The mathematical physicist must simplify in order to get a manageable model, and although his concepts are of great beauty, they are austere in the extreme, and the more complicated crystal patterns observed by the metallurgist or geologist, being based on partly imperfect reality, often have a richer aesthetic content. Those who are concerned with structure on a super atomic scale find that there is more significance and interest in the imperfections in crystals than in the monotonous perfection of the crystal lattice itself.
Recently there is a tendency to pursue distortion in art, but in the case of this jar, natural deformation has raised distortion to the level of spontaneous beauty.
Generally speaking, the Western perception of art has its roots in Greece. For a long time its goal was perfection, which is particularly noticeable in Greek sculpture. This was in keeping with Western scientific thinking; there are no painters like Andrea Mantegna in the East. I am tempted to call such art ‘the art of even numbers’.
In contrast to this, what the Japanese eye sought was the beauty of imperfection, which I would call ‘the art of odd numbers’. No other country has pursued the art of imperfection as eagerly as Japan.
We love to see the process, not just the result. The imperfections in your work can be beautiful if they show your struggle for perfection, not a lack of care.
Local Code was Sorkin’s attempt to design a whole city from scratch—with one big twist. The whole thing had been written as if it were the byzantine, nearly impossible to follow codes and regulations for an entire, hypothetical metropolis. The effect is like stumbling upon the source code for SimCity. Sorkin’s exhaustively made point was that, if you know everything about a given metropolis, from its plumbing standards to its parking requirements, its sewer capacity to the borders of its school districts, then you could more or less accurately imagine the future form of that city from the ground up.