My new sofa looks like a bus seat
My new sofa looks like a bus seat
Foreword: In lew of having a social media account for my work, I have decided to attempt to start a monthly newsletter. I can't promise much but I hope it will give an insight into my practice, projects and inspirations.
I have upgraded in life. I finally got a sofa for my room. It's old, very hard and looks like a train seat but gone are the days of sitting on the floor and my intermit knowledge of how much I need to hover the floor. (Sidenote: During writing this I found out that train/bus seats use 'Moquette' fabric and busy patterns because it hides stains.)
This, and my nearly acquired lockdown hobby of knitting, have enabled me to get around to watching things that usually leave me restless. Namely two Adam Curtis Docuseries ("The Century of the Self" & "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace") and Youtube documentary on Dubstep. What I loved about all of these was their ability to tell stories that transpire over the decades. Whether that be the how teachings of self-actualisation led to people focusing on making themselves happy in the current state of the world rather than changing the state of the world to make themselves happy; or how the UK smoking ban moved the sound of dubstep away from the grey tones of Mala to the colour energy of Skrillex, as DJs struggled to keep clubbers away from the smoking area. If you have 4 hours free or are knitting a bucket hat, I highly recommend "The Century of the Self", it's on amazon ironically.
When not giving myself posture induced back pain on the sofa, I have been working on two Data related projects. The first is launching a store for my picture book, "Big Data Girl". Even though I like how it looks, I am most proud that the website has no trackers, Facebook pixels or Google Tags. A surprisingly hard thing to achieve and a reminder that the internet is built on the expectation that users must be tracked (Thanks Gumroad for sorting me out).
My other ongoing data project is inspired by my recent infatuation with 'The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows'. It seems there is a word for every feeling and even if you don't re late to a particular entry, others do. Hence I am training an Ai using machine learning to come up with its own sorrows and definitions, in the hope that someone will relate and feel understood. My experiment isn't going too well currently but here is my sad neologist's best attempt so far:
Antematter n. the feeling of extreme everything being and grey and common falls away, leaving behind a constellation at the bottom of the pan --- a longer even a hug.
That's all from me, hope you've enjoyed and have a great month.
Fred
My Website: https://www.fredwordie.com
My Book: https://www.bigdatagirl.com
My VC: https://ventually.xyz