I went to an algorave and it changed me forever.
I’ve been making— I’ve made—
I’ve been trying to express myself with code for a while.
I build tools for myself that let me— allow me to be creative— to express myself. It started with sandpond and it led to arroost and the tadi web and torn leaf and other stuff and it might lead to more, who knows.
I feel like— I’ve struggled and learned— I’ve struggled through various— I’ve learned some—
It hasn’t always been easy for me to express myself with code. I have found myself struggling through the same hurdles and blockers again and again. And in doing that, I learn things —about myself, and also about the practice of being creative more generally— in a more general sense.
Through this struggle, I have seen myself change throughout— as my situation changes around me. I now sound different, and I look different, and I act different, and I still don’t know what I want or who I am, but I am learning to—
I have always hoped that I— I always thought that if I—
“If I just figure out how to express myself fully, then I’ll finally know who I am.”
I’ll be at peace! I’ll reach the end. So I have been very motivated to make things— new things, and express myself with new ideas. And get to the end. “Just make 99 sands! (in different ways)” (in different ways) (in different ways) (in different—
At some point, I started to realise that I was very wrong.
It wasn’t the “finishing” that was important on that creative journey. It was— the journey part of— the journey of the journey was the most important part of the journey. It’s a process— creativity is a process that we go through— that feels like change.
Through making things— expressing myself, I change. My change is reflected in my work. It has a moving target and it never quite gets there. And my work bounces back at me, and it changes me in return. I learn— I mean— I’m inspired by— it makes me realise— helps me— you know what I mean— it’s a two way street— it goes back and forth like a dialogue.
If you ever do— ever get to the end of an artistic project, you end up with an artifact. But that artifact is not the project and the project is not the artifact. The artifact is only the final step— a shadowy echo of what you really did. It can be important— meaningful, but only within the bigger picture within your struggle towards the end. If you were to discard all of that initial work, you would lose something valuable— something precious.
The process is the point! That’s the human part! That’s why we’re here! To share our journeys and struggles with each other! Otherwise we’re no better— we’re no better than some stupid— if you want an artifact— without the process we are nothing better than a stupid image or language model pumping out— regurgitating any— if you want an artifact— that’s not why we’re here.
I realised that it’s important to share the imperfect process behind creation, even if it sucks— especially if it sucks, because it’s the most important bit. And you see me doing that here with these dashes that I— that indicate where I have changed my mind. I don’t backspace, I dash instead. And so you can see my— see how my— you can see my process and my struggle towards the end. You can know when I’m sure, and you can know when I’m uncertain— when I can’t write— decide what to say— write. And hopefully, you can see inside my head a little bit. And we can feel closer. And we can feel—
I call it “sharing scrappy fiddles”. Don’t just share the end. Don’t just share the artifact. Share the whole process, from start to finish, and beyond (in each direction).
I have been trying to get people to normalise it— to normalise sharing scrappy fiddles for a while now, on my mastodon and in my— my talks and on— and on my blog and in my appearances— appearances.
And what’s more—
I think that it’s morally important— important, in a moral sense— that we normalise sharing scrappy fiddles. I think that it’s morally wrong to not normalise sharing scrappy fiddles— that not normalising sharing scrappy fiddles is morally wrong— inaction is morally wrong. I want you to know that this is how important it is to me.
My quest towards normalising sharing scrappy fiddles led me to create a tool called arrow— roost— arroost. Arroost has many influences— too many influences to list. I will now list— let me list some of my— here are some of my favourites.
Arroost helps you create— express yourself through music because it’s really complicated— opaque and difficult to use. Its interface kinda sucks, and it isn’t clear what to do and its really hard to get all the timing right and it has this stupid time travel thing going on and it tricks you into thinking that that’s the main thing but it’s not the main thing— the main thing is that you can make sounds in it and when you hear those sounds coming back to you it sounds— it feels like those sounds don’t come from you really— it feels like those sounds come from arroost.
So it takes responsibility away from you. You stop worrying about what your music sounds like because it isn’t yours. It belongs to arroost. But you still made it. The artifact is lost— it crashes often— your work gets— is lost when you close the window and that’s the— the whole point is that you’re here to make some sounds not to have made some sounds.
You’re not supposed to use arroost forever. You’re supposed to use arroost and let it change you— let it—
A lovely guy called Shane Crowley wrote about it in his blog post. He said that— and I directly quote:
“Arroost got me back to a place where I could make something”
Shane gives various reasons for this in the— in his blog post. One of these is:
“With Arroost I couldn’t do noise reduction, so I stopped caring and just focused on recording.”
And I was really pleased to see all the scrappy fiddles that people made in arroost, and more importantly, shared, thus normalising it. Click here for just a small selection of examples.
This is not unique to arroost. You can see similar things happening in my influences. tldraw creatively frees you to draw because of its— the imperfections of its marks. Sandspiel is not a drawing tool, which makes it a great drawing tool. Nonsense machines are hard to play, which makes them easy to play.
I didn’t set out to make a live coding tool, but I guess I— I did. I think that live coding is when you code some music or visuals or whatever, live— I mean— live coding is when you perform— give a performance— perform— play— create by coding on the spot.
And I felt kinda bad about this to be honest. Cos I made a live coding tool without knowing anything about the live coding community. But some people pointed out to me— some people from the live coding world pointed out to me that arroost was basically a live coding tool. This happened after I did a live performance of arroost, entitled normalise sharing scrappy fiddles.
There were people at that event who told me this— that arroost is live coding, and they invited me to come along to their live coding meetups. They were very welcoming. I told them that I didn’t know anything about live coding and they told me that that’s okay.
Time passed, and through bad luck and nothing else, I wasn’t able to get to any of those live coding meetups. It was just some unfortunate timing, that’s all. But still, people like Joana Chicau kept encouraging me to come along, which was very nice.
My other exposure to the live coding world was through Alex McLean, first on the future of coding slack and then on mastodon and elsewhere. I tried to learn as much as I could about live coding, so that I could understand what I was building more and more— or— what kind of context I was building within— what kind of community I was part of.
I learned about Laurie Spiegel and Algorave and how live coding gets sometimes squeezed out of more “serious” (read: stupid) academic spaces for stupid reasons. And I reflected back on Xavier’s talk at last year’s LIVE, and how it would be great to see more like that.
And in my head, I started to connect my different influences together. Electroplankton is a form of live coding. What about sushi go? What about otomatone? And nonsense machines? I think they can be meaningfully viewed as live coding.
What about sandspiel studio? What about giving a live demo? How far can it be pushed beyond its usual characteristics? Is there room for what I do in all of this? Apparently:
“People are pushing the boundary of what live coding is all the time. It’s kind of live coding itself, in a way.”
But I still felt like I didn’t really understand. I was learning about it— I wasn’t experiencing it or joining in.
All the while, I was grappling with my own place in wider communities— fields. All around me, I felt the pressure to specialise. Do I go down the research path? or art? or engineering? or content? or—
And I have been struggling towards bringing my work in these fields closer together.
I sometimes struggle to “find my people” in a way. I enjoy— relate to different parts— aspects of different communities. And I find myself taking part in lots of different ones, but feeling home in none. This is not unique to me— this is not rare. Quite the opposite, in fact. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this is the most common experience that people experience— and you might relate to— experience it yourself.
So I find myself trying to build my own path out of the component pieces that I have access to. I don’t want to hop between doing art and content and research and— I want it to be the same thing. I want it to be blended, just like me, so I try to carve myself a blended field where I can keep one foot in all worlds.
You are welcome to judge how well I am doing at my task, but I think it’s going ok so far. People seem to mostly like what I make, but then they also continually tell me to do things differently— that I’m doing things wrong— that I should do things more like them and their field, and not like all those other fields. And so I do wonder sometimes what it is I am doing wrong— what I should do instead— what I should change. I have my doubts in myself, just like everybody— everyone does.
Sometimes I wonder— what would it feel like— just for one moment— for someone— just one person— to tell me—
“Just go for it Lu.”
“Go all the way.”
Fortunately, I’m a very very very very very very very very very very— very very very very very very stubborn person. It’s mainly a learned response— some kind of survival instinct— I strongly resist external calls for me to change.
I went on a march recently.
In one of the speeches, the speaker, Nadeem Perera said that “everyone does activism in their own way”— everyone is an activist in their own way. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and that’s ok. By working together, and embracing our diversity of approaches, we are all the better for it.
The march itself was special because it was a combined effort of different groups that normally don’t work together. Direct action groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil teamed up with more traditional organisations like WWF and The Wildlife Trusts, also known as “the old guard”.
Leading up to the event, there were small signs of discomfort around this. Do these large corporate charities really want their name next to radical and disruptive groups? Do these radical and disruptive groups really want their name next to large corporate charities?
The answer, of course— is yes, of course. Of course they want to be blended— it benefits everyone— brings legitimacy to both ends of the spectrum— they cover for each other.
Because of this blending, the march felt special— felt like the coming together of different fields. And it made me think about my own— it made me think about what I do. I might not fit into certain characterisations of activism, or research, or—
I don’t go on a lot of marches— protests, but I do occasionally ask people to do something and— I do try to normalise— —whatever it is that I am. And very occasionally— it very occasionally works.
I haven’t thought about it as “activism” as such. Maybe “satire”, but definitely not “activism”, but now I’m questioning that.
What would it look like if I fully embrace my style— if I “go all the way” with what I do— go further than I have before, and advocate for myself and others, while also combining it— blending it with everything else? Art, comedy, satire, content, research, activism, community. What would it look like for me to fully embrace that? and “go all the way”?
Meanwhile, I was asking every researcher I could find— I was asking the same question to every researcher I could find.
“Is your work about influencing people? or is it about solving hard problems?”
I wrote it up in my write up, but I found most answers unsatisfying. The one that impacted me most was Alex McLean’s reply on mastodon afterwards (remember him from earlier?).
He says that the important thing is:
“Making space for community, and getting the conditions right so the community then grows itself. I think to really align with this approach it’s good to stop talking about making tools for people. I think tools are much more limited than languages or environments.”
oh no—
all I do is make tools—
like arroost—
well that’s mostly what I do—
not always but—
Ok that’s not only what I do. Torn leaf has been one of the most creatively fulfilling projects for me in my life, and its first artifact isn’t even finished yet. I put out a call for logo submissions— a call— invitation for people to recreate the torn leaf logo in whatever way they want. “It can be good. It can be bad.”
I was expecting maybe a handful of submissions— five or ten max, but it went relatively viral. Hundreds of people sent me their— sent in their logos. It totally swamped me. But it was lovely— overwhelmingly lovely to see all the submissions that people had made in all these different ways. It felt like a “community moment”— some collaborative creation— expression of something (or other). I felt a sense of belonging. If you knew what torn leaf was— if you knew the meme— the phrase— that “you must submit something to torn leaf”— then you must submit something to torn leaf.
“The tadi web doesn’t belong to me” is what I tell people. I’m not in charge of it— I don’t control it. I only described— observed it— its possibility to exist— of existing. And people have started to run with it. I see it popping up in more and more places. It is lovely to see that happening, all without me.
The goal of the tadi web— torn leaf— is the same as the tadi web— torn leaf. Its goal is to blend together— communities and bring them together. And one day, the two umbrellas may come together— join and blend as one— reducing down to one torni weaf— tan leb. Two copies of the same thing— the same thing repeated, but slightly changed.
And so I wonder if I should make less arroosts and less sandponds and more tarni leebs.
The London coding scene is a mixture of many blended communities. I mean— I’ve been through this before— I won’t go through it again. Let me just pick out a few moments.
My first introduction to the London coding scene was through Sam Wray, who somehow found my early youtube videos that were only picking up ten to twenty views each, and he gave me permission to use his music in two of those videos He told me that I should come along to London Creative Coding meetups. Unfortunately, this was during lockdown, so I couldn’t go to anything in-person. But I did join the remote meetups and it made my head start to explode with possibilities. I became inspired by people like Jazmin Morris and Cassie Evans and it was complete news to me that there was a whole world of people expressing— making things with code.
Time passed, and— it’s gone full circle. I was a speaker at one of the in-person events. And now, I’m one of the people running the damn thing. I don’t do much— I do very little compared to the others in the group— I’m not very helpful at all. But I was really happy to invite two of the speakers for the next event, V Buckenham and Joana Chicau.
I know both of them through the Future of Coding meetups here in London. I’ve seen them both give great talks there. V shared Downpour, their app that lets people make and share scrappy games on their phone. And Joana shared some of her practice around choreography in the context of computing. She worked within the web browser, injecting her code into familiar websites, like Google(!), adding her own sounds and behaviour into the experience. Both talks felt rebellious— punk, in some sense. They felt cheeky— there’s a sense of humour to them.
And I originally discovered the Future of Coding through Steve Ruiz, my current boss. Steve is known for his “build in public” style, that he has shared on twitter for a long time. And no one does it as well as Steve— to the extent that Steve does it. It feels like an extension of an art practice. It’s normalise sharing scrappy fiddles through and through, whether you label it that or not. It’s sharing the process and sharing it live. It’s why Steve first reached out to me. He saw me doing the same.
Time passed, and— it’s gone full circle. I’ve spoken at three future of coding events now, and I’m co-host of the podcast(!) and one of the other hosts, Ivan Reese makes the music for my youtube videos and it goes really well with the animations that my partner Flora Caulton makes for them.
And of course, I work at tldraw now, Steve’s company. Things have blended together.
My work at tldraw continues to be about making things and sharing the process, live— in realtime, with my colleague Orion Reed. This is the practice that the company grew from, and because of that, it stands as an outlier in the tech world. And now I’m getting asked onto podcasts and things to talk about that approach.
Normalise sharing scrappy fiddles.
I am proud that tldraw has been able to support the London coding scene in small ways, sponsoring and paying for events like Future of Coding, and London Creative Coding. And more recently, we hosted QueerJS in our office, organised by my friend Alex Dytrych, who I first met via Sandspiel Studio, which I got involved with through Max Bittker, because of our shared love of sand, which I got into by discovering spatial simulations of artificial life by Dave Ackley.
I spoke at QueerJS, and so did my colleague, Taha Hassan, who shared some extremely early stage work on improving the accessibility of the canvas. His talk contained scrappy demos, as well as his early design and planning work. He shared his whole process— he shared it all, and it was fantastic.
In all of these events, there is a culture of scrappy process sharing. Maggie Appleton has put in monumental effort and leadership in creating that culture at London’s Future of Coding meetups. The emphasis is on the scrappy “seven minute demo”, which she has written about on her wikiblogarden. You should read it.
London is great because it’s a convergence point. People travel here from elsewhere. People stop off here while passing through. They are all part of the scene, even if they don’t live here. Like Alex McLean a few weeks ago. He popped a message up on the Live Code London chat.
“I’m in London this evening if anyone fancies a swift half.”
So me and my colleague Orion Reed joined him for a swift four halves after work, and the three of us talked about all of this.
I went to an algorave and it changed me forever.
It’s where live coding happens and where people dance to visuals and music.
More specifically, it’s when there are “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive conditionals”.
I saw Alex McLean perform there (remember him?) and Joana Chicau perform too (remember her?) and Sam Wray perform as well (remember him?) and V was there (remember them?) and Orion Reed (remember him?) and Taha Hassan (remember him?) and Flora Caulton (remember her?) and lots more people who were also at the QueerJS meetup (remember that?) and we couldn’t quite manage to convince Alex Dytrych to come (maybe next time) (remember her?)
Sam Wray was there making visuals, and it was great to meet him in person for the first time. We’d only ever called before (and we got the train home with him afterwards).
After seeing Joana Chicau talk about choreography in her Future of Coding talk, it was great— I was pleased to see her perform it for real. It was hilarious and brilliant. She searched something like “live feed camera” on YouTube(!) and then —she started messing with the website’s search results to turn it into live visuals— to make it dance. She was the choreographer in this case. She was conducting the algorithmic feed— intended to manipulate— choreograph her, and she flipped it around— flipped around the power dynamic— imbalance.
Suggested videos of cats and cute kittens, and inline adverts, and UI components, buttons and links— they all bounced up and down, grew in and out— they spun around— they glowed with different colours. This is not what Alphabet Incorporated(!) intended to happen! It felt like graffiti. And it was super scrappy. You could see the browser’s console, and you could see what Joana was typing and pasting into it. There was a sense of humour and cheekiness, again.
Alex McLean stopped the music partway through his set.
“We’re going to do some maths” is what he said (or something like that). And then he broke down what he was doing— how the algorithm was working. He got the audience to join in. And I watched an already engaged audience became even more engaged. And I became engrossed! Our group mainly consisted of people who had never been to an algorave before, and this mathsy pause served to get us all involved. We could start to understand what was going on, and we started to listen out for further patterns in further sets. Multiple people commented that they got way more “into it” after that moment.
I mean— it wasn’t just about understanding. It was also about explicitly getting the crowd involved. Algorave is often described as a back and forth between the coders and the crowd. This pause was a clear acknowledgement and deepening of that.
At one point, Alex made a mistake. He accidentally made one of the sequences cycle through way too quickly— too fast. It sounded a little bit jarring, and I saw him smile to himself when it happened. He stopped it shortly afterwards and looked up at the crowd and sheepishly said “sorry”, which cut the— it made everyone laugh.
At that moment, I thought back to our chat in the pub, when Alex had told me about the culture of “embracing your mistakes” within live coding. I wondered to myself— I wondered if he had considered— even for a moment— did he feel tempted to keep the mistake in? I’m not sure. Maybe not. Maybe that one was too much. But I bet he could if he really wanted to. And in this moment, I now observe how I— how it’s— how it shares similarities to my current approach to writing with— all— these— really— annoying— dashes.
The mistake was embraced. It was a positive moment— a moment of laughter— of shared struggle. Alex had to react and respond to the mistake, and so did the crowd. Everyone dancing had to make a decision on “what to do”— decide how to respond. It was a— live coding is a shared struggle— a combined— community— collaborative effort.
Live coding is live. It’s “extreme sharing”. It leaves you vulnerable.
That night felt special to me, but I guess it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from—
“We love repetition” is a repeated tagline of Algorave. So I asked Alex McLean where it came from, because I guess it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from—
When I was a (failing) student the first time around in the 90s, I came up with “MDMA generation, we love repetition” as a joke while messing around with a synth, if I recall correctly, and later reappropriated it…
For me though, “algorave generation, we love repetition” as a statement sits in the context of UK university computer music departments around 2010, with their institutionalised electroacoustic music culture where virtuosity is all about the number of genelec speakers in your multichannel array, and where repetition was regarded more or less as pure evil. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of this guy Adorno but for some reason he’s taken seriously by music academics despite every quote I’ve read from him coming across as unhinged… He reckons repetition is “psychotic and infantile”. Believe it or not, these people group together all music that isn’t electroacoustic or European classical as ‘popular music’ and repetition would be a mark of that. I think there’s a small world mindset inherent in rejecting repetitive dance music and it doesn’t take much imagination to link it to racism, homophobia, classism, etc.
So basically, to say “we like repetition” is a kind of rejection of that kind of weirdo performative seriousness that we were talking about in the pub. ;)
That night was built on top of a lot of previous events and a lot of previous work. It came at the end of many previous choices and acts in—
My work has the recurring theme of—
The past and—
Repetition and—
Its connection to—
How it combines with—
The present and how—
Change to connect—
Time passes because of—
The future to—
The fine balance of—
The past—
Chaos and—
Repetition—
Order—
And change.
Arroost is a live coding tool, and it leans into a lot of the same themes and values as— but it differs in some ways.
Algorave claims that “Algorave musicians don’t pretend their software is being creative, they take responsibility for the music they make.” And this is different to Arroost, which tries to take responsibility away from you.
And Arroost places much more emphasis on voice. You have to record all the sounds yourself, with whatever you can, and the easiest thing is often your own voice.
These differences reflect the slightly different goals that Arroost has and—
“Recursion is cheap” is what some guy said once apparently.
“Recursion is cheap” is the same— an idea— as an idea, it has the same elitist undertones as thinking that “repetition is infantile”.
If “recursion is cheap” then being recursive becomes a rebellious act in the same way that repetition is.
And we can challenge the idea by trying it out. Is recursion really so cheap? Maybe it’s cheap to imagine it, or to create a pattern that would lead to it, but is it cheap to do it? to live it? to really be it? to carry it out? to execute it?
What does it really feel like— mean to be recursive? Can you comprehend the scale— the horror of the unmeasurable infinity that is recursion? Can you face the endless repetition, really?
Do you know what it feels like to stare at yourself an infinite number of times? Like in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms, there is no escape. You are there— you are what you are— with your mistakes and your choices— your history and change.
To look at yourself recursively is to look at all past and future versions of yourself as copies— repeated but slightly changed. You embody an ever-changing yet repeating pattern, never quite arriving or settling on a resolution, except for death, and even in death, your body crumbles onwards onwards, changing changing.
There is no hiding— you cannot hide— that you are a scrappy fiddle, and always were— and always will be.
So it is up to you—
It is up to you whether you share yourself or not. But whatever you choose to do, whether you share scrappy fiddles or not, you must normalise sharing scrappy fiddles, at the very least for those who want to or have no choice, like me.
You are a scrappy fiddle. You may or may not share scrappy fiddles. But you must normalise sharing scrappy fiddles.
I had an idea for doing a recursive livestream, where I make a fractal by ‘reacting’ to myself again and again and again and again and again.
It’s a very simple pattern. Repeat the video. Repeat. And speed up until you swallow yourself.
But to carry it out— to perform it, it’s quite hard. It takes a very long time, and you have to face what you did earlier on. There is no escaping your past.
It is an act of repetition— recursion, but also an act of change. You can see the change I go through during that time. It is spelled out for you to see. I do the livestream over sunset so you can see the change clearly via the light on my face.
And all I have is my voice. That’s all I do. I have to find things to say— find what I have to say— what I need to express. I start by being timid. I’m not warmed up, but over time, I gather courage. I find my voice, and lose it, and find it again, and lose it. It’s a moving target. There isn’t something to find out— figure out. I’m just existing, and expressing myself, through my changing voice.
I copy myself— I repeat, but change a little bit each time.
I hint towards live coding at the start and the end.
And I talk about the themes of identity, voice, shame, repetition and struggle. These are the things that sometimes make it difficult to normalise sharing scrappy fiddles.
And I try to touch on all the blended fields that I want to be part of. The stream is some stupid viral marketing content. It is a massive joke. It is also satire— a parody of the kind of attention grabbing content that we are now used to, that I am now part of. But as well as being a joke, it is also serious. During the stream, people ask me serious questions about my research, and I answer seriously. And it is also an artistic project— a piece of performance art. And it is also advocacy. I explain the message of advocacy that the original video has. And I use the stream as an event to raise money for that cause. And people gave a lot.
And it is also about community. I mean—
More and more, I am trying to build a cult— I mean— ha(!)— a community.
The stream would have been nothing without people turning up, and contributing. It was a back and forth between me and the “crowd”. Like algorave, it was a collaborative process. There were tons of repeating refrains put forward and picked up by viewers, which have continued on for days now. I feel part of something bigger, despite its ridiculousness— its stupidity. I feel like we all went through something together.
And in that crowd, many familiar faces turned up. I saw my boss Steve Ruiz who told me to look out for my posture, and my partner Flora Caulton who told me to react to Fortnite, and Ivan Reese, and Dave Ackley and many more, and all the people I know and recognise from mastodon, as well as many new avatars and names that I now recognise. Some who stayed the entire time from start to end.
For me, that felt like worlds colliding— blending together, which is exactly what I want. I want to draw the lines between these different worlds. I want to share the connections I have seen.
For me, it was an exploration of what it feels like to change. Even one hour later, looking back on my recent self, I could already see that I had changed. And it made me think of how I have changed in these last few years especially.
That’s what happens when we do repetition— when we copy ourselves forwards from one second to the next. The act of copying— repeating— is always imperfect. You might copy something wrong. Or you might just be in a different circumstance, one second into the future. To copy— to repeat— is to grow into something different, and that’s all we do.
In the original video, this is what the rainbow spell represents to me (I don’t care if it’s cheesy). We change, we grow, we copy, we continue, we learn, forever.
“Cells randomly copy themselves into empty spaces, changing the colour of the copy a tiny bit each time. It produces some very colourful patterns. So let’s do it again and again and again.”
Through making things— expressing myself, I change. My change is reflected in my work. It has a moving target and it never quite gets there. And my work bounces back at me, and it changes me in return. I learn— I mean— I’m inspired by— it makes me realise— helps me— you know what I mean— it’s a two way street— it goes back and forth like a dialogue.
If you ever do— ever get to the end of an artistic project, you end up with an artifact. But that artifact is not the project and the project is not the artifact. The artifact is only the final step— a shadowy echo of what you really did. It can be important— meaningful, but only within the bigger picture within your struggle towards the end. If you were to discard all of that initial work, you would lose something valuable— something precious.
The process is the point! That’s the human part! That’s why we’re here! To share our journeys and struggles with each other! Otherwise we’re no better— we’re no better than some stupid— if you want an artifact— without the process we are nothing better than a stupid image or language model pumping out— regurgitating any— if you want an artifact— that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to normalise sharing scrappy fiddles.
I went to an algorave and it changed me forever.
Back to the wikiblogarden.