Weeknote 05+06/2025
Moon music, pedagogic manifesti, Georgian jungles, massive murmurations, film school begins, kiosks, and D&D takes New York.
“Great talk among people how some of the Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand, and that next Tuesday is to be the day. Against which, whenever it shall be, good God fit us all!”
― Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys
7 things worth sharing
Great poster work from designer and teacher Mitchell Volk - a manifesto for his classroom entitled “I Will.” If I still had a classroom I’d be printing these out nice and big and sticking them all round the room. Having a manifesto is something I’ve given thought to every time I’ve started a new job or role and it’s a powerful thing to make that thinking visible to others, too.
I often pick up eBooks on Kindle in the book deals tab of Amazon - trawling the science fiction and fantasy section for anything interesting that’s down to 99p. Somehow, Leo Vardiashvili’s debut novel “Hard by a Great Forest” was in that category though I’m not sure I’d put it in there myself as it doesn’t strike me as all that fantastical. That said, it was a gripping, visceral, and sometimes troubling book that I loved. Set in Georgia (the country), it paints a vivid and engrossing portrait of a place wrestling with both its past and its future whilst spinning an absorbing story of one person’s search for their family under unusual circumstances.
One of my most beloved forms of nerdery is playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of my very best friends. We’ve been playing our present campaign for just over 3 years now and it’s been a bottomless source of joy and community - especially whilst living away from many of those I care about. Now, I’ve been told that playing sports and watching sports can both be enjoyable (sounds like nonsense, frankly) but it’s certainly true that watching D&D and playing D&D can both be a blast. My very favourite D&D show to watch is Dropout’s Dimension 20 which recently sold out Madison Square Garden(!) in New York City. Take that sports!
If you were to look through my (tens of thousands) of photos on Google Photos you’d see more than a few photos of newsstands, kiosks, tiny hole-in-the-wall shops, and other little stores and businesses. My favourites are the tiny shop on one of the Embankment Station platforms on the London Underground and this little kiosk called kiosk in Tokyo. Photographer Trevor Traynor has an amazing collection of such photos from all around the world and they’re deeply pleasing to scroll through.
The House of Tabula YouTube channel by Lewis Michael Bond and Luiza Liz Bond has some of the best content focusing on art and film anywhere on YouTube. Their recent video, The Ultimate Film Studies Watchlist, is the first episode in their new foundations of film series and is a tremendous introduction to really thinking deeply about film.
When I lived in Rome for a summer, many many years ago, I was often mesmerised by the colossal murmurations of starlings that would fill the sky every evening. Artist Xavi Bou has used the movement of birds, in these gyrating, undulating, masses to produce some enchanting, almost hypnotic video work as part of his ongoing Ornithographies project.
Icelandic musician Halldór Eldjárn is also doing fascinating things at the intersection of art and computation. In Eldjárn’s case, he’s taken images from the Project Apollo Archive and used custom generative software to translate the imagery into beautifully, elegiac music which he then curated into a 25-minute cohesive piece. He goes deeper into the processes behind the music in this lecture. You can also hear live performances of the music on his website.
There have been some significant events here in Serbia over the last weeks. This probably isn’t the place to go deeper into what’s been happening but it has been extraordinary to have such a first-hand view of everything as it’s all unfolded often (quite literally) all around us. Things are far from over, and many of the protests, blockades, and student actions are continuing but, thankfully, things have been remarkably peaceful and we have to hope that they’ll continue much in this vein.
It’s been very strange to be in the middle of such a significant and exceptional time whilst also being very much contained in the tiny bubble of looking after a newborn. It’s a tiny world, looking after a newborn, with your whole focus on the tiny creature you’re trying to keep happy and well and so coming up for air and seeing everything that is happening all around us has felt like dipping into some alternate reality.
I’ve also been thinking (even more) about games and just what makes a game a game. In particular, I’m really interested in games that are fundamentally experiential, narrative-driven, collaborative, and transformative in some way. At the moment I’m exploring this to build an introductory online workshop all about purposive/transformative game design but also to go further with both game design and support others in designing games that allow for rich, evocative, communal experiences. Who knows where it might lead?
- Mitch.