✨ Smattering 02: Whatever

Eclectic collections of fragments, quotes, and anecdotes from our on/offline lives.

Oct 22, 2020

I personally don’t think music really “happens” in the open air. I know there’s been a bit of an explosion in the number of outdoor festivals recently, but generally speaking music in the open air blows around and kind of dissipates. Same in big arenas or stadiums – it wafts.
But in a small venue with a low ceiling, the music hasn’t got anywhere to escape to, it bounces back off the walls, it surrounds you, it can almost feel like it enters you and goes into your body. It’s easier to get lost in the music in that kind of environment.
And isn’t that what it’s all about?

A Rave In A Cave

All through the last decade these ideas have been gradually developing in my mind, just like one of those stalactites or stalagmites you find down there – so it felt natural that when I came to make new music, caves would be involved somehow.
I felt that by going back to the very roots of human creativity I could learn how to begin a new creative venture of my own.
And I knew it had to involve other people. Caves were the first places we learned to live in close proximity with each other. There’s no point learning how to communicate if there’s no one else to communicate with.
So it had to be a band. A social happening, a social gathering. A collective leap in the dark. An attempt to make sense of the shadows on the wall and the shadows inside my own head.
A return to the source.
A rave in a cave.

— Another extract from Jarvis Cocker’s ‘Nu-Troglodyte Manifesto’, in which he muses on the benefits of living ‘offline’.

⛅️How We Turned Into Batteries…

‘Energy has become modern society’s holy grail, but what if we don’t want to spend our limited time on Earth constantly recharging and draining ourselves?
…No matter what the management gurus try to tell us, the idea that our brains are inexhaustible sources of energy is clearly wishful thinking.’

But is it new?

“…the ancient Greek physician Galen of Pergamon wrote about the causes of "melancholy", an ailment characterised, among other things, by a lack of energy. During the Middle Ages, theologians railed against the sin of "acedia", which included symptoms like lethargy and a lack of motivation. And in the late 19th century, many western Europeans and US Americans suffered from “neurasthenia”, or nervous exhaustion, which manifested primarily as extreme fatigue. It was said to be the result of a “lack of nerve force” and was triggered by the pressures of capitalism and by technological innovations such as the steam train, the telephone and the telegraph.
While exhaustion has always been with us, the ways we explain and interpret it have differed throughout the ages, says Schaffner. Today, as in the 19th century, we tend to blame our stress, insomnia and burnout on external factors, particularly technology.”

🛠‘Social Media is not designed to be a ‘tool’

“As an artist, I use Instagram to share my art with the world and the community. When I am on Instagram, I feel the surge of negative emotions, the hierarchical statistics and everything that is wrong with Instagram, which capitalises on negative emotions so that even if we’re feeling shitty, we can’t stop using it.

I deleted the application off my phone and two hours later, something unreal happened.

As I drifted towards music and my creative process — the people I saw as my competitors or people that I essentially wanted to get more ‘likes’ over, did not seem like those little monsters at all. They seemed like collaborators, people I could reach to and make art together.

These thoughts did not arrive when I opened Instagram to message them, I was met with negative emotions again, felt like I was a loser and I did not message them.

The story that I told before — that my goal of collaboration would be connected through a tool named ‘Instagram’, but what if the tool is essentially rigged with such a pathological business model?”

‘I have been saying that for years and years, a key insight with immense consequences for design and users.’ —Geert Lovink

NoSurf says: “Stop Spending Life on the Internet”

NoSurf is a community of people who are focused on becoming more productive and wasting less time mindlessly surfing the internet.

Read reports from the NoSurf community here.

*Here we must continue to question notions of ongoing self-optimisation and productivity.

What time is it?

via. David Graeber’s website

John Waters has asked us to let everyone know that he does not personally use any type of social media to communicate with fans. He is not on Facebook, he is not a Twitter user, he doesn’t do Instagram or Pinterest, and he doesn’t have a YouTube Channel. If you think you are communicating directly with John or his staff through any digital outlet, you are incorrect.

Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work

When did creative work become so boring?
How did ‘digital-first’ come to dominate everything?
...and why is nobody talking about it?

Now they are.

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