More thoughts on Blogging

Short form blogging as a form of note taking, thinking out loud, and public learning has taken off quietly in the last few years. I have spent some time recently reading about and  trying to setup my own disparate set of tools to do this as well.

It’s all a bit too technical right now. Some options I’ve considered are, Notion as a webpage, Voodoopad as a self constructed wiki, some suggest simply writing a html page and updating as I see fit, this is the least technical option for me and may yet take shape. At the moment I’m dropping most snippets of text, some pdfs and images into Apple’s notes app. From a search and retrieve perspective this is fine, however a digital garden is more than that. [See the links below for more on the ideas and approach to digital gardening.]

For now I have rejigged my WordPress blog in an attempt to better reflect this approach, adding a menu option in the main menu at the top for a links page. Also adding content to my about page that explains a bit about digtial gardens. I also moved categories to my sidebar to make the interconnections between my words/posts and other media seem more obvious.

Moving forward I will try to add as much link rich information as I can in each post. This will allow for some non-linear reading.  In the meantime my motley collection of links can be found on pinboard.in/u/:s2art, there is a social element there and it has a small annual fee attached, as well as a taxonomic tool for tags and organisation.

Here’s a list of articles that have been sitting in my open tabs in my browser for over a week now that have me thinking abot this idea of a digital garden.

☛ Website | Flickr | Instagram | Photography links | Twitter | Tumblr ☚

Summer Preoccupations

This interactive piece on the New York Times website is a marvellous example of how the web can be harnessed for educational good.

Click on the image below; to view.
The woodblock print referred to by the New York Times is by Katsushika Hokusai: “Ejiri in Suruga Province.” It is the 10th image in his renowned cycle “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.” It examines the print in detail and draws some conclusions about its impact on Western Art, even referring back to Jeff Wall’s iteration.

Website | Flickr | Instagram | Photography links | Twitter | Tumblr

The History of the World Wide Web


I found this website that explores through a timeline and in a decade by decade series, how we got to where we are in terms of the current world wide web. It uses fairly non-technical language and builds on and adds to some of the Web’s best known stories.

Website | Flickr | Instagram | Photography links | Twitter | Tumblr | altfotonet

Meanwhile on Flickr

Spencer Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 2013-11-02 14:43:30
Spencer Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 2013-11-02 14:43:30

My flickr stream is one that is highly curated. I look for similarities or disparities that tie the images together. I treat my flickr stream as a 24/7/365 gallery.

Using Lightroom it is easy to duck and weave around and collate worthwhile images that can then be later drawn upon to upload. Tools like Lightroom and Aperture have made the process possible. Otherwise locating specific images in my unwieldy 200000+ image library would be nigh on impossible.

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Reading in the time of the Pandemic [Quote for yesterday]


What seems to be real in the photograph is always a simulation of something else. We have shown how this way of thinking provided a theoretical basis for simulation methods in contemporary art and photography. The exploration of staging, quotation, repetition, copying and plagiarism typifies the postmodern trends of the 1980s. These anti-realist strategies found a rationale in the conceptual art movement’s critique of documentary methods and the emergence of sceptical attitudes to the truth claims of photography.

pg 169. RETHINKING PHOTOGRAPHY: Histories, Theories and Education, by Peter Smith and Carolyn Lefley published 2016 by Routledge, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN, ISBN: 978-1-315-72241-2 (ebk)

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