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This month’s Dispatch is late because I’ve been occupied enjoying the best part of the PNW: summer. There’s been a lot of walking involved as my friends and I recently got into a Korean app called Walking Charlie; I also used these walks to contribute to Are.na’s Walking Scores. But I’m actually writing this today after a few days of being indoors due to wildfire smoke. What’s there to do when the grass is on fire?

Paying more attention…

This month, I was a part of Sense to Sense taught by Meg Miller and Laurel Schwulst for Ultralight School. I don’t (or, didn’t?) think of myself as a writer, but this class has helped me get reacquainted with writing as a tool for thinking and design. The exercises—each week covering a sense—asked us to pay attention to how things look, feel, sound, smell, taste.

The class is collaborating on a publication and website coming soon in September, so watch this space for an invite to the online book launch/reading.

Our week on touch inspired me to revisit the question of what it means to touch our machines, something (for those of you who knew me in grad school) I’ve been circling for a while. I’m still collecting thinking and building references here, and have drafted the beginnings of an essay organized around four gestures (click, hold, drag, release), pairing the mechanics of each with the language we've built around it. If you’re interested in reading and offering feedback, let me know!

…and doing something with it

We’re inspired by what’s around us, and for me right now this comes from just being outside. I’m trying to operate more in the mindset of “making things just because I want to try them out.” (And writing about them here means I won’t abandon ideas part way…right?)

✈️ In a twist, I found myself inspired by the Blue Angels (the downside to beautiful PNW summers is the annual Seafair) and am sketching out a web app to create my own skywriting. This is a bit of a learning curve for me; more on this process another time. I’ll share this out when it’s done!

✨ On the beach the other day the water's shimmer and sparkle brought to mind Joan Didion's concept of "images that shimmer around the edges" that was referenced in Sense to Sense—or rather, the class made me pay attention to the shimmering. What if the movement of these shimmers is also a score?

This weekend ❇️

This Saturday, August 8 from 2–5pm I will be hosting HTML Day Seattle with Komal Yadav at Volunteer Park. HTML Day is an annual event organized by HTML Energy for gathering IRL in places around the world to write and learn HTML.

• Event details are here → http://htmldayseattle.neocities.org

• See if there’s an event near you → https://2026.html.energy/

That’s it for now—I’d love to hear from you and what you’re working on, thinking about, or obsessed with lately.

Nicci