Imperfect Beauty

 Analog is to digital as candles are to lasers. 

 

Imperfection is the spice of life and here's why.

I'm a lover of analog sound and so generally prefer vinyl to CD's. When recording I prefer analog tape to digital. Both formats have advantages and disadvantages but in the end I suppose I'm a naturalist.

For me, analog is to digital as candles are to lasers. Who wants to cuddle up with a loved one sharing wine and a great movie with a laser beam on the coffee table?

Digital recording is pure clean sound whereas analog recording by nature picks up “extraneous” ambient noise. Playback on vinyl adds even more noise--especially if your records are dusty. Nothing wrong with noise, though, because it's part of the real world and gives warmth and vitality to music.




Perfection is boring. Have you ever heard a perfect sine wave generated by a synthesizer? It's a monotonous soul-sucking tone. In contrast, a single held note on a cello (complete with vibrato) is an example of variation over and under the note, which gives it character and expression. 

 

 Yawn-inducing sine wave diagram showing perfect "peaks" and "troughs."

Same goes for art. One of the first things you learn in illustration is to vary your sketch lines. Perfect and even line widths have a purpose, but generally they are to be avoided.

Variations or “imperfections” are therefore the soul of artistic expression. 

 

Joe Kubert rocking the page. Check out the variety of line widths and values from white to black.

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all systems tend toward greater disorder or entropy.

It's easy to break a glass but harder to piece it back together; visually and on a gut level I prefer broken glass to whole and lightning storms to perfect days, but that's me. As an artist, pure forms can be lovely (e.g., a child's face) but I much prefer a weathered face with lots of character. I think most people prefer worn-out t-shirts and boots with some scuff.

Some researchers set up an experiment in a mall to see what sort of female face would test as the most beautiful. It is generally acknowledged that symmetry is intrinsically pleasing to most people, however, when test subjects made their own changes to a digital female face, they found that over time the preference was for “average” or more asymmetrical features.


Not surprised that mall goers chose something average, but you get the idea.

So it goes for literature. No one wants to read a perfectly nice story with a tidy ending (except my mother). We want something to go awry, to deviate from the norm: no one gets on a roller coaster that goes in a straight line. 


Thank you, imperfection, for keeping it real.