Posts Tagged ‘Pepys’
“There are more invisible than visible Natures in the universe”*…
Gustave Doré. From an illustration in the 1877 edition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Roaring out of the radical 1790s, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a founding fable for our time. A fable must by definition revolve around an animal, and in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s nightmare the slain albatross hangs around the fated sailor’s neck like a broken cross, an emblem of his sin against nature. It is all too relevant today, as a statement of isolation and despair: “Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!” Yet in that forlorn expression is great power; the power of art to change us…
Slavery, ecocide, plague … the warnings of Coleridge’s poem resound down the ages. Now 40 actors, musicians and authors are performing in a daily mass-reading: “Why Willem Dafoe, Iggy Pop, and more are reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to us.”
Then experience “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Big Read.”
[TotH to friend MK]
[image above: source]
* The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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As we dig for a drop to drink, we might recall that it was on this date in 1665 that Samuel Pepys made his first diary reference to the Great Plague in London. “Great fears of the sicknesses here in the City, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.” The entries in his diary continue throughout the year, documenting the horrifying conditions in the city, as many thousands died, until Winter’s freezing cold reduced the number of fleas that spread the disease. (Pepys also wrote, the following year, about the Great Fire of London.)
“More poetry, less demo”*…
School for Poetic Computation is an artist run school in New York that was founded in 2013. A small group of students and faculty work closely to explore the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory — focusing especially on artistic intervention. It’s a hybrid of a school, residency and research group…
The school for poetic computation is organized around exploring the creative and expressive nature of computational approaches to art and design. The school approaches writing code like creative writing — focusing on the mechanics of programming, the demystification of tools, and hacking the conventions of art-making with computation.
We value the craft necessary to realize an idea, recognizing that every writer needs space and time to hone their trade. Our school aims to provide a safe haven for you to get acquainted with the craft of coding at your own pace, make it your own, and investigate the space between creative process and craft. This takes conversations with colleagues and the right push at the right time.
The school aims to be more than a technical bootcamp. It is an opportunity to work intensively with a small group of students, faculty, and artists to explore questions about the poetics of computation. For us, computation is poetic when technology is used for critical thinking and aesthetic inquiry – a space where logic meets electricity (hardware), math meets language (software) and analytical thinking meets creative experimentation…
More about the New York City-based School here; more projects (larger and more legible) here; and more background, via the School’s blog, here.
* motto of the School for Poetic Computation
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As we get past the do loops to just do it, we might recall that it was on this date in 1667 that Samuel Pepys took delivery of the first recorded glass-fronted bookcase. He wrote in his famous diary:
“So took up my wife and home, there I to the office, and thence with Sympson, the joyner home to put together the press he hath brought me for my books this day, which pleases me exceedingly.”
and a few days later he wrote:
“and then comes Sympson to set up my other new presses for my books, and so he and I fell into the furnishing of my new closett … so I think it will be as noble a closett as any man hath.”
These cabinets– each with paired glazed doors in 21 small panes, over a low section, also with glazed panes, made to hold large folio volumes– are believed to be the same bookcases on display in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
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