I am staying in the Swiss Hotel, Stamford in Singapore. It's an old haunt from IBM days and has one of the best swimming pools I know. Its a large circular pool with six water feeds in the form of small concrete ornamental fountains around the edge. At 0530 in the morning I have the pool to myself. I tried a variant of the normal too and fro this morning taking a triangular route between alternative ornamental fountains, but then passing over the same ground. If there had been five or seven, then swimming between alternatives would have provided a pleasing asymmetry and I would over the course of an hour tracked most of the pool. As I got frustrated by symmetry, I remembered that most human features are also asymmetric and that we like things in threes, fives or sevens but the even numbers somehow seem wrong. When did you last see a Prince sent on four quests? Asymmetry is of course not the same as inequality. The hotel fills up every day with Qantas crews on stop over, the Qantas pilots however stay in the slightly superior next door hotel. I would have thought better of Australians than to see them perpetuate class differences! The final asymmetry of the morning was the sweeping in of a tropical storm. The staff had just finished laying out tables around the pool for breakfast when tablecloths and crockery were swept up and into the pool. For the next twenty minutes I retrieved debris from the pool to a grateful staff, then spent half an hour hunting through the undergrowth to find my glasses (to correct a asymmetric vision). It also gave me some thoughts for the lecture tomorrow on the future of Government, more on that then and hopefully a podcast.
Comments (2)
It's interesting that you point out humans like asymmetric things when I think it's often pointed out how humans are attracted to symmetry. For example this study mentions how facial symmetry can show that a person or animal developed in good health even in the presence of environmental stresses, and thus is attractive to potential mates.
I think the neat thing about a symmetrical pool as you've described is that two people could swim simultaneously on similar but slightly shifted routes.
Posted by Guy Mason | July 23, 2009 9:01 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 21:01
It may be that one difference is whether you're engaged in a creative activity(where asymmetry provides helpful variation), or in a passive/observing activity where symmetry's lack of tension/variation may be perceived as pleasing/restful...a sense that someone else's creative work has been completed.
However, our attraction to symmetry can be dangerous...e.g., trying to fit the real world into neat boxes, creating artifacts that don't leave enough tension/variation/ambiguity/asymmetry for the observer to continue the creative work, etc.
Posted by WalterRSmith | August 4, 2009 8:20 PM
Posted on August 4, 2009 20:20