Day 5 #AdventOfSystemSeeing
Attending (more) closely
This page is from @nsousanis book Unflattening. (It’s amazing; gift yourself!)
Study this page and write notes — on the page if you have access to a printer (and size the image to give margin). Take the full 15-20 minutes, so you push yourself to notice more and then more. Focus on the meaning. The systems. The interactions. How it is communicated and conveyed. How it draws your attention. What you notice and become interested in.
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The page is from Unflattening (@nsousanis remarkable PhD dissertation).
I can never get a good image of the page from the book (dont want to crush it open!), but the page is available here:
http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com/2015/07/on-unflattening-interview-with-nick.html
This exercise is inspired by Nick Sousanis: https://spinweaveandcut.com/visual-analysis-examples/
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"We tend to think about observing as we think of reading: like it was but quick consumption. Like it was not a skill you could improve and hone your whole life."
— @romeu
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"Observing sounds simple — almost like doing nothing but looking around. In fact, it is hard work requires practice & skill."
— @estherderby
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"Training in observation follows the same principles as training in any activity. At first one must do things consciously and laboriously, but with practice the activities gradually become automatic and unconscious and a habit is established.”
— WIB Beveridge
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"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
— (maaaaybe) John Lennon*
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From Beveridge
Via https://ia801808.us.archive.org/4/items/artofscientifici00beve/artofscientifici00beve_bw.pdf
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If you’re willing to share your notes on this one, I’m a “plus 1” on interested :)
https://bsky.app/profile/nsousanis.bsky.social/post/3lcl4y3vaq22z
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After you have done this “workout” (so you get the experience), this (from @nsousanis) is an interesting read (what influenced, what was intended, etc.):
https://spinweaveandcut.com/did-it-flow-connectedness-in-joyce/
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“spend three full hours looking at the painting, noting down his or her evolving observations as well as the questions and speculations that arise from those observations. The time span is explicitly designed to seem excessive. [..] But what students learn in a visceral way in this assignment is that in any work of art there are details and orders and relationships that take time to perceive.”
— Jennifer Roberts, The Power of Patience
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2013/10/the-power-of-patience
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“What this exercise shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness.”
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This quote is from @nsousanis alt text on this comic/post:
https://bsky.app/profile/nsousanis.bsky.social/post/3lcygb2yvg225
But it also informs the comic upthread:
“It talks about the linear nature of reading and the simultaneous nature of seeing - and again, how comics have both - a dual nature, but sequential and simultaneous. Which is also tree-like and rhizomatic (interconnected roots) - which is also what a Banyan tree is (a tree that walks...).”
— Nick Sousanis
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And though we are not (generally) presenting our various system visualizations in comic flow, there is this element of speaking across frames, feedback loops and non-linearity (where time goes wonky because we anticipate—imperfectly of course…)
The image is this wonderful post from @dahukanna (click through to boost and to read the alt text on Dawn’s image too):
https://mastodon.social/@dahukanna/113611145206555428
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Saw these at the art museum gift store (not my photo):
“Corita Kent was an educator, artist. and social justice advocate who believed that art could be a tool for dialogue, reflection, and change.
[..] Corita asked her students to engage in "slow looking" exercises. Using a paper viewfinder tool that simulated the experience of using a camera, her students were able to select, isolate, and examine the details of the world around them.”
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“This page plays off the faucet passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses from the Ithaca episode. I first read this in high school [..] and what I took from a single passage detailing all that went on in turning on a faucet had a profound influence on me.”
— @nsousanis
https://spinweaveandcut.com/did-it-flow-connectedness-in-joyce/
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@RuthMalan "But I would argue that as the shape of time has changed around it, the meaning of patience today has reversed itself from its original connotations. The virtue of patience was originally associated with forbearance or sufferance. It was about conforming oneself to the need to wait for things. But now that, generally, one need not wait for things, patience becomes an active and positive cognitive state."
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@RuthMalan "Where patience once indicated a lack of control, now it is a form of control over the tempo of contemporary life that otherwise controls us. Patience no longer connotes disempowerment—perhaps now patience is power."
Certainly feels like it to me.
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@RuthMalan Oh goodness and it's from 2013 but could have been written today.
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@RuthMalan Thank you for sharing this!
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@kevinriggle i remembered @yvonnezlam sharing it, and at first wasn’t remembering the key words to find it again… the brain being laggy on fetch requests and all that … but eventually it delivered :)
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@RuthMalan @kevinriggle Weirdly, I was thinking about this article while idly flipping through Jenny Odell's book on time today! I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about the emphasis in tech on fitting things into fast feedback loops because our brains like them, when we know that all kinds of feedback loops are not fast.
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@RuthMalan A book I would recommend to architects, as we do draw, is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards (see https://kirja.casa/book/7127/s/the-new-drawing-on-the-right-side-of-the-brain for a short review). The book describe a flow state of mind where seeing is enhanced. The book mainly contains techniques for reaching that state. There is also a short list of tools that you need for "learning to see" in order to draw. The rest is lots of drawing exercises as I remember. I'm happy to elaborate if this is of interest.
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@nsousanis
Plus 2!
➕➕
@RuthMalan
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@RuthMalan Absolutely. Years ago, when I walked in the woods I could identify two trees confidently. Everything else was a blur of green and brown. With near-daily practice, the forest is much more legible.
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