By Neale Van Fleet on June 8th, 2023
Soren Iverson designs and shares unwanted tech features to his Twitter, like the above-pictured typing indicator that shows the length of the message.
Layers
By Neale Van Fleet on June 7th, 2023
One of my last photos from New York City. A confluence of layers.
Huge Mural on Mont Royale by Saype
By Neale Van Fleet on June 7th, 2023
Photo credit: Saype
I caught a glimpse of this while on the bus, and had to track it down later to figure out what it was. A huge artwork on the side of Montréal’s “mountain” by artist Saype for the upcoming Mural Festival.
Orange Sky
By Neale Van Fleet on June 6th, 2023
The skies above Montréal, and much of the East coast, are tinted an eerie yellow orange due to smoke from forest fires. Climate change is making these sort of events more and more common.
Map of current smoke distribution by Smoke Forecast:
Experience Mapping at Cooper Hewitt
By Neale Van Fleet on June 6th, 2023
On my recent trip to New York City I was lucky enough to visit the Cooper Hewitt design museum, a favourite place in the big apple. There I found this one hands-on strategy of getting kids to map their emotional experience of the museum using coloured markers.
From their accompanying text:
On this wall, students share their field trip experiences by choosing a ribbon color representing their felt emotion and placing that ribbon in their borough location. Students are mapping their “data”-emotions represented by ribbons-to NYC’s five boroughs.
As the school year progresses, this wall will tell the ongoing story of what our K-12 community members from around the city experience when visiting Cooper Hewitt’s galleries.
Abstract Video: Underground
By Neale Van Fleet on June 5th, 2023
Strobe Warning!
Another in my series of abstract video pieces for a potential upcoming project.
Book: On Connection by Kae Tempest
By Neale Van Fleet on June 5th, 2023
A short book on the importance of connection through creativity, from London-based poet, novelist, and musician Kae Tempest. A recurring theme is how hard creative work is, but but doing it and sharing it is important in being open and connected to humanity.
The following excerpt mentions writing, but I think it applies equally to any creative endeavour:
To write is to fail. An idea is a perfect thing that comes to the writer in a breathless dream. The writer holds this idea in their mind. In their body. Everything feeds it. They’ve spent their entire lifetime up until that point, honing their skills to get this idea out of the aether, and down through their useless hands, onto the page. But it will never be right. There is no way that a writer cannot injure that idea as they wrestle with it.
The recurring theme of failure in this book is strangely encouraging and empowering.
By the time it has revealed itself to be finished, when the deadline can’t be put off any longer, the exhausted writer has learned another lesson about their own restrictions, that they promise themselves they will overcome next time. But next time comes, and they’re faced with new restrictions, new limitations, new impossibilities. Finishing work is what gives the artist the humility necessary to begin again.
Brutal and honest.
America Has a Problem
By Neale Van Fleet on June 4th, 2023
Kendrick Lamar adds to an already-great Beyoncé track.
Rumble Strip: Let's Talk About Guns
By Neale Van Fleet on June 4th, 2023
The excellent podcast Rumble Strip, which tells stories of real people all around Vermont, has done an episode talking to real Vermonters about guns. A tough subject that tends to get oversimplified on both sides, told with some subtlety and consideration.
Find it in your podcast player of choice, or listen here.
