Sense and Sensibilities (distinguishing and discriminating)

When discussing such things as taste, discrimination and discernment, there is always a risk of sounding elitist.  It's an occupational hazard in the arts. But, as I hope to show, this is due to two quite different ways in which we are capable of responding to experiences, one of which we all have access to, whilst the other has to be learned.

"But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to increase and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty." —David Hume (1757)

It could be said that an art school education is largely directed towards the cultivation of sensibilities, to the sharpening and refinement of tastes and to the subtleties and nuances of method, media and process. In order for us to become conversant with and to develop our appreciation of the fine details and qualities of experience it is often necessary to attend closely to the minutiae of sensations and to form distinctions between subtly different materials, gestures, expressions etc. But does this skill emerge through sensory experience alone or do language, and the distinctions that language enables, play a vital part in what Hume called "the delicacy of taste"? He writes: "Where the organs are so fine, as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact, as to perceive every ingredient in the composition: This we call delicacy of taste."

Hume observes that our first experiences of things are often "obscure and confused; and the mind is, in a great measure, incapable of pronouncing concerning their merits or defects." But as experience increases, "The organ [of taste] acquires greater perfection in its operations; and can pronounce, without danger or mistake, concerning the merits of every performance." But if it is the case that experience and exacting discrimination are sufficient to explain this skill then we are left with an unsettled question: do animals develop a delicacy of taste through experience also? And if experience and fine discriminatory capacities are fundamental to a delicacy of taste then old dogs and innumerable other mature animals must possess sensibilities that far exceed our own.

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s Timothy D. Wilson and colleagues published the results of several frequently cited studies which explored the relationships between feelingful or “affective” judgements and verbal criteria. In the most famous of these studies test-subjects were asked to rank a selection of 5 jams in order of quality. The average rankings determined by these novice jam tasters turned out to be fairly closely correlated with rankings determined by expert jam tasters. Another group of novice jam tasters were also asked to take the test but in this case they were asked to make a note of the reasons for their judgements before ranking each jam. In this case the average rankings were significantly unlike those of the expert tasters.

Wilson et al conclude that what differentiates novices from experts is that novices have not yet integrated their affective states into a conceptual system, with the consequence that their attempts to verbalise their feelings fail to do them justice. Experts, on the other hand, have a much more stable grasp of their conceptual system and the ways this describes and frames their underlying affective states.

What this research reveals is that experience alone is insufficient for the development of our sensibilities. No matter how many jams I try - and I like jam a lot - I'll never become an expert simply by triggering my affective states, by tasting my way. What makes the crucial difference is my capacity to structure and articulate my feelings through language. 

Savouring a sensation then, can be thought of in two quite different ways. We can prolong an experience by deliberately lingering over it - sustaining and consolidating the associated feelings. Or we can contemplate an experience by carefully distinguishing between its component parts. This would be impossible if not for the categories and concepts of language. The ability to discriminate, on the other hand, is enabled by our sensory capacities, capacities that we share, though obviously to differing degrees of resolution and acuity, with other animals. 

Sensibilities, it turns out, are what language enables us to derive from the affective responses of sensory discrimination - from our senses. Without language we might still be able to savour our sensations but we would be unable to contemplate them. Not only is contemplation linguistically derived, it is also inherently social, precisely because of these linguistic roots. Perhaps this is why much of the most memorable and pleasurable savouring is that which is shared.

"No pleasure has any savor for me without communication." —Michel de Montaigne

Discriminating Attractiveness (Part II)

In 1989 Stephen Buck and Drew Tiene undertook a study of student evaluations of expected teacher effectiveness made on the basis of photographs. In addition to the photographic images Buck and Teine also provided printed descriptions of the “teaching philosophies” of the pictured teachers in terms of  authoritarianism or humanism. In contrast to earlier studies where only photographs were used Buck and Tiene discovered that in this instance the physical appearances of the teachers made no difference to the evaluations made. Buck and Tiene concluded that: “Attractiveness by itself was not found to have an effect on any of the ratings of teacher effectiveness.”

On the face of it this is very reassuring because it suggests that the physiognomies of teachers play an insignificant role in perceptions of their potential to teach when compared with other factors. However, it could be argued that the underlying assumption - that appearances are the only gauge of attractiveness - is fundamentally mistaken. Someone’s teaching-philosophy is by no means a neutral description of their approach to teaching. On the contrary, it is a significant indicator of their beliefs and values as a teacher and more generally as a human being. Buck and Teine appear to have overlooked the fact that beliefs and values are major contributors to behaviour - and behaviour is surely an inextricable component of attractiveness. 

So whilst physical appearances might have a negligible influence on peoples’ evaluations of one another, behaviour on the other hand has a significantly greater impact. Your friends are probably not your friends because they are physically attractive (although you might find them so). They are your friends because of the things they say and do, because of the many subtle and attractive ways they behave. 

If art can tell us anything about this subject it is that we very definitely make judgements, not simply on the content of expression but on its form. But where people are concerned, expression comes in many different forms, not merely the physical. Few people would disagree that photographs are a dubious means to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers or students. But if no other clues are available we will inevitably make assumptions based on whatever evidence is presented. It is no surprise therefore that the UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) phased out the use of applicant photographs more than a decade ago. 

If behaviour really is a more accurate determinant of the effectiveness of teachers, then how much time do you imagine would be needed to form an accurate evaluation of a teacher? Presumably it would be necessary to get to know them a little first, say an hour at least to be really sure. Longer? In the early 1990’s psychologist Nalini Ambady and colleagues conducted a number of studies of evaluations of expected teacher competence based on video footage. They found that even with as little as 6 seconds of video: “complete strangers were able to predict quite accurately the ratings of teachers by students who had interacted with them over the course of a whole semester!” Indeed they found that with only 2 seconds of silent video the evaluations suffered little in accuracy. 

Like Buck and Tiene, Ambady and colleagues found no significant evidence of the influence of attractiveness on the evaluations. But, like Buck and Tiene, they also made the assumption that attractiveness is a measure of physical appearances. Closer examination of the behavioural criteria used to rate the teachers reveals that eleven out of the fifteen behaviours evaluated could, without the slightest difficulty, be considered as attractive - they were as follows: Accepting, Active, Attentive, Competent, Empathetic, Enthusiastic, Honest, Likeable, Optimistic, Supportive and Warm. The implication then, is that the majority of qualities considered important in highly rated teachers are also commonly regarded as attractive.

Part III further compares physical appearances with behaviours and concludes by considering the implications of a alternative interpretation of the nature of behavioural traits.

Discriminating Attractiveness (Part I)

Do physical and other forms of attractiveness play a part in teaching and learning? Do the appearance, demeanour, character and behaviour of students and teachers make any difference to how they perceive one another? Does attractiveness influence evaluations made, attention given or expectations formed?

Much as I’d like to say an unequivocal “No” to these questions the evidence proves overwhelmingly otherwise. Attractiveness plays a part in all human interactions – even the purely textual.

This is clearly a taboo subject and you certainly won’t find mention of it in any university policy documents or prospectuses. Universities would be quick to distance themselves even from the touchpaper of favouritism let alone anything more incendiary.

Even though the impact of attractiveness is extremely difficult to gauge accurately, it is no doubt widespread, not just in education but in all walks of life, which is probably why it so often goes unmentioned and unacknowledged. We are animals after all and we are subject to forces that have shaped our species over millennia.

Fortunately attractiveness takes many forms and what appears superficially unattractive often turns out to have deeper qualities and subtleties – this is a lesson that art demonstrates over and over again. But this doesn’t change the fact that attractiveness has a significant influence on human behaviour, it simply shifts the emphasis to another level where judgments are made by other criteria – though criteria that are no less aesthetic in nature.

Judgements are undoubtedly influenced by aesthetics. Why else would we pay attention to beauty if it were not a strong indicator of genetic fitness? Whether it be a fertile landscape, a ripe fruit or a sunny day we are commonly drawn to things that must have provided our ancestors with survival advantages and would therefore have contributed to the gradual selection of the genes we have inherited.

Do you find your friends attractive? How could you not? You might not find them physically attractive but there must be something that draws you to them, to want to spend time in their company. No doubt they enjoy spending time with you for similar reasons.

From the very earliest schooling I can remember liking some teachers more than others, both male and female. The brusque authoritarian ones who smelt of stale cigarettes and seemed to thrive on meting out various forms of punishment were almost always unattractive to me and I know for certain that I tried less and cared less about what they had to teach. Of course there were some subjects that even the worst teachers could not entirely ruin but their adverse influence could be clearly felt and it was by no means inconsiderable.

Over the last few decades a significant amount of research has been undertaken around this subject and whilst the results have not always been in agreement there are strong indications that attractiveness plays a role in the evaluations students and staff make of one another. Other studies, in which the variables have been more carefully controlled,  claim to have found no evidence of the influence of attractiveness. However, a closer inspection of this research reveals that the predominant means of evaluating attractiveness has been through the use of photographic images: through physiognomy alone and therefore, I would suggest, the underlying assumptions need to be examined a little more critically.

Part II will discuss two of the most prominent of these studies in order to distinguish between physical and behavioural attractiveness.

Evaluating the Sensuous

"Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine – good God, how fine. It went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy – all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beatified Strawberry." –John Keats

Meaning, or “content”, as it is often described, is certainly a primary dimension of artworks but it would be a mistake to consider it as the primary dimension. Whilst art is undoubtedly a realm of significations, meanings and associations it is also a realm of the sensuous: of the profound variety and variability of physical qualities and their exquisite influence upon our senses. Artworks are formed through physical engagement with the stuff of the world and this stuff gives texture, substance and colour to experience. Indeed it is impossible to conceive of experience as something divorced from its physical causes and forms. To be without our senses would be precisely to be denied experience, since experience is surely the very stuff of sense impulses triggered and stimulated by the world around us. Without it would be to exist as an entirely disembodied consciousness in the most profoundly isolated and terrifying emptiness imaginable, with nothing but our memories and thoughts for company.

An education in the arts, at its very best, seeks to sensitise students to the subtleties and nuances of process and material, to encourage and inspire a deep familiarity with the extraordinary potential of sensory experience and to instil a sensitivity to the importance of inflection and an appreciation of the pleasures of lingering with and savouring the vast spectacle of the sensuous.

Grand ideals indeed, but are students aware that these are amongst the ‘objectives’ that their education sets out to instil and where exactly are they, or their equivalents, explicitly stated? - certainly not in the Grading Criteria, Learning Outcomes or even in the benchmark statements of the Quality Assurance Agency. How then, are the sensuous qualities of artworks to be evaluated, or rather, how might the sensuous qualities of artworks be evaluated fairly and, in order to do so, might it be necessary - or even possible - to establish meaningful and applicable criteria?

“In addition to interpretation, critics almost always make judgements about the quality of the work. Such judgements are statements about the merits of what has been seen, not statements about matters of preference. Judgements, such as “I think this is a good piece of work,” can be debated. Preferences, such as “I like this painting,” are not debatable; they are matters of choice.” –Elliot Eisner

This aspect of debatability - and the scrutiny it implies - is crucial, but in order for debate to proceed the discussion must address itself to the reasons that led to any judgements made. The more consistent and widely applicable these reasons, the more they are likely to approach what we might consider to be criteria: standards or principles by which judgements are qualified. But when it comes to sensuous experience are criteria really of any use in forming opinions? Surely we simply respond instinctively to the things we like, dislike or hate; to the things and experiences that impact upon our senses and emotions?

Certainly we are primed with instinctive reactions towards various phenomena and these instinctive responses may be relatively universal but they are also relatively unsophisticated. Just as often, perhaps significantly more so, our responses are informed and conditioned by prior experience and this allows us to judge similar experiences directly and immediately without having to abstract ourselves from the immanent sensation of embodied experience. Keat’s didn’t apply criteria to his nectarine, at least, he didn’t consciously deliberate in-the-moment over the specific qualities of his experience. To have done so would have distracted him from the fullness of experience. His evaluation – if we can call it that - is retrospective and clearly seeks not simply to describe the experience but to celebrate it by inducing, as far as possible, a palpable evocation through the eloquent flow of precisely woven form.

Could we formulate criteria for the evaluation of nectarines? No doubt, and it seems likely that these criteria would probably capture much that Keats sought to distil (fruit growers and competition judges probably already use such criteria). Could we create criteria for fruit in general? Possibly, but this would pose a much more challenging task and the criteria formed would likely have little value to the individual nectarine grower.

So, what possible value could criteria have for that impossibly diverse and bizarre form of fruit known as art? And does this mean that we have no means to fairly evaluate the sensuous qualities of art? Moreover, might the relative lack of emphasis and acknowledgement of the sensuous in art school Assessment Criteria and Learning Outcomes be responsible for a growing indifference and lack of awareness of one of art’s most vital attributes?

“How should we develop students' unassessable qualities? Should we refrain from developing them because we can't measure them?” –Phil Race 

Brought to Brook (Memetic Innovation as a Threshold Concept)

In a previous post I mentioned a conference keynote given by Donald Brook and his claim that “experimental art” is a tautology. Soon after posting I was contacted directly by Brook wishing to politely clarify some points and to offer me a copy of his paper so that I could study it more carefully.

After a momentary impulse to stand my ground and argue the case I decided instead to give his paper a closer look and to try to follow the thesis. This led to a flurry of emails which I’m pleased to say Brook was generous and patient enough to engage in.

In educational theory there is an increasingly popular idea known as “Threshold Concepts” which describes those areas of difficult conceptual terrain encountered as one ventures further into any specialist domain. These thresholds invariably challenge already established conceptual schema (in fact they often overturn them) and once assimilated they transform the learner’s view of the subject forever and may even alter their view of themselves and of the world. Powerful stuff where epistemology and ontology collide!

I’m not entirely sure that Brook’s ideas have been exactly a threshold concept for me but they have certainly proved troublesome, discursive and liminal: all characteristic elements of threshold concept thinking.

Now comes the difficult part – to describe the concept.

The initial idea, as I see it, stems from the identification of a split in the meaning of the word “art”. “Art”, according to Brook, is a homonym and the two senses of the word are so often conflated that any discussion of the term quickly leads into a mire of unnecessary philosophical complexity and specious argument.

Art version 1 or “art#1” as I will call it, is a trans-historical, cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary human capacity for creative innovation and it’s the art we speak of when we discuss the “art of gardening”, the "art of crime" or even the “art of craft” for that matter. Brook dubs this form of art “memetic innovation” (not to be confused with mimetic innovation). Following on from Richard Dawkins’ and others theorisation of memes (which are the cultural equivalent of genes) Brook sees art#1 as those unexpected – and to that extent unintentional - discoveries within all fields of human ingenuity (not just that field where artworks are made) that can be recognized, shared and repeated. This aspect of repeatability is crucial since it is this that allows a mere epiphany to endure beyond being a simple flash in the pan to become a disseminable meme (this raises some very interesting ideas relating to the nature of survival to which I will return shortly).

Memes, like genes, propagate themselves as copies. However, there is an important difference, as Brook writes:

“Genes are replicated, which is a causal process, whereas memes are imitated, which is an intentional and voluntary process. The one thing they have in common is that they may be perfectly replicated (or imitated, as the case may be) or they may be imperfectly replicated (or imitated). Perfect replication (or imitation) ensures the perpetuation of a kind; imperfect replication (or imitation) results—through evolutionary adaptation—in the historical emergence, shaping and extinction of a kind.”

So like genes, memes undergo variations which may or may not be better adapted to their current environment. Those that are, survive and propagate themselves further, those that do not, tend to be superseded or to die off in classic Darwinian fashion.

“Art#2” as it will be known here, is the name the artworld gives to those objects and experiences, in all their myriad forms, that it classifies as art: it is “the class of works of art” as Brook puts it. Brook’s insight into the bifurcated nature of the term "art" allows us to gain powerful conceptual traction when dealing with, for example, what has become known as the “Institutional Theory” of art widely popularized by Arthur Danto and particularly George Dickie in his books Aesthetics: An Introduction (1971) and Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (1974). Simply put, the Institutional Theory of Art claims that art is anything that the artworld says it is. It’s an extremely prevalent justification (most likely because it takes no brain power to trot it out, ie: it’s a resilient meme) used by gallerists or artists like Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst.

In 1980 the British aesthetician Richard Wollheim took the Institutional Theory of Art to task by arguing that art should have reasons for being art. If there are no good reasons then there is likewise no good reason to consider the artifacts claiming to be art as art. Furthermore, if the artworld adopts something as art then we should examine the artworld’s reasons, since the claim that “it’s art because we say so” is simply neither a compelling nor a persuasive justification.

Dickie returned to the debate in 1998 but Wollheim’s emphasis on reasons continues to stack up very well, though it is perhaps true that a few concrete examples of what he meant by reasons would have provided clearer evidence of what was required as necessary and sufficient conditions for considering something as art.

Brook’s theory allows us to take this argument one step further and by a completely different route dispensing entirely with the field of aesthetics which Brook views as spurious. Through it we are able to establish that the art that Dickie and the Institutional Theorists speak of (the art that most of us think of when we hear ‘authorities’ speak of art) is predominantly art#2. It may also contain examples of art#1 (memetic innovation) but the Institutional Theory provides no purchase upon this distinction.

In an essay of 1947, on the subject of Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell writes:

"In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is 'good' ... Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion."

This aspect of survival, which pertains equally to artworks as it does to literature, can be seen as an analogue of memetic replication. Memes survive by being imitated, and culture, as a closely woven tapestry of memes, reproduces itself through the imitation of these memes and evolves as a direct consequence of memetic innovation: through favourable variations in imitation that are recognised and exploited. The test of literary, artistic or cultural merit, according to this theory of memetic innovation therefore, is not simply measured by survival but through the continuing duplication of its underlying memes. Art#2 survives by being repeatedly made in the likeness of previous art and is fuelled by those rare, unpredictable and invaluable variations that comprise art#1.

Art then (or rather the art#1 of art) comprises all those firsts of a kind: the first use of perspective, the first use of cubism, the first work of abstraction and so forth. Everything else is merely a repetition of a then recognizable form*. There may be a certain latitude for the refinement of a newly discovered meme (think for instance of Picasso’s refinement of Braque’s invention of Synthetic Cubism) though this is arguably simply the exercise of greater determination, deviousness or quick wittedness on the part of Picasso and is therefore not a form of memetic innovation but simply the skillful exercise of art#2. Art#2 can quite comfortably be thought of as craft: bereft of innovation what else could it be? This is not to say that art#2 lacks skill or meaning or is an entirely redundant form of cultural production and discourse but simply that the initial insight or discovery (the art of art) is only ever manifested in the first of its kind: the originary memetic innovation.

If the implications of all this have not struck you yet it may well be that, as in my case, you initially perceive all this as fairly straightforward. However, to return to the theory of Threshold Concepts for a moment: a further characteristic of Threshold Concepts is that they are reconstitutive ie: it’s not so much the initial acquisition of the theory that is troublesome but the consequences of the application of the theory for ones conceptual schema and this only emerges once one begins to apply the theory to already existing examples (like the idea that cultural survival – Ars Longa - is intrinsically linked to the replication of memes). Also, due to the nuances and complexity of many Threshold Concepts, it can take time to fully assimilate the theory with the result that learners often find themselves switching between feeling that they’ve grasped the concept one moment only to find the next moment that they need to start right back at square one (as I often have). On a side note, I imagine there is some very interesting – perhaps even innovative - work to be done on the nature of Threshold Concepts as memes and the importance of reproducibility and digestibility in concept formation and dissemination (Threshold Concepts are invariably the hummingbirds of the meme world: highly specialised). Equally, there is perhaps a challenge for Brook to package the theory of memetic innovation such that it might itself become a meme rather than a rather thorny academic epiphany.

There’s much more to say about this theory and I’ve already skirted over a lot of the important details (like his claim “there's no way to make art; only to find it?”) but this blog post is already far too bloated. Inevitably there are more questions raised than answers provided here but if you have a desire to follow up on the theory I have included a couple of links below. There’s also a 145 page book available, published by Artlink, Australia - though the price tag is prohibitive. It’s also likely that the organisers of the Conference where Donald Brook presented his keynote will publish his paper. If so I’ll post a link here too (here).

*Brook also points out that: “It’s important to see that there is both absolute memetic innovation (nobody could do whatever-it –is before somebody did it) and relative or subjective memetic innovation (lots of people could do it, but nobody had mentioned it to me). You might be astonished to find that something working as a merely repetitive commonplace for you is a revelation for me!”

Links:

“The Aweful Truth About What Art Is” is now available for download as an eBook here

Here’s a good review of “The Aweful Truth About What Art Is”:

http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3239/brooks-way-with-kinds-categories-and-memes/

And several edifying and entertaining essays can be found here, some quite closely related to the ideas of Memetic Innovation:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/donald-brook-27486.html

Variation and Perfection

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about “variation” and I’m beginning to realise that it plays an easily overlooked but vital role in our understanding and appreciation of a constellation of concepts including “uniqueness,” “rarity,” “perfection,” “quality,” “value,” and “greatness” etc. These are things to which we might aspire and they lead many people in the world to extraordinary lengths simply for the hope of experiencing the vaguest glimpse of them. Global culture is, to a large degree, driven by this desire: to be the best, the greatest, the highest quality, the most efficient, the most economical, the most sustainable, the most valuable, the most perfect.

All quantifiable things, by definition, lend themselves to being measured, and it is through measurement that we might seek to improve them. As Lord Kelvin famously noted: “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” But not all things that can be measured, can be improved. We can measure the hue, intensity and brightness of a myriad of colours but we’d likely be certifiable if we sought to improve say indigo, crimson or ochre. These colours are what they are. We might prefer one particular colour over all others, but this does not make International Klein Blue either qualitatively or quantitatively better than any other colour. Our preferences are subjective aesthetic choices, not objective facts.

When discussing aesthetic matters we can still talk in terms of “quality,” “value” and “greatness” etc. but the further we venture into this territory the more unwieldy and contentious the criteria we might apply. Once again, we are dealing with preferences – very elaborate ones - but preferences nonetheless. Over time we might find that we share the ‘taste’ of a certain connoisseur and that their preferences lead us to a fuller understanding and enjoyment of our own experiences but there is nothing objectively more True about their opinion than that of any other equally well informed and experienced consumer. Truth, in fact, doesn’t actually figure in the equation, since we are not dealing with facts so much as feelings and sensations - not measurable things ‘out there’ so much as complex and notoriously difficult to quantify internal states. If you’re at all doubtful about this claim then consider for a moment the extent to which societies institute teams, juries, boards, committees and panels etc. to make critical judgements in cases where the possibility of subjective bias may lead to faulty or damaging decisions. In such cases we substitute inter-subjectivity (collective judgement) as a proxy for the goal of pure objectivity.

So where does variation fit in? Perhaps the easiest way to approach this is to introduce the experience of food (though the principle could be applied to any sensory experience). Imagine the most perfect meal you’ve ever eaten. Would you wish to dine on this same experience day in, day out, morning, noon and night for the rest of your life? Doubtful. The experience would very soon become monotonous to the point of disgust. My point therefore, is that where aesthetic matters are concerned, quality is nothing without variation.

Yet another important aspect of what makes anything valuable is “rarity,” such that when rare things become abundant they cease to retain their value. Paradoxically though, what we also find, is that rarity and variation pull in entirely different directions. Rarity calls for uniqueness and scarcity whereas variation calls for multiplicity and diversity. This might well explain why there is such a widespread emphasis on originality within the fields of aesthetic choice, since originality simultaneously provides something rare (the first of its kind) and variation (by adding something different to what we already have). It might also explain why true perfection is an ideal forever tantalisingly out of reach.

The Aesthetics of Crime (and a petty misdemeanor)

According to the stats, my post entitled “How to Cheat the Word Count” is one of the most visited on this blog, searches for “cheat the word count” apparently being fairly popular on Google. No surprises there then. Now, I’m all for the creative bending of rules and inventive alternatives to unexamined orthodoxies but borrowing other peoples hard earned deceits is surely a bit rich. Coming up with an innovative cheat is one thing, but stealing one simply heaps subterfuge upon swindle and lacks even the controversial virtue of guile. No honour among thieves indeed!

Seriously though, whilst I’m critical of unimaginative pilfering, the idea of dreaming up novel ways to cheat the system is by no means wholly distasteful to me. Moreover, the notion that creativity is somehow universally positive is clearly mistaken. Creativity’s dark side finds expression in fraud, computer viruses, terrorism, fakery, counterfeiting and many other familiar, and not so familiar, crimes. I’m certainly not about to condone such acts but it’s surely inconsistent not to be curious about, and sometimes even to admire, the human ingenuity that often lies eerily close at their heart.

A book on the aesthetics of crime would seem to be long overdue but perhaps the significant challenge for such a text would be to disentangle the principles at work in beautifully planned and executed crimes from their inherent immorality, the danger being that crime becomes unwittingly elevated to the status of art form. But there is no doubting that certain crimes have something strangely sublime - in the Burkian sense - about them that makes them all the more horrifying, and this horror emerges directly from the profound discord between the aesthetic and the moral. The same fascination can be seen in such films as Silence of the Lambs in which the character of Hannibal Lecter is portrayed as an inordinately creative but depraved monster.

As I say, this is a potential subject for a book (but not one that I’ll ever write) and is perhaps a little too ambitious for a blog post, so instead I’d like to relate a story on a much smaller scale.

Recently I was requested to attend some “staff development” training consisting of several online tasks, an online test and a day of workshops. I hate online tests, I’ll do almost anything to avoid them, and when it comes to assimilating information that has doubtful relevance to me or the things that I value, I’m also a good deal less than enthusiastic about sacrificing time that I could devote to more productive work (I’m sure I’m not alone in this respect?).

Since the online tasks were provided as independent study material, I decided to complete them as quickly as possible, which meant that I would have to devise an efficient method of cutting corners but at the same time gather the necessary data to pass the test (in education theory this is disparagingly termed “Surface Learning” but it’s something in which I consider myself to be something of an expert!).

One of the tests was audio based and required listening to an account of a fictitious event and answering questions based on information recall. I tried it once and failed. Being dysgraphic the task of keeping notes is quite a challenge for me, especially if I have to do it quickly, so this conventional solution really wasn’t applicable. How else to capture the audio then, so that I could refer back to it? My mobile phone of course! And since I’d taken this leap into the sneaky utilization of technology it was only a small step to open up each of the online learning materials in a separate window on my computer and to use this to directly access the answers to the required questions. I probably could have achieved a 100% score but that would have taken more time – I was trying to do this quickly remember – so a few incorrect answers were perfectly acceptable to pass the test.

Was this cheating? It certainly felt like cheating, but then, it also felt like being creative and in some ways the two are indistinguishable. Creativity is a process of improvising, of inventing solutions and transforming imagination into form. It frequently involves illusion (which itself is a form of deception), corner cutting and the exploitation of resources. If our ancestors had never evolved this formidable array of skills, including both their positive and negative aspects, it seems extremely unlikely that we would ever have descended from the trees.

So was it unethical to use technology to short-cut the test? If the information that needed to be assimilated was vital to my job then the answer is “Yes.” Am I therefore admitting to unethical behaviour? Not exactly. Some individuals are very good at retaining information and some are simply not – not unless it’s interesting to them that is – I’m obviously of the latter category. When we lesser mortals are tasked with the job of retaining information we often resort to tools and familiar methods: pen, paper and note taking for example, since it’s cheap and easily available.

My dysgraphia aside, why should the use of a technological form of data retrieval be more unethical than the conventional practice of note taking? I’d argue that it doesn’t. The only thing that made my use of technology ‘sneaky’ was the fact that this wasn’t envisaged by the people who put the online staff development materials together. Presumably it was their intention that these materials would slow down the process and force participants to take notes and assimilate the information at a slower rate. Slower does tend to correlate with better retention, but this begs the vital question: is information retention really necessary when technology provides us with readily available repositories of rapidly accessed information that effectively extend our cognitive capacities?

“Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves,
or we know where we can find information upon it.” -Samuel Johnson

Last February Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely published their research into the correlation between creativity and unethical behaviour in which they claim to have “found a robust relationship between creativity and dishonesty”. If the findings stand up to scrutiny and further research in a wider variety of settings then this would seem to create a genuine dilemma for employers in how to weigh up the potential gains as opposed to the potential losses of employing creative people in their businesses. The findings also present a dilemma for creative people themselves in evaluating their own ethical behaviour since, as Gino and Ariely point out, creative people are also more likely to come up with ingenious explanations to justify their unethical behavior.

Ah… perhaps I should go and do the staff development test again!