Legends of the Sun Pig

When Abi and I visited SFMOMA last year, the Sol LeWitt exhibit left quite an impression on me. Not because of the beauty of the works themselves, but because of their nature. The museum had a collection of wall drawings which were not drawn by LeWitt himself, but by other artists based on his instructions. For example, his collection Work from Instructions (1971) includes:

Plate 5. Using a black, hard crayon draw a twenty inch square. Divide this sqaure into one inch squares. Within each one inch square, draw nothing or a freehand line or lines.

Plate 6. Using a black, hard crayon draw a twenty inch square. Divide this square into one inch squares. Within each one inch square, draw nothing, or draw a diagonal straight line from corner to corner, or two crossing straight lines diagonally from corner to corner.

The instructions seem very clinical and precise at first glance, but you very quickly see how much flexibility and leeway they allow. With a “hard black crayon” you can draw thick or thin lines. The instructions say nothing about whether the thickness of each stroke has to be consistent across the whole twenty inch square. For Plate 6 there are four possible states for each square (nothing, diagonal 1, diagonal 2, cross), which gives you a gargantuan 2⁸⁰⁰ possible versions to play with. Each time an artist follows the instructions, you will get something subtly different, but still essentially the same. The art lies in both the execution and the instructions. We take this kind of duality for granted with classical musical works and theatre plays, often granting the composer and playwright the most credit. But for visual arts it feels subversive and unusual.

I was reminded of this while I was listening to the “Pumpkin Pressure” episode of Hello Internet. Brady and Gray talk about various emoji (frog face, crocodile), and which versions they like best — Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.

It struck me that the Unicode Emoji catalogue has a lot in common with Sol LeWitt’s conceptual art. The Unicode consortium defines the core essence of the emoji in a few short words, such as “frowning face with open mouth” (U+1F626 or ?), “shallow pan of food” (U+1F958 or ?), or “person in lotus position” (U+1F9D8 or ?). It’s up to the implementors to execute this concept and turn it into something expressive and recognizable at the scale of a tiny letter-size graphic, ideally within a consistent design framework.

I think the balance of creative expression here is tilted in favour of the implementors. But don’t underestimate the work that goes into deciding which emoji will be codified, and what the canonical textual representation will be. That’s art, too.

I first saw Thumpers in support of Chvrches, and then on their own tour in 2014. They have a new album out now, Whipped and Glazed. I like it. It’s good. Reminds me a lot of Friendly Fires, who might be making a comeback? Also very exciting.

See also: Track By Track: Thumpers – ‘Whipped & Glazed’ on Clash

Right at the end of the summer holiday, Abi, Fiona, and I went indoor skydiving at City Skydive in Utrecht. It was amazing!

Alex and I had spotted the facility earlier this year while it was still under construction. It is just off the A2 to the north-west of Utrecht, very clearly visible from the motorway. On the day we went, Alex didn’t feel like coming along, so it was just Abi, Fiona, and me.

When you arrive, you sign in and wait for your flight trainer to come and collect your group. You get suited up in some unflattering flight suits (with built-in handles on the back and hips, so the trainer can throw you around more easily), and equipped with a helmet, flexible goggles, and ear plugs.

There is a small theatre space at the rear of the facility where the instructors give you a safety and instructions briefing. Although the noise is muted on the outside, once you get into the wind tunnels you can basically hear nothing, so they cover the hand signals and pantomime gestures they will use on the inside.

Depending on the package you have booked, you get 3-5 one-minute slots in one of the two enormous vertical wind tunnels. If this is your first time, the flight trainer works you through a set of exercises to drill you on the basic skills like how to turn, and fly up and down. If you get far enough through the supervised exercises, you’ll get a flight certificate that allows you to come back and dive on your own, but we didn’t get nearly far enough for that. Abi’s shoulder gave her some trouble, so she ducked out after just the one flight. The instructor allowed Fiona and me to take over her remaining flights, so we both got an extra minute. A minute might not sound like much, but it feels like quite a long time when you’re being physically battered into the air by up to 300km/h winds.

After your session (or if you’re not flying), you can relax in the café area just outside the tunnels, and watch how other groups are getting on. I had a great time, and would love to go back again!

Previously:

• Some thoughts on the Lumia 930
• Lumia update
• Lumia 930, one year on

Reading back through those old posts, it’s clear I was never really happy with the Lumia 930. Right from the start it was a compromise, because I didn’t want to splash out on a brand new flagship phone. For the first year I was able to convince myself that it was a worthwhile tradeoff. More recently I have been loathing every minute I spend with it:

• The MSN Health app was disabled a few software updates ago, and the few compatible walk tracking apps in the Microsoft store are buggy pieces of ad-serving garbage.
• The Life360 app I had been using for cross-platform location tracking (we’re a mixed platform household) has been discontinued for Windows Phone. I can download an old version, but it crashes on startup.
• The built-in Podcasts app I complained about last year has gained even more bugs. It still sometimes keeps playing when I ask it to stop. But now it also regularly just stops playing audio after a couple of minutes, and when I press “play” again, it resets to the original start point.
• The camera has got slower. There is now a regular pause between me pressing the button and the phone actually taking the picture. I could forgive this when it took a while to acquire focus in low-light conditions, but now it happens in broad daylight as well.
• The automatic upload to OneDrive regularly fails to start, and skips photos. I have to check each batch to make sure that all photos and videos have all been uploaded correctly. When they haven’t, I have to connect the phone to my Windows PC and extract the data the old-fashioned way, because neither Microsoft nor Apple care enough to make the Lumia recognisable to OSX.
• No ad-blocker for the Edge browser. Browsing the web with ads is just awful.
• With no new first-party phones, Microsoft has made it pretty clear that the Windows Phone platform is dead. The software ecosystem, which was never that great to begin with, is dying. I don’t use many productivity apps, but I miss having basics like 1Password.
• It confuses the heck out of people when you hand it to them and ask them to take a photo or a video with it.

I got the faulty camera module repaired under warranty last year, but it took about two months. During that time I went back to a cracked-screen iPhone 5. It was fine, but I’m too used to a big screen to go back to something so small again.

After two years, enough is enough. Until now, I have always taken Abi’s hand-me-down iPhones, or bought non-flagship phones (Android or Windows) that offered good value. Abi isn’t lusting after this year’s new iPhones. I am. I always find it easier to spend money on other people, but screw it. I can afford it, and I really want a phone that will make me happy. The new Google Pixel phones are due out soon, but I’m happier with the iPhone software ecosystem. So that means I’m going to get an 8 or a X. As Ron Swanson may have put it:

Why not? I like the kid and I have the money. One thing I promised my self when I buried gold in my backyard is that I would never be a hoarder or a miser about it.

Or as Tom Haverford would have it: “Treat Yo Self”

Update 10 October: Windows Phone as a platform is now officially dead.