(Found via Pinterest)
This is The Praxis Circus.
And you’ll be getting this at almost midnight Sunday! 🌚
Recently, I have found myself revisiting old haunts, temporary obsessions and ideas on the web and irl, looking at a lot of the ideas and frameworks that inspired me or just seemed interesting at the time.
Exploring the creative and intellectual foundations of my current perspectives is something I realise I do whenever I feel lost or in need of new energy and so far, it has not failed to reinvigorate and get me believing in the potential of the future once more.
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I have been toying with discussing some current affairs in this newsletter, talking about things like the BBC documentary about the codeine epidemic in Northern Nigeria or Kanye West saying Slavery was a choice or Childish Gambino’s powerful new music video “This is America”, but I think I will just leave that sort of thing for the podcast (yup, it’s on the way!) which will allow me to give it a more distinct identity from The Praxis Circus and give me some room to explore some stuff I can’t get to here.
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The Alpine Review has been on hiatus for a while now, but Patrick Tanguay is putting out a weekly newsletter covering a lot of the same content - future of work and economy, interesting technology, and sociology stuff. If you find my newsletter interesting you would definitely find something mind expanding every week. He did a stint over on Kottke with a whole load of really cool articles. Start with this one on why humans need stories and work your way through the rest. All good stuff!
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Warren Ellis, whose comic book/graphic novel Planetary is where I first saw the term “fictionaut”, tends to talk a lot about the mechanics of building stories and the metatextual things surround a lot of his work are sometimes even more fascinating than the stories themselves.
Amongst all the writers that have influenced me, he really helped me hone in on the practice of approaching projects and organisation building as narrative constructs.
It sounds weird, but if you think about life as this space that can be interacted with only through our actions (whether that is a marriage, going to school, traveling or building a business), then it makes sense to me to engage in activities that maximise your perspectives and experiences in various domains. The idea of a fictionaut is of someone that builds worlds and explores them in order to come back with insight and I think this approach can be applied all over the place.
Build, explore, record, learn.
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
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A lot more people are talking about Design Fiction these days with one of the best creators of it being the excellent designer and futurist, Anab Jain of Superflux. Imagining different futures is one of her more straightforward talks about the practices and a good introduction into what she does. Here is speculative fiction author Bruce Sterling with a good talk discussing the practice.
As a slight tangent to all this, here is one of my favourite authors Philip K Dick (PKD) writing about world building.
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Via Patrick Tanguay’s newsletter is this great piece by Ian Bogost arguing that “stories” are probably the first native smartphone media format - click.
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I really like these and Toogood in general as a design company. The way they name their clothing and shoes is very evocative and pushes all those fiction-loving buttons I have.
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Reading List
I finally got around to picking up a copy of James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games and I am reading it alongside Ian Bogost’s Play Anything - The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom and the Secret of Games. I am still flirting with the idea of getting Hyperobjects by Timothy Morton to complete my current philosophy reading for the next few months, but it is either that or Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater which I have been putting off for a while.
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Music
Been listening to music again (and reading interviews with musicians)!
Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music is basically what I want my life to be soundtracked to. Here are two recent interviews where he discusses his recent battle with cancer and making music after that experience.
The Fader has one and so does The Verge.
I also thought this Pitchfork interview with Liz Harris of Grouper was pretty good, and she has a new album.
Timaya’s Ah blem blem and Olamide and Wizkid’s Kana are both amazing and make me incredibly proud of where our music industry is going - creating a vibe that is simultaneously wholly Nigerian, contemporary AND of high quality without any compromises made to make it palatable for a non-Nigerian audience.
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I don’t know how to explain this succinctly so I will just leave a link to it here. Devine Lu Linvega is a musician, game designer, software developer and graphic designer that lives and works on a sailing boat with his partner and puts out work with a very strong monochromatic aesthetic.
I own all his iOS apps and enjoy his work immensely. He has created this arcane universe that he uses as a framework for the majority of his creative projects and is a great example of the sort of thing I am fascinated with and very interested in building myself.
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I am will be away next week so it is possible that the next edition of the newsletter will be a bit delayed, if it is and you notice, please forgive me in advance!
Have a great week ahead!