At times of change, the learners are the ones who will inherit the world, while the knowers will be beautifully prepared for a world which no longer exists.
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Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Interesting essay by Stewart Brand for the Journal of Design and Science, outlining the strengths of a construct called “Pace Layering”.
Even though he focuses on human society and a six-layered structure (Fashion/art, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture, Nature) as the basis of a healthy civilization for the most part of Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning, Brand proposes all dynamic systems to be based on a structure made of multiple layers of different pace and size in order to be robust and durable.
In design –no matter the specific field, but especially in software and systems design, of course, we come across and/or form a lot of dynamic systems with the need to be adaptable, so pace layering might provide a valuable concept to build upon.
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Analogue self-portrait taken with my Impossible I-1 on Polaroid Black Frame Edition, triple-exposure embroided with red yarn
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© Jason Bruges Studio / Sam King (via Vimeo)
An interesting installation by London based Jason Bruges Studio for the past Olympic and the upcoming Paralympic Games in Tokyo:
The Constant Gardeners will create a new visual language to communicate and celebrate the motion of the professional athletes and their feats of physical prowess. The installation will produce dynamic, representative patterns, which ‘the gardeners’, a team of four industrial robot arms mounted on linear rails, will precisely rake into a large-scale gravel canvas, consisting of fourteen tonnes of crushed black basalt, surrounded by a further four tonnes of silver-grey granite. In a series of daily performances, ‘the gardeners’ will work together to create around one-hundred-and-fifty unique illustrations throughout the duration of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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© Go Project Films (via YouTube)
Silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything.
Acoustic ecologist –who’d knew, that such a profession exists– Gordon Hempton in Sanctuaries of Silence, a beautiful short film by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Adam Loften. The 360°-/Virtual Reality-film takes the viewer to the Hoh Rain Forest, a protected area in a National Park in the State of Washington, North America where Hempton has been documenting the sounds of nature for more than thirty-five years.
The website accompanying the short film, in addition, offers a nice little five-step exercise to practice listening and be present, open, and curious in a world increasingly polluted by noise.
