Ever since twitter offered the option, I’ve been adding image descriptions to any images I tweet. Reading the white pube’s review of Abi Palmer’s What Now?, with its account of the artist’s audio description of her video, made me think that there might be something interesting in reading out those descriptions. Because I think there is a kind of accidental poetry involved when you are trying to convey the content of an image only using text.
So that’s what this month’s piece is. 55 images/descriptions I’ve posted to twitter in the last however many months, 7 of which will be selected at random each day, which then scroll up the screen, bottom-to-top, accompanied by recordings of me reading out each description.
Download tentative translations
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The Rules:
The file at this link will be deleted 1 month from now (07/11/20).
All downloads are zipfiles containing a Windows executable.
All source code and assets are included, licensed under the GPL (code) and CC-BYSA (assets).
As long as you abide by those licenses, you can do whatever you want with the download.
Further Reading
This article by James Meek is the clearest overview I’ve read of the covid crisis, how it has spread, and how it’s been dealt with (successfully and otherwise, depending on the country). Particularly interesting in explaining how African countries have dealt with it far better than those of us in Europe and the US.
A fascinating paean to CalMac ferries by Joe Kennedy.
“We are aware that we are alive only because of love.”
Cécile Richard has released another incredible bitsy about hope and the necessity of friendship when you’re struggling. CW: anxiety, self-deprecation, depiction of a panic attack.
It’s a shorter reading list this month because I forced myself to take a break from twitter following the (inevitable) recent outbreaks at scottish uni halls. If I had stayed online I would have ended up saying something that would definitely get me in trouble. I’m still seething at the way our students have been treated in all this.
Anyway, it turns out a lot of my reading comes from folk tweeting about things on twitter, so I’ve ended up reading less than usual. Sorry about that. We’ll hopefully be back to normal next month.