Last May, I used a fountain pen for the first time. I had seen someone using one to take notes during a talk we were both attending, and asked him about it afterward. We chatted, he let me try his pen in my notebook, and the next day I bought one at the stationery shop in my neighborhood. I’ve always enjoyed stationery, and have piles of used and unused notebooks, from Moleskines to Hobonichis, as…
Installation view, “Lisa Oppenheim: Monseiur Steichen,” MUDAM Luxembourg. Photo: Mareike Tocha Because I only browse Instagram every few months, I’m late to discover that my old pal Lisa Oppenheim, an artist whom I’ve written about and whose work I acquired for my onetime employer , has an exhibition on view now at MUDAM Luxembourg . The curators of the show, Christophe Gallois and and Nathalie…
Given how much time I spend using a web browser, I wondered how accurate a portrait of my interests it might return. So I typed each letter of the alphabet into the search/URL bar, one by one, and have recorded the websites suggested by autocomplete: A— Are.na B— Bluesky C— Cyclemarks D— DuckDuckGo E—My bank’s online portal F— Feedbin G— GitHub H— Hot Pizza (a social art/art-education project my…
Image: my most listened-to albums of 2024, though not all of them came out this year. My full Last.fm year-end report is here . I listen to new music obsessively, and I’m still dedicated to albums over algorithmic playlists. I read reviews, follow a few new-music newsletters (especially Philip Sherburne and Shawn Reynaldo ), get release-update emails from the wonderful Boomkat , and keep up with…
Five years ago today, I sent the first email to this list. Today is my forty-fifth birthday, so I thought I’d send another update. There are 584 words below. I once listened to a radio interview with the writer John McPhee, then in his eighties, who claimed that the preoccupations of his many essays and books are the same subjects that fascinated him as a teenager. In the last few years, I see…
Last August, I wrote about breaking free from the Apple and Google maps duopoly, listing a handful of alternative apps then emerging . My favorite to use these past eight months is PamPam , co-founded by Helena Jaramillo and Carlo Joerges. Their goal is to allow everyone to make custom maps “without coding or clunky tech.” A shorthand way to describe what they’ve built is “ FigJam on top of Google…
No, that’s not a typo. I wrote most of these notes in early 2023, then I let them simmer for twelve months. I made slight modifications to the writing, but the picks themselves remain unchanged after another year of listening. The majority of the music I listen to gets categorized, in my family, as “A/E”: that can stand for ambient/electronic or, perhaps more accurately, abstract/experimental. I…
Since November, I’ve watched with interest as hundreds of bloggers have listed their default apps . I’m an early adopter and opinionated about the tools I use, so I thought I’d join in by listing my own. I’m using the same categories as Carl Barenbrug did here . This is an update of a post I made almost exactly four years ago. Mail server: Google Workspace Mail client: Mimestream Writing (notes,…
Four years ago today, I sent my first-ever newsletter and announced the launch of my personal website . I only sent two subsequent emails, yet in the intervening years lots of people—including many I do not know!—have signed up. This message is a quick update; there are 388 words below. My last message , early in the North American experience of the COVID–19 pandemic, included one hundred links to…
UPDATE, May 2024: For the past year I’ve worked with my friend, designer and developer Ross Zurowski, to build a new, expanded, and better version of Valise. We’ve just opened it up to users in a public beta. See the website at valise.works for more information! Museums and galleries pay thousands of dollars to manage their inventory with software like TMS and ArtBinder . I want to help artists…
Artist Roni Horn once said, “Iceland is the place where I have the clearest view of myself and my relationship to the world.” She had begun visiting the island nation in 1975; fifteen years later, she published Bluff Life , the first in what would become a series of ten artist’s books collectively titled To Place . As Horn and others have noted, the first word in the series title activates the…
In graduate school I spent a fair amount of time researching how public spaces were used for political purposes during the Progressive Era. In particular I looked at New York City during World War I. Despite there being, to my knowledge, no large-scale permanent memorial in New York to the American war effort, the spaces of the city were dramatically reshaped during the war itself. In early 2012 I…
I recently downloaded Flight Simulator , an “ambient travel app” from Soft Works , a small software company run by Laurel Schwulst and Dan Brewster . It’s pitched as an “ode to airplane mode” that celebrates the “peaceful solitude of travel.” Set your phone to airplane mode, choose a real-world destination, and, after the duration the actual flight, you’ll be alerted that you have landed. You can…
It has been thirty-one days since I’ve gone out in the evening. Like many of you, I suspect, I have spent some of those nights at emotional extremes. Today I asked myself simple questions: what am I good at? What do I get pleasure from? The first answers that came to mind: I’m good at finding out-of-the-way cultural experiences and I get pleasure from sharing my enthusiasms. So, here is a mystery…
For more than two decades I have spent a few hours each week, every week, seeking out and listening to new records. In high school, this involved sending a dollar and a self-addressed stamped envelope to punk-rock record labels for their catalogues, then mail-ordering what looked intriguing. In college, I would ride the subway to Harvard Square and shop at Other Music; the location closed not long…
I don’t often make resolutions. But every January I take stock of how I apportion my time and the tools I use to work. After conversation with a few friends and seeing others’ posts , I thought I’d share what tools I use currently and why I use them. I work within Apple’s ecosystem, though several of the services I use are cross-platform. My choices stem from two values: ➀ In balancing convenience…
Today is my fortieth birthday. The gift I have given myself is a new personal website , designed and built by my talented friend Ross Zurowski , and this newsletter, which I will send occasionally. It will feature writing, links, and updates about my work. There are 559 words below. Those of you who have known me longest might recognize elements of the website Project Projects made for me in 2004.…