Just like last year, I’ll be taking a break over the next four or five issues, so this is a shorter issue than would normally drop into your inbox. I hope that you enjoy this selection of links and pics, feel free to get in touch, and look forward to catching up later in the summer.
This is Day 9 and after I send this off I’ll take a test and see if I’m finally negative. I may have to wait a little longer, but I hope not, I’m already a little stir crazy and missing being outside and moving around freely. My folks’ house is a bungalow with a long room on the side that is split into two parts with dividing doors that slide across separating a back bedroom from one at the front. There are windows along the side that open up into the garden and a path along the house. It has been useful really, perfect in lots of ways, we are sheltered from the rest of the house, self contained, the rear bedroom has a bathroom with a shower. The boys call this the Covid Wing and are having a bit of fun at our expense (now both my wife and me are isolation, I’m in the front room, she’s in the back), and feed us contraband sweets and pieces of fruit through the window, which has become a hatch for food and drinks.
Although I’m feeling much better, my sense of taste has almost completely disappeared, just a few flavors, including citrus remain, so food is about texture, chewy or crunchy are my favorites. Worse still, loss of taste has been replaced by one which is muddy, slightly yucky and sickly. I’ve tried to make it go away, with chewing gum and orange juice, but it’s still there, stagnant as ditchwater.
I have a sketchbook, a few watercolor pencils and brushes, and a black Papermate pen that gives a clean line and blots out when you add water. I’ve been searching instagram for faces and sketching ones that I’ve found, just people, some of them life models, otherwise they’re too glossy and made up. It’s tricky thinking of the hashtags, #face is too generic and people are posing and puckering up, #lifemodel is tricky because you get a lot of sketches and drawings, #person is more interesting and #me sometimes gets you “real” people, it’s an honest hashtag.
I had time to trim the number of people I was following and it cleaned up my feed a little. It is an interesting space for artists, there are so many wonderful potters and textile artists, painters and illustrators, concrete craft, printmakers, wood-turning, carving, sculptors and weavers. The real frustration now is the move to video, which hold attention for longer (more engagement, more ads) and it’s a shame, because I still like photos, which you can spend time with and often say more. It’s been interesting that it’s the anniversary of the iPhone, I would say that it has been incredibly useful to be able to get a good quality image from a device that you keep in your pocket, and be able to touch it up and then post it online. Of course I love video, and this wave of short clips, through TikTok and all its similar clones is incredibly accessible. I wonder how it is shaping the world, certainly it is changing the way people act and behave.
I have a session to run at next week’s Playful Learning Conference, thinking about Playful approaches to video, that I hope will be a discussion and celebration of the ways we use moving image, particularly in learning, while learning a few oblique strategies for generating ideas. I’ll have more to say on this, of course.
After that, I’ll be heading to Durham, to talk to the team about immersive projects and adding activities to teaching.
I’ve also managed finally, to get my students through their summer projects, and what a great bunch of films they have produced, I’ll add them to our YouTube channel so that you can see. It is wonderful to read the journal reflections, again the challenge isn’t so much learning how a 360 camera works, but finding a suitable subject and planning out a short film. I’m really proud of them, they’ve pulled off some great work.
I have watched a few films this week, including Good Time by the Safdie Brothers who also wrote and starred in it. It’s a claustrophobic crime film with a nervy Robert Pattinson trying to get back to his brother (Benny Safdie) and make it through a wild night in New York. It was one of the films recommended by Mark Cousins in his new Story of Film - A New Generation, which is terrific and given me a few others to see. I love how Mark see film, brings themes together, tracing lines between movies, showing how two different films such as Parasite and Us, really are exploring something similar, the notion of shadow families, reflections of each other. I bathed myself in this for three hours, straight through, I mean, what else was I going to do?
Finally, catching up with news from America, which is not great. Scotus has gone rogue, the assault on LGBTQi+ lives continues, increase in the murders of Black women, the horror as people start to work through the implications of the Roe ruling, more January 6 revelations. I just hope Americans go to the polls with these issues in mind, but I fear it will be gas prices will decide the fate of the country.
Thank You
Fingers crossed that I can get back to normal. Thank you for reading, this is still a summer micro-issue, honestly. Writing has kept me a little bit sane this week, and it’s been a measure of how much better I’m feeling that I can read and type, honestly the first few days were so cloudy.
Wishing myself a speedy recovery and look forward to catching up with you next week.