nov _24
▲ highlights: exhibition opening in December // CYENS residency update // new website design // and more...
⫷ audio intro
hugs,
ål // ≧◉◡◉≦
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// things to share » =================================================================
🖤 <postcard from Limassol/>
game testing session at the EdMedia Lab in Limassol, hosted by Eleni and Sonia <3 // 1-11-2024
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● <exhibition opening in December/>
At the end of my CYENS residency, there will be a group exhibition done together with the rest of the artists-in-residence. Once we have an opening date and more info (but for sure it will be around the 13th of December, what a lovely birthday treat!), I will share it on my Instagram. Keep an eye also on ThinkerMaker Space’s insta! 👀
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▲ <CYENS residency update/>
While working on the research that informs the game I am creating, I collected some valuable resources, observations, findings, and inspirations. It’s difficult to share all of that work and material that stands behind the visible, but I need to try. The game features some additional elements which make it special - several essays, a glossary, and methodologies used for its creation. I am excited to bring them to you alongside the game, so they will find their place at the exhibition and as part of the game, too. Here are some of the features I’ve been working on:
▲ a glossary of “future design” // Have you come across terms like “homophily”, “connectedness”, “social capital”, “possible worlds”, or “permacomputing”? These and more concepts I researched will be nested in a glossary.
▲ essays on what influences the way we design our future // In the game, there are some “did you know?” cards that you encounter while playing. They usually ask questions and bring up some concepts I’ve researched during the residency. Those cards will lead also to a longer elaboration in the form of an essay - if the players are curious to learn more about something they haven’t come across before.
▲ methodologies set I used to develop the game // It was a challenge to bring such a broad concept into a board-card game. It means you have to oversimplify things, build a gameplay that makes sense and decide what to keep and what to leave out. The methods I picked for this game helped me make those decisions - methods such as speculative fiction, path dependency, modularity, exaggeration, simplification, diffraction, and more.
▶ The project’s AlWiki page is slowly building up here.
Eleni and Antonia holding the game’s first booklet.
Visual summary of the game testing session in Limassol on the 1st of November.
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⍟ <my website’s new look: focused on artistic projects/>
I redesigned my website (again). This time, I wanted to focus on my artistic practice and make it look like a portfolio. I made it much simpler and reduced the content dramatically. Not sure if it was the right call, but I felt I had toooo much stuff there and was confusing for people. How do you find the new one?
Your feedback will be invaluable, so if you feel like it, pls draw me a line about what you think about it. <3
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★ <why is literature so important today?/>
I came across a beautiful text by Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak on the power of literature today - in an era of anger. She warns about the danger of transitioning into another era - the one of numbness. While anger has a destructive power, numbness is even more dangerous. I believe we can all see how these two core emotions already co-exist in the political and social discourses with the fresh proof of the most recent election in Bulgaria.
Shafak finds literature an “antidote to numbness”: writers not only “keep the flame of peace and coexistence and empathy alive” as she argues, but they also play a crucial role in bringing perspectives and muted voices to the surface. I love that she also reminds us about the difference between getting snippets of information online every day, reading slow journalism and books, and processing all of that to turn it into wisdom. It’s a long process we don’t take because we’re running, no, we’re rushing around.
today, we are living in a world in which there is way too much information, but little knowledge and even less wisdom.
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🖤 A lovely soul forwarded this art letter to you? You can join here:
The Elif Shafak text is amazing, but when I first read it I felt it was a bit out of touch. I agree that literature can change our perceptions and that literature is important, but that’s not necessarily in a positive way. Books were also what kept the flame of the which hunts back in the day and the reason for many other horrible things people did throughout history.
So, it’s about more than just having literature available, it’s about paying attention to it. That’s, in my opinion, the main issue today. There’s more ‘good’ writing than ever before in history but that doesn’t change the fact that humanity pays attention to other things.