Cold sugar and a new colour
Hello you,
The weather is warm enough that I start craving cold sugar. I’m not a fan of fizzy drinks, maybe because I don’t drink alcohol, so it feels like I have been punished with many brands of cola or some sour orange juice at social events. Things are getting better of course, but for a time, a while back, the options were few.
Can you imagine a new colour? I can’t, it’s something I have definitely tried to do. About a thousand years ago, a colleague once told me that he used to try and invent new colours as a method of getting to sleep. This has clearly stuck in my head, but I’ve never managed it. I revisit favourite rich colours and then try to bend them in my imagination to no avail.
So, when I read a headline that scientists were claiming to have discovered a new colour, I was feeling pretty thrilled. What would it be like? Where would it go on the colour wheel? Is there already a paint tube and a Pantone card?
It’s called Olo. You can’t see it with the naked eye without specific stimulation with a laser. Not an everyday occurrence then. It’s called Olo from the binary 010 indicating which of the cones in your eyes are switched on. Nerdy. I like that.
Apparently it looks a bit like this -
I don’t know what I was expecting, but then we’ve already covered that I can’t invent new colours in my mind so I guess it could have been anything. The claim that it’s a new colour is up for argument (of course) and how we interpret things is always going to be different. My sense of yellow is probably different to yours. I wonder if our sense of Olo is the same. Maybe one thing about Olo is that it’s so new, that we haven’t built cultural meaning around this. This is the kind of thing I have been staring into space thinking about while queueing in the supermarket. I’m ‘fun’ at parties.
Meanwhile, I listened to Twist by Colum McCann on Sounds. I’d say, go get it, but it’s not available right now. I know. Annoying.
TL;DR for you - Imagine Moby Dick, but the white whale is a broken undersea internet cable that has been sabotaged. They have to find it and fix it because of course we all rely on the internet too much these days and it’s enough to crash the economies of several African nations and annoy the undersea cable company in Belgium.
I know I rec books in these newsletters, but this one made me think of when Wired was more than a shopping catalogue. I remember being utterly gripped by a story about exploring a sunken ship using some tech or other. Naturally the names escape me, but I was holding my breath reading about what they found in the dark watery depths and how dangerous it all was. Listening to McCann’s book, about technology but written with some real poetry, also brought back feelings of claustrophobia and danger. I am not one of life’s aquatic people. I like to be near, not in the sea. I align it with space as an environment that I probably shouldn’t try to be in, if I want to survive. If you can find the book or audio book, give it a whirl, let me know what you think. I know that Moby Dick reflects a lot about the times it was written in, economics, race, madness and obsession and this does a lot of the same. As ever, people are the strength and weakness of technologies. I wish Wired was cool again.
Making art, re-learning Python
Things are quiet in terms of news to share because I am reading, writing and making stuff. I like the quiet. I am making a foray into costume, working on some very large drawings and thinking about medicines for short stories. I like a good robust to-do list that keeps me at just the right level of anxiety while I am working for rent.
I do need to get a few Python lessons under my belt though. It’s been a long time and to say I am rusty is both mild and polite. Why do this? Because I’m making a little research tool or two. That’s about all I am saying on that, but you can be sure I will be using up all my best curses while I try to get back into the coding habit.
Oh, there is news. I finally got a copy of Religion and Artificial Intelligence. Those who know me, will understand that I have no faith, but I am curious about the ways in which morals and ethics are built into technologies of different societies. The book is edited by the very clever and funny Beth Singler who commissioned the cover illustration from yours truly.
Meanwhile, a few of my interviews with artists have gone up on the Friends of the Royal West of England Academy site. It’s voluntary work, but I do love interviewing people and finding out what makes them tick creatively. Read more about Miche - who also runs a gallery, Tony - and his wild sculptures and Geoff, who is working creatively with AI.
Read, reading, re-reading
I’m re-reading Auster’s The New York Trilogy. I loved it as a teenager and I love it now. It’s so gently unsettling. It seems to find stylish shapes in the mundane. I’m annoyed that Auster died earlier this year. So it goes.
I’m also reading Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik. I am love/hating it right now. When Anolik is on, she’s really on. There’s some really incredible writing in there. But there’s also some gossipy shorthand and I find it a bit simple to pit these two women in opposition when they both had quite incredible lives.
The book count is low this time because I have been working on a literature review. So I have been reading a metric ‘flip’ tonne of academic papers and books which I frankly can’t be arsed to list here. If you’re desperately bored, ask me about it.
Other than this I have just started Queering The Subversive Stitch, Men and the culture of needlework. It’s an interesting history, but one I am often conflicted by. I was introduced to textile arts by men. As a kid, the main knitting and tapestry person I remember was Kaffe Fassett. So men in textiles doesn’t feel unusual to me, but I am aware of the idea that it is ‘women’s work’. Though I don’t think I’d say that to a woman who is within reach of many sharp needles and some good quality fabric scissors.
No enviable artist list this time. But one artist I have been catching up on. I watched the Andy Warhol Diaries. I’m not sure I love his work, but I do find it interesting. I get the sensation that his more famous images are burned onto my retinas and so I take them for granted. There’s some great footage of him working on big pictures. I like what artist lives tell me about them and in this case, it feels like Warhol was sadder and more lonely than I had realised.
Now, that’s not the lightest note to end on.
Maybe one enviable artist this week then - Cristobel Navarro, who makes flat paper look like carved stone. I’ve been thinking about the process video for days.
Until next time, think about how magical a world is where we might be able to still discover new colours. Pretty cool right?
Remember to hydrate.
Jx