World Computer Sculpture Gardens, Factorio, and Music as Daily Bread

Must admit. Not having a tentpole article I had to write this week felt good. 😅

Regardless, thanks for the messages of support! Hope you’re touching grass too.

📚 Reading - Caroline Kepnes - You

I’m busy reading similar-ish books to my new novel (called comparables in publishing speak). ‘You’ did deal with similar themes and reckon it’s a decent comp, mostly because it also deals with consent, usage of technology as power, and the blurring of people’s public and private lives. Would I recommend it? While the themes resonated, the subject matter didn’t really do it for me. Not really a true crime/serial killer/Dahmer genre enjoyer. So, following a psychopath for that long just isn’t for me, personally. If that’s your thing, I’d suspect you’d enjoy it! Next comp I’m trying: Dave Eggers’ Circle.

📺 Watching - Arcane S2

First few episodes dropped. Damn, I adore this show. It does a few things really well. It knows its roots: growing from promo/marketing around League of Legends (leaning into anime music videos as aesthetic). This style can sometimes be confusing as it feels it breaks the 4th wall a bit, having pop music from our time be played as backtrack to scenes from a different story-world (it’s almost like being turned off if Lord of The Rings would play a Noah Kahan track during the film). But, regardless, it’s just cool as heck. And I enjoy that it leans into it. It evokes emotions and just so damn watchable. And that’s a good reminder as storyteller: don’t get in the way of just doing cool and entertaining shit even if it might be tonally off. Your audience will forgive you if you made them feel something.

The second thing that I admire that is so damn hard: *all* the characters in the show has immense agency, enough that they themselves are bending the story and world to their will. There’s often a tension between agency and keeping the story trudging along to a plot. Too much agency and it might not always feel as tight/succinct (*cough* A Song of Ice and Fire *cough). Juggling many characters in a way that gives them immense agency while also having a tight story is *hard*.

🕹 Gaming - Factorio

omg. nerd catnip. It’s been years where I’ve played a game that I couldn’t put down - and why is it suddenly an hour after my bedtime?!

Great video covering it.

At first you’re like: ah sweet, I automated the production of a red science pack and then the next day you’re researching bus and balancer designs, automating circuitry and logistics networks. 😅

💾 Links!

Narrow House in Poland

I love urbanism on the edges, things that only happen because of idiosyncratic rules. This is a house, designed by writer Etgar Keret in Poland.

The house is located between two buildings from two historical epochs. “The first is a brick building on Zelazna Street – a fragment of the pre-world war II city, almost no longer existing. The second – a cooperative concrete apartment building, an element of an “imposed structure”, which was aimed at negating the previous city landscape. Their adjacency is coincidental – like many architectural structures in Warsaw. Keret House is a perfect example of the so-called “non-matching” in the city’s urban fabric. Another reason is the city’s war history – where the house is located, two ghettos – the large ghetto and the small ghetto met. Only a few steps from the house, a bridge connecting the two closed spaces, stood”, explains Jakub Szczesny.

World Computer Sculpture Garden

0xfff curated a show detailing on-chain and dynamic art hosted on Ethereum with artists like 0xHaiku, Rhea Myers, and Sarah Friend. It’s defined as a “contract show”.

I adore this kind of art. You can interact with it in unique, mediated ways.

The website you are viewing was generated from the show contract itself at block 21194346. Over time, as people engage with the artworks and artists activate their pieces, the information rendered here will change, block by block, year by year.

Sarah Friend’s yesbot:

Maltefr has a great essay on it, titled “Computation in the Expanded Field”

The artists in "World Computer Sculpture Garden" explore computation and networks with an understanding that the contemporary art world has yet to grasp the significance of these phenomena. Perhaps their work constitutes the beginnings of a movement—though not an "-ism" or school.

Over the past years, the work produced by these artists has been labeled in various ways: "on-chain art," "runtime art," "blockchain-native art." I prefer to describe it as “protocol art,” because these artists are primarily concerned with foundational structures or sets of rules that precede and define a computing environment.

Private Firms vs Public Industries

Enjoyed this take from Steve Randy Waldman and puts into the center the role of the state to ensure that its markets thrive as intended.

It is not enough for the state merely to counter monopoly — although the state should, must, aggressively counter monopoly. As Sanjukta Paul has emphasized, "economic coordination of one kind or another is inevitable", because it is necessary. Absent an affirmative alternative structure, the emergence of one or a few dominant firms is simultaneously what antitrust law mans to prevent, and yet the only path to orderly efficiency antitrust law leaves available, because collusion between firms is unlawful but coordination within firms is normal. "Break 'em up" is only the beginning of the state's role. The state must provide rules of a game under which firms can, and must, stay broken up, with each firm succeeding or failing on its merits while the industry as a whole thrives and delivers for the public.

Ultimately, if the state is responsible for managing property rights (which it is), it’s also responsible for its market structures above a certain scale. The state should as much as possible ensure that its markets remain competitive. Too hands off and you get lopsided monopolies. Too strict and private profit opportunities evaporate.

In a previous article, he pointed out how China approaches competitiveness without choosing winners. The state subsidizes industries, not firms.

China's experience suggests one can use the conditions of funding to affirmatively structure the market in ways that ensure continuing competition, rather than rely solely on after the fact policing by antitrust authorities. China's subsidies come via provincial governments, whose officials require their champions remain local. In the US, firms might simply be forbidden contractually from selling equity or assets to rivals or roll-ups.

The game is made up by the state and the role of the state in markets and competitiveness is to nudge the game along as necessary to ensure the game keeps being played.

🎶 Music

Erike Satie - Gymnopedie No. 1

Stephen Colbert asked Jon Baptiste what song he would choose if he could only listen to that one song for the rest of your life. The first one that came to mind for him was Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No 1.

It’s an interesting question and one I have to think about too. But one thing resonated with me. Jon describes the song he would choose as one that would be a “daily bread” as it has to be almost a daily sustenance. I like that. Gymnopedie No 1 is exactly that. What a calming song. Beautiful. It’s been a favourite for many years. I get it.

Do you have such a song?

Hope you enjoy your week and you get to see a lovely sunset.

Simon