What Makes Art?

Ok. The title is to catch attention. I cannot answer that question. Cannot even attempt to. Being fairly artless, and somewhat down to earth, this is one of those questions I am happy to let go.

But why did this question crop up?

In the recent past, I and a friend of mine participated in Chitra Santhe – an once a year, full day street art market in Bangalore. We put up a stall to sell our photographs. To get the photographs to a level were happy to show to people and hopefully will also be able to sell, we took lot of help – from people who actually were artists and knew about photography. All said and done, we were there for a lark.

Participation itself went through a bit of twists and turns. Initially powers that be (who decide who are artists and who are not) were divided over whether to treat photography as art or not. Finally, it was decided that photography is also art. We tied up with a artist friend to get a stall.

And we had quite a bit of fun in getting the photographs to the level we thought was good enough for public display and sale. This took time, patience, imagination and expertise.

Which were certainly in short supply. Most often, the expertise of editing the photos needed a friend who is a professional photographer. Selection of photos was again another involved process. Another artist friend critiqued.

If nothing else, I learnt two phrases – ‘it is not talking to me’, ‘there is no drama’.

Each photo went through many steps – selection, a sense of what the photo should be saying, transformation of the photo to say that.

Finally, each photo had contributions from 4 people – 2 photographers, 1 artist/photographer, 1 photographer/artist.

This is when the question came up – what makes an art? Was it the photograph? Was it the thinking as to what the photo should be saying? Was it the expertise that transformed the photo?

I don’t really know. All I can say is that, many people who saw the photos in Chitra Santhe had a smile on their faces. May be that is what art is all about. To bring out the emotions in people.

I have another question – What price art? That is another story altogether.

Indians & Customer Service

Of late, all my friends and acquaintances seem to be afflicted by a strange new disease – dissatisfaction with customer service. Ten minutes into the conversation, after the traffic, infrastructure etc have been exhausted as topics, we start cribbing about bad customer service is from some poor corporation. Normally it is the cell phone company; other times, it is the credit card company. It is almost as good a conversation filler as ‘back home’ talks among the NRI crowd.

Agreed, we are all at that certain age when cantankerousness is not only expected but also very satisfying. Methinks it is our poor substitute for more lecherous pleasures, again, since we have reached that certain age where anything remotely enjoyable is either bad for you or not decorous. (When and how that age comes about is a topic for another day, hopefully. In fact it has to be explored if the age is physical, somatic or mental. But I digress …). Even granting the tetchiness, I feel that our ire at bad customer service is all out of proportion with the trigger.

Let me give you an example: earlier, say 5-6 years ago, if a plumber told he will come at 10 AM Tuesday, it was understood all around that it is merely his intention and one was quite happy if he turned up on Tuesday at all. No squabbling, no irritation, no nothing. Similarly, if the cell phone dropped a call, there was an elaborate etiquette on who should call back whom but there was no beating of the breasts or tearing of hairs. (Kids: there was a time when one was happy to get thru to somebody in another metro within an hour by using a lightning call. No kidding and one paid a real bomb too!) But now, all it takes is a surly tone from the hassled customer support kid and we go ballistic.

I think the reason for this has to be among the following causes: (a) we have lost our chalta hai attitude without developing the ability to get service, (b) we don’t really understand what is a commensurate level of service for the money we pay and (c) customer service really sucks. It would be a cop out to say that it is a mixture of all three. Sure, it is a combination of all these and more causes. However, I believe that our expectation does not match what is being offered, which, obviously, is a function of what we are willing to pay.

Management theory defines customer satisfaction as Performance minus Expectation (it says that in whole tomes but that is it, in essence). As a culture, though, we want a Rolls Royce for the price of a Maruti. So, our expectation is never tempered by what we pay for the service. Therefore even very good service does not satisfy us – only exceptional service would do! Taking the cell phone example further, the ARPU for Indian providers is among the lowest in the world (~ USD 3 per month, if I remember correctly). For that we have fairly high technology services like 3G and very interesting (even ruinous) rate plans like per second billing, location based billing, unlimited data etc. In addition to all this, we went and invented the ‘missed call’ – an absolutely brilliant but ultimately unproductive (for the carrier) communication channel.

Have a look at the ARPU data by country (slightly old but the major trends have not changed).

Indian ARPU clearly is the bottom of the pack. Ask yourself honestly – is your expectation from your provider on service quality not closer to the Japan end of the spectrum?

I hold no candle for the carriers – I am just as irritated when a call is dropped or when a standing instruction goes missing as anybody else. All I ask for is a bit of fairness in expectation.

It is not worthy of comment that the dog talks badly, it is a wonder it talks at all!

On the nature of science

A discussion on a group that I subscribe to sparked off this opinion. The discussion started with a debate on the efficacy of drinking 600ml of water to cure all kinds of diseases. Obviously it attracted a few skeptical comments and references to snopes which were countered by evidence on how "my mother's friend had this xxx disease that doctors gave up on but was cured by homeopathy/ ayurveda" etc. Broadly the arguments were split between "Where is the proof?" and "It is all individual. There is no proof required as it clearly works." spiced by "Western science is selective about proof anyway".

This got me thinking about proof and the nature of science and I thought I will dash off a quick opinion. A well reasoned article will have to wait a bit though.

Anecdotal evidence is not proof in any system of logic, including the vedic system of logic or Eastern philosophy that No-proof-is-requried camp normally subscribe to.

If I say placebo effect or natural remission or even immunity build-up as explanations for the instances that alternative medicinces seem to work, it will normally be pooh-poohed as a "Western concept" without really offering an "eastern" explanation for why it works for a class of people. If it does not work for class of people, then it is irrelevant anyway.

But the fact is that neither the explanation nor veracity of this assertion can be confirmed by either camp it is beyond the competence of both parties, specifically as it applies to medicine. So other than sophistry, it achieves nothing to enter into a debate on that.

Nobody but a novice is arrogant enough to claim that all phenomena are explained, indeed, are even explainable.. Even in so called classical physics only a small set of problems are amenable to solutions. The rest are all approximations. THerefore this myth that science has all the answers is not something that is propagated by scientists or people who understand what science is.

In my opinion, there is no western or eastern science. There are only observations & anamolies and theories that attempt to explain them. All schools of reasoning and logic require that all assumptions be clearly stated and rigour be employed in arriving at conclusions. However, all schools also demand that you subscribe to their epistemology in doing so. Euclidean geometry only works if you subscribe to the axioms, which by definition, cannot be proved. Therefore pays your money and takes choices.

The problem with making choices is this: It is interesting that all of us who rant & rave at the 'other' side nevertheless partake of the bits that are personally palatable or profitable from any system of thought. You, who are such a champion for the "Ancient Indian Tradition" "Vedic xyz", no doubt are an excellent logician in the Hellenic tradition because that is what was required for you to code. Nor are you, I am willing to bet, shy about taking a flight or using a computer or undergo a heart surgery (which hopefully you dont need) despite their western origins. I, the champion for skepticism and 'Western' rationality, have to shamefully confess that I prefer my mother's kashayam when my stomach is upset to any tablet and that I do feel a sneaking pride when I read about Aryabhatta or Bhaskara or when I hear the infamous "you invented nothing" slogan for nothing more than the accident of being born in the geographic area as these worthies. Hell, I am sure many a skeptic has sent up a prayer (inadvertenly or involuntarily, I am sure) when a loved one is very sick. So each of us assembles a quilt of biases, thought models, mental shortcuts, conditionings, world views, epistemologies, ontologies and go around thinking OUR hodge podge is better than the other's pot pourri.

We are all instrumental in our philosophy. The rest is just time-pass.

That having been said, homeopathy doesnt work!