I was struck in Rome by the discovery of the absence of smooth and bland surfaces; nothing is low-dimentional. Everything ancient has ornaments in the smallest details; no area is left smooth, even for functional objects. The only exceptions I could find were Etruscan artifacts.These are 1st Century terra cotta oil lamps, one notices embellishments. Later Christian era oil lamps are of course adorned with religious symbols.I am now convinced, looking at a modern wall, that smooth surfaces hurt us deeply into our soul We have already discussed how we crave some class of variations, something that can be mapped by Jensen’s inequality.We are antifragile to dimentionality of objects. I feel that looking at a modern architectural object is an eyesore, even a soul-sore. I wonder if grafiti are a naturalistic rebellion against low-dimension.
