I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.
I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.
Also on Mastodon.
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Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …
If the settler could not be heard over the screams of primitive accumulation, and the citizen could not be heard over the noise of machines, the consultant cannot be heard over the click of the metrics.
Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …
The algorithm of work subjects every labour process on the production line to undoing, disassembly, and incompletion, in order to demand it be completed better, assembled better, done better. It leaves behind not an improved organization but a metric to ensure the organization will never be satisfied.
Livestreaming is ubiquitous in our Covid-19-inflected era. In this book, EL Putnam takes up the …
As women designed and programmed their sites, they also established methods for connecting along with developing the techno-aesthetics of the resulting encounters with the site through maintenance as an ethics of care. In addition to sharing images uploaded from webcams and coding websites, camgirls set up chat rooms, online shops, archives of images, and blogs in order to engage with a growing following of fans from around the world. This milieu consists of the camgirls and the technical objects used to produce the sites, but also the geographic space of their homes as the setting of their camming work and the millions of individuals connected as part of the network that arose around their sites.
— Livestreaming by El Putnam
Part of the conclusion of a section on how 'camgirls' started a particular tradition of performance art through online image streams in the 1990s that also highlights how their entanglement with technology developed its own autonomy.
Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …
The moment you say it is mine because I worked on it and improved it, or you say that I am me because I worked on myself and improved myself, you start a war. And by misattributing the initiation of this war to nature, you then codify this war as the (anti)social contract.
This section looks at 'improvement' as it's covered in European philosophy, and how it is used to justify action through usufruct (working on and improving anothers' property). This quote is a succinct summary, and is powerfully complete.
Released from jail, Nealon returns to the family home but finds himself alone in an …
Starting this early. A Christmas present from my partner's parents, for the darker winter nights.
North (1975) is a collection of poems written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 …
Heaney's most famous collection is split into two parts, written when he was young. The second is the one he is often best known for: poems of the Troubles in Northern Ireland that reveal the harsh realities of trying to live in those times. Most of these, and some more nationalist moments in the first part, haven't aged particularly well.
The ones that do work very well are the poems about nature, or those many about the lives of the humans that became bog bodies. These are amazing works that thrum with the voice of a poet who deserved every accolade.
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in …
Cormac McCarthy concluded his life with two books about two siblings, brother Bobby (the protagonist of the excellent The Passenger) and sister Alicia of Stella Maris. The former is a physics whiz, the latter a maths genius. The trouble (or karma) of their family, including their father's involvement with the Manhattan Project, haunt them.
Both books are philosophical musings on meaning and structure in a strange life. This one is a real gift. The entire story is a dialogue between Alicia and a counsellor in the Stella Maris institute. Alicia muses on life and maths. The dialogues are like Plato's, with different big ideas being drawn out and then punctuated with a touching story of family, hallucinatory friendship, longing and heartache. The dialogue evolves over the 'sessions' so seamlessly that it is impossible not to get lost on the journey with the duo. The questioner often pulls back …
Cormac McCarthy concluded his life with two books about two siblings, brother Bobby (the protagonist of the excellent The Passenger) and sister Alicia of Stella Maris. The former is a physics whiz, the latter a maths genius. The trouble (or karma) of their family, including their father's involvement with the Manhattan Project, haunt them.
Both books are philosophical musings on meaning and structure in a strange life. This one is a real gift. The entire story is a dialogue between Alicia and a counsellor in the Stella Maris institute. Alicia muses on life and maths. The dialogues are like Plato's, with different big ideas being drawn out and then punctuated with a touching story of family, hallucinatory friendship, longing and heartache. The dialogue evolves over the 'sessions' so seamlessly that it is impossible not to get lost on the journey with the duo. The questioner often pulls back just when we (the reader) want to know more, and later as familiarity grows the relationship changes between them, and between reader and characters. The achievement that this book is is hard to describe, but it is a worthy parting gift from a master craftsperson of the written word.
North (1975) is a collection of poems written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It …
Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …
We bear, in the obsessive self-management of 'our' clicks and strokes, the overdetermination logistics lays down. It is both through and as a set of applications we apply...that our labor further concentrates the means of production with the goal quite simply and starkly of preventing us from taking care of one another, from looking out for one another, by making us look at one another, which is taking care of them.
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself …
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in …
The arrival of language was like the invasion of a parasitic system. Co-opting those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. The most susceptible to appropriation.
Spoken by the protagonist as part of the dialogue that is this entire book. Liked this suggestion.
Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …
Moten and Harney always bring me to new places with their writing. A friend told me this had come out a couple of years ago, and I put it on a list. I boight it last year so am finally giving it some time.
Livestreaming is ubiquitous in our Covid-19-inflected era. In this book, EL Putnam takes up the …
Excited to read this book, by an academic who I admire and a friend who I value.
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (orig. Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige; literally Nils Holgersson's …
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is written about as a children's book, and in essence it is. Nils is a young mischief-making boy who likes to pick on animals until he is transformed into miniature by an imp. After learning a little humility, Nils goes on to ride with a crew of geese across Sweden, and has many adventures with crows, foxes, ducks, a cow, a dog and other animals, and even some mythical beings and places.
But deeper than this, Lagerlöf has written an environmental call to action that is 100 years ahead of its time. Nils learns to love his world and those in it by becoming part of it. His transformation is gradual but complete, made richer by the wonderful prose and incredible descriptions of Sweden from a goose-eye-view (Lagerlöf must have hired a hot air balloon for research, surely). Myth and story blend with compassion, humour …
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is written about as a children's book, and in essence it is. Nils is a young mischief-making boy who likes to pick on animals until he is transformed into miniature by an imp. After learning a little humility, Nils goes on to ride with a crew of geese across Sweden, and has many adventures with crows, foxes, ducks, a cow, a dog and other animals, and even some mythical beings and places.
But deeper than this, Lagerlöf has written an environmental call to action that is 100 years ahead of its time. Nils learns to love his world and those in it by becoming part of it. His transformation is gradual but complete, made richer by the wonderful prose and incredible descriptions of Sweden from a goose-eye-view (Lagerlöf must have hired a hot air balloon for research, surely). Myth and story blend with compassion, humour and empathy in short chapters, so many that are wonderful even taken alone. An unforgettable book, for children of mind or body.
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (orig. Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige; literally Nils Holgersson's wonderful journey across Sweden) is …
