens’ clothing and foot apparel. He’s tall and well-statured with a stately set of features, and as those types are wont to do, enjoys taking wide strides in the threads of a man of town, inhaling wafts of the electric muggy mist of London into his lungs and expelling it with the humble but winning reflections about how, in the conquest of that life well-lived, he is measuring up. It is the photosynthesis of the modern man in full, filtrating the dense air with hope and glory for the benefit of those scurrying about a foot below.
He loves a refined pleasure like a well-crafted cup of coffee when presented to him, he just (and I can say this for myself in many ways, ie. my lazy approach to wine – Argentinian and Chilean, thanks – they’re reliably punch-packing and unsweetened, and I’ll take that hard twinge of copper for the price), doesn’t necessarily figure out that with a bit of effort he can procure these things himself. For years he has been following a process, which to be fair, was a habit initiated and instilled by his former partner, of preparing his morning hit of caffeine by means of a plastic filter-holder propped over a mug. The rest you can figure out: insert filter, grinds, kettle-water and a tedious waste of time. I’m not sure what aggravates me so much about this system, other than a repulsion of the combined forces of pretension (you can afford an espresso machine), a stubborn, luddite impracticality (literally all a coffee-machine does is heat and trickle water, how has this technology failed to meet your standards?) and a sneaking suspicion that it derived, knowing said former partner, from a lifestyle piece in Kinfolk magazine.
The last time I went to visit, not long after that relationship had run its course, each morning I would grumble my way through this brewing circus, silently vowing (or kid-sister shouting, if he happened to be present) that the first post-divorce deed I would usher into the routines his new life was the ritual of a sensibly-made morning coffee. Unfortunately as luck would have it, I’m the poorer and therefore less generous child, so my well-intended plan of surprising him with the doorstep delivery of a Lavazza percolator (my own system for years) went unfulfilled. Eventually I modified the intent towards his own general to-do list of self-actualizing goals (“your new place sounds great but have you gotten that coffee situation sorted yet?”), and it was gracefully relinquished (I have a very kind brother) to the back-burner to make way for such priorities as the nurturing of tomato seeds into a full-fledged garden of his new yard. Finally one day, he announced that he had not only tended to the long-overdue but not forgotten question of caffeine rituals. But in classic sibling rivalry fashion, casually boasted about ousting my own method. He went the extra step too, being the more financially-healthy and giving child, by ordering what was intended to subvert my own coffee system for an Amazon delivery to my own doorstep.
In opening the box, I laughed as one item came out after another, a parade of apparatuses that were, upon my text-message confirmation that I had received the gift, accompanied with my big bro’s order to follow to learn the steps of the brewing process by watching a specified YouTube video.
Box contents:
– An elegant coffee grinder that foreshadowed the impracticalities ahead by lacking an indentation around which to wrap the power cord.
– A bag of medium-dark roast coffee beans (appropriate but in my opinion, falling short of the accustomed jolt my morning work depends on), intact with its own serving spoon.
– A package of filters.
– A ceramic, and very Kinfolk-like, coffee-filter holder with a spiral of grooves, along with its own tiny serving spoon.
I diligently sat through a five-minute video of an apron-toting man standing behind a slate countertop in a sparsely decor’d (read: explicitly minimal) café, intact with the muffled sounds of cups clanging and soft, muffled chatter, which led me to take a pause in realizing how long it has been since I’ve been enveloped by that ambience. The Youtube barista walked me through the steps, which included the nuances of delicately poured water from what should specifically be a kettle possessing a very narrow sprout, over the empty filter, to be spared from the retched taste of paper. The filter rinsing was then followed by a timed procession of more very slow pouring water through the grinds in a circular motion, a process that, if done right, takes several minutes to complete. When I later said more than half-jokingly complained about how it must have been invented for Japanese aristocracy, instead of arguing my brother enthusiastically agreed, “the slower the better.”
Every morning of the weeks that followed, save for the ones that began at 5am when I worked on a film set and could not spare the luxury of idle time, I dutifully worked through iterations of this ancient art of coffee-brewing. My motor skills adapted to the sudden onslaught of half-awake multitasking (boil water, grind coffee, wash grinder, prepare filter, rinse filter, scoop varied amount of grinds into filter, make use of the obligatory 30-second pause after first bit of water through grinds in order to feed the cat, then pour water in filter in slow, circular intervals). I’ve learned to carry the whole assemblage: cup, filter-holder, filter and hot-water jug over to my desk, so I can start settling into my day’s work instead of hovering over the mug while staring into space like John from the Garfield comic (note: even John has a percolator), waiting for the water to drip through the grinds.
The funny thing is, when I made the crack about Japanese aristocracy (not a quip on the Japanese, it is actually a Japanese coffee-dripper), he shot back that you’d think aristocrats would be above spending their time like that, even with ample amounts of time on their hands. In other words, he wasn’t even trying to argue with me, he was actually pressing the point of how ridiculous it was. So why, after this symbolic graduation from the impractical Kinfolklore of his former life, had he chosen to weave an even more tedious and smug narrative into his morning routine? The taste? It’s nice… a tad weak if I’m being honest. I always need two big cups (so twice the amount of work and time), whereas one cup of the Lavazza was an adrenaline jolt that sufficed to ride out the morning (although admittedly, I may have been getting to sleep easier). But is there a subtle, refined flavour that can truly come only from the tradition and subtle variations of caring, painstaking human work? It’s debatable. This could again be on account of my lack of instinct for refined tastes. I don’t, for example, get how people can make such a big teal about types of tea. It’s tea! But if we are to assume that yes, the human factor does add to the flavour, even if it’s in a tree-falling-in-the-woods type way where we just assume a human hand has contributed with tender care and expert precision, does that make us feel like it tastes better?
There’s a lot of talk about AI art, that is, computer-generated art-making <Eric sculpture example>, and I mean less in the foreboding Singularity sense as I do in the genuinely cool, ‘look at what we as humans designed technology to build for us, or built technology to design for us’ sense. DaVinci was an engineer as much as he was a fine artist and scientist. In the end it’s all a matter of exploring. And this stuff is cool, there’s no doubt. But I’m more interested in what aspects of the explorations we humans can retain exclusively as our own, the result of lifetimes of lived experience, that can never be replicated by an algorithm. Not by 2045 (the year the rather smug-faced Ray Kurzweil Singularity is rumoured to take effect), not ever. In the case of hand-poured filtered coffee, the shop down the street from anyone in an urban area is likely to put that debate to shame. But what coffee does do is point toward the topic of craftsmanship.
I draw. I have my own style and techniques, acquired from a lifetime of simply doing the thing. I didn’t have much in the way of drawing lessons growing up, it was just something I figured out my own way, in the act of it because I took to it and enjoyed the challenge. It was a part of who I am since I was very little, a portal for how I understood, interpreted and interacted with both the external world and my own emotional and intellectual development. It’s more than something that I have a knack for, it was and remains a method of communicating. I have at different times, including recently, battled with laments about not benefiting from a formal art education, rich in technique and method. I still only know the top level of the colour wheel, and continue to apply the same rudimentary rules about it that I absorbed in a single art class in grade 10 (complimentary colours) when painting a series of apples (yellow apples with purple shadows, red apples with greenish shadows – oooh the vibrancy!). Is my ability to draw impeded from this lack of training? Likely, but I’m not entirely sure whether it matters, as I’m not sure I would have enjoyed a life as a commercial illustrator anyway.
Virtual space is actually just a 3D grid adjusted to fit over your retinas, as opposed to how it appears through the looking glass of a flat monitor screen a few feet from your face. Three-dimensional graphics are based on the Cartesian grid, or more precisely, the Cartesian Coordinate System. The long and the short of it is that a graph is composed of squares, or in 3D, cubes. Those cubes are represented by points – eight for each of the ‘corners’ of a cube, each set of four points is shared with its neighbouring cubes on all six sides.
Because it’s hard to calculate for curves, triangles (laymen speak here) were introduced into the mix.
It’s taken a few months, but I’ve finally figured out how to at least embark on the explorative path in virtual space. Using one specific application (Tilt Brush), on account of its one specific tool (the Hull Brush), I think I’ve been figuring out how to expand my drawing style into a form of 3D sculpting. It’s an ‘additive’ sculpting by necessity, since as of yet there’s no means of subtracting from the forms created other than deleting or undoing instances of ‘completed’ shapes. It works sort of like the combined functions of a pressurized water hose, a tube of paint being squeezed by a pinched thumb and index finger, and the precise physical movements of a graffiti artist with an aerosol can of paint.
I haven’t yet found any documentation on just how the Hull brush works, and its unfortunate, because its nature and function is pretty phenomenal. Provided you keep your hand motion very even-keel on an either horizontal or vertical plane, the Hull brush will release a ‘stroke’ that connects itself to the grid points as a ‘flat’, that is 2D, surface plain. If you draw out the stroke but maintain a consistent level with the singular 2D line of dots, the shape will gobble up more dots, expanding in size but remain flat. However, if you were to move your hand in a perpendicular direction from the plane you started on, the shape will follow the dots along that path, immediately transforming into a 3D shape. <images should be here>
There are rules and behaviours to appreciate about this process. The Hull can’t, for instance, understand C-shaped curvatures in space. If you tried to create an “S” shape, for example, the curves would be lost, leaving you instead with an “O”. In time I think there will be a version of this brush, be it through Tilt or some other program, where the output is so sensitive to the user’s motion that it can calculate for curves. But for now, it means learning to work with the underlying base of vertices (dots) that connect the triangular shapes of the grid.
Over the course of the past month (October), I became fixated on the potential of the human factor to be found in the Hull brush. It began with an unexpected moment of discovery. I had set to work on the Palmer Luckey piece (see previous post), beginning with the scuba diver. It seemed an appropriate starting point, but even more so, the natural, self-centric focal point of the world I was setting out to create. I began with the diver’s face, which, without any attempt at achieving a likeness, unconsciously became a representation of me. I soon fell into a trap I’m well-accustomed to in a lifetime of art projects: the sand-pit abyss of the details. I lost sight of the greater piece, becoming entirely consumed with the rhythmic, focused sculpting process of this human form in virtual space. I was completely captivated and feeling like I had finally hit my stride with a tool I could hone in my own way.
I’ve poured countless hours into the sculpting of that figure, while often finding myself trying to rationalize the significance in what I was doing. I felt like I needed to justify its purpose of this technique when 3D modelling in an application like Z-brush, albeit in desktop applications, offered far richer complexities and levels of exactitude. Then there’s the aforementioned given that the sculpting tools in virtual applications will improve exponentially in the near future, rendering the need to work with the present limitations of the Hull brush obsolete. I eased my apprehensions by reassuring myself that I could be contributing a crucial role in such developments, making offering the techniques that I acquire now as building blocks for engineers to expand upon in future iterations.
A neuroscientist once told me that his career’s work was dedicated to the theoretical existence of a single, specific molecule. He had resigned to the fact that it was unlikely the molecule would be ‘discovered’ in his lifetime, and may not for several generations ahead. But he was satisfied in that his research might serve as a factor in the eventual achievement, even though it could take place long after his lifetime. No one but perhaps the most directly involved members of the scientific community might be aware of his contributions, never mind ascribing credit to his life’s work. It struck me as an act of selfless nobility – the passion for his quest was driven by the love of science itself – and the impact stayed with me. If I were to imagine myself devoting my creative energies on a mastery of this one tool, one that may soon be replaced, then the best I can hope for is that the work I create with it plays a factor in this process.
As far as the first concern – that 3D modelling software can already achieve far ‘greater’ results, it begs the question of what ‘greater’ consists of. 3D modelling on a desktop application is clunky work. The inputs are calculated by either mouse clicks and drags or by numerical entries on the keyboard. A gamut of application-assisted tools are packaged into neatly organized menus, not only suggesting techniques for the artist but at the helm of the design process itself. Like any complex series of techniques, over time and regular practice, the steps become intuitive. A cylinder, for example, is made by ordering up a perfectly generated ellipse, then creating a secondary ellipse of vertices embedded on the flat surface of the first. By selecting the exterior face of the ellipse (in ‘faces’ mode), you’d then use the extrude tool to pull it upwards into the shape of a cylindrical tube. That’s just one way; there are plenty. It becomes fast work and each modelling artist can acquire the aptitude to incorporate their own style into the otherwise mechanical construction.
The problem I have with this, that I have had since completing the Computer Animation course at Sheridan College 12 years ago, is that there’s too much being asked of me in adapting to the digital ecosystem of the creative process. When I began this program, I had just completed a BFA in ‘classical’ animation at Concordia, where my film projects had largely focused on my talent and skill for drawing. Unlike Sheridan’s animation program, there was no insistence that I adhere to a curriculum of industry-standard drawing techniques. It wasn’t necessarily the best route for winning an internship at Pixar or Disney, but I had no interest in that. In fact I had only switched into the animation program from the Fine Art major after a year spent trying to justify whether or not my work qualified as ‘Art’ to a prof that had herself majored in poetry. I went into animation because I just wanted to be able to draw how I pleased.
From the onset, I was interested in how technology was affecting my creative process. The first film I made didn’t make use of digital tools whatsoever. I drew each frame by hand with a light-table, then used an 80-year old camera (Oxberry) to capture the images. I even drew the zooms and pans by hand, opting to have the most minimal dependency possible on the camera. My film project at Sheridan five years later involved a 3D character – a business tycoon wombat – lounging by a Hollywood-style pool with his bikini-clad human girlfriend. As he barks orders on his literal cordless phone (the cord of the old school rotary receiver is cut with the wires dangling out), he watches in shock as his girlfriend falls flat on the ground, having suddenly been revealed as a paper-like 2D cutout. The whole set eventually collapses into a two-dimensional flat surface. As the camera pans out, we watch the still 3D wombat tumble off the picture plane, which is now presented as a framed, abstract (flat) painting. As an illustrator, I was combatting 3D graphics as much as I was an artist figuring out my role in the digital age.
The 3D modelling applications are far too codependent on engineering concepts for my liking, inhibiting my own natural intuition in how to sculpt. These concepts, tools and techniques are at their core based on a logic-driven constructs, encouraging the propagation of reality-based ideals. Ironically this reminds me of that very same poet-come-painting professor from the Concordia Fine Arts program, peering over my page during a life-drawing session and commenting that my drawing style was “too academic”. The implication was that I was so engaged in emulating reality that I was neglecting to make the study interesting enough for her in some other way. Meanwhile, what I was actually doing was training my hand to interpret what my eyes observed. I was indeed so absorbed in this challenge to pay much mind to how interesting this study might become in a vernissage, and I was also a 1st year college student focused on improving the skill I was best at. The mindset in this program, as was announced to us in the early weeks of September, is that we were to have already developed a proficient technical toolset prior to embarking on this school’s right of passage into the Art World. Here the goal was to seek out and prove merit in the value we had to offer as Fine Artists in a postmodern context. I called bullshit, right off the bat. The presumption that young adults had already perfected their technical practice enough to devout the four remaining years on building the philosophical context of their artwork struck me as incredibly pretentious, lazy, and ultimately an excuse for the University to pass the buck on teaching actual skills. I saw this as the equivalent of an engineering student spending their college education trying to prove why they should be considered interesting enough to build things instead of learning how to build. It not only didn’t seem fair, it made a mockery of the Artist as a contributing member of society. How could I possibly be taken seriously without a foundation of hard-earned skills?
What I was inadvertently discovering was the postmodern argument between two schools of thought in academics, one that I’m now returning to yet again. On the one hand there’s the appreciation for technical skill, which builds itself off the scientific notion of ‘discovery’ of knowledge, recalling Plato’s entities, a striving towards perfection and that in by embarking on this path, humanity’s goal is the pursuit of purity. Until recently, we believed the height of that goal was finding God, whereas now it seems to be driving towards the fearful endgame of the digital age: Singularity. On the other hand, there is the modern concept of knowledge by creation, implying that there is nothing to ‘discover’ but rather only iterative paths of learning about ourselves. The awkward problem is that I find myself in a tug-of-war between them, where I believe a fundamental understanding and acquisition of certain technical skill is required in exploring new depths of creation.
This finally, brings me full circle back to the coffee. Is the taste actually better on account of the human craftsmanship? The coffee machine may make better coffee straight out of the box, but it can’t through mornings of subtle fluctuation in the brew process, change or improve the way the coffee tastes. It can only do what it was made to do, and any improvements will only come from purchasing the next version. It can’t learn that by, for instance, playing around with the timing of the water-pouring intervals, the grinds might absorb the water more or less densely. It can’t, in a fit of impatience, discover that by brashly rushing the water through with an impertinent flick of the wrist, instead of in delicate, graceful swirls like the cloth of a Japanese dancer performing a ceremonious ritual, experience the consequences of this act, nor the hidden blessings (maybe I like that bitter, sadistic thud on my innocent morning tastebuds). In other words, it can’t incorporate the daily dramas of simply being human.
In the realm of petty criminals awaiting sentencing, there is a saying about how the verdict can be dictated by what the judge ate for breakfast. It can mean, in the case of a high school friend of mine who waited out an impending charge for growing a large crop of marijuana (before it became a legal and, in the pandemic, very commonplace backyard activity) the difference of a 15 month prison sentence or a gentle slap on the wrist in the form of an arbitrary ban on the possession of lethal weapons (he promptly bought a crossbow to celebrate his freedom). It is for this reason that the circumstances of our daily lives will always carry an element of chance, human variables dictated by how well or badly one slept, whether or not there’s good food in the belly, or if a criminal standing before a judge vaguely rekindles a fond memory of a boyhood friend with a wild spirit and a good heart who once, when on a hunting adventure, accidentally shot their companion’s foot.
Art lives here, in this adjunct between science and stories, where a striving for perfection can and will always be marred by the impact of how the seemingly arbitrary or blatantly obvious reactions and impulses that come with simply being alive. Since we first learned to set our own fires and whittle spears from wood, technology has served to offer us a means of devising tools to help us or hurt us, facilitate the means to an end or impede us should things go wrong. But along the way we learn to hone our tools, making compromises with the particularities of their servicing in order to wield them as gavels to our own verdicts, our truths, that in turn are weighed out by what we ate for breakfast.
How I learn to use the Hull brush, no matter how proficient I may become with it, or any other tool I should happen upon, from the ancient craft of a Chinese calligraphy ink brush to the imagined possibility of one day being able to paint or sculpt in augmented reality with sensory feedback in thin air, will be driven by the layered history of my life. That goes for my psychological framework, my spirituality, my world views, and whether or not I’ve gone for a run or my cycles through a grieving process in the traumatic loss of a lifelong friend. In sculpting a human form, I will never reach a height of anatomical perfection in the way a modelling program can, any more than an algorithm will ever account for the trials and tribulations that make themselves known in the blunt or graceful stroke of my hands.
With that I can feel satisfied in my compromise with technology by making an amendment to that adage I’ve lived by: learn the rules so you know how to break them, and master the tools so you learn how to shape them.