Chasing uselessness

Occasionally I run across something so weird it's almost charming.

This happened just yesterday, and has to do with a topic I've looked at here at Skeptophilia a couple of times before; the question, "What is art?"  My conclusion was the rather unhelpful "If you think it's art, it is."  Admittedly this is coming from someone with the aesthetic sensibility that God gave gravel.  I can barely draw a straight line with a ruler, and most of my attempts at doing anything artistic look like they were produced by a four-year-old, or perhaps an unusually talented chimp.

An art-history-major acquaintance of mine, who also happens to be a bit of an intellectual snob, says I'm basically just lazy, that if I took the time to learn about various schools of art and trends and philosophical underpinnings, I'd understand that there is good art and bad art.  Me, I think this makes no sense at all.  If I can compare it to music -- a topic I do know something about -- I can understand all about a piece of music's structure and harmony and theory and whatnot, and even the historical context in which the composer wrote it, but still dislike it intensely.  If it sounds unpleasant, for me it hasn't worked.  Unless the composer's intent was to have listeners go, "Wow, this is terrible," in which case they succeeded brilliantly.

It reminds me of journalist Edgar Wilson Nye's acerbic quip that "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

In any case, back to art.  My point is that I'm hardly in the position to criticize another person's artistic creations.  If anyone actually is.  It all boils down to individual taste, and that is, um, individual.  Which may be tautological, but still makes a point that some people need to hear.

The topic comes up because of a strange but wonderful Japanese art form called Thomasson.  If you know anything about the Japanese language, you probably noticed right away that the name doesn't sound very Japanese -- and you're right, it isn't, although it's been "Japanified" to Chōgeijutsu Tomason (超芸術トマソン) to make it work with the phonetics and writing system.  But the name comes from American baseball player Gary Thomasson, who was signed to the Yomiuri Giants in 1982 for a record-breaking sum of money.  Thomasson then spent his entire two-year stint with the Giants never scoring a single hit -- in fact, he came close to breaking the all-time strikeout record.  Finally he was benched, and ended up being little more than a (very expensive) dugout ornament.

So in the art world, a "Thomasson" is something that was created with some kind of purpose in mind, but clearly accomplishes nothing -- and still is carefully kept up as if it actually made sense.  Like the pieces in the Museum of Bad Art that I referenced in my earlier piece (linked above), you can't set out to make a Thomasson deliberately; they just kind of happen.

The term was coined (and the art form promoted) by artist Katsuhiko Akasegawa, when he saw a staircase that led up into a wall -- but which was still, for some reason, maintained:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jr223, Hanshin Iwaya east, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Once he started noticing them, he found Thomasson everywhere.  Doorways opening onto blank walls, or ones that open ten feet above the ground (with no balcony).  A doorknob protruding from the side of a building.  Guardrails, gates, or fences that accomplish nothing, like this one:

Aficionados of Thomasson have come up with about a dozen categories, including Muyō bashi (無用橋, "useless bridge"), a bridge in the middle of a field that doesn't go over any obstacle; Jōhatsu (蒸発, "evaporation"), where a sign or an image has lost pieces to the point that it has become undecipherable; and Kasutera (カステラ, "Kastella," a brand of square-ish Japanese sponge cake), where there's a cuboid protuberance from the side of a building that serves no purpose.  (A sunken cuboid indentation in a wall is called a "Reverse Kasutera.")  The whole thing caught on in a big way, with thousands of people photographing and cataloguing examples of Thomasson they'd found.  In fact, a Thomasson Observation Center opened in Shinjuku, and has had several large and very popular exhibitions.

Well, this brings up a variety of responses from me.

First, I kind of feel sorry for Gary Thomasson.  How would you like to have your name forever associated with things that are weird and useless?

Second, since they're not created to be art (even bad art), are they actually art?  Discuss.

Third, I was immediately reminded of the very odd hobby I wrote about a while back, which is called being a "Randonaut."  The idea here is a little like a cross between geocaching and tripping on shrooms.  You log into a website that converts the output of a random number generator to latitudes and longitudes (you can set it to come up with coordinates fairly near you, so you don't end up with a spot in the middle of the Indian Ocean or something).  You then go there, look for anything peculiar, and report it back to the website.  Some Randonauts participate because they think what they find is an indication we're living in a computer simulation; others simply want to experience something "liminal" or "numinous."  (Check out the link if you want more information.)

Fourth, people are really strange.  I mean.

Anyhow, that's today's dive into the deep end of the pool.  As hobbies go, looking for Thomasson has got a lot to recommend it.  I think the whole thing is kind of cool and whimsical, and I definitely will keep my eye out for any examples that might come my way.

Given how prone people are to doing odd and pointless things, I'm sure I won't have any trouble finding it.

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