June 17, 2024

Another electromagnetic field

I’m going to guess it was 2006. Or maybe 2007. Phil called, said did I want to go and see this art thing in a field outside Bath? It will be cool, he said.

We drove in his car. There’s a spot on the hills up by the M4, where the pylons hunker down, lower to the ground than usual. In a field directly underneath the power lines, an Artist had set up dozens of strip light bulbs, poking into the soil.

We arrived when it was still light. Lots of us were just milling around, waiting for electromagnetism to happen.

It happened as dark fell. Stray electrons from the power cables above our heads dribbled down earthwards, through the stuck-on-end bulbs. Which began to glow.

art life

June 17, 2024

Collecting things for me

I spend a lot of time encouraging teams and work places to “collect things” - pictures, screenshots, quotes, etc - that they can use as raw material for communicating about their work in future.

But it’s been years since I thought about collecting things for me, for the sake of having them collected. This post from Christopher Butler renewed lots of those thoughts:

“You might be thinking ‘cool cool cool so what are you going to do with all these pictures?’ which is very reasonable. I don’t know! Look at them? But I HAVE THEM THEY ARE MINE NOW.”

I used to collect a few things - images, PDFs to read, audio files to listen to - but got into the habit of ruthlessly deleting them after use. I’m not sure why. Maybe because those were the days when storage was expensive. But as Christopher points out, storage is cheap now.

I’m a strong proponent of archives, of the value of museums. It’s time I invested some time in one that reflects my interests, so that in years to come I also have a bunch of pictures (and audio files, and quotes, etc) I can, I don’t know, look at. Because I have them, and they are mine now.

archives computers

June 16, 2024

My shoulder hates the internet

This is the shoulder I have that hates the internet. It also hates my typing on computers. It hates me driving. It has strong opinions about me doing things with my left arm. It makes its opinions known.

Ow.

life health