Measuring Ugliness
It is a little-understood fact that darkness is not the opposite of light - darkness is merely the absence of light. But there is an opposite. It is a natureforce which goes in the opposite direction from brightness, right through darkness and out the other side. It is a darkness as radiant and brilliant as sunlight, but in the negative. A blackness which shimmers and glows. An anti-light which illuminates the terrors and fears of our darkest mind.
Just as darkness is not the opposite of light, neither is ugliness the true opposite of beauty - it is merely the point at which beauty equals zero, beyond which there exists in the negative an anti-beauty, an ugliness of equal power and emotional impact to beauty. It is a madness of design to believe that this state of negative beauty can be planned or intentionally created. We can turn off the light, but we cannot turn on the dark. We can turn off the beauty, but we cannot create true ugliness, real anti-beauty. We do not hold the building blocks to manufacture such a thing.
It is inherent within our minds and our hands and our machines and our materials to only create varying degrees of beauty, for these, too were created from elements of beauty, in varying degrees.
Take a moment to look at your hands. Have you ever seen a hand which you thought of as ugly? But what is the ugliness? An absence of the traits which we think of as beauty - nothing more. And yet this hand, this assemblage of bone and tendon and muscle, is the most amazing and wondrous mechanism in the known universe. It may be gnarled, yet still play a violin concerto. It may be stained with tar and nicotine, and yet still perform delicate surgery. Beauty in degrees, with ugliness as the zero point.
Patina is a degree of beauty. Regarded with care and attention, the scratches and stains which create patina are merely an addition and transformation of existing beauty. Is not a 1968 Masi a thing of beauty, and is it not even more beautiful for having survived in original condition for four decades? The sheen is dulled, the color faded, the chrome bestained, but the same basic value of beauty exists, having been converted to "proof of use", "proof of existence", "proof of appreciation", and ultimately "proof of life on Earth".
Any true pursuit of ultimate ugliness would need to deal with the traits on the opposite side of beauty, but in our world, created by the hand of God, nothing can exist on that far side of ugliness...
...except, perhaps, oversized water bottles.
And maybe hairy legs on ex-racers - Yes, hairy legs are probably proof-positive of the existence of an "anti-beauty".
Aldo Ross
(the eggnog is flowing early in)
Blue Ball, Ohio
> After a bit of off-list correspondence with a couple of
> list members, I have a challenge for the
> mathematically-minded among us.
>
> This challenge comes out of some idle chatter
> about that Colnago Export frame on ebay.
> I think the seat-cluster is butt-ugly, and
> the question was raised "how do you measure
> ugly?"
>
> I propose that one *could* measure ugly, with
> the right formula or equation. I am not sufficiently trained
> in the science of measurement to design
> such a formula, but I'm sure there are people
> here who *are* so trained.
>
> Whoever comes up with the most useful
> formula (that is, can be used without fear
> of *meaningful* refutation in conversation
> with like-minded obsessives, and could also
> be used in Concours, and the like), will get
> a prize from moi, yet to be determined.
>
> Discussion can take place off list, or on it,
> unless or until the omnipotent list-master calls a halt
> to list discussion of the matter (I figured he might want
> to compete himself, although what he'd need my prize
> for I can't imagine, he probably has three already,
> whatever the prize ends up being)
>
> ...it'll be a good
> prize too.
>
> The formula, or metric, must take into account
> the following, in some fashion:
>
> *the collecting experience, in years, of the person making the
> judgement of ugliness
>
> *the number of bikes of the same national origin,
> quality, and value, owned by the judge
>
> *the fair market value of said bikes
>
> *if the judge has designed and built more than 20 custom, high-quality
> lugged steel frames with their own hands, the collecting experience
> number is increased by some factor to be determined.
>
> The judge need not currently own any bikes, the *number of bikes*
> may include *all* bikes of the relevant kind that the judge has owned
> in the past, even if they have none in the present.
>
> The result of the formula must describe ugliness by
> a number that falls into a consistent range of numbers
> without reference to any other judge's result... the range
> can be 1-10, 1-100, or may be some fraction, as long as
> the number, and the range of ugliness, is predictable.
>
> the idea is to flatten the subjectivity of the judgement,
> and render some useful description of the ugliness
> involved.
>
> Have at it.
>
> Charles Andrews
> SoCal