Douglas Wolk presents a drastically condensed awesome version of Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment.
November 26, 2009 12:21 AM   Subscribe

Douglas Wolk's Ignite presentation of Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment. via Coilhouse
posted by cgc373 (32 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Annoying.
posted by jayder at 12:31 AM on November 26, 2009


Seconded.
posted by mrnutty at 12:32 AM on November 26, 2009


fun and light hearted, thanks for sharing!
posted by Kudos at 12:33 AM on November 26, 2009


That was pretty good!

OK, Kudos and I have balanced out jayder and mrnutty. Let the voting recommence.
posted by painquale at 12:36 AM on November 26, 2009


No, my loathing for this and most other ignite talks is so intense that I count at least double.
posted by mrnutty at 12:40 AM on November 26, 2009


I hate balance. Vote with your knives!
posted by cgc373 at 12:44 AM on November 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


Get cgc373! He's trying to upset our Balance, praise be to its most holy Order and Tidiness!

But first we must read the fucking article! If we ourselves forget our most holy precepts, all is lost!
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:17 AM on November 26, 2009


we must read the fucking article

It's a video.
posted by litleozy at 1:35 AM on November 26, 2009


Oh how clever! Not really . . . it's annoying.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:43 AM on November 26, 2009


I would probably enjoy the video more if its production were more aesthetically pleasing to my eyes and ears.
posted by chillmost at 2:07 AM on November 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


I thought it was good.

Who's Douglas Wolk?
posted by bardic at 2:13 AM on November 26, 2009


Douglas Wolk at Wikipedia.
posted by cgc373 at 2:16 AM on November 26, 2009


The sound quality is so bad I missed every fourth word and had to interpolate.
posted by sidereal at 3:56 AM on November 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


I'm smarter when I talk fast.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:32 AM on November 26, 2009


It crashed my flash plug-in.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:22 AM on November 26, 2009


Youknowitwasactuallyquiteinterestingbuttalking *slide: Batman looking interested*
thatfastthewholetimewithoutpausi *slide:the Flash racing*
ngandneverevenstoppingforthechangingofthesli *slide: Dr. Doom "NO ONE WILL EVER STOP ME NOW!"*
desthatwerejustsortofshown(butalwaysalittle *slide: Superman reading*
offintheirtiming)gotonmynervesquickly. *slide: Captain America looking disgusted / annoyed*

Seriously, powerpoint presentation are not intrinsically evil, but even when used as a backdrop slideshow they need to be done correctly. Give your audience time to look, and don't make them decide between listening to you or looking at your images. All your material may be well known to you, but if your audience isn't up to the exact same level as you (and if they were, why would they listen to your lecture?) they will need time to follow your train of thought, especially if you jump from one bullet point to the next.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 5:33 AM on November 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


It's hard to condense this stuff into even the space of an intelligible book. I thought he did an admirable and entertaining job given the constraints.
posted by treepour at 5:35 AM on November 26, 2009


Who's Douglas Wolk?

Dudes, He's on twitter, which is the perfect place for deep, philosophical discussion.
posted by delmoi at 6:20 AM on November 26, 2009


Kant really could have done with 140 character limit. I think that's even shorter than some single words in German.
posted by painquale at 6:28 AM on November 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


What I learned from this video:

Kant was a clever guy and would have had a lot of favorites, but he asserts his points of view as if it was scientific fact which can get annoying. This is probably easier to see with pictures of Wolverine than in the original German.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:42 AM on November 26, 2009


Not fast enough... I would have liked to watch the whole thing at speed 4X, but the viewer doesn't allow it. Some of the slides were interesting though. I had never seen the wolverine themed Dali and Van Gogh parodies.
posted by nicolin at 6:42 AM on November 26, 2009


This is pretty decent but this is more sublime
posted by fuq at 8:08 AM on November 26, 2009


Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go:
posted by neuron at 8:26 AM on November 26, 2009


Can I vote "both." It started out pretty good, but then when he locked himself into comic book illustrations that didn't really match what he was talking about, it got annoying.

Also, the sound quality sucked.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:42 AM on November 26, 2009


Fun.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:15 AM on November 26, 2009


Oh....another super condensed take on Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement using comic book covers.

Yawn.

But I do like how he sticks it to Kant for being one of the worse writers in the history of the world. Beyond terrible actually, truly horrifically semi-sublime its utter twisted grotesqueness..

Anyhow Douglas Wolk is another way to cool to talk to you at a record convention rock critic snob with a record label that puts out mini-cds even though you played in a Fall cover band with him in the mid-90s.
posted by Skygazer at 10:31 AM on November 26, 2009


Don't know the guy personally, did not attend the most recent PDX ignite (although I have attended in the past).

That said, yeah. Chewing aluminum foil. That perfect combination of psuedointellectual content and smug pop imagery which describes a lot of Portland nowdays. Zombie pirate weddings ha, ha. Please follow my tweets of This Weekend's 2nd Annual Hummus Bowling Championships live from the Pearl- we'll be noshing on vegan treats underneath massive projected pages of Friedan's The Feminine Mystique- so bring your bi/curious bowling pals!

Also, this guy read Kant and likes comics.
posted by mrdaneri at 10:43 AM on November 26, 2009


Tough crowd today.
posted by Edward L at 10:51 AM on November 26, 2009


@PontifexPrimus Erm, that's sort of the point of Ignite talks. You get five minutes, twenty slides, and you don't get to control the rate at which the slides progress. It's an artificial constraint that usually leads to some level of comedy.
posted by endquote at 10:22 PM on November 26, 2009


Yeah, it would have been useful to clarify in the post that the format (20 slides, 15 seconds each) is how Ignite works, not just an irritating aesthetic decision by Wolk.

Aside from the sub-optimal audio quality I thought this was pretty good. The use of Wolverine as his first example indicated straight away that he wasn't aiming to be too highbrow or "pseudointellectual", and the laughs from the audience suggested that they understood this as well. Then he hits the basic ideas and gives a fairly clear sketch of each of them. Now you know at least one thing about Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment, and you'll recognize a couple of other ideas about it when you next encounter them. And maybe you've become interested enough to go and learn more about it, at a more sedate pace. All in all, that's pretty good going for 5 minutes' education.

NB: Not a substitute for a full college course from a trained Kant scholar. Always consult your professor.
posted by logopetria at 12:30 AM on November 27, 2009


Where can I get one of these KantMan comics?
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2009


Right here, oneswellfoop.
posted by cgc373 at 4:00 PM on November 27, 2009


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