User Profile

Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 8 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.

This link opens in a pop-up window

Fionnáin's books

Currently Reading (View all 10)

Cormac McCarthy: Stella Maris (Paperback, 2022, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 4 stars

1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in …

A Dialogue as a Parting Gift

5 stars

Cormac McCarthy concluded his life with two books about two siblings, brother Bobby (the protagonist of the excellent The Passenger) and sister Alicia of Stella Maris. The former is a physics whiz, the latter a maths genius. The trouble (or karma) of their family, including their father's involvement with the Manhattan Project, haunt them.

Both books are philosophical musings on meaning and structure in a strange life. This one is a real gift. The entire story is a dialogue between Alicia and a counsellor in the Stella Maris institute. Alicia muses on life and maths. The dialogues are like Plato's, with different big ideas being drawn out and then punctuated with a touching story of family, hallucinatory friendship, longing and heartache. The dialogue evolves over the 'sessions' so seamlessly that it is impossible not to get lost on the journey with the duo. The questioner often pulls back …

Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Zun Lee: All Incomplete (Paperback, 2021, Minor Compositions) 5 stars

Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …

We bear, in the obsessive self-management of 'our' clicks and strokes, the overdetermination logistics lays down. It is both through and as a set of applications we apply...that our labor further concentrates the means of production with the goal quite simply and starkly of preventing us from taking care of one another, from looking out for one another, by making us look at one another, which is taking care of them.

All Incomplete by , , (Page 18)

Cormac McCarthy: Stella Maris (Paperback, 2022, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 4 stars

1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in …

The arrival of language was like the invasion of a parasitic system. Co-opting those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. The most susceptible to appropriation.

Stella Maris by  (Page 174)

Spoken by the protagonist as part of the dialogue that is this entire book. Liked this suggestion.

Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Zun Lee: All Incomplete (Paperback, 2021, Minor Compositions) 5 stars

Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …

Moten and Harney always bring me to new places with their writing. A friend told me this had come out a couple of years ago, and I put it on a list. I boight it last year so am finally giving it some time.

Selma Lagerlöf: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils 5 stars

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (orig. Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige; literally Nils Holgersson's …

Environmental Empathy a Century Old

5 stars

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is written about as a children's book, and in essence it is. Nils is a young mischief-making boy who likes to pick on animals until he is transformed into miniature by an imp. After learning a little humility, Nils goes on to ride with a crew of geese across Sweden, and has many adventures with crows, foxes, ducks, a cow, a dog and other animals, and even some mythical beings and places.

But deeper than this, Lagerlöf has written an environmental call to action that is 100 years ahead of its time. Nils learns to love his world and those in it by becoming part of it. His transformation is gradual but complete, made richer by the wonderful prose and incredible descriptions of Sweden from a goose-eye-view (Lagerlöf must have hired a hot air balloon for research, surely). Myth and story blend with compassion, humour …

Tanya Leslie, Annie Ernaux: Shame (Paperback, 2023, Fitzcarraldo Editions) 2 stars

An event that lived

2 stars

Annie Ernaux explains how shame has influenced her life in a short memoir. It begins with the climax: 'My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon'. From there, Ernaux explores her rural childhood in a post-war French village, and how this event and the fear of community shame stayed with her even nearly 50 years later.

It's hard to criticise something so personal, but the language is a little mechanical, perhaps because of the numbness created over time. It is also hard to understand the motivation for the book being published (I often feel this with memoirs so it may be my bias), but it did paint an interesting picture of a community that lived on gossip and thus hid their lives, something I have seen in my own life.

Rachel O'Dwyer: Tokens (2023, Verso Books) 5 stars

Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket

Wherever you look, money is …

Value reimagined

5 stars

In Tokens, Rachel O'Dwyer tells a story of value through tokens, alternative objects of payment that operate outside of legal currencies. The book blends years of in-depth research with clever use of anecdote and a well considered structure of 9 chapters, each telling a different part of the story.

While the overarching theme of the book deals with contemporary digital technologies such as NFT artworks or video game trading currencies, there is plenty of room given to histories and cultures of tokens than just these recent phenomena. O'Dwyer blends art history, economics, feminist theory and technology to present tokens in everything from subversive economies to hyper-capitalist systems. Brilliantly written throughout, and overloaded with information that is a testament to a long and thoughtful research practice.