#8 a little roundup, jan 10.
where my brain has been today!
I have been chronically on my computer today (even more than usual) which has been horrible for my posture but amazing for my cool-link-gathering spreadsheet! here’s a little roundup…
Places To Read (discovered on are.na)
on this site you can click on various sites that strangers recommend for reading. of the thirty-four I saw on this page I have been to one, which is actually pretty cool to think about. I wonder what would happen if I organized travel around hitting reading spots (besides running out of money really quickly). the spaces are categorized by their notable feature which I find interesting. I think it would be cool to create a variety of projects like this one, such as places to journal, places to meet a stranger, places to have an epiphany. maybe a lot of people have had an epiphany in the same place?
(this kind of reminds me of a project I tried to start a few years ago where I graphed each coffee shop I went to according to a set of metrics (music vibiness, lighting vibiness, conversation/collective chatter warmth, seat availability, coffee quality, general atmosphere (which I called “general buzz score”). I didn't get very far with it because I realized how these metrics all interact with each other in different ways in different spaces, and how most of the metrics couldn’t be numerically ranked and are entirely subjective.)
… if you are talking about collections of places there is also this one — atlas of cafes where one can think.
Special Fish (also discovered via are.na)
this site is insane. people create a profile and then use their personal page to log anything — poems, things they have, media they like, colors, sounds, cool projects, thoughts, to-do lists. there are things people are logging, archiving, and collecting on here that I have not thought about recording before and it makes me want to collect my thoughts better as well. not even in an organized way. it reminds me of this thing I just read about, how keeping track of small thoughts and items that pass your way can lead you to notice more patterns and make more connections, even if (especially if) you do not record in a particularly organized way. I love graphs and maps but sometimes this way of thinking limits me — I begin to collect things, and always begin by first creating a new system of collecting. I have tons of these — empty spreadsheets, books, even websites I have set up for collecting, only to find the very procedure I set up ends up limiting me. i’m not sure what the solution for this is. probably more experienced people have figured this out. so far, in a couple things i’ve read it points to recording first outside of a system, chilling with the chaos, then later going back to look for patterns. the other thing I am starting to see, and we can see this practiced well in this site, is that it’s possible to overdo the interface. things are raw. let them be raw ?
(approaching my desktop file organization in this collect-first, system-later way however does not seem to be helping anything )
Reading Machines (another are.na find )
this is one I return to time and time again. “a publishing platform for non-teological reading.” I had to look up what that work means and tbh I’m still not entirely clear. I think it has something to do with the means as an end in itself vs means to an end / medium is the message vibes ?? or if I am projecting a bit, the letterforms and movement of them themselves become the message ? (such a font enthusiast read, lol.)
anyways, the words sometimes peel off or are scattered and they make musical sounds as they hit the bottom of your screen. it is poetry in one of the most thought provoking forms I can imagine, where the poem moves with itself, disappears even. as someone whose main interests include both reading, reading about reading, and digital art, this is kinda my dream website.
okay, enough websites. this is a playlist my best friend Samantha just made (and which I have written all this to the tune of). she has been talking a lot about the idea of neuroplacticity and how what we consume (soundscape-wise, in this case) informs how we think. I don’t wanna steal her thunder and I am selfishly hoping we do a deeper project together on soundscape/music related stuff soon. all I will say is, last term I took a sound design course last term and had to create a three minute experimental soundscape. I chose to do one based on the process of making and pouring tea because it is one of the most grounding/thinking/existing processes for me. I had never thought of the soundscape of a teapot before. but I spend an hour recording my tea pot (it is cast iron) and the sounds it makes, with and without tea inside. or with a spoon inside, but no tea. or tea leaves standing still. or with freshly boiled water. anyways, editing these samples was, I think, slowly turning me into tea as well.
some things I recently saved to my channel “mapping the unmappable.” I think if I wasn’t a human I would like to be a map. this is possibly, I am just now realizing, something I should return to in terms of holding myself to unrealistic standards ?
some moss to counteract all the lists and grids of today. this is from yesterday, at the spot I always park my bike at on campus.
(on second thought, I guess this is also a grid.)
also, this cabbage I recently ate turned into a bitmap.
currently reading: Salt Houses. It is about a Palestinian family. there is this paragraph I just read this morning that talks about how in the early hours of the morning, with all the people gone, the main character found that Kuwait City felt feminine; during the day, filled with people, it felt masculine. I am not sure what to make of this yet but more to come ?
currently listening:
(I am the secret liker that rhymes with yo, hehe)
-chlo