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Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 12 months ago

I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.

I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.

Also on Mastodon.

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Fionnáin's books

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Radical Friends (Torque Editions) 5 stars

Radical Friends brings together the leading voices in the DAO, NFT, crypto-art, Web3, and blockchain …

Multifaceted ideas on distributed leadership

5 stars

This is a very exciting tome. It is about 'Distributed Autonomous Organisations' (DAOs) in the arts. DAOs are essentially a method of leadership of organisations with distributed leadership among members, often using technologies like blockchain to help decision-making. The book has so many ways to be used that it's hard to know how to describe or review it. It is simultaneously an artwork about distributed leadership, a guide to establishing and running DAOs, a philosophical and theoretical exploration of radical friendships, a documentation of existing projects and a more-than-human object that speaks beyond itself. It is really wonderful.

Radical Friends is divided into essays, artworks, conversations and other short sections. It is wonderfully edited and laid out, and is very beautiful throughout – the tarot card deck Hexen 2.0 by Suzanne Treister divides the book sections, and other artistic and aesthetic/design choices are perfect.

Naturally, with so many voices in …

H is for Hawk (2014, Jonathan Cape) 4 stars

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced …

Hawk-Grief-Human

5 stars

An extraordinary book, filled with poetry from the first page. Helen Macdonald seamlessly links a chain of things that seem unconnected: her grief over her father's death, training a goshawk, the strange life of the author TH White, perspectives on nature and nationalism, and magic.

Aside from the electric storytelling, the prose throughout is poetic and poignant. The links to disparate things are seamless. And the linked processes of grief are explored delicately right to the end. Even when I don't agree with some of Macdonald's perspectives, I am very grateful to her for sharing this journey as such a literary wonder.

H is for Hawk (2014, Jonathan Cape) 4 stars

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced …

Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time, too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when we are dead. We live out our three score and ten, and tie our knots and lines only to ourselves. We take solace in pictures, and we wipe the hills of history.

H is for Hawk by 

Subjective but poetic. This section begins with a comment by an elderly couple who talk warmly of the deer before complaining about "immigrants", leading Macdonald to consider the links between blood-and-soil, nature and aesthetics. This paragraph is a highlight in a sad passage of the book.

Radical Friends (Torque Editions) 5 stars

Radical Friends brings together the leading voices in the DAO, NFT, crypto-art, Web3, and blockchain …

Imagine this: We invite someone to care for us. They say they can't. Instead of seeing this as a breach of contract, we react with curiosity and support. What if every breach of contract expressed a need? What if a violation of a contract was the beginning, not an end?

Radical Friends by ,

From Cassie Thornton's essay Commune Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est? (pp163-172). Thornton developed the care-based artwork The Hologram and suggests in this chapter a framework for a blockchain-based system of care, part influenced by the art project ReUnion Network by Yin Aiwen. Excellent chapter and ideas within.

H is for Hawk (2014, Jonathan Cape) 4 stars

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced …

But most of my bird-loving friends had read Baker's book [The Peregrine] before they ever saw a live one, and now they can't see peregrines without them conjuring distance, extinction and death. Wild things are made from human histories.

H is for Hawk by 

That second sentence.

Radical Friends (Torque Editions) 5 stars

Radical Friends brings together the leading voices in the DAO, NFT, crypto-art, Web3, and blockchain …

This need for radical friendships and primal strangeness is the keystone of our technological life. Yet we must not subsist on this world on the tools we are given, rather we must be the co-creators of tools of worlding. We must find new ways to reclaim the power of trial and error, we must feel empowered by failure because to come undone is to come one step closer to learning how to live with chaos, and mastering the modes of surviving in a state of generative chaos.

Radical Friends by ,

The words that end the chapter The Reappropriation of Life and the Living – A Cosmic Battleground by co-editor Penny Rafferty. This wonderful chapter is a highlight in this book, and any section could easily have been quoted here.