Week 69
Scheduling theory, creative confidence & looking back on my education, new painting algorithm, analogue creative work and exploring my relationship with cooking & food.
Looking back on my week, it seems like I had a good, productive week. However, at the end of most days, I didn’t feel like that (as made evident by my micro-blog).
There are many things at play that cause my disappointment at the end of a day. However, more often than not, it is my need for immediate, big achievement that drown out even a fairly productive day.
I must accept that success & achievement is a slow process, that I’ll eventually get to exhibiting and talking about my work. But it can’t happen at the same time as me trying to push out my work. Applying for a talk is also an achievement, a move towards progress, that I almost always leave unappreciated. I think I’m going to try and recognise the small wins at the end of the day in my micro-blog, allowing them to take center-stage when I reflect about my day.
This week, I didn’t do any substantial diverse academic reading. The week was slow, a little more focused on making things.
[Reading] Scheduling theory
This week, I read up a lot about scheduling theory in Brian Christian’s book, Algorithms To Live By.
Interestingly, scheduling has been studied extensively by mathematicians and computer scientists. An optimal algorithm to prioritise tasks and get the most amount of work done still remains a difficult problem to solve, some of them even being considered intractable problems in computer science (impossible to solve). From people planning their days in the morning to making sure rovers on Mars function effectively, every person in the world is trying to come up with their best versions a scheduling algorithm.
The book deep-dives into how computer scientists used methods that we have probably used in the past and how those methods evolved over time to consider many factors. For example, you may check off tasks that take the least amount of time and progress to more time-consuming ones (Shortest Processing Time), complete tasks with the earliest deadline first (Moore’s Algorithm) or combine the two and create a system of weight (duration to complete the task multiplied by the weight it’ll take off your shoulder).
However, as the book goes on to explain, a simple algorithm like this may not suffice as a low-priority task may block a high-priority task and, therefore, you may end up deprioritising a high-priority task. The solution offered is priority inversion (something that scientists discovered while their rover was stuck on Mars doing the same thing), which is to inherit priority of tasks if low-priority tasks are blocking high-priority tasks.
The book is super geeky and I recommend it to anyone who thinks algorithms can add structure to human lives.
[Conversations] Creative confidence and how my college education instilled it in me
This week, I had a conversation with a design student from NID. I usually have many conversations like these, people enquiring about my work & practice. When I step into these calls, I’m excited because I anticipate either learning or collaborating with the student. During the conversation, however, I realise that it’s going to be similar to those that I have already had and I leave feeling a little disappointed.
Most of the questioning from students is often around – how I create the quantity of creative work that I do and how they are afraid of putting their work out there because it isn’t there yet. Whenever I hear that statement, I chuckle lightly because even I don’t believe that my work is remotely there yet. But many people who see it think it is, maybe because I’m confident in putting it out there.
In my second year of college, I had read Creative Confidence, a book by Tom & David Kelley. I don’t remember much of the book but what I really liked was the title and the combination of those two words has seeped into my roots. But I don’t think it was just those two words – I was fortunate enough to study in a space that allowed experimentation, stepping into a staff room with professors tinkering, failing and tinkering again, and being able to question what is considered good & bad (and why).
As much as I vocally expressed my disappointment with my college, looking back I feel blessed to have had the environment that I did. I don’t think that I would have survived at NID or IIT. Actually, I wouldn’t have made it past the entrance test because I didn’t have the skill that they deem important. This was the best part, because my lack of foundation led me to create my own foundation, which is why I’m able to fiercely engage with the process of making. I’m not imitating someone else’s foundation, I’m working off on mine.
[Work] New painting algorithm
This week, I decided to re-think my original painting algorithm which involved treating the brush as a rectangular object and ‘pulling’ strokes with movement and rotation.
This time, I wanted to try and include bristles in my program. If you think about a paintbrush, the position of the bristles is not uniform. A bristle may be above or below the other, which leads to more organic visual output (in comparison to a uniform rectangle).
What I did this time was instead of creating one paint stroke with a single rectangle, many smaller points (with offset positions) are created. The number of points is variable (brush thickness can vary) and the speed of painting each stroke is randomised (leading to different strokes in the same composition). The rest of the ‘painting’ itself follows the basic logic of my previous algorithm, something that I will change in the next one.
I still have room to mess around with the parameters of this algorithm which I will continue to do in the next couple of weeks. I also think that typography with the same generative treatment might be interesting, so I’ll mess around with that as well.
[Work] Analogue work
Building on my last exploration of living life in a more balanced fashion, by engaging in different ‘kinds’ of work, I have been actively taking time off the computer and playing around with ink, letter stamps and other mediums. Here are some outcomes from the week.
[Cool Projects] Dafi Kuhne’s Tunnel Poster
Came across this really cool Dafi Kuhne poster.
What’s interesting about his work is he never uses a computer to make his posters. They are layers of physical material that is printed over & over again on paper. I think I’ll mess around a little bit with layered printing myself.
[Life] Cooking and eating warm food (and it feeling good)
This week, in a conversation with Ankur, I realised that I spent a considerable amount of money ordering food online (about 3 times more than I anticipated, which was already a lot).
I’ve started to devote a little bit more time cooking & eating. Yesterday, I marinated chicken and added beans & carrots to the mix and it went really well with rice. Eating that meal became kind of a highlight and that doesn’t usually happen with me.
What I’ve realised is that my relationship with food hasn’t been great. In middle school, I would warm up lunch in the microwave that was made in the morning and didn’t really pay attention to what I was eating. In high school, someone else made our meals for us (as we were eating in a mess). I’ve never prized warm home-food as something special because my relationship with food has always remained merely nutritional.
That is what is beginning to change and I’m glad that I am willing to devote a little bit of time to the slow process of cooking and eating. Maybe I’ll learn to make tasty food as well along the way, and not rely on throwing in whatever is available in the fridge.
I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead.
Love,
- A.