The lizards underpinning reality.

(I think it's the same guy as the Svart Höna rooster further down.)

Yesterday's spray-painting exercise was to see if I could do stencil prints from photos of my Svart Höna, solid black melanistic chickens, a heritage breed from Sweden. The trick was to see if I could get their facial features to read even though they are pure black. (Even their bones and the insides of their mouths are black.)

A rooster:

And a hen:

Spray paint on paper. Self-portrait based on a photo by Emma Dodge Hanson.

Produced in an edition of 8.

Spraypaint on pizza box.

A self portrait: Stencil , spraypaint on pizzabox. (Getting the hang of cutting stencils for portraiture.)

And a rooster: I think you can probably tell I really loved this rooster.

Spray paint on pizza box.

I have been playing with Peter Stoyko's SystemViz iconography.

SystemViz is a research project by Peter Stoyko exploring how visuals can enhance systems thinking, especially as it relates to inter-disciplinary, collaborative design. Findings are expressed as visual codexes and other applied tools.

Today marks my first product release after finishing an OCAD Master of Design degree, and it also happens to be the day the OCAD University Senate confers my degree: Mantra and See to It earrings from Wild Moon.

During quarantine in May, I bought a 3D printer for Pandemic Post: Retrofuturist Mail Art.

I got to talking to Asia Clarke, one of my OCAD classmates, via text message over the summer about the jewelry design possibilities. We ended up doing a jewelry design collaboration via text, and the two different designs launched today on her Wild Moon Jewelry website. Asia described to me the approximate dimensions of an earring and I used a technique I had been playing with for picture frames to integrate text into a hoop earring. And Asia took it from there to do her jewelry magic. The results are amazing.

Photography by Anothony Gebrehlwot.

There are two styles: one which says "Black Lives Matter," the other of which says "Defund the Police."

100% of proceeds will go to supporting the Black Legal Action Centre, a non-profit community legal clinic that provides free legal services for low or no income Black residents of Ontario.

100% of proceeds will go to supporting the Free Black University, a radical educational institution that exists to transform and to hold a space for the creation of radical knowledge that pertains to our collective freedom and healing.

Spraypaint on paper.

UPDATE: A few more versions.

My OCAD University Major Research Project, entitled, A Thousand Futures: A Search for Scenario Space, is now available on the OCAD website.

Abstract

Although both science fiction and professional foresight work both are engaged with what the future might look like, they operate mostly independently from one another. A literature search reveals the characteristics of written science fiction and foresight, seeking ways these practices could be successfully combined. Concepts are explored through the example of agriculture and agricultural technology as well as technologies for constructing narrative semantics. Approaches are outlined for generating foresight scenarios and for creating a semantic tagging system for generating a semantic space for scenarios using intellectual technologies from science fiction.

Keywords:

agriculture, agroecology, animals, apples, bibliography, books, category theory, climate change, chickens, computational narrative, computational thinking, design fiction, dystopia, farming, fiction, folktales, foresight, foxes, futures, genre, history, landscape, language, metaphor, motifs, nationalism, ontology, orchardry, organic farming, pattern language, patents, pigs, publishing, retrofuturism, rewilding, scenarios, science fiction, semantics, speculative design, speculative fiction, tagging, technology, transrealism, utopia, wolves, workshops, writing

I saw Tenet in a theater in Toronto with fancy seats that vibrate and tilt along with the action. I don’t think the seat’s enthusiasm contributed much, but I did enjoy the show. I went to see it for two reasons: One is that science fiction films flood the cultural discourse and change narratives, and this one is playing partly in what I consider my space, so I felt like I needed to know what is in it. The second is that I just finished writing something long and my brain needs a break from rehearsing and reworking my own prose; it helped to clear my head.

Before I went, I read reviews and internet takes. Most people who had seen it were concerned with trying to figure out what is going on in the film, because it has scenes in which time flows both forwards and backwards. After reading the article in the Washington Post about their decision not to review the film because Christopher Nolan gave reviewers no choice except to see it in a theater with other people, I considered whether to skip it. But in the end, I went. I would not make the same decision two weeks from now, because I expect the incidence of the virus to spike up once schools are open. Having seen it as the director intended, unless you are really excited by watching stuff blow up, there is no particular reason to see it in a theater. Inasmuch as the film is good, it won’t lose much if seen instead on a big screen TV.