Death to Realism! 023
Death to Realism! 023
Happy Spring! Obviously this issue's gone out a bit late, but it was because there were still some things I wanted to squeeze into it, as you'll see below. If you need a refresher on the origin & nature of these bi-weekly updates, check out the first issue before reading on.
What's New?
Domino Club has just dropped a new batch of anonymous, subterranean-themed games. We've also commandeered the URL barefootis.legal if you need an even faster and more memorable way of sharing Domino Club games with your professional network. Mysterious pseudonyms will be maintained until April 3rd, so in the next issue I'll be able to share which entry is my own as well as some thoughts on the rest of them!
I also spoke to The Verge a bit about Bitsy, drawing on my past research into small scale game development and how tools and online communities shape these activities. I'm quoted at length... I guess I always have a lot to say when this topic comes up, but I highly reccomend also checking out the linked work!
Coming Soon
I'm currently busy with a lot of things, finishing up my current job contract at the end of April, but also moving to a slightly bigger and more suitable flat because both of us working from home from the same room has been occasionally inconvenient. I may take a month off then before jumping back in to freelancing and looking for work since i have some savings, and would like to have some time to focus exclusively on writing! The new flat will also mean I'll finally have enough room to get a proper filing cabinet and catalog my huge stack of zines/tech/culture zines properly, which will be a fun process to document.
The Rec Room
A cool thing about Bandcamp is not just how easy it is to find new stuff on there, but also how you can finally get a legit copy of some old, weird, back catalog favorites, like this one, which I think I exclusively listened to as an MP3 rip from a FULL ALBUM youtube video before.
This weird/awesome Joseph Beuys video was back on my radar for some reason this week
I don't know if I'll have time to make something, but the new Bitsy jam theme is great and I want lots of people to make stuff for it...
Our new place is going to be really close to Pollok Country Park so I have been enjoying the cows, songbirds, huge fluffy lichens etc. to be found there when we have to run errands in that part of town.
I've Been Reading
I've gotten a bit more paperback reading done than usual, because my job has gradually worked back up to two days in the office per week, so I now have a bus commute! The first book I read this way was Chris Kraus' Torpor. And while this was the novel of hers I assumed I'd relate to the perspective and phase of life depicted in it the least, it was still pretty good, and a bit eerie that the main character starts the book off worrying about war breaking out in Europe and a weird tradwife revival in the air... in 1991. I've started The Warehouse by Alessandro Delfanti that is a study of precarity and surveillance in Amazon warehouse work with lots of interesting details and analysis so far.
I loved this article on dream science, not just because it explores the question of how do you even study something that is so abstract and notoriously subjective and hard to remember, but because it really puts words to some of the weirder and more unpleasant aspects of insomnia and half-sleep. This post on extreme small scale solar computing goes into a lot of fascinating aspects of the tech there, but also ties in poetry generation and presentation. Finally, this unshot Chekhov's gun manifesto is interesting food for thought on the lineage and consequences of "invisible" software and design.
I think that's all I have this bi-week! For new subscribers who have signed on since the last newsletter, you can check out the archive of past issues at any time!
Thank you again for your support,
Emilie