Claude as a studio assistant

I was looking at my friend Mert Hürtürk’s new blog, Intromert, and came across an entry titled Low Place Like Home, where he shared geometric sketches made with Processing, a tool purpose-built for artists to …

Hockney’s wandering eye photos

I started reading Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing. I bought this book a while ago. I was browsing the book at Dussmann, opened a random page which happened to be page 96 and Odell was talking about David …

A cushioned connection

I am reading The Creative Gene by Hideo Kojima, and in his interview with Gen Hoshino, he explains how he wanted players to be able to create connections with one another. In Death Stranding players can leave …

Photographs can transcend original intentions and motivations

I am reading How I Take Photographs by Daido Moriyama and in contradiction with his previously noted statement that I should have an idea of what I want to capture, he states that I (the photographer) will …

Communication is not what sets humans apart

This is a passage from Ray Nayler’s book The Mountain in the Sea. I keep coming across this idea that language enables us to talk about what is not immediately present, and that we are the only species capable of …

A way of looking but not joining

I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and in this essay titled Last Words, she has written about Hemingway: The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of …

Heidegger was an early product thinker

I am watching Hubert Dreyfus’s lecture on Heidegger and Being and Time, where he describes two modes of being for objects. 1. Readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit): When tools are ready-to-hand, they smoothly integrate …

The “we-ness” of being an octopus

I’m reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, and there’s a section where he writes about Tibetan Maintenance Drones, the degree of independence built into them, and what it feels like to command them. You …

Recollection, with all the feelings that accompanied it

While reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, I began to wonder about the difference between knowledge that feels like mine and knowledge that simply exists out there. Nayler wrote the following when a …

Memory is a consistently reinforced pattern

I am listening to Michael Levin on Lex Fridman Podcast on YouTube and Levin just made this description which resonates with how I feel about memory. What is a memory? It is a pattern, it is an informational …

Why go down the rabbit hole

Jenny Odell writes in How to Do Nothing: So why go down the rabbit hole? First and most basically, it is enjoyable. Curiosity, something we know most of all from childhood, is a forward-driving force that derives …

To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works

I am reading the introduction of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and he writes: To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works: the way it evaluates a statement for truth, the way it …

Japanese builds from the outside in

I am reading Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg and she wrote about this incident where in her trip to Japan, her student Mitsue—who is also a friend and her guide in Japan— told her about someone who wanted …

Going back to stone

I am watching a short video on Isamu Noguchi by SFMoMA and I particularly found his remarks on the limitations of the industry relevant. If you want to live and work in an industrialized situation, you have to use …

What do you want to capture

I am reading How I Take Photographs by Daido Moriyama, and he says something that I myself am not sure how to answer. Emphasis mine: I see so many young people—I guess they’re photography students—with cameras in …

Time is memory

I am reading The Unreality of Memory by Elisa Gabbert, and in the essay titled “The Unreality of Time,” she writes about Henry Bergson’s concept of time. Apparently, Albert Einstein famously said “there is no …

Interesting is a non-word

In this scene from Matt Ross’s movie Captain Fantastic, Viggo Mortensen’s character tells his daughter that interesting is a non word, and that she was supposed to avoid it and be more specific. This idea stuck …

The carrier bag theory in Prey

I watched Prey by Dan Trachtenberg the other night. I am not particularly keen on Predator sequels, but this one seemed promising: raw untouched nature, a Native American setting, and strong reviews. Right before …

Smelling as time travel

I underlined this part in Kaveh Akbar’s book Martyr! about how Orkideh could smell lavender to travel to any other point in his life. I used to walk with a sprig of lavender in my pocket—smelling it, I could go to …

Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on books

I read this quote From Walter Benjamin online: Und heute schon ist das Buch, wie die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Produktionsweise lehrt, eine veraltete Vermittlung zwischen zwei verschiedenen Kartotheksystemen. …