Written Nov. 1st, 2006.
Today I received a grade for a photograph I took. the idea of grading art is a great example of a poison that we all consume on a daily basis. It’s called empiricism, and we’re force fed it daily. I’m not going to get into the pure madness of giving a grade from a scale-a scale who’s function is to compare and judge based on quality-in an arts class. I think it’s important to look at why the hell we’re grading art in the first place.
The answer is obvious, we’re all trying to be scientists. Well, we’re trying to be taken seriously. I’ll let you in on a secret. Marking schemes work on one thing and one thing only: math tests. Math, at it’s more basic levels can be compared, checked, and evaluated against itself as much as you like. That’s the stunning beauty of math, and also why in grade 10 you could copy Johnny’s homework verbatim and never get caught.
I’ll let you in on another secret. Everything else that claims to be science is much more fallible then they’ll have you believe. Multiple choice tests? well the teacher writes the questions. If you think more along the lines of the teacher then you’ll do better. Is this effect all that big? no. If you don’t know the content you can be the teacher’s brain-twin and still fail, but the teacher, despite their best efforts, is biased. It’s not that big a deal, and that doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination render science useless. It does show that we shouldn’t model our lives after what we learn in class.
What’s the point? It’s simple. As a society we’re very quickly becoming addicted to ‘facts’, to the idea of being more correct then the next person by being more objective. I happen to think that this is because the flood of information we face on a daily basis leads us to want something concrete to work by. When someone offers us something we believe to be concrete, we grab it, stand on it, and use it to function.
This addiction to facts is a very scary concept. Because these facts are a fallacy. Math is the only true fact. Everything else wants to be a fact, and indeed tonnes of what we hear in a day are true, and can be used to function. But Computers do math, they speak in 1 and 0, that’s it. Computers are boring, so why are we trying to be one?
What I’m trying to say is that there is a difference between functioning and living. We learn to function, we love to live. Functioning is necessary for living, but it’s not the reason for living.
My graded photograph is stupid. The mark is useless. the only thing that helps are the comments on the back of the page that give me suggestions on how to take a better photograph. That information is totally subjective, but will help me a great deal more then a number. Numbers are for math, Math is for functioning, artistic photographs are… not.
The comedy here lies in the fact that I have to try to convince you, with compelling ideas, not facts, to live. There is no mathematical equation that qualifies the joy of life, but there is a photograph.
That said, my mark wasn’t too shabby.