Week #19
Fake cell phone towers, my current tiktok obsession, and more on technology.
1
I take back everything bad I've said about TikTok (I'm lying). There is some incredible content out there. I mean really. This article from Vulture does a great job explaining how we got here.
2
We've all been cyborgs for longer than we've acknowledged. This recent study points out that tools are interpreted by our brains as extensions of our bodies. A cool thread on Twitter about it.
3
On more Fuck Yeah Future Shock, here is Facebook's latest campaign for their latest VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2.
4
If you miss the look and feel of old Geocities webpages, take a loot at Mmm. I'm a fan of nocode solutions, and this is a funny entry for the website builder category: Mmm.page.
5
An interactive guide to ambiguous grammar.
6
If you're into Nils Frahms, Max Richter or Philips Glass, this is a good take.
–
Beijo!
Revisiting these photos nowadays is almost equivalent to traveling. Here are some photographs I took in Brazil over the last 17 years that I'm fond of. This is the first of many collections.
:)
Week #18
How are you? Interactive articles on physics, virtual streamers, and NFTs.
1
I'm a huge fan of these interactive and illustrated articles about physics and engineering by Bartosz Ciechanowski. He just published another one on Internal Combustion Engine. He also wrote about Camera and Lenses back in 2020.
2
A Twitter thread about Miko, a virtual streamer on Twitch, lead me to this article on The Rise of Synthetic Media & Digital Creators. It is a case study on how emerging technologies are creating new formats of media and narrative interactions.
3
My favorite description and a summary of the recent NFT debacle.
jacobgalapagos:
i dont know what an NFT is and im too afraid to ask
queersamus:
imagine if you went up to the mona lisa and you were like “i’d like to own this” and someone nearby went “give me 65 million dollars and i’ll burn down an unspecified amount of the amazon rainforest in order to give you this receipt of purchase” so you paid them and they went “here’s your receipt, thank you for your purchase” and went to an unmarked supply closet in the back of the museum and posted a handmade label inside it behind the brooms that said “mona lisa currently owned by jacobgalapagos” so if anyone wants to know who owns it they’d have to find this specific closet in this specific hallway and look behind the correct brooms. and you went “can i take the mona lisa home now?” and they went “oh god no are you stupid? you only bought the receipt that says you own it, you didn’t actually buy the mona lisa itself, you can’t take the real mona lisa you idiot. you CAN take this though.” and gave you the replica print in a cardboard tube that’s sold in the gift shop. also the person selling you the receipt of purchase has at no point in time ever owned the mona lisa.
unfortunately, if this doesn’t really make sense or seem like any logical person would be happy about this exchange, then you’ve understood it perfectly
4
I learned from this amazing video that each Samba school from Rio has a different rhythm signature for the snare drum, and that they are derived from the school's Orishas. An article breaking down the differences.
Week #16
A quick work update, a question that I've been asking, and a couple of recommendations.
Olá,
I discovered on this lovely weekend exploring Brandenburg, that Uckermark has hills caused by glaciers from the last ice age. I also paid tribute to some DDR customs and had my first (fkk) swim of the year – which indeed felt like melted glaciers.
A step forward
The weekend trip was a celebration for closing a chapter of the last year of work. Before we faced news of lockdowns, and what would soon be our new reality, I was in Brazil pitching to GIZ a new product idea we had developed at Envisioning. This would be a big step forward in the techDetector project we started in 2019 and in the process we delivered and shaped our research.
After twelve months of planning, methodology revision, design of new features, completely rewriting our software, and writing hundreds of research pieces, we are launching Envisioning's new platform with its first customer GIZ and a very relevant subject, Sustainable Development. In this new phase, the techDetector will be continuously reporting developments of emerging technologies, and their consequences on different topics, but most importantly it is kept open and free for everyone to access.
I'm really satisfied with how it turned out, and couldn't be happier to have such amazing people next to me developing this (thank you for all the patience and great work).
The project is launching this Tuesday and will be available at https://techdetector.de
Owning in a Digital era
Not only because of the recent NFT debacle, but I've also been asking myself what it means to own content or media in an age of streaming and online services.
I'm interested in understanding how the preservation of culture and memory will be affected when our access to films, music, books, applications, and other media are being more and more dictated by streaming or licensing platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Spotify or Amazon Books.
I'm investigating this topic, and any insights (books, links, ideas, etc…) would be very valuable. I've also had a couple of nice Zoom chats with friends to bounce some ideas around! If you're interested, I'd love to tell you more.
Recommendations
Keeping the habit of closing these newsletters with some recommendations, here are two
Luiz Bonfá: Solo In Rio
The sweet sound of the nylon strings of the classical guitar, specially in the hands of players like Luiz Bonfá are superb. This record has beautiful instrumental pieces with different examples of samba and choro rythms (samba teleco-teco, samba canção e choro canção). My highlights are Manhã de Carnaval, Perdido de Amor, and Sambolero.
Agnès Varda: Mur Murs (1980)
I'm a big fan of Agnès Varda and her documentary/essay films. Together with Chris Marker, they've developed beautiful pieces in this genre such as Sans Soleil (1983) or Les plages d'Agnès (2003). In Mur Murs, Agnès tells the story of how Murals among other things are used in Los Angeles to preserve and communicate the identity of migrant minorities in the city. It reminded me of the PIXO documentary about the movement in São Paulo.
Um beijo,
#004: Pannierstraße's rooftop
Between 2018 and 2019, Kevin and I shared a flat that, despite the 5 long flights of stairs, had quite the bonus, and it was too good of a novelty.
During the warm months of that year, we spent a whole lot of time up on that rooftop. The apartment was on the Dachgeschoss, and during summer it reached dizzying high temperatures. Going up there felt like accessing a different city. We didn't have to dispute for a patch of grass in the parks, and much like the Wim Wenders movie, we were above everything.
I remember cautiously trying to climb those stairs with a cup of coffee in one hand, and the GODAD foldable chair in the other. Looking back, it was quite precarious. I think one of our (probably mine) highlights was bringing up a barbecue grill. We learned that the previous tenants also had the practice, as indicated by the carpet left there (we never cared to remove it, and apparently it remains there untouched).
All in all, I had some lovely memories up there and it quickly became a little photography playground for me. I think some of the first 4x5 and 120 film tests I did, happened there. Some of these I'll expand in full posts, starting with the session with Artur.
Arthur Soares
Um beijo!