homespun

The Atlantic takes a preview at what sounds like a pretty engrossing analysis of the evolution and subsequent associations we've bestowed on the concept of craft.  

Craeft by archaeologist and television personality Alexander Langlands explores how in spirit and practise the term, synonymous with manual labour, has stripped down of much of its former esteem of refinement, skill and finished that were co-opted by manufactured goods—though this too shares the same sense of being hand-made. When the Industrial Revolution brought in masses from the countryside, social theorists encouraged workers take up crafts, constructive hobbies, in their off-duty hours out of an abundance of caution that day-labourers and shift-workers had too much unstructured leisure time—a modern, occupational affliction that comes out of automation and mass-production. Without the need to learn a technical skill to maintain hearth and home and with the associated respect and deference lost, the idea of plying one’s craft was disdained as something frivolous and as a prestige project. Meanwhile crafts have become more like kits to be assembled rather than reflecting on the material and means of making and using things.

full fathom five

Our morning mediations come courtesy of Fancy Notions with a calm but catchy introduction to the cinematography and scoring of a pioneering New Zealander named Len Lye. Combining experimental film with kinetic sculpture and travelling widely through the South Pacific, Lye became a student of Aboriginal cultures and was one of the first European settlers (pākehā is the Māori term for such an outsider) to appreciate and incorporate their art.

This highlight reel from his 1936 animated short “Rainbow Dance” was filmed in Gasparcolor—one of the forerunners along with Dufaycolor, before Technicolor became the industry standard. You can find a wealth of his other works (including the above titled musical composition, which might have a familiar ring to it) curated by the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre, your local library or via your trusty search engines.

putting your money where your mouth is

Ingeniously, designer Tomo Kihara is offering these Street Debater kits that allow a person between engagements to radically change the reaction of passers-by to pan-handling.
Once soliciting donations becomes a challenge and a conversation starter, people on the streets might become more aware of social inequities and more willing to discuss the big issues that drive them—and perhaps even tip the scales of fortune for those who might need a little extra luck and exposure at the moment. What do you think? It’s fair to question whether such opinion-polling might not invite even more polarisation and divisiveness but we think it’s insightful that voices other than social media influencers and shrillest among us deserve to be heard and benefit from honest debate.

turn-down service

As if it were some heroic, historic re-enactment of the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon, a team of hotel executives at a Trump-branded property in Panama (which was surely disparaged as a less than optimal place of origin for migration) are apparently barricaded in an office and are shredding files, as Super Punch reports, refusing to concede defeat in an ownership dispute with another developer that has a controlling-share of the dismally unutilised building.
The squabbling continues—including turf-battles which include cutting off the power and communications to the opposing side—amid ongoing litigations between the two parties. The Panamanian courts have not yet interceded, though their hand may be forced so, with this room-to-room threatening to escalate and Trump’s backers apparently destroying records. If Trump is not recognised as the legitimate ruler (it looks like he is not) of this one building and will go to these extremes over a hotel where no one is staying, one wonders what kind of dangerous tantrum might ensue over a real territorial dispute and constitutional crisis. Arguably, we’re already soaking in it.

courage under fire

Noted sophist and US Federal Communications Commission industry shill who is amazingly foremost contender for individual with the most punchable face (and that says a lot) out of a corrupt, nihilistic regime including Trump and his wastrel spawn, Ajit Pai, was just awarded a prize firearm by the National Rifle Association for doing the organisation’s bidding and permitting them to forward their agenda with his repeal of the protections of afforded under Net Neutrality.
How allowing the propaganda of the highest bidder outshout the rest of the internet increases America’s freedom is a bit of a mystery but as US domestic policy is a domestic issue, I guess we don’t need to wade too far into the fray even though this signals something far more sinister that slower, more expensive internet access where prolefeed is only content on offer. Of course, this is not the most heinous thing that the commissioner nor the NRA has done today surely and others in the administration have earned and been bestowed with such prizes—which by their acceptance, tacit or otherwise, demonstrate that the only thing easier to buy than a gun in America is an elected politician and the political appointees meant to uphold the public value of the agencies that they chair.

fairy lamp

Researchers in Japan, as Slashdot reports, have developed tiny electronic diodes that float in the air, riding ultrasonic sound waves. The darting points of light, because of their resemblance to fireflies, have been named Luciola after the native family of flashing insects and their quiet agility masks some serious decibels of sound holding them aloft and orchestrating their movement—albeit above the range of the human ear and could in the near future appear in applications from mobile holographic displays to projection mapping.