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Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 11 months ago

I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.

I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.

Also on Mastodon.

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Fionnáin's books

Currently Reading (View all 8)

Jane Prophet, Helen V. Pritchard: Plants by Numbers (Hardcover, 2023, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc)

This open access book takes a queer, feminist, and decolonial technoscience approach to the ecologies …

Thoughtful artistic research with plants

Plants by Numbers is an edited compilation of fourteen chapters by artists and researchers who work with plants. In most cases, the plants are collaborators or contributors, and are also part of developing anti-colonial or critical narratives, using the human-plant relationship to highlight or critique human behaviours. Great credit is due to the editors, as this carefully curated selection is made up of voices that are so careful to not unintentionally exclude or diminish many peripheral voices. Throughout the book, space is repeatedly given over to these voices, and I was really grateful for this.

As in any collection of essays, there are some that resonated less with me and some that are standout. Co-editor Jane Prophet's personal chapter on colonialism, ethics and trees is one of the best chapters, as is Amy M Youngs' thoughtful works with plants and people. Sina Seifee's project on the trees of Tehran is …

Jane Prophet, Helen V. Pritchard: Plants by Numbers (Hardcover, 2023, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc)

This open access book takes a queer, feminist, and decolonial technoscience approach to the ecologies …

Vegetal writing takes place at the intersection of species with human privilege so profound and multilayered it is impossible to account for it fully, as in every written account humans speak for plants. If, as I do, one believes in the observer effect—that an observed system is disturbed by the act of observation whether the observation is by human or an instrument—then even phytographic experiences with no touch, where humans “only” observe, are impacted by the act of human observation, mediated or not, and observation is intersectional. Writing/drawing with Hong Kong plants, and observing them, is a process entangled with British colonialism very differently from the colonial entanglement when writing with the English oak.

Plants by Numbers by , (Page 171)

From the very compelling chapter 'Codely Phytographia: An Artist's Material History of Writing Code with Trees' by Jane Prophet (pp 163-180)

Jane Prophet, Helen V. Pritchard: Plants by Numbers (Hardcover, 2023, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc)

This open access book takes a queer, feminist, and decolonial technoscience approach to the ecologies …

The kinds of online public campaigns that Terranova and Sundaram recommend were indeed powerfully applied to this issue, and as a result, the 2010 Dodd-Frank act (section 1502) required companies to determine through supply-chain due diligence whether or not their products contain conflict minerals from DRC or neighboring countries. But the tracing system is easily faked and has now been turned into a “mineral laundering scheme”

Plants by Numbers by , (Page 144)

A dark term, 'mineral laundering'. Quote from the chapter 'Decolonization, Computation, Propagation: Phyto-Human Alliances in the Pathways Towards Generative Justice' by Ron Eglash, Audrey Bennett, Lionel Robert Jr., Kwame Porter Robinson, Matthew Garvin, and Mark Guzdia

Susannah Haslam: Infrastructuring : Four Conversations on Cultural (Paperback, 2021, Antenne Books Limited)

Four fascinating perspectives on a different kind of art

Four brilliant interviews unlock the thoughts of four artist/collectives that work in dynamic ways. I loved this book for its aesthetic, its perspectives, and the space it gives to each interviewee to open up on a question. It is beautiful, short, and pointed. The crux is about cultural infrastructure, be that galleries, museums, or communities. The perspectives are dynamic, thoughtful, and diverse.

Robin Wall Kimmerer: The Serviceberry (Hardcover, 2024, Penguin Books, Limited)

A gift of a book

This book was gifted to me on my birthday last year. Its words are a gift, too, as is most of what Robin Wall Kimmerer offers us.

This very short book puts forward a clear thesis arguing for a gift economy to become normalised, beginning with a gift of serviceberries from the earth and from her neighbour. It draws from Kimmerer's community and friends, from her scientific and Potawotomi knowledge, and from her explorations into economics. It's very brief and filled with quotable sections that put forward a clear and easily understood argument against scarcity economics, and toward abundance and gifting.

My only real issue is that it doesn't give over much space to the small societies exist outside of the hegemonic one, where gift economies often central (my own place is one of these). It's a small complaint though, because Kimmerer still uses peaceful and beautiful words to convey …

quoted Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk: Flights (2017)

Flights is a 2007 fragmentary novel by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. It was originally …

Sometimes I start to doubt that it will work. After all, what it has in it can only be what we can put into words – what we have words for. And in that sense, it wouldn't be able to hold everything at all. We should have some other collection of knowledge, then, to balance that out – its inverse, its inner lining, everything we don't know, all the things that can't [-->] be captured in any index, can't be handled by any search engine. For the vastness of these contents cannot be traversed from word to word – you have to step in between the words, into the unfathomable abysses between ideas. With every step we'll slip and fall. It would appear the only option is to get in even deeper. Matter and anti-matter. Information and anti-information.

Flights by  (Page 78 - 79)

Following my previous quote, this is still in the same fictional section about Wikipedia, written in 2007, and I find it also really compelling as a perspective. Page breaks at [-->]

Olga Tokarczuk: Flights (2017)

Flights is a 2007 fragmentary novel by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. It was originally …

WIKIPEDIA

As far as I can tell, this is mankind's most honest cognitive project. It is frank about the fact that all the information we have about the world comes straight out of our own heads, like Athena our of Zeus's. People bring to Wikipedia everything they know. If the project succeeds, then this encyclopaedia undergoing perpetual renewal will be the greatest wonder of the world.

Flights by  (Page 78)

(note this is a work of fiction, written in 2007, and this is a first person narrative perspective that I felt was interesting)

avatar for fionnain Fionnáin boosted
Katherine Rundell: The Golden Mole (EBook)

The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In …

We live in a world of such marvels. We should wake up in the morning and as we put on our trousers we should remember the seahorse and we should scream with awe and we should not stop screaming until we fall asleep, and the same the next day, and the next. Each single seahorse contains enough wonder to knock the whole of humanity off its feet, if we would but pay attention.

The Golden Mole by  (Page 124)

Susannah Haslam: Infrastructuring : Four Conversations on Cultural (Paperback, 2021, Antenne Books Limited)

So, does the institution always need to be only the host? If you have an institution where the members of it are also its voices [-->] and performers, could that lead to solidarities between artists and institutional workers? What happens when there's not a clear division between those positions? Would an artist we invite into the organisation then work together as a peer with the organisation?

Infrastructuring : Four Conversations on Cultural by  (Page 49 - 50)

This answer resonates with me, in response to a comment about 'institution-making' and spoken by interviewee John Bingham-Hall.

Han Kang: We Do Not Part (Hardcover, 2025, Hamish Hamilton)

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her …

Snowflakes don't melt

Content warning Mention of Jeju genocide/massacres