I feel like a dopey fly today. Bouncing around between tabs looking for nothing. This bit of the year where things are winding down but there’s still a lot of the weight of things to do around.

This one’s a short one with some updates and not much else. I won’t make excuses for it. I managed to finally update the website with recent things including a talk I gave about Haunted Machines at Burg Halle, the Telling of Things chapter I wrote with Kristina Andersen and I’m really happy with and the Scratching The Surface interview.

It’s rare that I’m happy with a bit of writing. I really don’t enjoy writing, not in the same way as rendering or making things. Often I’m asked to write about things that I’ve written or spoken about elsewhere and though there’s a real value in doing that, it lacks the novelty of coming up with something new. I know that as a good academic I’m supposed to dig deep, reiterate, bulwark my ideas but I’m restless and short-tempered and once something’s done I’d really rather move on. Anyway, Telling of Things was both something new that we came up with together and a joyful collaboration so it was a real pleasure to write and fun to read back.

Upcoming

This also gives me the chance to let you know what’s coming up. I’ve written a short piece for Dirty Furniture again about the early researchers of the telephone, charlatanism, necromancy and their interest in spirituality. I revisited and wrote up a talk I gave years ago for a new publication called Phantoms of Design. The chapter works thorough some of the ideas around magic, myth etc. but with a specific focus on opacity. I think those are both coming out this year.

I’m going to release those lectures I recorded for our students next week as well. I’ll hopefully get to do some new ones for the coming year.

Short Stuff

• Probably most probable. An analysis of what chances in percentage people think sentiments of probability are. Super interesting visualisation. Reminds me of something I saw years ago where someone walked around London asking people where they thought they were and drew a similar plot using a similar method. I’ll never find it, so don’t even ask.
• Here are all the Blender nodes explained. All of them.
• David Rambo has an interesting article in Computational Culture on mechanical keyboards, crucially how using one in a non-normal orientation and setup can be used to deprogram assumptions about technology in the symbolic domain.
• If you’re in Germany, go and get to Munich to see im/possible images. Which looks amazing.

That’s it. The render this week took so much time to get right but my love for you remains as strong as ever. Write you again next week.