World of Flimmer

Its strange, but there are few things that scare me more than perfection. Perhaps it is because being it is the lack of a human touch. Perfection gives a machine-like feeling, and it may work well in some contexts - for instance if you use a drum machine or generates a design that is intended to provide the audience with a sterile impression. There is nothing wrong with doing something like that - as long as it is a conscious decision.

But what is really this illusive "human touch"? I guess the magic really comes from it being an analogue process. Anything analogue contains something asymetric, elements which are unpredictable. And few things are more interesting than exactly that, the unpredictable.

Most people who knows me would probably be surprised to hear about my sentiments in regard to imperfection and unpredactebility, after all - I am working with computers almost 24/7. But one thing is using these tools - another thing is what kind of end result you are looking for. I do not mind creating a design that is 110% based on fractals or a simple 3D rendering - but it never gets interesting until you start mixing in parts of a photograph, a portrait, an image of a city, a scan of some lines drawn with coals - elements that introduce imperfection and adds a different kind of structure to the layout.

The same goes for the before mentioned drum machines. As far as I know, one of the first things that got added to electronic drumsets were exactly this: an option to randomly miss a beat, perhaps hitting the hihat a split second too early or late - something to make the result sound less perfect.

The same goes for fashion photography - its okay to clean up the pictures and remove spots on the models, but if you work with the portaits too much, you may end up with something that crosses the line into the uncanny valley. Since I also have worked with these kind of issues, it is very interesting to for instance read about people like Pascal Dangin who seem to be understanding that retouching is not about perfection, it is about beautification and not dehumanisation. It is a pleasure reading about what he was looking for in a picture, what he wanted to change and how he approached it.

But perfection is so many other things than just beautifying pictures, adjusting colours or creating 3D models and robots. It is a topic that appears time and time over again in religion, philosophy, politics - in every aspect where human activities are applied. "To fail is human, to forgive is godlike", meditating to achive Nirvana, communism, capitalism - all are proverbs and methodologies created to describe or achieve the perfect society or life. And of course - everything is bound to fail.

Being human is about imperfection. I do personally regard imperfection as a kind of charge, something that can ignite the sparks of change. Even if change is not necessarily a good thing, I do at least believe it is better than the alternative: static. It is just as with evolution - if a species is not able to adapt to changes in the environment or other kind of circumstances, it is bound to sooner or later become extinct.

So in the end it may just be that it is our ability to be less than perfect that will make us service. It makes us more interesting, it makes us adapt, and it makes it possible to identify more with ... well, the imperfect.

But even if this is the case, we are still drawn to and searching for the perfect, even if we are repulsed by it when we are confronted with it. We are walking enigmas - which makes us a very interesting species. Which is just perfect for me.