There is Such a Thing as a Stupid Question
This was really bugging me the last few days. Zed Shaw gave a presentation at CUSEC the other week, to which he followed up in his blog about how wonderful truly inquisitive people can be. He’s just lucky that he got to meet inquisitive intelligent people. The truth is, contrary to what you may have heard from your middle-school teacher, there is such a thing as a stupid question. I know this because I heard you ask it.
When in the presence of smart people, try to listen first.
Concordia is in the middle of a speaker series for our faculty of arts. It started off with a brilliant man by the name of Leonardo da Vinci Theo Jansen, who not only packed the auditorium once, but was kind enough to offer a repeat presentation (right after the first) to the second auditorium-ful of people who were waiting out in the lobby that night.
Theo is an interesting fellow, because his work is interdisciplinary– meaning, it’s partly art and partly engineering. I’m no expert in either field, but I know enough to know how to divide most of the aspects of his work. Now, it’s important that I reiterate that this speaker series is targeted to our faculty of arts– fine arts. Although I major in engineering, I attended the talk because a friend of mine thankfully informed me at the last minute. His work may marry two foreign fields of creation, but I’m starting to think his talk would have been much better suited to an engineering crowd than a bunch of art students. I think after you realize how little they understood about this guy, you’ll agree.
It’s Theo fucking Jansen.
This is the first thing that really got me. I was standing out in the lobby, and I actually heard someone say,
Guy: "So who is this Theo Jansen [mispronounced, by the way] anyway? My professor told me to come see him speak."
Girl: "Oh, he makes sculptures that move. It’s cool"
You know, I have no problem with people who don’t know who he is– he’s not exactly popular or anything. Really, I think this guy is godly, but I don’t care that you went "Theo who?" when you just read his name for the first time 20 seconds ago. The issue is, if you’re going to expressly see one specific person speak, don’t go without figuring out who he is first. Surely don’t go just because your professor told you to. I’m sure even art students are capable of using Google.
And yea, it wouldn’t have been so aggravating to hear that if it was some isolated incident. But over the course of the evening it became clear that these people really didn’t understand or care about what he did.
Questions are not supposed to be a chance for you to flex your ego
This is probably not limited to art students, but some people think that question period is a chance to show the speaker that you’re as brilliant as they are. I don’t know why that is. They’ll ask questions they already know the answer to, just to hear them agree, and then nod as if they knew it all along. Luckily enough, this girl didn’t quite get the opportunity to nod, because Mr. Jansen had no clue what she was talking about:
Girl: "I notice that you pay a lot of attention to forms in your work, for instance the motion of the feet [pointing to display of Strandbeest moving legs]. Do you do this for aesthetic purposes?"
Firstly, it should be clear that nearly 5 minutes before this question, Theo was discussing how he used a computer algorithm to model and select the leg-tubing ratios to generate the best possible motion of movement. He actually went relatively in depth on the subject, and showed a video of him hacking away at an old Atari computer executing evolution-modelling algorithms (the video actually used a cute little rendition of Conway’s Game of Life to illustrate what was going on) and reading all these crazy numbers out of a tiny little monitor. He had very little part in the aesthetic outcome of his creations. His goal was function and efficiency, not aesthetics. This girl didn’t get it. She didn’t listen. To her, this was an art project first, an experiment in evolution second (if at all), and the formulation of his work in her head become nothing but a selective adaptation of what she wanted to believe about what he created.
Don’t judge…
If you’re going to ask someone a question, do it because you want to know what they think. More importantly, don’t pretend you know what they think. This is probably one of the reasons I don’t think an art crowd was right for this guy. Throughout the entire night, everyone was judging him primarily as an artist. The questions revolved around things like where he got his inspiration, how he dealt with his creative ideas, etc. They thought he was one of them.
Don’t get me wrong, Theo’s work is very aesthetically pleasing. Even his Wikipedia article describes him as an artist, but the fact that it’s considered art is not intentional. He knows this, but people didn’t really get it. It was clear that the second they saw him walk on the stage they immediately judged him as an artist– with a proverbial paintbrush in one hand, a canvas in the other, and a degree in fine arts just like them. The problem is that he has no fine arts degree– but he does have one in science. He mentioned this, but it was too late– they had already judged him.
The way you ask it matters. Think context.
It’s no surprise that Theo Jansen didn’t understand half of the questions posed to him. Now, the guy is Dutch, so some of the problem may have been a simple language barrier issue (though he seemed well versed enough in English to me), but I think this was more due to the completely different context in which questions were asked. When this man creates new "species" (not "works", "sculptures" or "canvases", mind you) he isn’t thinking lines, forms or figures. He doesn’t think colour, composition, deep artistic value. He realizes they’re there, but that is not his goal. He was relatively clear about this throughout his talk. Clear because he never said any of this stuff once, but he did talk plenty about evolution, genes and mathematics. It still didn’t really get through to the audience:
Guy: "Do you add noise to your creatures purposefully to create a certain mood?"
There is a right and wrong way to ask a question. There are certain contexts which people understand, certain ways of phrasing a question that will be more accustomed to the way certain people think. Using artistic language to someone who isn’t formally trained in the arts probably won’t bode well with them. How do you answer that? What mood? Stop judging me as an artist and listen to what I just told you! Argh! Here, Theo Jansen, I’ll be aggravated so you don’t have to.
There are no stupid questions, only stupid people
Actually, there are both. I’ve found that stupid people usually ask stupid questions, though the converse is not equally true. This rant is not an exercise in defining what a "stupid question" is. That can be largely subjective, even with the examples listed above. The point is that there are some clear cases when you should really just keep your mouth shut unless you know what you’re doing.
The whole notion that no question is stupid is brought about by the education system to invite participation from young, potentially shy, children. The whole assumption is that if you have this lovey-dovey accepting environment, people open up more. It’s true. But we’re not children anymore, and we don’t need to be tricked into asking questions. Adults are aware when they’re completely lost, when they need an issue clarified, or when they can figure it out on their own. Asking a question doesn’t make you cool anymore.
It’s great to have questions. Zed loved it. I’ve done presentations and loved the questions too. But I loved the questions that weren’t forced– the ones that actually came from true willingness to understand. I don’t need proof that you were paying attention, and I certainly don’t need to listen to you flatter yourself about your knowledge of XYZ just because you’ve been given a convenient opportunity to do so. These are stupid questions, and I demand anybody to prove me wrong.
