Without the state

Is there life after birth?

"Death is non-existence, and I know already what that means. What was before me will happen again after me. If there is any suffering in this state, there must have been such suffering also in the past, before we entered the light of day. As a matter of fact, however, we felt no discomfort then. And I ask you, would you not say that one was the greatest of fools who believed that a lamp was worse off when it was extinguished than before it was lighted? We mortals also are lighted and extinguished; the period of suffering comes in between, but on either side there is a deep peace. For, unless I am very much mistaken, my dear Lucilius, we go astray in thinking that death only follows, when in reality it has both preceded us and will in turn follow us. Whatever condition existed before our birth, is death. For what does it matter whether you do not begin at all, or whether you leave off, inasmuch as the result of both these states is non-existence?"

Lucius Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD) via Ophelia Benson in the comments to this post.

Digital Art? [Part 2]

As promised in the previous post I want to look at the implications of digital manipulation, commonly called 'Photoshopping'. Photoshop is of course a specific package so I will use digital manipulation or DM from now on, as a generic term for the whole range of digital manipulation tools available.

I want to start however from a slightly different perspective, with Dadaism and Marcel Duchamp.

When Duchamp signs mass-produced objects . . . and sends them to art exhibits, he negates the category of individual production. The signature is inscribed on an arbitrarily chosen mass product because all claims to individual creativity are to be mocked. Duchamp's provocation not only unmasks the art market . . . it radically questions the very principle of art in bourgeois society according to which the individual is considered the creator of the work of art. Duchamp's Ready-Mades are not works of art but manifestations.

I start here because a frequent complaint about DM work is that its output is not artistic because it is not the work of individual effort and has no ‘craft element’. I shall come back to that second point later. For now consider the question of individuality.

Typically photography is defined by its literalness. In that view, the photographic image is a direct description of reality not a representation of it. In practice of course the photographer has selected from the world just as much as the painter. The image is defined as much by what is outside the frame as by what is included and is inevitably only an approximation of the real world it purports to capture. Although I took my first photograph some 40 years ago, it took me some time to recognise this. Accepting this separation however frees the photographer from the tyranny of literal representation. Since DM requires an original photographic image, there is already therefore a degree of selection from the world involved and that of itself is an artistic choice.

By representative I do not necessarily mean figurative. If the apparent parallels between the image as captured and the world in front of the lens had not distracted us, this would have been obvious anyway, as photographers explored the use of differential focus, distorted or out of focus images, solarisation and grain. Some, like Man Ray or Angus McBean, pushed the boundaries to the limits but all of these techniques met some hostility from ‘traditionalists’ before being absorbed and accepted as a part of the aesthetic of photography.

DM, obviously also involves image manipulation. This may be limited to the application of a single filter or tool. At this point some problems of terminology arise, because these filters are described so often in terms derived from painting – brushes, watercolour etc. Where packages like Corel Painter are used to originate a piece of work then this is probably useful since it allows the artist to work by analogy. At its best though, DM is not about mimicry but about creating something that cannot be created in any other way.

Statements like this - If you can score a copy of the 800-pound behemoth known as Adobe Photoshop, you can fake artistic ability with the best of them - don't help however, even when they obviously come from computer geeks rather than artists. As with any art form, there be good and bad examples. Sturgeon's Law applies here too. I suspect that the difficulties many have with it however is the ease with which images can be created which can give the appearance of having been created in ‘conventional’ media but in practice have never seen a brush. Take this image for example – derived from one of my own photographs – which has been processed in Paint Shop Pro using two ‘plug ins’.

My intervention was pretty much limited to selecting the strength of the parameters to be applied. (I cloned out some road signs before applying the filters) There are five parameters, each of which can be given a score of 0 to 100. In theory therefore there are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations (10²⁰). In practice a variation of 1 or 2 is unlikely to be noticeable but there is still a huge range of choices that can be made. I’m making no claims for this as ‘high art’ – whatever that means – but I contend it still has value, even as a faux ink and wash drawing. A ‘craft skill’ is still present even in this relatively mundane image - a point made to me in an email about another image of mine – also on Flickr.

…I don’t think it matters even a little bit how long something took to create - some great ones come in the blink of an eye and others that one spends a long time on just never make it into the really good category - I think it depends more on whether or not you are connected to your "source" and it feels like "this is me in action"…

Digital technologies now offer more opportunities for new ways of seeing the world. To some it offers the opportunity to create new realities by creating realistic digital collages – not always for reputable purposes it must be said – while for others it offers the chance to further blur the boundaries between photography and other media. So far however there does not seem to be an agreed aesthetic response to the characteristic feel of the digital image or a digital equivalent to the painter’s brush stroke.

One of the debates raging within photo clubs across the world, as many cross over from film to digital camera usage, is what should be allowed in the post processing of digital images. One community is for minimal post processing. Another group would like to see only what could be done in a wet darkroom be allowed. And finally there is a third group that says anything goes.

As with the move from painting to photography, from monochrome to colour, so now the move from chemical to digital is generating a new debate on what is ‘acceptable’ – on what is ‘Art’.

While at its simplest level DM may involve only the application of a pre-written filter, it can be much more complex of course. Something that appears to be gaining in popularity is the ‘Orton’ effect. This involves layering of different treatments of an image to produce a very distinctive effect. The effect may well be possible in other media but its conception depended on the existence of digital manipulation.

Sites like Flickr are good places to check out work that pushes the boundaries in this way.

Check these out:

Michael Seidman

Ron Diorio

Lawrence Roberts

Lionel Martinez

Ian Summers

Digital art?

I suspect that in the art world – at least that part frequented by the likes of Brian Sewell – Photoshop is a term of abuse, but then I also suspect that in some of its more hidebound corners, photography is still viewed as an upstart medium. There is a tendency of course for people to abuse that with which they are not familiar. I imagine that when factory made paints first became available, those painters who ground their own pigments and mixed their own paint got quite sniffy about this dreadful new stuff. Similar comments were no doubt made about synthetic brushes and acrylic paint. In the early days of colour photography, many photographers rejected colour as a distraction from the core aesthetic of photography as an art.

The famous remark about photography, that ‘from today, painting is dead’ has of course proved untrue. Photography has established itself alongside painting and drawing as a valid form of artistic expression. As with painting however, the generic term embraces a huge range of styles and forms. Think of the imitations of old master painting by Reijlander, the soft focus portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron, the social realism of the FSA photographers or Weegee, the ‘decisive moment’ of Cartier-Bresson, the surrealism of Man Ray, Angus McBean or Diane Arbus. These are all photography, but with very different impacts.

Portrait photography apart, photography has conventionally however been supposed to record what is in front of the camera. The photographer’s role was in selecting what to record, not in creating it. Cartier-Bresson famously refused to allow any cropping – what he saw in his viewfinder was what he printed. However, conventional darkroom chemistry is not a neutral process. Bill Brandt for instance when he returned to some of his work in later years produced images much darker than the original prints. Even photo journalism is not immune. Capa’s classic photograph of the dying soldier is widely suggested as being posed and the photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, now rendered into a sculpture is a restaging of an earlier event but with a larger flag. It is the second image which has gained iconic status.

The work of Man Ray is another obvious exception while Angus McBean continued the tradition of Reijlander, in assembling his images from a range of sources - a tradition now picked up by many 'Photoshoppers'.

This is all by way of a preamble to a discussion of the implications – artistic and social – of packages like Photoshop. For ease this will follow in a second post.

Property is theft

My recent post on road pricing made several references to Simon Jenkins book ‘Landlords to London’. Rereading this book for the post and also as a counterpoint to ‘The Voluntary City’ made me realise the real significance of the great London Estates. Most of these were originally in the ownership of the Church until the Dissolution under Henry VIII. When he seized Church properties he distributed them among members of his Court in return for favours granted and for political benefit.

The estates thus created lasted by and large into the modern era. The development of these estates set the pattern for modern London – the city we see today. It is salutary to realise therefore how much that London is thus built on theft – pure and simple theft. We don’t need to think about how the Church acquired their property, or about esoteric theories of primitive accumulation because of the clear break created by Henry’s theft from them.

Worth remembering next time someone tells you how the private sector is so much better than the state at promoting development. Ask them where that property came from.

Sir Robert Peel's Principles of Policing

I can't remember how I first came on these, but they remain cogent, although increasingly ignored. It seems to me that politicians and rather disturbingly the police, are both more and more seeing the police force as an army of occupation.

Sir Robert Peel's Nine Principles:

Principle #1: The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Principle #2: The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

Principle #3: Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

Principle #4: The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

Principle #5: Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

Principle #6: Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

Principle #7: Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."

Principle #8: Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

Principle #9: The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

Public health and private choice

Quite a few of my recent posts – all tagged I think ‘Reclaim the State’ – have been based around the idea of personal choice and self-ownership and the degree to which these ideas should be pre-eminent. Some claim I know – and not just individualist anarchists - that individual rights do indeed trump all others. Where conflict arises between individuals this argument seems to me to rely on the principle that defence of those rights by all means necessary is legitimate – ultimately therefore on armed force. I’ll perhaps come back to that another time.

Most however, me included, accept that some limitations on individual actions are essential, while continuing to disagree on what those limitations might be and their extent. For example, if someone has a highly contagious and potentially fatal disease like smallpox, most would think it a very severe view of liberty not to accept that the infected person should be isolated from society to prevent that disease spreading. The loss of liberty for this person is surely essential for the avoidance of a much greater evil, namely the spread of that disease to many others and does them no lasting harm.

Even so, this is still a complex issue. While isolation is a fairly neutral term, it still means imprisonment; moreover imprisonment for reasons beyond the control of the infected person. While there is precedent, this must always be a difficult decision. It raises serious questions about the balance between the collective rights of people in society against those of individuals. In the case of Mary Mallon – otherwise known as ‘Typhoid Mary’, she knowingly placed others at risk, even though she had been repeatedly been told of the threat she posed to others. She was kept in a hospital away from society for three years until she promised not to work with food. She broke that promise and was confined again, this time until her death. It is known that she was responsible for the deaths of at least 3 people, possibly as many as 50.

In Mary’s case, transmission of the disease did not occur except through poor hygiene in the handling of food. It is possible to imagine however much more virulent diseases where an asymptomatic carrier is at large. As a thought experiment imagine a highly virulent, perhaps genetically engineered disease which somehow turns 1% of those infected into symptom less carriers. These people show no symptoms but if allowed to wander around would infect the rest of the population and spread the disease further. Assuming some test is available to identify them, should they be confined? Perhaps more to the point how do we administer the tests required? Blood tests for example are invasive and in themselves require consent. Is it legitimate therefore to require everyone to submit to a blood test in order to identify the 1% who are carriers?

What happens if the percentage is not 1% but 10%, 20%, 30% or 40%? Is there a threshold point at which the risk to society at large, perhaps to humanity itself makes such an intrusion acceptable? What happens if these people choose not to be tested or confined? Can the state use deadly force to protect others? Some of the implications of this are dealt with in a science fiction context in Greg Bear’s book ‘Darwin’s Radio’, but the potential threat posed by Bird Flu reminds us that there are real dangers.

Immunisation takes us into even more difficult territory. Unlike confinement, immunisation depends on an ‘invasion’ of the person. It also depends on ‘herd immunity' to be fully effective. In other words when the proportion of vaccinated people in a population exceeds a given percentage, the spread of the disease is effectively stopped - to the benefit of the unvaccinated as much as the vaccinated. This percentage depends on the disease and the vaccine, but 90% is not uncommon. Failure to take up immunisation thus places at risk not just that individual, but also every other un-immunised person – including people who may be allergic, too young or too old.

The classic recent example of this was the debate over MMR, where because of fears about a relationship between the vaccination and autism, vaccination levels in some areas of the country have fallen well below the herd immunity level, with consequent increase in infection rates.

Even with high vaccination levels those affected by measles are not evenly distributed.

Where vaccination is widely practiced, as in the United States since 1962, measles has continued to occur in poorly immunized subgroups that are characterized by low educational level and economic status, very young age, or religious beliefs forbidding acceptance of vaccine. Ultimate success of a systematic immunization program requires knowledge of distribution of susceptibles by age and subgroup and maximal effort to reduce the concentration of susceptibles throughout the community rather than aiming to reach any specific proportion of the overall population.

The vulnerable sub-groups described above presumably do not choose to be vulnerable and the low take up of MMR vaccine in these groups is not in general related to concerns about side effects. By contrast parents who do choose not to immunise thier children are doing so because of specific fears about the MMR vaccine. In doing so they are effectively deciding that the risk of adverse effects to their child from the combined injection outweighs the risk of contracting Measles, Mumps or Rubella including the increase in that risk as a result of the decline in herd immunity. 

If these fears are unfounded, as is almost certainly the case, then these calculations are erroneous and are increasing the general risk of infection for all children. Setting those particular concerns aside for the moment however, it must be recognised that there will still be some cases of an adverse reaction. In those circumstances would it be legitimate to make vaccination compulsory?

It seems to me that for low levels of adverse reaction the case can be made but it is by no means clear-cut. The number of children aged 10 and under in the UK in 2001 was slightly over 8m. Assuming for the moment an adverse reaction rate of 1 in 100,000 children, this would mean 80 children would suffer across the country as a result of the MMR injection if every one of the 8m were given the vaccine. An outbreak of measles triggered by the vaccination rate falling below the herd immunity level would almost certainly lead to many more than that suffering serious illness including blindness.

While I don’t think the science of herd immunity is disputed, I suspect that parents withholding their children from MMR are underestimating the risk of contracting the diseases against which it protects, are probably not factoring in at all the increased risk due to loss of herd immunity, and are almost certainly overestimating the risk of adverse reaction to the vaccine. It is easy to say they are acting irrationally, but the essence of this sort of decision is not just about risk, but also about where that risk falls. If they overestimate the risk of an adverse reaction it is a risk nevertheless that affects their child, while the risk of contracting the disease is a risk spread across all children. The choice of perspective on the decision affects the decision itself.

I’m not sure where this leaves my original questions. We appear to have a situation where individuals acting as rationally as possible in situations of imperfect knowledge nevertheless produce outcomes that are not optimal for themselves or for society as a whole. Is this of itself enough justification  for compulsion?

Condos with built-in rental suites

This looks like a great idea: Condos with built-in rental suites.

Hierarchy vs self ownership?

I'm not sure I agree with everything in the post that Chris Dillow of Stumbling and Mumbling points to (here), but I certainly agree with his conclusion.

[Anthony Evans is] also showing where the most important political division lies. It's not between "left" and "right", and certainly not between Tory and Labour. It's between those who support hiearchical politics, and those who think the people should be given more control over their own lives and over the government.

League of Gentlemen (and women)

I'm not a huge fan of 'link swapping', but the basic premise of this scheme is one I can subscribe too - I find lots of blogs with huge traffic and I wonder why these?

EDIT: I like the 'Carnival' idea much better and this one - the 'Carnival of Citizens' looks as if it could be good. Deadline for the next one is December 15th - more here.

Mulled whine

Stupid claims about the alleged banning of Christmas nailed.

Claim: "I read reports of local authorities deleting Christmas from their greetings cards and street decorations... [they] should be ashamed of their pathetic spinelessness." (Very Rev Colin Slee, dean of Southwark, Guardian Face to Faith column, December 9)

Reality: A particularly wondrous instance of Christmas-banning propaganda here, since Mr Slee not only provides almost no evidence for his claim, but actually begins his article with a long paragraph celebrating the fact that so many British companies do celebrate Christmas. We're finally graced with a factual claim for Christmas-banning in the penultimate sentence - a reference to how the "loveless intellectual desert called secularism" offers us something called "Winterfest" instead of Christmas. Winterfest appears to be some kind of marketing scheme Stoke on Trent council organised in 2004. There are plenty of references to Christmas and Christmas activities on the council's website this year. Unless the dean means WinterFest, which is a rather vociferously evangelical Christian music event held in that awfully loveless desert of secularism, Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Virginia .