A couple of books and a private view of Urban Portraits by Mark Woods. Received a copy of Networks of New York - An illustrated field guide to urban internet infrastructure by Ingrid Burrington, a lovely pocket book that helps you decipher the invisible communications infrastructure of our cities.
I like this from the introduction: “how do you think about the internet, how do you visually perceive it. This book is mostly about the last framing-identifying physical internet infrastructure on city streets”
Tuesday saw a first visit to Burgh House in Hampstead for the opening of a friends exhibition “Urban Portraits” www.burghhouse.org.uk/whats-on/whats-on/exhibition/urban-… I love the way Mark captures buildings - so much so that when I knew we were moving out of our old two up two down on Pages Lane I commissioned him to paint our lovely old white cottage with the red Acacia tree out front. Still has pride of place in our new living room (on Pages Hill, we didn’t move far).
The second book Why we make things & why it matters - Peter Korn was a lovely read. Lots of snippets follow as a reminder of things I noted whilst reading.
Written by a furniture maker and educator, it explores the philosophy of craft and why physical making, creative problem solving, and the mastery of tools are so central to human meaning, learning, and fulfilment. Reading it sparked a lot of connections to my own work across engineering, design, and academia: from the joy of teaching versus the “productionisation” of university life, to how tactile “learning through doing” compares with iterating on LLMs, and what a modern Arts and Crafts movement might look like in an era of AI and automation.
“We are an object making species.” Engineer, artist, designer, maker, scientist - not sure which one of these I am, I hope all, but at the centre of all those is the idea of object maker or tool maker that gets me excited.
This is how I feel about assessments, attendance and the productionisation of academy. There is no greater reward than feeling that you have taught someone something.
As industrialisation and automation are turbo charged into the AI era, what will be our generations arts and craft movement?
Curious about the relationship here with learning through doing and our contemporary process of prompt engineering to iterate our LLMs to find the right kind of information on our behalf.
On motivations that lead to self transformation.
The design process, clarifying the design brief, generating ideas and testing and refining those ideas given the constraints of time and money.
On meaning and fulfilment, the use of tools and the role of toolmakers.
Do, share, notice.
Well worth a read.
Did a little update to the site since was frustrated I couldn’t search for keywords in posts. Search bar now available in the archive page
Looking at links.duncanwilson.com, these parts of the internet crossed my path this week:
- Switzerland in Minecraft! via Steve
- CultureBlocs via Mark Simpkins at IoT Meet Up
- Daft Punk and Lego? yes please
- Spotify play list when reading Why We Make Things was a good one