Tag Archives: Instagram

Nanoscape

My buddy and fellow cyclist Geoff Williams (gewilli to his peeps) has a side gig going on posting artwork from Electron Microscopes. Fascinating stuff. He recently had a print exhibition at the Chazan Gallery in Rhode Island. Check him out on instagram and twitter. I hear he plays a mean fiddle as well.

From the Gallery Exhibition Website:

For over 20 years Geoff Williams has been honing his craft as an electron microscopist. Each image that he collects is an expression of his sensibilities. The dynamic interplay of shape and grayscale values speaks to him. From that first image Williams collected on a scanning electron microscope (SEM) until now, he has been consistently striving to master a technique that engages this scientific tool towards a goal of sharing this world through his personal lense.
Williams’ images provide a tactile and striking view of samples we may or may not encounter in our day-to-day lives.  These samples can come from very diverse sources, from food to tiny fragments of the custom bicycle making process, to broken or discarded bits. Williams strives to present them as inspiring visuals, hoping to draw in and engage the audience in a way that is not possible in any other expressive form. The unique three dimensionality of these SEM works has the potential to decouple any a priori connection a viewer might have, while at the same time fostering a powerful de novo relationship to the subjects.

Watching

I didn’t look or listen for anything in particular, I just let the details of this particular moment in the neighborhood come to me: the quality of the air—heavy and warm, the incoming summer storm kind; birds; two couples having a conversation down the sidewalk; the clinking of dishes coming from inside the house to my right; distant hammering from a construction site somewhere in the blocks behind my house.

David Cain, The Alternative to Thinking All the Time

I happened on this quite by chance recently.

My oldest daughter has a job at the local fried chicken joint now. I often have to go pick her up. Her shift ends at time ‘X’, but really she has stuff to do after so I’m never sure when she gets out exactly so I sit in the car in the parking lot and wait.

Usually it’s around 9pm on a moderately busy street corner of a semi-residential section of town with a riverside park across the street. These summer nights at dusk by the river, there’s all manner of stuff going on.

Initially, I’d surf instagram on my phone, read a book, sometimes try to meditate, but eventually I just got round to watching and listening. Doing exactly what he describes here. Immersing myself in that moment and the goings on at that exact time, tuning out all the other irrelevant noise – stuff that is either unimportant or I can’t do anything about at that time anyway – and often yes – I’m sort of startled out of it by her opening the truck door.

I always feel really refreshed, awake and present after.

Au Revoir, Facebook.

I’ve deactivated it for time periods before, but going full monty this time. Over the past few months I’ve pretty much jumped off all the social medias, including the Plus here, but have decided to gradually come back to some, in a more curated fashion. Found overall that spending less time in front of screens was a really beneficial exercise.

I’m still going to have some reservations about not having a Facebook account, things that kept me from deleting it before. A couple of Groups I was managing, and a few other things, but for the most part I won’t miss it. I’ve made arrangements to share photos with family via Flickr and I have been keeping in touch via more ‘conventional means’ like email, text, and old-fashioned voice phone.

I had hung on to Facebook for a long time primarily for Messenger, but I’ve learned you don’t have to have a Facebook account to use it. People from Facebook can still connect with you on it provided they have your phone number. It also works with Instagram – just learned this today – which I plan on keeping because I enjoy it quite a bit. Something about it being image-based, and there’s less politics and drama. I hate that they’ve started fucking with the timeline chronology, but, oh well.

Deleted my twitter account as well. Hadn’t used it as more than a link-reposting device in months and frankly, looking at it these days just bores me.

I think I will be dipping my toes back into Google+ some, though it will never be like the early days. Just poking around I very much dislike a lot of what’s been done with it, even in the short time I haven’t really been paying attention. It seems that it’s even harder now to find that genuine engagement that made it so exhilarating in the beginning. I find there’s too much being ‘pushed’ at me now, with suggestions, ‘things I might like’ or other upsells.

Collections, though good in theory, only works if everyone uses them, allowing you to opt out of portions of people’s content. Unfortunately I find most people don’t use them, or at least the ones I wish did, don’t.

So my Facebook goes dark 14 (or less) days from now supposedly. Perhaps I’ll do some sort of countdown here, because, reasons. Whatever.