Week 80, 81 & 82
Revival, east vs west art choices, Zeldman's article on living a creative life, a sketch on Bombay, Scott Siskind's doxing story, habit stacking, generative music and Ling Dong's work vs my own.
The past 3 weeks have been very difficult.
It started with my acceptance to the Fabrica residency, swiftly followed by the realisation that attending it won’t be feasible. I then flung my hands at other relevant full-time opportunities, but nothing came to fruition.
What I have right now is a repository of work that few people find ‘cool’. That’s it – I’m not at the cutting edge of anything, to be able to move into academia or a different vocation. Masquerading as a man consumed by his passion has become tiresome. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.
It’s not bursting out of me anymore, fire doused by reality. I spent two years naively in a mad pursuit, fully convinced now that it was time spent in the wrong bucket. What is then the right bucket?
I don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to consciously spend my time anymore. For the past 21 days, I’ve just laid there like an animated corpse, going through the motions of every regular day. It’s a wonderfully iron-clad impenetrable box that I think I belong in and no other human being is welcome.
[Articles] East vs West – Art choices
Read an interesting article comparing differences between how people in the east view things vs people in the west.
Here are some pointers from the article that were interesting:
We already discussed that Greek philosophers focus much more on individual objects than Eastern thinkers, who look more holistically.
This tendency hasn’t changed throughout history.
The higher placement of the horizon is linked to the context-oriented visual attention style seen in adults’ drawings and historical paintings in East Asian cultures, as opposed to object-focused drawing styles commonly seen in North American cultures.
Can this mean, if extrapolated, that western thinkers are better at micro / nuanced thinking and eastern thinkers are better for macro / big-picture thinking?
Maybe a long-shot but an interesting hypothesis to test out when designing diverse international project teams.
[Reading] I am a creative – Jeffrey Zeldman
Well written article by Jeffrey Zeldman. Here are some pointers I took away:
What I do is alchemy. It is a mystery. I do not so much do it, as let it be done through me.
Made me wonder about ‘structure’ in the creative process:
I am a creative. I don’t control my dreams. And I don’t control my best ideas.I can hammer away, surround myself with facts or images, and sometimes that works. I can go for a walk, and sometimes that works. I can be making dinner and there’s a Eureka having nothing to do with sizzling oil and bubbling pots. Often I know what to do the instant I wake up. And then, almost as often, as I become conscious and part of the world again, the idea that would have saved me turns to vanishing dust in a mindless wind of oblivion. For creativity, I believe, comes from that other world. The one we enter in dreams, and perhaps, before birth and after death. But that’s for poets to wonder, and I am not a poet. I am a creative.Maybe why I've made some connections in the creative industry:
Creatives recognize creatives like queers recognize queers, like real rappers recognize real rappers, like cons know cons.Creatives belittle our own small achievements, because we compare them to those of the great ones. Beautiful animation! Well, I’m no Miyazaki. Now THAT is greatness. That is greatness straight from the mind of God. This half-starved little thing that I made? It more or less fell off the back of the turnip truck. And the turnips weren’t even fresh.
Powerful end:
I am a creative. I believe in the ultimate mystery of process. I believe in it so much, I am even fool enough to publish an essay I dictated into a tiny machine and didn’t take time to review or revise. I won’t do this often, I promise. But I did it just now, because, as afraid as I might be of your seeing through my pitiful gestures toward the beautiful, I was even more afraid of forgetting what I came to say.
There. I think I’ve said it.
[Sketches] What Bombay feels like
Made a sketch on what living in Bombay feels like.
Neat piece of code for this one.
Each background particle picks a random tile to go to, after a random duration. Then it travels upwards first (and then sideways) to avoid diagonal movement reaffirming the rigidity that this city has.
[Reading] Scott Siskind’s article
Read a rather long article by Scott Siskind, a psychiatrist who ran a popular online blog anonymously and had to delete it to avoid being doxed by the New York Times. Here are some notes from it:
Discusses blogging and the implications on his career & life. I wonder if I’m risking my career by being so vulnerable in an online space. Something like my micro-blog won’t make my case as a graduate student or a possible teacher. But it’s okay, I don’t think I want to trade my humanity for a better job yet.
Made me wonder whether my blog ever reach this level of popularity or resonance?
His purpose of blogging is so strong:
I want to grab some of you by the shoulders and shake you and shout "IT'S JUST A BLOG, GET A LIFE". But of course I would be a hypocrite. I remember back to when I was a new college graduate, desperately trying to make sense of the world. I remember the sheer relief when I came across a few bloggers - I most clearly remember Eliezer Yudkowsky - who seemed to be tuned exactly to my wavelength, people who were making sense when the entire rest of the world was saying vague fuzzy things that almost but not quite connected with the millions of questions I had about everything. These people weren't perfect, and they didn't have all the answers, but their existence reassured me that I wasn't crazy and I wasn't alone. I was an embarrassing fanboy of theirs for many years - I kind of still am - and if my punishment is to have embarassing fanboys of my own then I accept it as part of the circle of life.
And also - I am maybe the worst person possible to argue that this doesn't matter. Almost everything good in my life I've gotten because of you. I met most of my friends through blogging. I met my housemates, who are basically my family right now, through blogging. I got introduced to my girlfriend by someone I know through blogging. My patients are doing better than they could be - some of them vastly better - because of things I learned from all of you in the process of blogging. Most of the intellectual progress I've made over the past ten years has been following up on leads people sent me because of my blogging. To the degree that the world makes sense to me, to the degree that I've been able to untie some of the thornier knots and be rewarded with the relief of mental clarity, a lot of it has been because of things I learned while blogging. However many over-the-top dubious claims you want to make about how much I have improved your life, I will one-up you with how much you have improved mine. And after reading a few hundred of your emails, I've realized, crystal-clear, that I am going to be spending the rest of my life trying to deserve even one percent of the love you've shown and the gifts you've given me.
[Reading] Habit stacking
Read a sweet article by Sebastian Gutierrez, titled Math as a habit.
He discusses a bunch of habit-forming techniques he used with his family, to get their children to do math (which the children love) as a habit. What worked for him was something called habit stacking – a technique where you pair a new habit with an existing one.
For example, if you wish to drink water every morning, attach it to your habit of brushing teeth every morning. Keep a glass of water near the sink, and drink a glass of water every time you brush.
Interesting thing to try out when I’m motivated to pick up a new habit.
[Learning] Generative music
Been very interested in the idea of generative music. Read this interesting article about how it works.
I’ve been messing around with SonicPI, and learning more about music theory. Maybe I make something nice or maybe I don’t. Who knows?
[Reading & Realisations] Ling Dong’s work vs my own
Was going through the work of current Future Sketches students and realised some things while viewing Ling Dong’s past work documentation that he made at CMU.
His work is so technically in-depth. My entire zone was about using basic logic and seeing how far I can take that, whereas his (and all the other Future Sketches students’) zone is to see how far they can take logic. His programming was so advanced that it made no sense to me in some places.
Maybe that’s what MIT was looking for. Well, of course, it’s MIT.