To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
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My lostness comes from the sense that our cultural collections are not wholly our own anymore. In the era of algorithmic feeds, it’s as if the bookshelves have started changing shape on their own in real time, shuffling some material to the front and downplaying the rest like a sleight-of-hand magician trying to make you pick a specific card — even as they let you believe it’s your own choice. And this lack of agency is undermining our connections to the culture that we love.
Even though I definitely don’t consider The digital death of collecting being something I myself might be affected anytime soon –I collect LPs, books and magazines, polaroids and probably even too much other physical stuff, I do fear Kyle Chayka’s observations might hold true for the general public —especially for the generations yet to discover the broad field of culture.
Another interesting essay adding to the sentiment that made me publish on this blog again in the first place.
kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting
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Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. Wabi-sabi is ambivalent about separating beauty from non-beauty or ugliness. The condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly. Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.
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filed under hyperlinks, videos
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© Yuki Kawae (via YouTube)
Because we all need less noise.
I could watch this all day: Meditative video by Yuki Kawae exploring different patterns in his minimal Zen garden. Tempted to use the practical tips from his website to build my own little Zen garden now.
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A Forrest in France / January 2nd, 2020 / Olympus Pen-F
filed under hyperlinks, recources and toolsNature Track is a podcast that opens a window on the beautiful sounds of the Australian wilderness. […] Each unique track is carefully recorded on location in a different part of Australia by the ABC’s nature specialist Ann Jones.
The beautiful podcast Nature Track by ABC Radio collects different sounds from Australian nature (so no music or humans), which reminds me a lot of ‘Sanctuaries of Silence’ and the amazing work of Gordon Hempton I’ve mentioned before.
The radio station furthermore has another podcast –among many others– called ‘Off Track’, which combines equally soothing sounds of nature with fascinating stories of environmental science recorded in the outdoors.
Both series are great alternatives for the very handy background noise app noisli, that I’ve been using occasionally for some time now.
At times of change, the learners are the ones who will inherit the world, while the knowers will be beautifully prepared for a world which no longer exists.
Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Interesting essay by Stewart Brand for the Journal of Design and Science, outlining the strengths of a construct called “Pace Layering”.
Even though he focuses on human society and a six-layered structure (Fashion/art, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture, Nature) as the basis of a healthy civilization for the most part of Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning, Brand proposes all dynamic systems to be based on a structure made of multiple layers of different pace and size in order to be robust and durable.
In design –no matter the specific field, but especially in software and systems design, of course, we come across and/or form a lot of dynamic systems with the need to be adaptable, so pace layering might provide a valuable concept to build upon.
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© Go Project Films (via YouTube)
Silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything.
Acoustic ecologist –who’d knew, that such a profession exists– Gordon Hempton in Sanctuaries of Silence, a beautiful short film by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Adam Loften. The 360°-/Virtual Reality-film takes the viewer to the Hoh Rain Forest, a protected area in a National Park in the State of Washington, North America where Hempton has been documenting the sounds of nature for more than thirty-five years.
The website accompanying the short film, in addition, offers a nice little five-step exercise to practice listening and be present, open, and curious in a world increasingly polluted by noise.
filed under hyperlinks, essaysI am on Twitter, still, despite my better judgment, and it seems to me to be The extremely unforgiving medium in my life.
It is risky compositionally. You can delete a tweet, but you can’t edit a tweet. You can add to a tweet, but it’s hard to improve upon it.
It is risky socially. Every tweet is an invitation for scrutiny if not consultation if not correction if not misunderstanding if not rancor. Forgiveness, even if we agreed it still existed in the wider culture, I think we could probably agree it doesn’t really exist on Twitter. (“Never Tweet” is not terrible advice.)
While Twitter still refuses to provide its users the repeatedly brought up and widely requested edit button, Austin Kleon has a point for Blogging as a forgiving medium —published on his personal blog of course. Reaffirms my suggestion to move back from the centralised social media structures to self-contained, more private digital spaces, instead.
Real time is slower than social-media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility.
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© Aeon (via Vimeo)
A drolly cheerful celebration of the very ordinary, Born to be Mild explores the uncommon hobbies practiced by the members of the Dull Men’s Club – an online community that connects ‘dull men, and women who appreciate dull men’.
aeon.co/videos/the-dull-men-s-club-where-being-extraordinarily-ordinary-is-celebrated
Ich bin der Meinung, dass die ganze Digitalisierung, die jetzt ja auch immer mehr Bestandteil unseres Daseins ist, Erfahrungsvermögen verdunkelt. Es gibt Bilder die verlöschen eins nach dem anderen ohne Spuren hier oben [anm.: im Kopf] zu hinterlassen. Es geht wahnsinnig schnell. Und vielleicht deshalb können oder wollen wir so viel konsumieren. Die sinnlich wahrnehmbare Welt verströhmt eine Aura, meine ich, die nicht digitalisiert werden kann. Wir müssen achtgeben jetzt, dass wir die digitale Welt beherrschen und nicht von ihr beherrscht werden.
