hoo boy who else felt like they had like 8 different kinds of nausea last week?? there are a lot of hot “well actually” takes right now, but my vibe is still a certain kind of relief… not really an optimism, more of an actionable frustration? I am visiting my family (after quarantining and having a successful no cooties test result obvi), and I’ve been doing a lot of vibing on the couch with the dog in an Arcangel Surfware sweatsuit I won in a web surfing contest like 7 years ago???? that was the only seasonally appropriate casual clothing I could find in my old storage bins. I was vibing so hard I even missed literally all of Remoticon ?.
my biggest practical goal of the coming days is gutting my personal website, and reorganizing how I want to think about my work. I am still very much in a state of “but I don’t WANT to think about my work,” but I can’t just vibe with the dog forever.
there are like 1001 blog posts on how to document your work, how to write a killer resumé, how to design the perfect portfolio, but how one-sided is that! how many times have I interviewed for a role in a product that turned out to be vaporware? how many times have I interviewed with a company that turned out to be full of jerks? how many times have I sent in a project proposal to a curator who turned out to be 2 children under a trench coat?????
idk quite how we can pivot this dynamic from essentially competing with each other for scraps via our CVs to like, just making chill things and living our lives (capitalism amirite?), but I personally vow at least to never again write some BS about how much I learned about UX best practices and optimized for performance when really I just spent a year working on some vaporware that got tossed out the second I ragequit.
resource roundup!
part of my recent momentum to redo my portfolio is thanks to Marie Claire LeBlanc Flanagan organizing some lovely online spaces for coworking on the theme of organizing your work. I highly recommend bookmarking her list of tools for connecting online. we have a long winter ahead of us!
do u need some fresh beats to get you in the mood for making this week? Compassion Through Algorithms Vol. II is a compilation of algorithmic music from artists based in England’s North that is available pay-what-you-feel on Bandcamp – all proceeds go to Young Minds Together, a group of Black girls making music and dance in Rotherham UK. check it out!
remember this post in Low-tech Magazine? it inspired Dither It!, a tool for reducing full color images to dithered ones. it’s a kewt lewk, and the code is also available on Github if you’d like to poke around under the hood yourself.
here’s another good bookmark – TextureHaven is home to hundreds of free CC0 textures you can use to spice up your digital projects. everything looks to be high quality and ready to go!
open calls!
applications are due December 16 for Data & Society’s 2021 fellowship:
Data & Society fellows have pursued academic research, written code, created art, brought together communities of activists and practice, run workshops and hosted convenings, worked closely with Data & Society’s in-house research team across research initiatives and each other, and much more.
this cohort will focus on the role of race in the theory, practice, and study of data-centric technologies. learn more here.
goodbye 2020! or good riddance! Hackaday has partnered with Digi-Key to challenge you to show them your New Year’s mood:
We want to see electronic fireworks, LED panel displays of beautiful things, your automated house that blinks and sings, or even a funny hat! Build the best BOM with alternates and great documentation and three of you will win a shopping spree, up to $500, from Digi-Key. Take the time to learn some new skills if you’re isolating; or use this time to express how you feel through interactive art. Nothing relieves stress like the smell of solder smoke and circuit boards.
learn more here.
Hackaday is hosting another Circuit Sculpture Challenge! entries are due by November 10. learn more here.
education opportunities!
this Saturday will be the final 2020 installment of Valerie Fuchs’ Code Cuisine! do u love snacks? do u want to dive into creative coding for the web with a very friendly introduction to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? these workshops always look super cute and fun, so hustle up and reserve a spot here.
? upcoming events!
today! today is the final day to register for Scent in Cinema: A Tale of Old Whiff, a virtual screening of the first scented animation! register for this free event here so that you can receive your scratch and sniff card in time.
Thurs, Nov 12! 6:00PM UMT-5! Tech Learning Collective is hosting a free guided tour of their foundations this week! if you’ve been curious about their offerings, this is a great chance to get to know what they are about and ask some questions. learn more and join the event here!
Sat, Nov 14! 2:00PM UMT-5! as the second installment of Algorithmic Sound Series, artist Malitzin Cortés will be giving a masterclass on live-coding with TidalCycles:
Her work spans many disciplines and technologies including but not limited to: live coding, generative art, expanded cinema, installation, 3D animation, and sound design. A teacher and researcher at CENTRO University and at the UNAM Faculty of Arts, Cortés’s work has been presented at various venues worldwide, including Medialab Prado, Asia Culture Center, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Spektrum, Vorspiel Transmediale, Mutek Mexico, and Mutek Montreal.
learn more and register for this free event here!
also Sat, Nov 14! also 2:00PM UMT-5! the CyPurr Collective are back with an online workshop to get you in the holiday mood with an eye towards thoughtful awareness of privacy. before u send an unsolicited Nest to all ur aunties, make some time to chat with the experts about what to look out for in the latest trendy gadget gifts. learn more and register here!
also also Sat, Nov 14! 5:00PM UMT-5! The Archive to Come is an exhibition of short, time-based works by more than 50 artists, curated by Clark Buckner and Carla Gannis. the show opened on October 22, but there are artists talks every Saturday until the show closes in December. this week’s talk will feature Faiyaz Jafri, LaJuné McMillian, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, R. Luke DuBois, Sean Capone, Snow Yunxue Fu, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Sherie Weldon, Noth Liu, and more. learn more here!
Thurs, Nov 19! 4:30PM UMT-8! join Gray Area, Mission Local, Pulitzer Center & ZERO1 to discuss how community members, artists, data scientists, and designers can work together to report the news through creative methods at “Drawing Outside the Lines: Art, Activism & Journalism.” learn more and RSVP here!
just for lulz!
*~housekeeping~*
if you have anything in the works that you are excited about (an event, a workshop, a new project), please send me all the details. if you wanna share links or chat, there is now a Discord server that you can use here.
I am also reviving a very old tinyletter so that I can share more of my personal work, now that I am making personal work again. if u want more martha ramblings + self-promo, you can sign up here.
