Hobbyist Academia #27
Sometimes I look back at everything I’ve gathered in the past few weeks and things sort of naturally arrange themselves into one or two overarching themes. It’s nice when that happens. Evidently, I’ve been pulling at threads of art and friendship lately.
Experience
The Brainstorms exhibit in London just closed at the end of June, so it’s technically too late to go experience it, but just learning about it made me think. It’s an exploration of the intersection of music, art, neuroscience, and technology. The core of the work is a collection of data consisting of recorded brain activity from people listening to the instrumental Pink Floyd song “The Great Gig in the Sky”.
Stateside in Las Vegas, the Meow Wolf art collective presents the Omega Mart exhibit, an immersive experience where every ordinary-seeming object is art and installations across the space come from artists around the globe.
Read
“How does one sustain a creative life?”
Systems thinker and design innovation professional Bruce Mau answers this question with 43 ways in “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”.
Creative director Shachar Aylon has launched a newsletter, Three Curious Things. He’s two issues in and I’m enjoying the interesting ideas from inside and through the eyes of a creative industry professional. I also really appreciate (and identify with) his motivation of making a thing he wishes existed.
This article from multidisciplinary design publication Wallpaper* delves into the use of architecture as a storytelling mechanism in the film Kinds of Kindness, coming out in the UK following a premiere earlier this year at Cannes Film Festival.
Casper ter Kuile’s recent newsletter is about a ritual community gathering he recently co-hosted in Brooklyn in the spirit of Midsummer, traditionally a Nordic summer solstice festival.
My friends at Sublime recommended Idle Gaze, a newsletter about “the hidden undercurrents of culture”. There’s really no better way I could have described it than the author himself did. A particular highlight is recent issue “in search of ungrammable spaces” from May. It offers an interesting lens through which to view experiential art exhibits like the ones I shared in the Experience section.
The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health Is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier by Kasley Killam was in Hobbyist Academia #24 ahead of its release; it is now available!
Anne Helen Petersen’s recent Culture Study newsletter about friend groups is a sneak preview of the subject matter of her upcoming book, Friend Group. She’s been interviewing people about their friends and how they build and sustain relationships and community in a world that begs them to optimize everything and not depend on others.
Engage and Interact
On a related note, Live Near Friends is a really interesting framework of using technology to actually produce the outcome of improved human connection and community. The platform helps people live geographically closer to their friends- like, walking-distance-close.
I am truthfully not entirely sure what this pre-launch product is, but I signed up to find out when it launches. I came across the founder on LinkedIn, where he posted about releasing a music and community related thing that might be some sort of board game or card game? The verb of what users will be doing with the product is “to play”.
Nat Eliason recently released Prolific, an app to help users build a writing habit by tracking writing sessions and learning from the analytics.
I also recently subscribed to a newsletter that’s so visual it doesn’t quite fit under Read. Visual I.D.E.A.s uses drawings to share aesthetically pleasing metaphors for personal development ideas.
I discovered Playground magazine while on a rabbit hole adventure in the Idle Gaze archives. It’s a biannual print magazine for curious and imaginative readers involved in or adjacent to the creative industries in Europe. (Issue 1 is sold out, unfortunately.)
Save This for Later
Most (if not all) of the recent additions to the To Read list center on systems and structure and frameworks, through different lenses.
Systems Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results by David Peter Stroh
Hidden Genius: The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World's Most Successful People by Polina Marinova Pompliano
Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers's Color Experiments by Fritz Horstman
Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict by William Ury (recommended by a friend at a garden party, which is a delightful phrase)
Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block (recommended in Casper ter Kuile’s recent newsletter, linked above)
[I will receive a small commission should you purchase a book using the Bookshop links included in the newsletter. Bookshop is an Amazon-alternative online bookseller that supports independent bookstores in your local community.]