emptiness
Occupied by a void
Roland Barthes wrote that the centre of Tokyo is occupied by a void...it is a quiet forest that lies at Tokyo's heart.
...The centre of Tokyo is certainly a void, but one that is protected by a circular train line, the Yamanote, which forms a 40-km (25-mile) loop around it. It seems to me that this ring of steel emphasizes the importance of the void, and the depth of its significance.
Names vs. The Nothing
This is the first site along the tour. In here we have a void. I remember the building that used to stand here, it was painted blue. Passing through it, you can imagine how us, as ghosts – should the building be standing here – would have to actually be invisible to pass through these walls and now it’s the reverse. The building is the ghost and we’re passing through these walls.
Erased de Kooning Drawing
Once, Robert Rauschenberg erased most of a drawing by Willem de Kooning, and then named it Erased de Kooning Drawing.
I am in no way certain what this is connected to either, but I suspect it is connected to more than I once believed it to be connected to.
Most important of all are the pauses
Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.
Empty rooms
A Quote by Bruce NaumanI don't think empty rooms are ever really empty. I think we subconsciously put our emotions into them.
Monkeys testing random designs
A/B testing is an effective approach to use science to design and deliver deeply-frustrating user experiences.
A/B testing without upfront research is just random monkeys testing random designs to see which of those designs do “best” against random criteria.
If drug testing was actually implemented like most A/B tests, you’d give 2 drugs to 2 groups of people and pick the “winner” by whichever group had fewer deaths.