"I have always imagined Paradise to be a kind of library." - Borges It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one." - Peter Greenaway A building is not something you finish, but something you start. (Stewart Brand) "The true artist sculpts their own life in the medium of space-time. Therefore the life of the true artist must be re-made in their own image." -- Jennifer Diane Reitz So we reach for art and music, though we know it will be flawed, Yet in striving to do better, we are reaching out to God. We are reaching for perfection, and it's not beyond our scope; Every act of creation is an act of hope. -- Catherine Faber, Acts of Creation Everyone is the son of his own works. -Miguel de Cervantes, novelist (1547-1616) "Every great work of art is offensive to someone, for a work of art is a protest against things as they are and a proclamation of things as they ought to be. " -- Gerald W. Johnson Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal --Sappho Boswell: But, Sir is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your journey? Dr. Johnson: Why, Sir if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible. James Boswell (1740-95) Scottish author, biographer of Samuel Johnson. "Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action." - John Maynard Smith (Science and myth) Humans need fantasy to be human. to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape." Terry Pratchett "Art is I; science is we." --Claude Bernard Euclid Alone by Edna St. Vincent Millay Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. "No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other." - FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, An Autobiography "Bad art inspires me. When I see great art, I feel humbled and unworthy. But when I see bad art, I say: Hey, even I can do better than that." > Henri de Toulouse-LaTech But yes, I do tend towards art. Because 99% of advertising is soulless junk, and consumers treat it with the apathy it deserves. A Big Idea executed in a compelling way that rewards the consumer - that's great advertising. It's also great art. Watch an old Nike reel or One Show annual - vital, full of life - and see how it stacks up against the stale, fossilised canon of "serious" art. Chris Worth I am nothing and nobody; atoms that have learned to look at themselves; dirt that has learned to see the awe and the majesty of the universe. Geoffrey A. Landis, Winter Fire Under the influence of psychology it may well be that, just as all the branches of science itself are coalescing into a unified world picture, so the human activities of art and attitudes of religion may be fused into one whole action-reaction pattern of man to reality. The recognition of the art that informs all pure science need not mean the abandonment for it of all present art, rather it will mean the completion of the transformation of art that has already begun. Art expressing itself on one side in a kind of generalized architecture, massive or molecular, gives form to the infinite possibilities of the application of science; on the other a generalized poetry expresses the ever-widening complexities of the understanding of the universe, while religion clarified by psychology remains at the expression of the desire that drives man through the universe in understanding and hope. Bernal, The World, The Flesh, The Devil Far more marvelous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined. Why do poets of the present not speak of it? --Richard Feynman "Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands." -- Cathy Better There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace -- those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way the sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet it is possible to see the peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death. from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan Dune 380 Elegant (and relevant) tools inspire the user to create elegant solutions. "pcm" "When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union" Frank Lloyd Wright "One of the reasons I became an artist was that I didn't like interacting with other humans." - Lane Smith "I used to put up a lot of resistance to the idea of being a professional software engineer because it seemed so cold and abstract. But as the demands of the market and my own desire for income combined to draw me into that profession like a tractor beam, I found that creating software or modifying existing software really does feel much like writing poetry or sculpting (or, as is unfortunately most often the case, like editing someone else's poetry or modifying someone else's sculpture). The audience is a bit limited because the only people who get to really appreciate the work of most software engineers is other software engineers... the exception to this last rule is the user-interface engineers, and I suspect that that's one reason why that is such a popular line of work within software engineering." "There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself." J. S. Bach