Me & My Shadow

A Networked Thought

I’ve been enjoying the work of two friends over the last few months, and the other day, sitting in a cafe in Edinburgh, I tried to work out why it was I liked them so much.

The two things in question are Matt Irvine Brown’s modern boogie yus Spotify playlist, and James Bridle’s New Aesthetic Tumblr.

First, you should assume I’m reading way too much into this. They’re just good things, and don’t need justifying with pseudo-intellectual blogging.

With that out the way, I think there’s something about them both that feels new and interesting.

Matt’s playlist is a collection of recent electronica with a decent beat. Every few days Matt comes back to it, adds a few tracks to it, moves a few around, maybe deletes a couple. Because it’s on Spotify you don’t have to download anything to listen to it - it’s all there and instant-on and legal.

At its most clinical, Matt has taken a slice of music and given it a name and a place on the web. Because it’s got a URL we can point at it, share it, and when Matt updates it, everyone’s copy updates with it. As he discovers new music he adds them to the playlist, but adjusts the older tracks to flow better too.

Matt has a good taste and knowledge of music, so it feels like I’m getting to watch over the shoulder of someone I respect as they thumb their way through a record shop, slowly building up the perfect playlist. It’s a bit like a mix tape which is always shipping.

James’ New Aesthetic Tumblr is in a different area entirely, but perhaps has some similarities.

James has coined a thing: a word, a patch of culture, bounded by a thought in his head. We’re watching James work through this thing he’s named, and the act of collecting these examples of the New Aesthetic is his way of working out what it is.

I’m not sure he’s always right, or that I agree with all his choices - but that’s fine because it’s his thought, not mine, and we’re all just watching.

Both of these seem like something new to me: something approaching a networked thought. They’re slow, evolving over months, but in full public view, as they both work through something that’s interesting to them through the act of curation and collection.

The playlist and the Tumblr are just containers for other people’s work, but the thought is in the connections, not the nodes.

I suppose part of my interest in them is a natural extension of the curiosity about the working process of creative individuals. A bit like the way people want to know what software was used to design a website, or what tools an author uses.

By watching the work evolve we might get a better understanding of how they both think and some of that might rub off on us.

And regardless, they’re both just good.

follow the red string

We cycled from London to Rye last Saturday. Perfect weather, roads and company.

We navigated by following a long piece of red string, and I tied a balloon with a camera to the back of my bike to record our adventure. It turned out something like this:

These Are the Words

In September, F and I cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats, from tip to tip of the UK. And I’ve been trying to write about it ever since. It felt like something I should write about.

I think one of the reasons why I’ve found it hard to find the words is that it seems so far removed from everything that happened before and after. There’s no narrative that leads in and out of the story. We said we’d do it, we planned it a bit, and then one day we got a train down to Cornwall and disappeared into a bubble for three weeks.

It didn’t seem particularly real to me, looking east from Land’s End in the lashing rain, thinking that we would now cycle to the other end of the country, and that I shouldn’t freak out about this. I almost did.

And it didn’t seem particularly real to me when we arrived in John O’Groats, with the light failing. As I looked out over the North Sea I could only wonder if there was anywhere else left to go. There wasn’t; we’d done all 987 miles. That didn’t seem right.

Then, the other day I watched this video by the director Seamus Murphy, for PJ Harvey. The short vignettes of British life reminded me of the things we spotted from our saddles. The detail and closeness of the footage reminded me of glancing through people’s front windows, listening to their chatter and watching their fields. It reminded me of rolling through towns and villages as close, passive, and silent observers of British life.

It’s a good song, I think, and I watched the video all the way through, before I realised what it was I felt looking out over the North Sea, shortly before we found the whisky.

I was proud, yes; proud we didn’t give up; proud we kept each other going. But also something I’ve never really felt before: I was proud of this country. And I think that’s something not many British people ever really let themselves feel.

Admiralty Chart Correction Tracings

We went to visit one of our printers today. They don’t just print newspapers, they also print things like this:

It’s a book of Admiralty Chart Correction Tracings. It contains a compilation of changes to marine navigation maps, published by the UK Hydrographic Office.

Ships will subscribe to the service through a third party, and receive the latest copy of the book when they dock at port. They tear out each page, and apply the relevant changes to their paper maps with a pencil and transfer paper. They’re paper map diffs, if you like.

I love it. For a start, you can print on tracing paper - who knew? And it made me wonder if all of the maps that the UK Hydrographic Office maintain are entirely hand-drawn, or if only the changes are done by hand. And if they use paper as the primary workflow, how they store the changes so they can extract the appropriate patches for printing, at the same time as maintaining a master copy. Maybe someone out there knows.

The kind of processes and expertise that build up inside an organisation, over a long period of time, for managing a workflow like this, seem complex and fascinating.

And ignoring all of that, it’s just a gorgeous book to pore over.

All surfaces smooth and uniform and strawberry

It might just be because I don’t quite ‘get’ Quora, but using it feels like I’m a tiny person on a massive jelly, all surfaces smooth and uniform and strawberry. But it’s huge, and wobbling around me, and I can’t quite get a grasp on it to climb up out of this pit of questioning doom, to somewhere from which I could survey the terrain. Instead, I’m left looking at this giant jelly, as it shifts underneath me, wondering why I’m here.

Not that it’s bad. Just that it’s somewhat nightmareish.

Hello 2011.