the art of noticing things
Aug. 15th, 2020 02:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenlua1)
an email i get all the time:
"i saw this huge bird flying outside today! it was REALLY big, and dark all over! do you think it was an eagle?"
there are so many questions i have to ask, and usually the querent cannot answer them: what shape was the bird, overall? were the wings narrow and pointy, or broad and flat? was it mostly gliding, or was it flapping its wings a lot? did it hold its wings flat or in a shallow v? what area were you in? was there a lake nearby?
and on and on. sometimes, they'll offhandedly mention some detail that singlehandedly IDs the bird, a detail that they didn't think was important at all until i pressed them.
more often, all they know is "a REALLY big bird," i have to tell them: there's no way to know for sure, based on that. here's what to look for next time.
learning to look for those details—how does the bird move? does that sparrow scratch the ground with one claw or two? is that swallow's flight dipping more like a violet-green's or more like a barn's?—is the whole process of becoming a birder. it is simple but not easy. go to the forest, find a bird, stare at it and just notice things. notice things until you think you've seen everything there is to see, then you notice more. leave the field guide at home; you'll get it out later. right now, just: look, look closer, closer than that.
2)
i watched a few episodes of the volleyball anime, and i found it amusing enough that i wanted to compare it against the real sport. luckily, some youtuber was happy to help, and—wow. i'm lowkey amazed at the folks putting together these youtube videos, and i'm amazed at the animators, for being able to notice so many details from the real sport, and slow it down, and craft a narrative around all those details that even a scrub like me can enjoy. volleyball moves so fast; i couldn't track any of those details while watching the real games.
i almost want to ask—what did those animators do? how did they learn what the key bits of volleyball are? did they just watch lots of videos in slow-motion? did they interview real volleyball players? was playing a few matches among themselves sufficient? or (my suspicion)—did the process of storyboarding force them to sit down and actually notice the bits that mattered?
because, for comparison—basketball's a sport i've watched a lot, but i'd be pretty stumped if i needed to storyboard a basketball anime. part of this is: i don't quite seem to have the head for basketball strategy that other folks have. everything i know, i learned from my very patient father, who watched tons of games with me, explaining all the positions and plays for me over and over until i kinda got it. but i remember watching games and only ever getting a vague feeling, a sort of bird's-eye feel for the pace and the tenor of the game; i would develop vague feelings like "wow, Kansas's outside shooting is really strong tonight," or, "why is Kentucky's center so out of it tonight?", but i never could've pointed out the specific details that caused me to make those judgments. the game moved too fast and i understood only half of it.
2b)
and that's an impulse i'm constantly trying to fight back against at work, actually—relying on my feeling of how things are rather than a concrete understanding of how things are, an understanding based on noticing all those gritty little details.
see, getting the feeling that a basketball team is doing well or poorly is all that i need to have fun at a basketball game. but in a tech job, you start noticing that dubious technical decisions getting made on the basis of: "everyone knows" that keeping two toolchains up-to-date is a nightmare so let's only use one, or "obviously" our performance constraints mean any garbage-collected language is a non-starter, and so on.
and the frustrating thing is, when you start trying to push back on these assumptions, often the common wisdom is right. you go dive into the nightmarish part of the system that everyone said will be horrible to refactor, because you think, "well, it can't be that bad...!", and then they're totally right and it is that bad and you feel like an idiot. sometimes you're lucky and the common wisdom is right for the wrong reasons—e.g., oh, okay, i was right that the memory overhead isn't actually the problem with using Application X, it's that the garbage collector causes unacceptable interruptions, so we're right to not use X but ffs everybody stop touting the same bullshit statistic about memory overhead all the time.
but you still have to push back all the time anyway, because the value you provide is almost always going to be when you are right and common wisdom is wrong and you're the only one noticing it. that's when you get to say, actually this thing we thought was totally impossible is totally possible, and here's the demo i made to prove it, and god that's such a high it makes all the "ugh i guess they were right after all" moments worth it.
3)
an email i get all the time:
"i saw this huge bird flying outside today! it was REALLY big, and dark all over! do you think it was an eagle?"
there are so many questions i have to ask, and usually the querent cannot answer them: what shape was the bird, overall? were the wings narrow and pointy, or broad and flat? was it mostly gliding, or was it flapping its wings a lot? did it hold its wings flat or in a shallow v? what area were you in? was there a lake nearby?
and on and on. sometimes, they'll offhandedly mention some detail that singlehandedly IDs the bird, a detail that they didn't think was important at all until i pressed them.
more often, all they know is "a REALLY big bird," i have to tell them: there's no way to know for sure, based on that. here's what to look for next time.
learning to look for those details—how does the bird move? does that sparrow scratch the ground with one claw or two? is that swallow's flight dipping more like a violet-green's or more like a barn's?—is the whole process of becoming a birder. it is simple but not easy. go to the forest, find a bird, stare at it and just notice things. notice things until you think you've seen everything there is to see, then you notice more. leave the field guide at home; you'll get it out later. right now, just: look, look closer, closer than that.
2)
i watched a few episodes of the volleyball anime, and i found it amusing enough that i wanted to compare it against the real sport. luckily, some youtuber was happy to help, and—wow. i'm lowkey amazed at the folks putting together these youtube videos, and i'm amazed at the animators, for being able to notice so many details from the real sport, and slow it down, and craft a narrative around all those details that even a scrub like me can enjoy. volleyball moves so fast; i couldn't track any of those details while watching the real games.
i almost want to ask—what did those animators do? how did they learn what the key bits of volleyball are? did they just watch lots of videos in slow-motion? did they interview real volleyball players? was playing a few matches among themselves sufficient? or (my suspicion)—did the process of storyboarding force them to sit down and actually notice the bits that mattered?
because, for comparison—basketball's a sport i've watched a lot, but i'd be pretty stumped if i needed to storyboard a basketball anime. part of this is: i don't quite seem to have the head for basketball strategy that other folks have. everything i know, i learned from my very patient father, who watched tons of games with me, explaining all the positions and plays for me over and over until i kinda got it. but i remember watching games and only ever getting a vague feeling, a sort of bird's-eye feel for the pace and the tenor of the game; i would develop vague feelings like "wow, Kansas's outside shooting is really strong tonight," or, "why is Kentucky's center so out of it tonight?", but i never could've pointed out the specific details that caused me to make those judgments. the game moved too fast and i understood only half of it.
2b)
and that's an impulse i'm constantly trying to fight back against at work, actually—relying on my feeling of how things are rather than a concrete understanding of how things are, an understanding based on noticing all those gritty little details.
see, getting the feeling that a basketball team is doing well or poorly is all that i need to have fun at a basketball game. but in a tech job, you start noticing that dubious technical decisions getting made on the basis of: "everyone knows" that keeping two toolchains up-to-date is a nightmare so let's only use one, or "obviously" our performance constraints mean any garbage-collected language is a non-starter, and so on.
and the frustrating thing is, when you start trying to push back on these assumptions, often the common wisdom is right. you go dive into the nightmarish part of the system that everyone said will be horrible to refactor, because you think, "well, it can't be that bad...!", and then they're totally right and it is that bad and you feel like an idiot. sometimes you're lucky and the common wisdom is right for the wrong reasons—e.g., oh, okay, i was right that the memory overhead isn't actually the problem with using Application X, it's that the garbage collector causes unacceptable interruptions, so we're right to not use X but ffs everybody stop touting the same bullshit statistic about memory overhead all the time.
but you still have to push back all the time anyway, because the value you provide is almost always going to be when you are right and common wisdom is wrong and you're the only one noticing it. that's when you get to say, actually this thing we thought was totally impossible is totally possible, and here's the demo i made to prove it, and god that's such a high it makes all the "ugh i guess they were right after all" moments worth it.
3)
“Most children enjoy the sound of language for its own sake. They wall in repetitions and luscious word-sounds and the crunch and slither of onomatopoeia; they fall in love with musical or impressive words and use them in all the wrong places. Some writers keep this primal interest in and love for the sounds of language. Others 'outgrow' their oral/aural sense of what they’re reading or writing. That’s a dead loss. An awareness of what your own writing sounds like is an essential skill for a writer. Fortunately it’s quite easy to cultivate, to learn or reawaken."
- Ursula Le Guin, from Steering the Craft
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 01:58 pm (UTC)(or 4) I receive a blurry photo of a hawk and the question "Tobias?" and I am pleased to report, it usually is Tobias. this is the one bird every self-respecting 90s kid DOES know)
anyway, yeah, noticing stuff and then contextualizing what one notices and knowing what to friggin' do with it is something I've been trying to work on w.r.t both writing and drawing during these vast amounts of downtime I have these days, so this post is some timely food for thought, ty!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 07:13 am (UTC)some self-professed total beginner birder describes some ABSOLUTELY WILD MULTICOLORED BIRD at a local park. everyone asks a bunch of "are you sure??? it was orange AND green???" type questions, and this n00b is like "yes? is that not normal??? sorry i'm new to this whole thing, i don't know what birds are normal"
...eventually an employee of the local zoo steps into the thread. yes, the zoo DID have an escapee from their south american songbird exhibit, and would OP care to provide more details so that the zoo can try and get him back?
and dang, yeah, contextualize, that's the word i was needing. tyty for the comment~
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 02:49 am (UTC)(i think, on this point ... you would really enjoy the two "Drawn to Life" volumes by Walt Stanchfield. he trained a lot of the god-tier Disney animators in this style of thinking, and his advice is very zen in the sense of being *incredibly* insightful/humanistic but also insanely... presently? detailed? he reminds me a lot of the Jaron Lanier dude you were mentioning the other day to me, in style, almost. you'd have a lot of fun seeing at how that style of 'noticing' transfers over.)
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 06:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-27 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-31 12:22 am (UTC)