Quarterly Co: #DSC03

‘Did you have fun doing this exercise?’

Sunday afternoon creativity, via #DSC03

Yes. I really did. Different tools and bits and bobs make things fun to play with. I think the cardboard was the most fun. Reminded me of building robots when I was a kid and, oddly, I felt the most was possible with the material.

Least favourite material would be the toothpicks and the gum: a) the gum tasted TERRIBLE and b) SO STICKY! ARRGH. Couldn’t get it to finish and/or stick on time.

I think the cardboard best expresses the original chair that I drew: I was able to add cushions and shape and, as I said, I felt most comfortable with it.

Incomplete #DSC03

— per instructions I’ve just checked out the other contributions to #DSC03 and they’re AWESOME.  I especially like Claire’s and Danielle’s (I have no idea how claire got her chair to stand like that – maybe I should’ve started chewing earlier).

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The above post was written in 5mins. Per the instruction ‘Reflect on it‘ that I received in the latest package from Quarterly Co (itself a birthday present from the rather awesome Robbie Dale). The challenge? Five chairs: design and build one chair; and then prototype it four/five times, per the instructions, only using the equipment provided – all under 30mins.

Ace.

I wonder if Robbie has done his yet…

 

 

 

Short stories on Instagram

I’ve been writing short stories on Instagram.

I’m not really sure why, but it’s just something that has started happening recently, since my last haircut in fact (which is an odd way for things to start but still). I remember the hairdresser handing me a copy of the latest GQ magazine and thinking ‘Ugh, I haven’t read this since I was a teenager’.

But then I opened it and started browsing – ‘I’ve got nothing else to do for the next 40mins, why not?’ – and I found an amazing and quite lengthy article about Philip K. Dick. Prolific science fiction author, futurist and drug user (I would be amazed if you’d never heard of him or of any of the films that are based on his works), I’d never read anything about him, the man, before and it was just completely mindstretching.

I really can’t remember the full ins and outs of the actual piece (quotes etc) and you’re a better man than I if you can find anything relating to the piece on the GQ website but what I do remember is the way they described Dick’s imagination and the way he viewed the world in which we live.

It really did blow my mind.

The guy was a mental case, a drug-[ab]using* genius and yet, his imagination was – and still is – ridiculously inspiring. That article, on top of this additional piece from Warren Ellis, entitled ‘How To See The Future‘, is pushing my brain in new directions and it is awesome.

On the way home that afternoon, I was on the look out for a decent Empty Underground shot or three and I spotted this:

Inspired, on Instagram

‘That’s cool’, I thought ‘reminds me of the use of amber, from [the TV series] Fringe‘. Then I boarded my tube and started typing. I don’t know what the character limit is on Instagram images, I’m yet to find it. But what I am finding is that being able to go over and above 140 characters is somewhat freeing.

My imagination takes me to all kinds of places…

I wrote:

—————-

Emergency tube closure.
Large rats, the size of cattle, have been reported roaming the tunnels at Oxford Circus. These orange panels, an emergency procedure in place since 1997, are actually made up of a thick orange sinew. Frequently mistaken as a deterrent to the unbelievably large rodents, the panels – also known as ‘honey squares’ – are actually covered on one side with a sickly sweet, yet dangerously poisonous, honey-like coating. This honey trap, if you will, lures the wildrats out of their dark dens and snares them with their hypnotic flavour.

Death occurs merely minutes after first contact. All that remains is for a clean up team to dispose of the captured carcass and reopen the station to the public. The whole process takes approximately one hour.

Quite remarkable really.

—————-

I’ve been writing short stories on Instagram. I’m not really sure why, but what I can tell you is that they’re inspired by Philip K Dick and Warren Ellis.

More short stories —

The Witness

Another World

Sentient Life

Emergency Tube Closure

 

Emergency tube closure. Large rats, the size of cattle, have been reported roaming the tunnels at Oxford Circus. These orange panels, an emergency procedure in place since 1997, are actually made up of a thick orange sinew. Frequently mistaken as a deterrent to the unbelievably large rodents, the panels – also known as ‘honey squares’ – are actually covered on one side with a sickly sweet, yet dangerously poisonous, honey-like coating. This honey *trap*, if you will, lures the wildrats out of their dark dens and snares them with their hypnotic flavour. Death occurs merely minutes after first contact. All that remains is for a clean up team to dispose of the captured carcass and reopen the station to the public. The whole process takes approximately one hour. Quite remarkable really.

A photo posted by James Whatley (@whatleydude) on

A bit similar to my N8 project from last year, this time it’s with Instagram.

*user or abuser? The word is undecided. He took the drugs to push himself, and his work, into new dimensions. Surely, for him at least, that’s not abuse; that’s using them exactly what they’re for.

Commonplace Books

A couple of weeks ago, when out for a few beers with some friends, my mate Kai and I got into a discussion about how we use our respective RSS Readers.

Teleportation just ain't what it used to be

— this is the only picture of Kai that is ever worth using, ever –

The crux of the conversation came down to one thing: folders – Kai uses them, I don’t. Kai’s point was that he likes to choose what format to consume and when. For example, he may opt to read long-form content in the morning, and prefer visual / illustrative stimulation in the afternoon. A point that I both understand and recognise.

However, I prefer reading everything at random. It’s a habit I’ve kept for a long time but it’s something that’s recently been re-enforced by learning about the origins of the commonplace book, and its place in both history and the creation of serendipitous innovation.

What do I mean? Well…

In the book Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson writes:

“Darwin’s notebooks lie at the tail end of a long and fruitful tradition that peaked in Enlightenment-era Europe, particularly in England: the practice of maintaining a “commonplace” book. Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters—just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book.

The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations.

There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: maintaining the books enabled one to ‘lay up’ a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the several pursuits of life.

Each rereading of the commonplace book becomes a new kind of revelation. You see the evolutionary paths of all your past hunches: the ones that turned out to be red herrings; the ones that turned out to be too obvious to write; even the ones that turned into entire books. But each encounter holds the promise that some long-forgotten hunch will connect in a new way with some emerging obsession.”

———-

That, believe it or not, is what historians mark as one of the ways Darwin was able to come to his theory of evolution (he famously had no ‘EUREKA!’ moment, it came to him slowly – over months) and that, believe it or not, is exactly how I feel about my RSS.

It’s a big jump – from understanding nature’s beginnings to reading internet ponderings mixed in pictures of lolcats – but that’s how I see it.

Basically, you should use RSS. And if you don’t, why not try starting a commonplace book? I had one in school, and it was awesome. In fact, I think I still have it somewhere…

—–

Commonplace book links of note

The Commonplace Book – Brett Bolkowy

The Ecology of Thought – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Good Ideas and Notebooks – EVSC

 

Liam Brazier

Awesome comic book art is awesome.

I first came across the work of Liam Brazier on one of my favourite art blogs, My Modern Metropolis. Probably after I tweeted about JUST HOW AWESOME his work was, I got into a rather geeky exchange with my friend Elise Pearce – which ended up with both of us committing to buying some of his work.

Elise bought BatmanCave Man‘, I went for SupermanMan Up‘.

However, the way that I wanted Supes wasn’t really advertised on Liam’s online shop, so I reached out to him (fortunately he’s fairly active on Twitter) and explained what I was looking for… he said it might be extra, I said I didn’t care… so we came to an agreement, and I got what I wanted.

I have... New art.

— ‘Man Up’, on my wall at home —

It is, clearly, awesome. And I believe it is also the only one, of its size, in existence.

Epic. Win.

Brazier’s work covers off the standard comic book heroes, obviously, but there’s also Star Wars, Rocky, Withnail, Teen Wolf and a whole bunch of other great stuff that I don’t know the name of.

I guess my point is, if you’re a geek with a penchant for the artistic, take a look at Liam’s work. I really can’t recommend it, or him, enough.

 

Update: turns out he does animation too. Wicked.

 

Five things on Friday #18

Five things of note for the week ending Friday May 4th, 2012

1. Jack White
First, this fairly-lengthy [but totally worth reading] profile piece from The New York Times ‘Jack outside of the box‘ was a great read at the start of the week. They really do mean it when they say ‘Jack White is the coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time’.

If anything, just read it purely for the comedy Tom Jones anecdote midway through…

Second, White’s first solo album, Blunderbuss, launched this week and debuted at number one on the Billboard 100. Nicely done. The album is pretty damn good – listen to the album [Spotify link] now, or just give the first track, Missing Pieces, a go below –

2. Marvel Movie Universe Infographic
It struck me last weekend, after seeing the quite frankly awesome Avengers Assemble, that what the world really needed was some kind of visual timeline of how all the movies overlaid on each other and affected each others’ respective stories.
After all, it was revealed a couple of years ago that Iron Man 2 would set before the events of The Incredible Hulk (what, you didn’t know?).

Back to the point – my brain figured that someone had probably made this thing already and hey, a quick Google later, it turned out they had!

Huzzah! The image above clicks through to the monster version but Slash Film has a clearer, listed description, for the more discerning viewer.

3. Switch Off
No, not another attempt from me to tell you all how important it is to unplug from time to time. Instead, a huge mural reminding us (well, me at least) to do the same.

Part of the Polish Katowice Street Art Festival, I think this is quite magnificent. There’s a whole other set of photos to be viewed over on My Modern Met. Great stuff.

4. Olympics-based Tweeting for brands (or lack thereof)
I read a blog post from Rax Lakhani recently, entitled ‘Will your brand be tweeting about the London 2012 Olympic Games this Summer? Think again.‘ It’s an interesting post as it talks about what will and will not be allowed in the realms of social media throughout this summer’s Olympics and, vitally, has the documentation to back it up.

Key quote?

Companies that are not Olympic sponsors cannot link themselves with the Olympics. For example, Company X cannot tweet: “Good luck to Jane and John at the Olympic Games!”, because it links their brand with the Olympics and Olympic athletes.

Alright, this is only slightly difficult to monitor BUT, am I the only one who smells snake oil around the potential / opportunistic Lawyer + Social Listening partnership? It will be an interesting few months over the Olympic period, especially when it comes to social.

5. Today
Is a big day for someone very dear to me. It’s not been an easy road but, at last, we’re at a turning point. As we head into the weekend, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Not far now.

 

Bonuses – this week has been a week of long form reading. First with the Jack White piece I mentioned above; then ‘Mysteries of the Connected Age‘ via The Wilson Quarterly; and finally ‘The Deceptive Nature of Bipolar: a First Hand Account‘ from the inspiring, moving and yet ever-insightful CALM Zone. 

 

Five things on Friday #17

Five things of note for the week ending Friday April 27th.

1. Iron Man

Iron Man Wallpaper Mondo

This art work (from Mondo) is superb. I like, a lot. Speaking of which…

2. Avengers Assemble!
It’s out this week. I’ve seen it. It’s awesome. You should see it too.
(and yes, of course I’m going to review it – at some point)

3. New Music
Two tracks of note (from the week before in fact, that I didn’t get time to blog this week) are X-Factor reject, Aiden Grimshaw’s first single – ‘Is this love?

And this awesome Gonzo 70’s-style remix of Adele vs Liquid Gold – ‘Rollin’ in the Deep

4. Prometheus
Pretty much a weekly feature at the moment…

…but tickets have just gone on sale here in the UK (if you know where to look) and I’ve got mine booked in — Bring it on.

5. John Cleese on Creativity
30mins of brilliance. Watch it.

Bonuses: Stunning dear-shaped electrical pylons – no, seriously; a couple of trailers for Cronenberg’s latest – Cosmopolis; and some breath-taking images of android-augmented women – which have to be seen to be believed.