Built and curated an exhibition with my partner in art Martijn van der Blom. It’s called SET::SOLID. I’m showing a selection of twelve of my bird prints, Martijn presents twelve unique prints from his Masks series.

–
Hanna Darboven & Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt. Great picture of Darbovens’ desk in there. Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt created typewriter art in the 1970’s in East Germany which was sent out as mail art. The mail art she received offered glimpes of the world on the other side of the iron curtain.

–
Still working through this excellent piece: Undoing the Toxic Dogmatism of Digital Design by Lisa Angela. It already reminded me of a community and a book to check out.

–
Some updates to https://royscholten.nl/, it has small pictures now!

–
Preparing work on the zines I’ll contribute to a group expo in February 2021. I already made one in remembrance of Herma Steur earlier this year.

–
Sounds: my spotify year in review is basically the playlist I made for spinning with some added Esoctrilihum, Mare Cognitum/Spectral Lore and Paysage d’Hiver from before I bought those on bandcamp.

#weeknotes 2020-49

Nu te zien in de Gooische Brink 35 Hilversum. Lego-prints van Martijn van der Blom en Roy Scholten.

Facilitated working through a complex site building question. A webcam pointing at some handdrawn diagrams was super useful in keeping the discussion on track.

I’ve been collecting links on Wardley Mapping for some time now, still need to dedicate time to figure out how/where this applies to the visualizing, mapping things I already do.

For example, modeling content. I wrote up how to build a content model in Obsidian.

Found out that the Common Pochard* had been missing from the collection all this time! Fixed that.

Preparations for an exhibition in the center of town together with Martijn. More on that soon.

Sounds: saw a tweet that asked for goose bump recommendations. Didn’t reply there, but:

• Blood on the Motorway by DJ Shadow
• Ashtray Wasp by Burial
• Encore from Tokyo by Keith Jarrett

#weeknotes 2020-48

Facilitating a discussion on a complex subject through hand drawn diagrams and a webcam hovering above. The drawings were essential in keeping the discussion productive and on track.

Please be sure to check out this beautiful schematic map from the 12th century. That tweet also has the link to the full scan of the book it is in. Oh my, such great looking pages.

“If you cut an animal skin into 4 sets of two pages, the number of possible ways of arranging these 4 pieces into a booklet is 6,144.” via @LitteraCarolina.

My account on drupal.org turned 15 years old this week. Quite the ride. Drupal is a large open source content management system. I help design it. More on that here.

Emily Webber on serendipity in the workplace.

Dinosaurs. 10 dino cards in legopress added to the print portfolio. It’s a collaboration with Martijn from 2017. The little arms of the T-rex were a design challenge, but no more. Also, T-rex vs. Triceratops.

The dino cards were a precursor to the 50 birds project that’s still underway. Here’s a short video browsing through all the trial and error prints that lead up to the final design. I wrote a short article on this project, in dutch, here.

Bill Sienkiewicz, always Bill Sienkiewicz.

New sounds. More noise for tumbling through space via Prava Kollektiv: Arkhtinn, HWAUOCH, and personal favorite Voidsphere*.

#weeknotes 2020-47

Going to have a look at this intro to Sketch Your System

I found out too late about this workshop on making medieval ink. Youtube has the goods, of course.

Small indieweb tweaks to www.royscholten.nl, just h-card stuff for now. On yoroy.com I even had webmentions and some syndication going for a short while, but it’s all very fiddly still. Also, I turned yoroy.com into a static html site (in dutch) so that removed those types of features.

Het goede en gewenste van structured content is ook dat sommige dingen daardoor juist niet meer mogelijk zijn! https://write.as/bildung/onmogelijk

More Luhmann* Zettelkasten geekery. Here’s a talk by one of the researchers that are working to digitize this analog knowledge database: https://vimeo.com/173128404. The presentation is German spoken, so I created a rough but mostly complete translation

Coming May next year: The filing cabinet, a vertical history of information. “The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information.”

Sounds: new Aesop Rock (the rapper with the largest vocabulary), Black Curse – Endless Wound and Convulsing – Grievous. The last one oddly helped achieve some actual flow during work this week.

#weeknotes 2020-46

Personal Knowledge Management, the Very Serious Name for “how do I store my notes so that I’ll do something with it”. Second brain, idea gardens, personal knowledge mastery, etc. See previously on here.

One example that is often referred to is Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. This German sociologist published some 50 books and 600 essays between the 50’s and 90’s of the 20th century. This intellectual productivity was in large part made possible through the 90.000 small paper notes of his thinking that he wrote, stored and linked in his so-called Zettelkasten (slip box).

Here’s a video of a presentation by one of the researchers working to digitize this analog knowledge database. It’s a good introduction, und also, the presentation is German spoken, so I created this rough but mostly complete translation

Luhmann worked this way to ensure that he would encounter many different perspectives when considering a certain topic or problem. At a certain volume of notes, the Zettelkasten became a generator of surprises, unexpected analogies, connections and perspectives, even for the very person who wrote all of them in the first place.

For me, when making art, the free exploration of ideas, forms and images is my way of trying to surprise myself. Especially with printmaking, what you put in is different from what you get out.

Surprising yourself in such a way can be a truly joyful experience. It’s worth pursuing.

The CMS_ui project dedicated some posts of the Drupal views module user interface from 2006, 2008 and 2011.

I was heavily involved in these efforts (1, 2 ), it was one of my first substantial contributions to the project as a designer. Still proud of this concept model.

Het goede en gewenste van structured content is ook dat sommige dingen daardoor juist niet meer mogelijk zijn!

Gestructureerde content maakt het makkelijker om daar waar dat gepast is (opsommingen, gerelateerd, inserts) zaken op basis van regels en filters te tonen. Business rules?

Daar alsnog een directe redactionele ingreep op mogelijk maken via een grafische gebruikers-interface gaat daar dan recht tegenin. “Soms” is een special case van “altijd”, dus die telt niet om de vraag kleiner te maken.

De management tools zijn in die gevallen eerder indirect: tweak de business rules, pas je taxonomie aan, stel de regels voor filtering bij.

Sinds afgelopen zomer een nieuwe start met schets/log/dag-boeken. In eerste instantie als losbladige katernen aangemaakt. Vier dubbelgevouwen A4 maakt 16 pagina’s A5. Produceer 8 katernen en je hebt 128 pagina’s voor een boek.

De eerste twee exemplaren die op deze manier tot stand zijn gekomen heb ik doorgenomen op thema’s en kandidaat vervolgonderzoeken

mogelijke vervolgonderzoeken

1. een gotische letter (kapitalen) in Lego. Dik-dun verlopen door twee drukgangen met off-sets. Eventueel ook uitzoeken wat er kan als de bodemplaat onder 45 graden gezet wordt.
2. Het comics karakter Jacob van M. in nog sterker middeleeuwse stilering doorontwikkelen door middel van verdere Barry/Brunotti oefeningen
3. Kalligrafische Ruimte 3: in het 2e journal staan abstract kalligrafische monoprints die met kleurpotlood zijn aangevuld en/of met posca stiften omlijst en gedecoreerd. Daar op door, op groter formaat, in individuele pieces?
4. De oost-indische inkt oefeningen waarin een vlek in een tekening wordt omgewerkt zijn interessant want zowel wit op zwarte als zwart op witte lijnvoering worden gecomgineerd. Gerelateerd aan 2 hierboven, want ook in deze oefeningen heb ik dezelfde stilering voor gezichten, uitdrukkingen toegepast. Combineren met monoprint achtergronden, omgevingen?

Eerste conclusies

• gotische letter in lego is teveel gelijk aan de nog lopende 50 Vogels project oefening, dus dat nog even niet.
• Kalligrafische ruimte naar groter formaat en kleur introduceren
• Journal oefeningen verder doen als comics oefeningen. Doorgaan met Barry en Brunotti dus.

#creativejournal #review #2020