De-Humanisation for (Real) Dummies

This was a rant. As such, it is not a very coherent piece. But It felt good to write it, at the time, and it is still valid.

Once upon a time, drunk as a bunch of monkeys, we were three friends on top of a veranda, talking about stuff late in the might.

We were one engineer (me) and two artists (my friends).

Nowadays it would be an artist (me), an engineer (me), and two deluded wrecks... OK, not really.  

There is life even when you earn your dough teaching plastic arts in a Switzerland High-school, I think. 

Maybe, 

sort of, 

I am not sure... 

No, there isn't - who am I kidding? Their life is over.

Anyway, we came to the conclusion (OK, I came, they just went along with it, not all so merrily to be honest) that artists and engineers are  not all that different.

Both battle with the limits of techniques and materials, trying to overcome them.

One step from perfection, and not a big one.

Both try to find the most elegant and beautiful solution to the formal problems they have in front  (1).

He, The Man

Good engineers' definition of "elegant" usually means "less complex".

Artists have things just slightly different, in that in most cases they find themselves their own problems to solve, and their idea of elegance is - really - more a case of "efficient transmission of emotions&sensations to the public".

My friends weren't much convinced - anyway, nowadays I still draw stuff, and they just grade some kid's home-works... (I am a devious bastard).

So, the artist and the engineer, in yours truly, tend to go together (2)

This, in turn, is an issue when someone that has no idea whatsoever goes out of his way to commission me the drawing of something that, I know, can't really be pulled off without killing the protagonist (I am not much of a snuff fan).

The artist in me thinks "this shit doesn't tell anything, about the world we live in, that I care to say", the engineer thinks "what a waste of a perfect cunt" ( I never draw ugly fucks, after all).

That's bad already, but the top of my personal disgust lies in what I'd gadly define as "stupid de-humanisation projects" - the ones that go too forward, beyond practical.

Having to clear her shit every day,
 how exactly represents an improvement?

This is usually compounded by the request that the protagonist "slave" must be shown to be clearly distressed, and totally unwilling to go along with the whole process.

What a pile of crap.

Now, it is not as much as a moral issue, as one of utter waste of resources.

Not only the girl... all the rest.

Why the heck should one waste his hard-earned shady contacts and money, to fuck with a woman that is not going to appreciate the effort?

Why, when it is quite possible to find another one that may like the idea (3)  and is going to be grateful, to finally be able to live her dreams?

Why should a sensible person risk some years of jail (in most countries, there are provisions of the kind of "no one able to understand could OK that!") for the sake of someone that will spend the rest of her life dreaming ways to kill him?

This isn't exactly my idea of a sound investment of one's own resources. No matter how limitless said resources may be... it is just throwing them away.

 

Really, guys?

The engineer think about it, and a screeching headache forms.

So, by the moment I finish reading the specifics of this kind of drawings, I am already a bit pissed.

Then, some people reaches to the conclusion that - to avoid the aforementioned potential retaliations - things must be carried on, to the level that the newly "created" "object slave" must be unable to do anything on her own... ears removed, eyes sutured, arms amputated above the elbow and, finally, toes removed (4).

To my engineer's brain, it is the apotheosis of waste... And, as the final product doesn't even look human, the artist isn't impressed either.

So, when I have to read a story with a character that has to spend quite some of his money (5), leaves a trail of "jail-scot-free cards" (6)  in the hands of every one of his accomplices, to have a "slave" that is unable to take care of herself and possibly still hates him,  I am not very impressed.

OK, OK - if someone pays, I draw whatever...

I know that fetishes are fetishes, and as such they aren't rational, but still....

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1. look at the engine of a Porsche 993, if you want a proof on the engineers' part, take Jackson Pollock dripping for an art take on it

2.  which is the reasons why some of my drawings are a bit frightening... Yes, people can build the stuff that I draw, usually with some home-variety tool. I draw on a ply-wood "Cintiq" I made myself, after all.

3. almost whatever idea, really, if people wait long and look hard enough - potentially, at least.
Once pieces start being chopped off, I am pretty sure that the "willing victim" will think things through; anyway, if at the beginning it has been clearly stated that, once started, there is no turning back, I kind of find it is fair game; or, fair enough..
 
4. because, everybody knows that , with toes, people can still handle objects.

5. Underground surgeons, nurses and surgical rooms doesn't come cheap..

6. yes, because, short of actual children's murders, one can get an amnesty from almost every other crime, by providing information to apprehend a sex criminal as dangerous as this.