Scraps

My virtual commonplace book & cabinet of curiosities.

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  • My initial research into GCP seems to originate within the context of SLP who specialize in GLP. One SLP referred to monotropism in relation to GCP.

    I’ve saved some quotes here, but I don’t completely agree with everything presented as monotropism in this paper. I think this is based on somewhat outdated research and a narrow view of autism.

    “To a person in an attention tunnel every unanticipated change is abrupt and is truly, if briefly, catastrophic: a complete disconnection from a previous safe state, a plunge into a meaningless blizzard of sensations, a frightening experience which may occur many times in a single day. Following such an episode it may take a long time for any other interest to emerge.”

    “For a monotropic thinker, if something does not work out as anticipated there are no alternatives available as there would be for a polytropic thinker. Instead of the projected outcome there is total disaster (Lawson, 1998). Total disaster is strongly demotivating.”

    “features of the environment which seem obvious to people with diffuse rather than tightly focused attention may be entirely missed.”

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1362361305051398?download=true

    See also: https://monotropism.org

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  • Fascinated by this process of Crafting Ceramic Circuits by Artist Clement Zheng.

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  • Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet

    A growing number of people are creating individualized, creative sites that eschew the one-size-fits-all look and feel of social media

    By Tanya Basu

    MIT Technology Review, September 3, 2020

    “These creative reimaginings of blogs have quietly taken nerdier corners of the internet by storm. A growing movement of people are tooling with back-end code to create sites that are more collage-like and artsy, in the vein of Myspace and Tumblr—less predictable and formatted than Facebook and Twitter.”

    “Digital gardens explore a wide variety of topics and are frequently adjusted and changed to show growth and learning, particularly among people with niche interests. Through them, people are creating an internet that is less about connections and feedback, and more about quiet spaces they can call their own.”

    “With blogging, you’re talking to a large audience,” (Tom Critchlow) says. “With digital gardening, you’re talking to yourself. You focus on what you want to cultivate over time.”

    The author of this post ends by wondering if it will hit critical mass – like that is something to aim for. I don’t think so and I hope not. When something becomes mainstream it is co-opted by capitalism and neurotypical social norms. This is exactly what happened to blogging when it went from something nerds did for love and passion to a revenue stream.

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  • Questions I’d like to explore… 🔬

    Is it perfectionism or is it GCP?

    Do we get stuck because we see the whole finished thing in our minds?

    Is it executive function or is it GCP?

    Do we struggle to find a way in because we are not sequential thinkers and seeing the whole is overwhelming?

    Can Iteration be a tool?

    The idea does not have to come out fully formed.

    What about “rejection sensitivity?”

    Could this be happening because we are reliving every rejection we’ve ever experienced? Does it also happen when we are already struggling with flaws (deviations from our internal gestalt) and someone points them out or criticizes it’s unbearable?

    How can we rewrite our gestalts?

    Can we make more space for imperfection, experimentation, iteration, and discovery?

    I think I’ve done this with gardening and pottery and it’s all to do with who I learned those things from and how I think about them. Can I invite that sense of ease and curiosity into other pursuits?

    Can we / HOW CAN WE rewrite our gestalts?

    Cross Pollination 🐝

    Find further research at #gestaltcognitiveprocessing.

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  • A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

    by Maggie Appleton

    “A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete – notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.”

    As someone who struggles with perfectionism and can get caught up in finding the right container a wild digital garden sounds like a particularly fertile project for me.

    “Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time… You get to actively choose which curiosity trail to follow, rather than defaulting to the algorithmically-filtered ephemeral stream. The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.”

    This metaphorical contrast of a constantly flowing stream (like social media) versus following your own curiosity down various rabbit holes reminds me of my early days of the internet and an experience I’d like to get back to.

    When I realized I wanted to reframe my artist’s log project as a digital garden (or compost heap) it was clear to me that my newsletter was more of a campfire… a space for connection.

    Then I continued reading to find this,

    “While gardens present the ideas of an individual, campfires are conversational spaces to exchange ideas that aren’t yet fully formed.”

    Love it when a metaphor comes together.

    And just when I was wondering if maybe it wasn’t all a bit frivolous and I was being distracted from the real work Appleton says,

    “Naming is a political act as much as a poetic one.”

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  • I first heard about this concept from Morgan Harper Nichols,

    “[Digital gardens] are online spaces where you can collect or share information…an organically grown collection of ideas, resources, and thoughts. It’s a place that you can create online that encourages continuous learning, exploration, and growth, much like tending to a physical garden. It’s a living ecosystem of interconnected insights where the ideas and concepts can bloom, cross-pollinate, or sometimes wither away. Unlike a static blog post or article that presents a finished thought, a digital garden’s content is often in a constant state of growth and environment.”

    I was immediately intrigued. This integrates nicely with my own ideas about creative ecosystems and creative compost.

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  • I love colloquialisms so I just ordered the audiobook of Landmarks by Robert McFarlane based on a recommendation with these examples from Robin Sloan:

    ammil a Devon term for the fine film of silver ice that coats leaves, twigs, and grass when freeze follows thaw

    This is something we see a lot in the American south and I am always enchanted by!

    sìth “a fairy hill or mound,” is a knoll or hillock possessing the qualities which were thought to constitute desirable real estate for fairies — being well-drained, for instance, with a distinctive rise, and crowned by green grass.

    As Robin says – the roots of Darth Vader there.

    smeuse a Sussex dialect noun for “the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.”

    Dying to hear how this one is said. He recommends a paper copy for the glossary, but I really want to hear how these words are pronounced.

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  • Saving links on the intersection of art & technology to explore later on. So I naturally had to include this Fabrication page from Ashley Jane Lewis.

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  • Portrait of the Artist from Ages 16-21

    2022, laptop, cement, water, rocks, dirt.

    Alt text: Laptop (with data still on it) cast in hammered and chiseled concrete on a white background.

    by Blair Simmons

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  • touching computers by Spencer Chang

    Discussion of tangible computing and a very cool idea about NFC chips / ceramics / business cards.

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