The sun is shining although the temperature is plummeting, it’s -14˙C/6˙F which is mighty cold in anyone’s money. It is quiet and serene, the snow is frozen, crunchy underfoot, and glistening like rhinestone beads. The deer visit at night and we wake up to prints across the path leading up the side of the house. I’m in the sunroom and sunlight is pouring in, I have a small portable radiator to keep me warm.
I’m feeling better today but only just recovering from a pretty horrible non-covid cold that knocked me out and left me completely out of it, sipping hot lemon tea on the sofa, trying to soothe a raging sore throat. I didn’t have the energy to read or watch much at all, just falling in and out of sleep, feeling sorry for myself.
Like I say, feeling much better now and more like my usual self. I need a shave though and I have an eye appointment this afternoon, so I have to make myself ready for conversation.
A few different bits and pieces for you this week. I’m completing the last few parts of my generative art course and JavaScript refresh, I’m reading There, There by Tommy Orange (affiliate link) and thoroughly enjoying it, and I’m writing a couple of articles together, both exploring content creation in VR and aspects of immersion. The omicron wave seems to be peaking but it will be a while before I can travel, I’m looking at mid-Feb at the earliest. Can’t wait.
Stephan
Spaces to Connect
Continuing from last week’s simplified description of generative art, I thought I would talk a little bit about Data visualization. I covered this subject as a unit back when I was a Graphic Design lecturer in a Further Education college. We often started the course by talking about Florence Nightingale’s rose diagram which told a story of the Crimean war that many did not want to hear, that more soldiers were dying from infection and disease in hospital wards than killed outright on the battlefield. This visualization saved many lives, helping Nightingale to secure funding for sanitation, laundry, and supplies to establish clean and sterile wards, where soldiers could recover from their wounds.
Nightingale was the first woman to be admitted to the National Statistical Society, and although we probably know more about her role in care and nursing, she knew how powerful narratives could be created by numbers. These days, we use computers can create data visualizations, in fact, you can recreate the Rose Diagram using an application called ggplot2 and by copying some code. The point is that there’s still a narrative to shape, there’s a story that can be told through a visualization that can be engaging and impactful.
I have been less than impressed with the use of data to tell stories about the pandemic. I’ve found it incredibly difficult to find consistent data and even harder to make comparisons so that you can make informed decisions about travel, being out in public, planning ahead. Recorded data, even by John Hopkins University is compromised by those counties and states that now refuse to publish numbers, and there’s even talk about why we continue to publish daily recorded cases and the effect this might be having on the behavior we’re hoping to nudge in the right direction.
It’s telling that even when presented with the Rose Diagram it took private money to fund the first round of changes to hospital conditions, the surgeon general at the time talked of deaths from infections as “unavoidable”. Will we look back at the pandemic and talk about how many deaths could have been avoided, what a percentage cost would have there been without vaccination? I hope so, it seems that we’ve lost our ability to tell stories using numbers, and although we often talk about having information at our fingertips, the myriad ways that we can visualize and read statistical data about the pandemic means that those who want to can obscure those narratives, or hide them in plain sight.
Learning
These generative art pieces are my first doodles, sketches in code, and the equivalent of mark-making or a toddler with a crayon. It’s fun to play around and create something though and I think I’m making progress, the code isn’t as intimidating as it was when I first started and I’m identifying the different parts. It is going to get a bit more interesting, I can assure you.
Life Lessons
I couldn’t help but agree with Stephen Colbert’s comment that a filibuster is an anti-democratic tool, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King who held that senators who support the filibuster represent the minority of Americans, almost 41 million fewer currently. It’s completely nuts, a legislative majority has to be at least 60 senators, which hasn’t happened for more than thirty years since the 95th Congress. Americans now vote for parties that can’t push through reform, sure it’s the same from both sides but it’s the voters that are being cast aside.
One of the main things I took from this article was that democracy is a practice rather than a supposition, that it needs to be enacted at every level of decision-making, from local governance to the executive branch. Watching “Knock Down the House”, the documentary following four women, including AOC and Cori Bush running for congress in 2018, grass-roots activists working to support their communities. This is the hope, I see it in our local community, those on school boards, working as police commissioners, standing as council members - they are the people who need to show that democracy works, that change can happen. I still believe that people are broadly communitarian, often adopting different positions locally than they might nationally. They are the ones working to keep services running, funding initiatives, seeking compromise, debating, and negotiating. It’s democracy in practice.
Lost and Found
There’s an excellent webinar on virtual escape rooms featured in FLTmag run by IALLT, I think it’s great to use these games for education and even more interesting when students become the designers and game creators themselves.
This excellent episode from the Audio Long Read archive looks at the dominance of the English Language. This is brilliant, taking in Anglo-Globalism, Alexander von Humbolt, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and many more concepts in linguistics and anthropology, along with reflections on sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and polylingual communities. I had no idea for instance of the practice of accent surgery or Roosevelt’s declaration that there should only be room for one language, that Americans should not live “…as dwellers in a polyglot boardinghouse.” We know that languages are dying, that their last speakers are dwindling until nobody can remember the language as it has been spoken and written. When a language dies so vanishes a culture.
I can’t remember if I shared this already, apologies if I have, but I thoroughly enjoyed Voir a series of films exploring cinema. I used to enjoy Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos’ Every Frame a Painting on YouTube and it’s great to them contribute to the series with films about revenge and how television has changed the way we watch movies.
Thank you
I hope it’s not too chilly where you are and that you’re safe and warm. I’m looking forward to a weekend staying in, sketching has become an almost daily practice and I’m interested in submitting a couple of paintings to the Silver Apple Gallery if they’ll have me. It looks like they have a few wonderful pieces at the moment and I hope I can pick something up.
We had arguments with our kid about wearing a coat to school, you wouldn’t think this would even be a discussion in sub-zero temperatures, but the practicality of carrying it around with him at school or only having a minute or so between lessons to get from the locker at the top of the 6th floor to say the gym or canteen, or even to collect it on his way home seems a greater inconvenience than being cold. I shake my head with despair.
So, listen take care, look after yourselves and I look forward to catching up with you next week. Remember if you ever want any more details about anything I’ve found or produced on this page then drop me a line.
Hope you'll get well soon! The generative art seems really interesting, I could use it as a refresher for my rusty JS skills too.