Art
Ben and I did some art. And we got it into the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It's been rather exciting.
It was also fascinating to see a bit behind the scenes of another world.
The service design of something that's been going for 250 years, for instance, is really good. The process for delivering your art to the gallery and the little anticipations of the unhappy path have been worn smooth with age.
I also now understand why all the 'affordable' things are sold-out way before regular punters get to see them. There are a lot of opportunities for insiders to shop first. That's been worn smooth too.
If you'd like your own bit of 'affordable' 'art' we made a website.
Small things
I heard / read two things at the weekend that stuck with me. Tiny things. But things that seem like good detail for a story. Or possibly some sort of inciting incident.
The first was a caller to Danny Baker's show on Saturday morning. He has a cat that collects cuddly toys. Goes out and comes back clutching a soft toy, presumably thinking it's some sort of prey. Has ended up with quite a collection apparently. The local small children and parents must by mystified. I could see that as a side story in Stranger Things or something.
The second popped out as I was catching up on a pile of old New Yorkers. This bit, from a story about the hunt for a pill to replace exercise:
"Mice love to run, Evans told me, and when he puts an exercise wheel in their cage they typically log several miles a night. These nocturnal drills are not simply a way of dealing with the stress of laboratory life, as scientists from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, demonstrated in a charming experiment conducted a few years ago. They left a small cagelike structure containing a training wheel in a quiet corner of an urban park, under the surveillance of a motion-activated night-vision camera. The resulting footage showed that the wheel was in near-constant use by wild mice. Despite the fact that their daily activities—foraging for food, searching for mates, avoiding predators—provided a more than adequate workout, the mice voluntarily chose to run, spending up to eighteen minutes at a time on the wheel, and returning for repeat sessions. (Several frogs and slugs also made use of the amenity, possibly by accident.)"
I love that. Makes me want to start an artistic practise constructing and installing wild animal gyms.
Back to the internet
As from today(ish) I am now Strategy Director at ustwo. It's exciting. BETC was a lovely place but right now I'm keen to get back more into the sort of digital work I was doing at GDS. And ustwo is a great place to do that. They're lovely people too.
The ritual updating of LinkedIn will happen this evening. Then I can see how long it takes the spam to find me.