Russell Davies

everything visible now

Last week - had a nice couple of days in Brighton thinking about Immaterial things.

A couple of reckons:

The proper cleverness of the AHO/BERG/Immaterials gang is that they seem to be saying this new stuff is invisble, that makes it hard to work with as a material, let's try and visualise it so we can understand it.

Almost everyone else seems to be saying this new stuff is invisible IT MUST BE A CONSPIRACY.

Right now, with a lot of genuine conspiracy floating around, we should make an effort not to default to Air Loom nuttiness every time someone finds a new use for the electromagnetic spectrum or decides to bury a pipe.

You remember that nice programme on Radio Two - Sing Something Simple - they had all those old timey tunes? That's beamed into our homes on mysterious rays that most people don't understand and that have demonstrably, certainly been used for evil purposes, it's called radio, it's invisible, that's OK.

A year or so ago grey water started spouting, intermittently and unpredictably, from plugholes in the kitchens of a number of flats in our building. Plumbers were called and over a number of weeks denied the existance of the problem, confessed themselves unable to solve it and explained that 60 years of ad hoc plumbing in each flat had rendered the whole system incomprehensible. Then, when they finally obtained the plumbing equivalent of 'root', they discovered that someone had poured the entire contents of a substantial aquarium down a toilet. This had, unsurprisingly, messed with the delicate and contingent balance of pressures and flows within our pipes. That someone does not understand our invisible infrastructure. Our plumbing is incomprehensible. These are not new problems.

There doesn't have to be a binary choice between hiding networks and revealing networks to be evil and hegemonic. We could decide to materialise technology infrastructure and demonstrate that it is marvellous, powerful and useful. Maybe that would encourage people to try and make their own things with it rather than just run away.

 

emergent architecture?

telling a time

I happened to notice today, that it was two-thirds of the way through the day. That's because the Pebble has a face that tells you Swatch internet time.

This is, of course, ridiculous.

But it's also good. Obviously the coming wave of smart watches will do all sorts of incredible things that wrists could not previously have imagined, but maybe they'll also make room for some little side projects that enable different ways of marking time. Investing in a whole watch that takes a sidestep like that is a bit like investing in a metric calendar - probably not worth it. (See below, I do a lot that's not worth it.) But as another screen, an extra diversion, it's interesting, it's perhaps worth playing with. That'll be fun.

couple of months

current status: motorhome

"The art of caravanning is miniaturization; instead of leaving the domestic realm behind, it is shrunk and towed along. To enter a caravan is to step into a wonderland of diminished scale; here is the small telly, the small microwave and a little fridge."

Applies to motorhomes too.

From: The Art of Camping: The History and Practice of Sleeping Under the Stars by Matthew De Abaitua

24 Aug 2013

stalking bill drummond badly - five

September 2010

A chance of redemption! Mr Drummond came to the Do Lectures to do a talk and a performance of the 17. Once again my fear of participating defeated me and I just sat outside the tent and listened, taking the occasional photo of Mr Drummond's magnificent Landrover.

 

who'd have thought it?

This blog - 10 years old today.

stalking bill drummond badly - four

Summer 2008 - Not Derby

Toby invited me to take part in Mr Drummond's Slice Through Derby project (part of The 17). I was very excited. In the end though my fear of participating in any sort of group event with strangers meant I made an excuse and didn't go. I regret this a lot. Would have loved to have done that. Not enough to actually do it though, obviously.

encounters

It's a long time since I've heard a radio play I liked but this afternoon's was brilliant. You should listen.

It was funny and sad and beautiful, all that, but it was also different - it wasn't like a regular play, it wasn't like regular radio. It mixed interviews, acting, songs, reminiscence and lies - which makes it sound awful - but it was actually electric.

I read How Literature Saved My Life the other week, by David Shields. It continues the argument of Reality Hunger, if argument is the word. I guess I'd sum it up as: the novel just isn't that good any more at telling us about the world we're in, or at least, not as good as other forms we have now, or at least, not as good as the forms we're about to invent.

Encounter, Cristopher Green's play, sounded like the things I'd like to read now. It sounded, somehow, connected, collaged, networked.