Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Shocked by beauty?
UD cites one of those typical Earlier Than Thought items, where archeologists were Shocked to find that stone age inhabitants of England used pigments to make things beautiful.
If beauty is shocking and incomprehensible, what does that tell you about our current mindset? What will a later archeologist find when our current era has become just another stratum in the wreckage? Would the proverbial Martian archeologist consider that the current era was capable of beauty?
I doubt it. The strata would show an abrupt switch from beautiful shapes and colors to black and white rectangles around 1910 AD, and then a total takeover by solid black rectangles around 2010 AD.
It's nearly impossible to find a consumer product that ISN'T a solid black rectangle. Even within the little microworld of web design the same trend shows up. In 2000 webpages were shapely and colorful, with a wide variety of fonts and textures and pictures. Now we have sparse black rectangles surrounding light gray text on light gray backgrounds. No beauty, no information. Just rectangles.
Labels: From rights to duties
¶ 10:51 AM
