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Austin, Texas-based URBS Studio is joining us for July’s Designer Desktop with a background that’s cool-tempered but energizing. Through her interdisciplinary design studio, Alyson Beaton explores the urban culture that surrounds her. The details and detritus observed all contribute to the whole of the studio’s work: grids, grit, signs, symbols, rhythm, scribbles, weeds, chaos, order, and more. URBS translates these visual tales of urban renewal and environmental sustainability through spaces, textile collections, children’s products, and more. The man-made environments that are part of our everyday lives are constantly evolving in different ways, and most of it’s nothing you or I have control over. But we’ll never tire of seeing creativity rise from the most unexpected of places.
For this month’s Desktop, Beaton shares her Glimmer design inspired by “The glimmer of light that reflects off the glassy buildings when the sun hits just right.” The trippy design is paired with the quote, “While you are looking, you might as well listen, linger, and think about what you see,” from Jane Jacobs.
Download yours with the links below!
Town Square Text
Whichway Cover
Metropolis
Flaneur Cushion
Facade
Glimmer
Alyson Beaton, URBS Studio
DESKTOP: 1024×768 \\\ 1280×1024 \\\ 1680×1050 \\\ 1900×1200 \\\ 2560×1440
MOBILE: iPhone XS \\\ iPhone XS Max \\\ iPad Pro
Learn more about URBS Studio here and follow along on IG here.
View and download past Designer Desktops here.
Trouble's brewing, what with all the unreadable AI dreck turning up in search results. Soulless and repetitious generated text is forcing out everything from the old machine-written junk (like those those gadget spec-comparison sites) to things that expensive humans write. — Read the rest
Jack, a Canadian soldier recuperating in a European hospital during World War I, begins a correspondence with Louisa, the librarian in his hometown whom he has only seen and loved from afar. Their letters turn romantic. But when the war ends and he returns home, Jack never shows his face to Louisa and marries another woman, leaving Louisa to wonder if she’s been the victim of some diabolical trick. Then Jack becomes the victim of an accident at the local factory. Wes & Erin discuss Alice Munro’s short story “Carried Away” and asking how the unforgiving machinery of a factory might mimic the so-called machinery of courtship, and how being carried away, whether by love or by ideas, might prove dangerous.
The post (sub)Text: Losing Your Head in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away” first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.In the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall, Doc Brown plans to use his Delorean time machine to head 25 years into the future and see, as he puts it, “the progress of mankind.” But like the license plate on the Delorean, Doc is out of time. Through his absent-mindedness—and angering some terrorists—Doc has failed to provide a future into which he or his friend Marty McFly can progress. Meanwhile, Marty’s own options and possibilities have been foreclosed by the mistakes of his parents, whose inaction and passivity have failed to secure happy lives for themselves or their children. Out of time and without a viable future, Marty’s only way forward is back. Wes & Erin discuss the 1985 film, “Back to the Future,” and how securing the provisions for one’s own future depends on two modes of confrontation: one in the present and one with the past.
The post (sub)Text: Time and Taboo in “Back to the Future” (1985) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has campaigned against what he has described as “woke indoctrination” in the classroom.
In “Holy Sonnet 14,” John Donne would like his “three person’d God” to break instead of knock, blow instead of breathe, and burn instead of shine. This vision of redemption is about remaking rather than reform. And it seems to be motivated by a sense that reason and the typical rhetoric of faith are not enough to bridge the mortal and the divine—what’s needed is God’s violent intervention. Wes & Erin discuss Donne’s surprising and paradoxical use of war and rape as metaphors for salvation.
The post (sub)Text: The Violence of Redemption in John Donne’s “Batter My Heart” (Holy Sonnet 14) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.
Matriarch is the sixth and final addition to the In Your Skin upholstery collection, a collaboration between HBF Textiles and product and interiors designer Erin Ruby. Aptly named, Matriarch is a twill weave with strong color combinations that evoke wisdom and experience. Visually, the twill blends bold complementary colored yarns to create a subtle melange and moire effect.
The six sensorial textiles in the woven fabric collection celebrate being comfortable in your own skin, inspired by the human experience and the ephemeral nature of life. Tactile with a handmade quality, In Your Skin looks like a residential product, yet has the durability for contract and hospitality environments. Each of the fabrics are certified Indoor Advantage Gold (SCS), woven and manufactured in the United States with wool locally sourced from the Midwest, and most patterns are made using post-consumer and/or recycled materials.
In Your Skin marks Ruby’s third collaboration with HBF Textiles. “Sometimes contract textiles can tend toward being cold or lifeless for pragmatic reasons, but this collection is so warm and tactile even with its high performance functionality. It’s full of life – imbued with optimism and aspiration, which I think will resonate within a space,” she shared.
The collaboration continues HBF Textiles’ focus on supporting women-owned businesses. “I love promoting talented female designers. It gives me a sense of pride to utilize the HBF Textiles platform to share their story and creative vision to a wider audience,” says Mary Jo Miller, Vice President of Design and Creative Direction at HBF Textiles. With like-minded mills and collaborators locally and globally, the brand continually explores the possibilities materiality can offer and how it can further connect us with other people and our environment.
Ultra Violet
Cernelion
Labradorite
Cernelion
Rose Quartz
Ultra Violet
Aura
To learn more about Matriarch, visit hbftextiles.com.
A current first grade history lesson in use in Florida.
A recusant Catholic turned Protestant, a rake turned priest, a scholar, lawyer, politician, soldier, secretary, sermonizer, and of course, a poet— John Donne’s biography contains so many scuttled identities and discrete lives, perhaps its no wonder that his great subjects were mortality and death. His Holy Sonnets, likely composed between 1609 and 1610, and published posthumously in 1633, are a collection of 19 poems written after the sea change in Donne’s subject matter from the secular to the sacred. They reflect his anxiety over his conversion to Anglicanism and his eventual decision to enter the priesthood, and meditate on salvation, death, and the wages of sin. Erin & Wes discuss Sonnet 10 in this series, “Death Be Not Proud,” an address of Death personified, whose power gradually diminishes beneath the force of Donne’s dazzling poetic rhetoric.
The post (sub)Text: Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.Roman Polanksi’s 1974 film “Chinatown” seems to have little to do with its titular neighborhood, which is the setting for only one horrible and final scene. Chinatown functions instead to represent the traumatic moment that drives this story just because it is hidden from view—a place indecipherable even to the hard-boiled private investigator who has seen it all … the place he doesn’t go … the place that bothers him to talk about … the place where inaction and evasion are the only ways to avoid causing harm. Wes & Erin discuss what Chinatown has to do with “Chinatown,” and how the theme connects the seemingly disparate themes of police work, political corruption, water rights, and incest.
The post (sub)Text: Trauma and Repetition in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.Last month, Newcastle University archaeologists suggested that this rather phallic object above is a 2,000-year-old Roman dildo. The 16 cm object—dug up at the Roman fort of Vindolanda in Northumberland, England—was also thought to be a darning tool for sewing or possibly even a pestle. — Read the rest
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Growing up with movie-buff parents, the Academy Awards were required viewing, even when I was too young to watch any of the nominated films. The ceremony had an alluring sense of self-importance: All those beautiful people in their beautiful clothes, talking about the power of art, as millions of people around the world watched. I still vividly remember the year my parents shooed me off to bed when the show ran late (as it usually does), then hearing the muffled soundtrack of a movie I’d actually seen. Had it just won Best Picture? I tiptoed back to the living room to check, and my father beckoned me over to watch the acceptance speeches. Some milestones, it turns out, are more important than a good night’s sleep.
When I was older, I started hosting low-key Oscar parties for friends, having spent the preceding months catching up on as many nominated movies as I could. The show became less Hollywood spectacle and more highly contested sports playoff: We placed bets, cheered on our favorites, and groaned over what we saw as bad calls. No matter the results, we always had plenty to argue about, because there were always more losers than winners — people unjustly robbed of an honor they deserved.
But was it simply a matter of supply and demand? The Academy Awards stir up controversy because there’s too much talent fighting over too little recognition. The indignant coverage of each year’s Oscar “snubs” glosses over a humbling reality: Most professional actors, directors, and screenwriters will never be nominated for an Oscar, let alone win one. It’s a ruthless numbers game.
The Academy Awards are also a magnet for contentious social issues, the movies being a reflection of the society in which they’re made. The debate over whether the Oscars should be less “political” has gone on for more than 50 years (and has been mostly lost by the “non-political” side). When April Reign created the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite in 2015, she set off a discussion about representation that continues to this day. In 2017, there were calls to cancel the ceremony when some nominees couldn’t enter the country due to Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration from certain —majority Muslim — countries. After Harvey Weinstein was finally called to account for his treatment of women, a group of actresses who’d gone public with their accusations introduced a #MeToo segment at the 2018 ceremony. It was a powerful statement that the movie industry, if (very) belatedly, was taking women’s concerns seriously.
The winners at this year’s Oscars will inevitably say something polarizing, odd, semi-incoherent, inspiring, and/or heartwarming in their acceptance speeches. And that’s why I keep watching. There’s a vulnerability in those moments that cuts through the Hollywood illusion, reminding me that everyone who makes it onto that stage is a person who has finally — improbably — had a dream come true. The Academy Awards have always been both inspiring and controversial, as the stories on this list make clear.
Hattie McDaniel made history by being the first Black performer to win an Academy Award in 1940. Unfortunately, that honor was complicated by the role she played: Scarlett O’Hara’s servant, the sassy but loving “Mammy,” in Gone with the Wind. The film was a hugely popular hit and won a then-record eight Oscars, including Best Picture. But even in the pre-Civil Rights era, McDaniel was criticized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) for degrading her race, as cultural critic Lynda Cowell makes clear in this commentary about Black female stereotypes.
McDaniel’s response that she’d rather be “paid $700 a week playing a maid than $7 working as one” was tart and to the point. Sadly, the night of her greatest triumph was marred by the casual racism that was endemic even in supposedly open-minded California. At the dinner ceremony, McDaniel was forced to sit at a remote table, separate from her co-stars, and she wasn’t invited to the celebration party afterward, which was held at a “no Blacks allowed” nightclub.
Cowell used to dismiss McDaniel as “a funny Black woman who provided the light relief in a three-hour long film,” while the petite Dorothy Dandridge was “the kind of light-skinned lovely every Black girl should aspire to be.” In this enlightening piece, she explains how she eventually realized that both were subject to the same racist limitations in their careers.
Mammy, cartoon or otherwise, was a character that had been a part of America’s collective imagination for a while. After appearing in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mammy started to get around. Despite the fact that slaves were given very little to eat and were often worked into early graves, the notion of the large, middle-aged, dark-skinned Black woman who loved her owners more than life itself became cherished. And why wouldn’t it? With no husband, children or family to ever speak of, this loyal, motherly, sexless husk of a human being posed little threat to white society. It was McDaniel’s portrayal of Mammy that came to embody a character that still sets the standard for Black actresses today.
One of the first — and most controversial — political statements delivered at the Oscars was made in 1973 by a young woman named Sacheen Littlefeather. When Marlon Brando was announced as the winner for Best Actor in The Godfather, she strode onto the stage in a buckskin dress and announced that Brando had asked her to reject the award on his behalf, as a protest against Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans. She identified herself as being of Apache heritage, and though she was booed that evening, she soon became an inspirational figure in the Indian rights movement.
But what if all her years of activism were based on a lie? Whitaker, a lecturer on American Indian Studies at California State University, met with Littlefeather for a possible book project and ultimately came to doubt the woman’s claim of Native heritage, a doubt she kept to herself for fear of “outing” someone who’d become a role model for so many. After Littlefeather’s death in late 2022, two of her sisters confirmed Whitaker’s suspicions. Whitaker’s account is on the shorter side, but her personal experience with Littlefeather gives it particular resonance. Rather than shaming Littlefeather for lying, Whitaker explores the reasons why she did, and what she gained from it.
Littlefeather became a cultural icon in large part because she made a life playing to the Indian Princess stereotype, and she certainly looked the part. This was especially true during the Oscars incident, in which she adorned herself in full Native dress, for example, because it sent an unmistakable message about the image she was trying to portray. It should be noted that the outfit was not of traditional Apache or Yaqui design, nor was her hairstyle.
The stereotype Littlefeather embodied depended on non-Native people not knowing what they were looking at, or knowing what constitutes legitimate American Indian identity.
When Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture in 1970, it solidified a change that had been rippling through American culture throughout the 1960s: Shiny Hollywood escapism was out, gritty realism was in. But did an X-rated movie starring two relatively unknown actors really deserve the industry’s highest honor?
In this essay, film critic Koraljka Suton argues that Midnight Cowboy should be remembered for more than its edgy rating. “Midnight Cowboy [was] the first and only X-rated movie in history to have won an Oscar for Best Picture,” she writes. “Two years later, the rating was changed back to R without a single scene having been altered or cut.”
Why? Because the initial X rating had nothing to do with explicit sex scenes (there were none), but rather, the movie industry’s distaste for anything that hinted at homosexuality. The scene where Jon Voight’s character (Buck) gets paid to receive a blowjob was mostly implied, but it was shocking enough to make people walk out of the theater and create a public outcry. His co-star Dustin Hoffman was afraid he might never work again.
But the controversy might have also attracted curious moviegoers who discovered a more moving film than they expected — which might explain that Oscar. Suton makes a convincing case that Midnight Cowboy deserves to be remembered as a poignant story of two outsiders who find support in each other, not the supposedly shocking movie an X rating implies.
Schlesinger’s film is, ultimately, not at all about sexuality, although it did break new ground in terms of its acknowledgment of various sexual preferences and practices, but rather about the importance of connection and true intimacy. In a world that gave them nothing and expected nothing from them, Rizzo and Buck were, to steal a quote from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, “each the other’s world entire”—and we were given the opportunity to take a glimpse inside and really feel what it means to survive, as opposed to thrive.
Saving Private Ryan entered the 1999 Academy Awards as the undisputed favorite. A huge commercial success, it also met all the expected criteria for a prestige drama: a beloved leading man (Tom Hanks), a respected director (Steven Spielberg), and a sweeping, emotional story that capitalized on nostalgia for World War II’s “Greatest Generation.”
When it lost Best Picture to the charming but relatively lightweight romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love, though, the ground beneath Hollywood shifted. This wasn’t simply a surprise upset, but proof that an Oscar could be won with the right marketing strategy. As David Crow explains in this entertaining, behind-the-scenes account, the now-notorious producer Harvey Weinstein crafted a relentless, no-holds-barred campaign to boost Shakespeare’s chances — and the fact that it worked convinced other studios to follow his lead.
Miramax started a whisper campaign saying everything good about Saving Private Ryan occurred within the first 15-20 minutes on the beaches of Normandy, and the rest was sentimental hokum. It worked. Spielberg did not campaign like it’s the Monday before election day, and Weinstein did.
While Weinstein is thankfully gone, the crude lessons learned by Shakespeare in Love’s win over Saving Private Ryan are not. Awards seasons generally begin in early September with the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival … It then continues with each film being released between October and December, mounting months-long rollouts that never really end until Oscar night. Coupled with corporate studio interests leaning ever more heavily on “four-quadrant” blockbusters that are built on franchises, this system has created an environment where Oscar movies are often little-seen limited releases, and mainstream populist films are more concerned with superpowers than prestige … The generally accepted wisdom that Oscar movies and popular movies are mutually exclusive remains intact.
Dargis, the Times’s co-chief film critic, remembers the 2010 Academy Awards as the “Bigelow Oscars,” with Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win Best Director for The Hurt Locker. “I hate the Oscars when I don’t love them,” she writes, “but that night I swooned.” Could Bigelow’s breakthrough inspire a wave of female filmmakers and producers to finally wield power behind the scenes?
It didn’t happen immediately, or all that smoothly. But as Dargis surveys the cultural landscape of the past 20 years, she sees undeniable progress. Female writers and directors who once would have been limited to romantic comedies are working on blockbuster action films, while creative powerhouses like Ava DuVernay have built their own versions of a mini-studio, directing, producing, and supporting other young creative talents.
Not all that long ago, I thought it would be best if the entire machine blew up, that the big studios just got it over with and died, making room for others to build something different and better. Certainly, the movie industry seems to be doing a fine job of self-combusting. Yet the truth is that despite the statistics and awards, the movie world looks different than it did 30, 20, even 10 years ago. The world looks different. There is, as I’ve suggested, no one reason for the shift in how we think about women and film, but it is a good and hopeful shift. Change has been slow. But change is here because women have followed their muses, honed their craft and heeded their voices no matter the hurdles before them and, in doing so, they have changed ideas about cinematic representation, about who gets to be the hero on set and onscreen.
Elizabeth Blackwell is the author of While Beauty Slept, On a Cold Dark Sea, and Red Mistress. She lives outside Chicago with her family and stacks of books she is absolutely, positively going to read one day.
Editor: Carolyn Wells
Copy editor: Peter Rubin
This is the future, a juxtaposition of virtual and reality. Art Blocks, TRAME, and Crypto Packaged Goods (CPG) have partnered with French artist Alexis André to create Navette, a series of 200 on-chain generative artworks (NFTs) and accompanying loom-woven tapestries. The first-of-its-kind generative art project unites 3D printing and textile craftsmanship to create uniquely coded digital outputs with complimentary physical artworks.
On March 2, 2023, Navette will be released via auction through Art Blocks Engine’s blockchain technology alongside a collector buying experience created by CPG. The generative code will be fed into Néolice’s digital loom, which will output eight, one-of-a-kind, large-scale physical tapestries that will then be claimable by owners of the original digital artworks. A redeemable token will be airdropped to the first six minters to claim their tapestry, with two others randomly distributed to collectors of the remaining 194 artworks.
Navette is the first collaboration between Art Blocks, TRAME, and CPG in an ongoing series titled “Craft Nouveau” that pushes the boundaries of generative art and traditional textiles. The series will bring together artists, creative code, and crafted collectibles, marking the possibilities that lie at the intersection of classical and futuristic.
Alexis André
To learn more about Navette, visit collectibles.trameparis.com.
The new Design En Rogue Architecture collection from S. Harris, part of Fabricut since 1954, translates a story many modern design lovers can appreciate – that of the Bauhaus school – into pattern and texture on fabric.
We got a sneak peek at the new designs that will be launching later this spring.
Known as a place as well as a method of teaching in pre-war Germany, the avant-garde Bauhaus brought together beauty and function, mass production and artistic vision, and disciplines from art to architecture. It was something never before seen, but has inspired creatives ever since.
The Design En Rogue Architecture collection unites designs based in organic and industrial art with those of architecture, taking inspiration from the Bauhaus artists who first introduced the world to this study of color, form, shape, and silhouette.
“This collection is full of highly structured textiles with a feminine essence – textiles that strike a chord.” said Jodi Finer, S. Harris Creative Director. “They’re movement-centric, statement-oriented, and evoke positivity. Inspired by the notion of moving forward through constant change as the only stabilizing force, we continue to test limits.”
You’ll find ten patterns in the Design En Rogue Architecture collection: Walker Fields, Isle of Capri, Senicio, Vastu, Off the Cuff, Sheeler Modern, Abstract Lines, Nouvel, Piston Mini, and Usonian.
A modern take on the classic floral print, Walker Fields found its inspiration in the wild landscapes of Walker Canyon and the Temescal Mountains in Lake Elsinore, California. A super soft alpaca fabric provides a subtle background to the brighter embroidery.
On the coast of Italy you’ll find Capri and its breathtaking scenery that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Isle of Capri brings to life the island’s landscape that’s scattered with luxury hotels and impressive yachts. It features intricate embroidery on an alpaca-blended wool.
Ahead of his time, artist Paul Klee was a master of color, shape, and form through his use of complicated geometries. Senecio is modeled after Klee’s 1922 portrait “Senecio,” alternatively known as “Head of a Man Going Senile”. Senecio is available in four colorways – American Blue, Amour, Java, and the aptly named Klee – that highlight the angles and perspective of the portrait.
The ancient Indian practice of vastu shastra is a way of organizing the home through architecture and planning of the space. The goal is to fill a home with good energy and positivity. Vastu takes its cues from the role of geometry within these principles. Choose from Citron, Natural Black, Mineral, and Pebble colorways.
Taking advantage of a more abstract interpretation of geometry, Off the Cuff showcases repetitive lines and closed, curving shapes. There’s a feeling of movement and energy that brings this fabric to life. Available colorways include Abyss, Citrus, and Shipwreck.
The work of modern artist Charles Sheeler depicted the American Heartland, where machinery and factories changed the landscape of work. Sheeler Modern borrows from the complex nature of modern machinery and translates it into a composition of shape, value, color, and repetition.
Abstract Lines combines detailed embroidery with an energetic color and soft, alpaca-blended wool. Flowing lines are embroidered in metallic purple thread that makes both the pattern and bright-yellow background pop.
Featuring a geometric pattern in metallic cut velvet, Nouvel offers texture and depth. Inspired by French architect Jean Nouvel, who is known for using contrasting forms to create visual interest, Nouvel plays with shadow, light, and positive and negative spaces. Nouvel is available in Boysenberry, Honeycomb, Passion Plum, and Tamarindo.
A smaller version of the Piston pattern at S. Harris, Piston Mini features the same rounded, expressive geometric shapes. Made of 100% cotton, this fabric is ideal for use in bedding and draperies. It is available in Pink Sun and Sand Castle.
Usonian looks to Frank Lloyd Wright for its name and design. Mimicking Wright’s use of minimal details and utopian principles, its boldness is a surprise and a delight. Choose from New World Blue, Red Tribune, and Terracotta.
Great design starts with a story. Born in metropolitan America at the turn of the 19th century, S. Harris continues to celebrate its roots in pattern, color, texture, and innovation. Every collection is designed as a love letter to the natural world, a tribute to history, the romance of travel, and a platform for storytellers. The brand’s pursuit of progress is alive in every fabric, wallcovering, trim, and accessory they make.
Explore Design En Rogue Architecture, launching this spring, and the full catalog of fabrics, trimmings, wallcoverings, and finished home goods at at fabricut.com/sharris.
Two of the biggest Nordic brands have united to bring us the BASTUA collection, launching globally in March 2023. The limited-edition series of 26 products, created by home furnishings giant IKEA and iconic printmaker Marimekko, brings together Nordic design and self-care rituals. From furniture to glassware to textiles, vibrant patterns reflect nature back at you.
“Collaborating with Marimekko was a natural choice for IKEA as we are both committed to enabling a better everyday life at home, and with the BASTUA collection, it begins with focusing on wellness first,” says Henrik Most, Creative Leader at IKEA. “The collaboration encapsulates the sensations of endless summers and the simple and aesthetic beauty of Nordic nature in furniture and accessories for the home.”
“BASTUA” describes a sauna in Småland, the region in southern Sweden where IKEA was founded. Self-care and Nordic sauna were the starting points of the collection that’s meant to be used when relaxing outdoors in warm weather or simply winding down at the end of a long day.
The launch of BASTUA marks the first time that Marimekko has designed prints exclusively for a brand collaboration. “Capturing the essence of Marimekko’s Finnish roots and its connection to the historic origins of sauna culture was a fundamental part of the design journey and the creation of the BASTUA prints,” says Rebekka Bay, Creative Director at Marimekko. When gathering inspiration from nature, the brand gravitated towards the large, decorative rhubarb leaves that are often found growing near saunas in Finland. You’ll find it throughout the collection, including on the ever-popular FRAKTA bag.
Within the BASTUA collection lies furniture, glassware, and textiles that include robes and towels – and even the first-ever sauna bucket – among other items. These are all things one might traditionally use when enjoying a sauna, or right before or after the ritual. You’ll find elements that can be used during a meal, a place to sit and feel grounded, and even a candle infused with the scents of elderflower, rhubarb, and sweet vanilla.
BASTUA’s furniture pieces are inspired by classic Nordic design. A side table offers a clever feature: the collection’s patterned trays fit perfectly on the top. You may even want to pull up the coordinating bench to enjoy a relaxing moment of Zen.
“Nordic furniture design has always been characterized by clean lines and simple constructions that focus on function” says Mikael Axelsson, Designer at IKEA. “The BASTUA side table is my take on this heritage, as it is made of birch veneer and with a high edge that keeps things in place.”
The BASTUA collection feels like a perfect partnership, neither pattern nor design overshadows the other. It’s a wonderful marriage between two brands that complement one another in harmony.
To learn more about BASTUA, visit ikea.com.
A new animated series starring beloved kidlit characters "Frog and Toad" is headed to Apple TV+, premiering Friday, April 28. Them is reporting that "gay Twitter" is lauding the adaptation of Arnold Lobel's Caldecott and Newbery Award-winning children's book for its "queer subtext," calling the amphibious friends "one of the internet's favorite queer relationships." — Read the rest
In my previous post I listed all the digital creative/critical works I’ve released in the past 12 months. (Whew, it was a lot, in part because I had the privilege to be on sabbatical from teaching in the fall, my first sabbatical since 2006. I made the most of it.)
Now, I want to provide a long overdue introduction to each of my newest works, one post at a time. Let’s start with An End of Tarred Twine, a procedurally-generated hypertext version of Moby-Dick. I made An End of Tarred Twine for NaNoGenMo 2019 (National Novel Generation Month), in which the goal is to write code that writes a 50,000 word novel. Conceived by Darius Kazemi in 2013, NaNoGenMo runs every November, parallel to National Novel Writing Month. I’ve always wanted to participate in NaNoGenMo, but the timing was never good. It falls right during the crunch period of the fall semester. But, hey, I wasn’t teaching last fall, so I could hunker down and finally try something.
An End of Tarred Twine is what I came up with. The title is a line from Moby-Dick, where Captain Bildad, one of the Quaker owners of the Pequod is fastidiously preparing the ship for its departure from Nantucket. As sailmakers mend a top-sail, Bildad gathers up small swatches of sailcloth and bits of tarred twine on the deck that “otherwise might have been wasted.” That Captain Bildad saves even the smallest scrap of waste speaks to his austere—one might say cheap—nature. The line is also one of the few references to twine in the novel. This was important to me because An End of Tarred Twine is made in Twine, an open source platform for writing interactive, nonlinear hypertext narratives.
An End of Tarred Twine is like the white whale itself—at once monstrous and elusive. And that’s because all the links and paths are randomly generated. You start off on the well-known first paragraph of Moby-Dick—Call me Ishmael & etc.—but random links in that passage lead to random passages, which lead to other random passages. Very quickly, you’re lost, reading Moby-Dick one passage at a time, out of order, with no map to guide you. Or as Ishmael says about the birthplace of Queequeg, the location “is not down in any map; true places never are.”
Here, this GIF shows you what I mean. It starts with the start of Moby Dick but quickly jumps into uncharted waters.
This traversal starts off in chapter 1, jumps to chapter 24, then on to chapter 105, and so on. One paragraph at a time, in random order, with no logic behind the links that move from passage to passage. As a reading experience, it’s more conceptual than practical, akin to the Modernist-inflected hypertext novels of the 1980s. As a technical experiment, I personally think there’s some interesting stuff going on.
Look at these stats. An End of Tarred Twine has:
Another visual might help you appreciate the complexity of the work. One of the cool features of the official Twine app (i.e. where you write and code your interactive narrative) is that Twine maps each passage on a blueprint-like grid. For the typical Twine project, this narrative map offers a quick overview of the narrative structure of your story. For example, here’s what Masks, one of my other recent projects, looks like on the backend in Twine:
Each black line and arrow represents a link from one passage to the next. Now look at what An End of Tarred Twine looks like on the backend in Twine:
The first passage (labeled 0) is the title screen, with the word “Loomings” linking to the second passage (1). You can see that passage then has outbound links as well as some inbound links. Here’s another view, deeper into the hypertext:
There are so many links between passages by this point that the link lines become a dense forest of scribbles. You can almost image those lines as a detail taken from Rockwell Kent’s stunning illustration of Moby Dick breaching the ocean in his 1930 edition of Moby-Dick.
Now, how did I create this unnavigable monstrosity? The point of NaNoGenMo is that you write the code that writes the novel. That’s really the only criteria. The novel itself doesn’t have to be good (it won’t be) or even readable (it won’t be).
Here’s how I made a several-thousand passage Twine with many more thousands of random connections between those passages:
You can check out the Python program that does the heavy-lifting on Github. But I thought people might also want to see what the Twee code looks like. It’s so simple. Here’s the first main passage. The double colons signify the passage title. So this passage is “1.” Then whenever you see double brackets, that’s a link to a different passage, which is also a number. For example, the name “Ishmael” becomes a link to passage #1626.
:: 1
Call me [[Ishmael->1626]]. [[Some years ago->2297]]--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly [[November->526]] in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
The links in this sample Twee code are different from the version of An End of Tarred Twine that I posted for NaNoGenMo and published on Itch. Because every time I run the Python script it creates an entirely new hypertext, with new links and paths through it. This what tickles me most about the project: anyone can take the source text and my Python program and generate their own version of An End of Tarred Twine. It reminds me of Aaron Reed’s recent novel Subcutanean, in which every printed version is different, algorithmically altered so that words, phrases, even entire scenes vary from one copy to the next—yet each version tells the fundamentally same story. In her review of Subcutanean, Emily Short suggests that the multitudinous machined variations fit the theme of the novel, of “the unknowable proliferation of motives and outcomes.”
Similarly, with An End of Tarred Twine we could have thousands of versions of the story, none alike. Just fork my code and make your own. A thousand different paths through Moby-Dick, none of them really Moby-Dick, but all of them monstrously “nameless, inscrutable, unearthly”—like the vengeful malice that drives Ahab himself to his ruin, dragging his beleaguered crew down with him.
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