Media on Arthur Nørve

Arthur Erickson

Sun, 12 May 2024 16:48:42 -0400

The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating | Aeon Videos

Interview with the Canadian architect Arthur Erickson.

His mention of Japanese influence on his style is interesting as this is a visual direction I feel attraction towards.

I was born in a cold and relatively but only seemingly barren place so his talk of architecture and use of colour in what he calls drab climates resonated with me. His approach of very carefully using colour and visually striking elements in such climates I find appropriate and reasonable.

Simple Made Easy

Tue, 07 May 2024 17:49:09 -0400

Simple Made Easy - InfoQ

Talk by Rich Hickey, the creator of Clojure on simplicity in code.

In particular he contends that de-complecting; unentangling systems yield better artifacts; the resulting systems we create.

He talks about the merits of:

Queues
Functions and values
True polymorphism
Data as data

And the vices of:

Classes and objects
State
ORMs

That means using constructs natively found in languages like:

Clojure
More “regular” Lisps (to a certain degree)
Haskell

Lacuna

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 19:17:18 +0100

📺 lacuna | NOWNESS

Adam Savage Interviews Tom Sachs

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 13:14:20 +0200

📺 Adam Savage Interviews Tom Sachs - The Talking Room - YouTube

Adam Savage interviews Tom Sachs, the artist and creator. Notably also the inspiration for the “Neistat aesthetic”, this connection is obvious when you’ve laid your eyes on Sachs’ work, but less so looking only at the Neistats'.

Sachs seems a real handyman and really, truly values utility in his work, workshop and art.

That something is fit for its function seems the most essential thing. As a corollary, the “marks of the maker” do not matter. On the contrary, they imbue the object with humanity and history, thus further enriching it.

Preventing the Collapse of Civilization

Wed, 11 May 2022 19:41:03 +0200

📺 Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow’s main thesis in this lecture is based on certain past events in human history. Listing several examples of certain knowledge and technology completely lost because of systematic societal collapse he argues that this might just happen to software and modern civilisation.

Amongst things he mentions the bewilderingly complex Antikythera mechanism as lost knowledge not merely stumbled upon by by the inventors but a result of an organised scientific process of failiure and discovery. Thus he claims that even complex systems can crumble and disappear only leaving traces and indications for future humans as to what was going on.

Ways of Seeing

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 12:01:32 +0100

📺 John Berger’s Ways of Seeing on YouTube
Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4

Four installment 1970s BBC TV series on art and European oil painting as interpreted by John Berger.

I don’t know who Berger is

Ep. 1 - Introduction

Introduction with a particular emphasis on Berger’s methodology and manner of presentation. Also covers the presentation of art, European tradition, paintings as information, reproduction, photography’s influence on painting and mysticism.

Notably he goes through how they’ll be using the possibilities of the camera to:

Small Is Beautiful: Impressions of Fritz Schumacher

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 10:32:55 +0100

📺 Small is beautiful impressions of Fritz Schumacher - YouTube

The Fox of Bloody Woman Island

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 10:21:15 +0100

📹 Portrait of a Place: The Fox of Bloody Woman Island | NOWNESS

A short documentary on the North-Norwegian wooden boat builder Ulf Mikalsen from Kjerringøy.

Interesting and enticing short work on what seems like a rather eclectic and particular individual.

Being a boat builder of traditional wooden boats he is a part of the slowly waning part of the population that keeps these very very old Norwegian traditions alive.

The name Kjerringøy

n. kjerring: A woman, sometimes used derogatorily; bloody woman, somtimes endearingly; wife. Fairly rural register.

Minimal Viable Home

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 01:03:02 +0100

🎙 Minimum Viable Home by Colin Wright - Optimal Living Daily
📄 Minimum Viable Home Exile Lifestyle

I listened to this podcast episode today (date of creation of this note), which was esentially a reading of a Colin Wright post and some commentary form the host regarding how we furnish homes.

It got me thinking about the way I have gone about furnishing and purchasing for my own house.

The Minimal Viable Home

In it Colin talks about the concept of an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) from software dev. and transsfers it to the all so familiar domain of housing and our living spaces.

Why renewables can’t save the planet

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 11:32:01 +0100

📺 Why renewables can’t save the planet - M. Shellenberger | TED

Energy from rooftop solar panels is twice as costly as that from solar farms
Windfarms and solar require vast areas and pose a serious risk to wildlifes
Renewable pushes in the US and Germany caused price increases
Nuclear is safer than classic renewables as per science
Nuclear has less material-throughput than classic renewables

Is Fish Healthy?

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 01:16:00 +0100

🎙 Er fisk sunt? – Morgenbladet (Is fish healty?)

This science podcast episode from Morgenbladet talks about the health properties of fish and in particular the Norwegian farmed salmon.

Environmental toxins accumulate more in animals in marine environments because of the longer food chains. Many species of fish are highly contaminated and are not healthy in that sense.

They also talk about the implications of close relationships between academia/researchers and business.

The Many Roads to Becoming Multilingual

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 00:03:15 +0200

📺 The many roads to becoming multilingual: Lessons from small-scale speech communities

Nicholas Evans is a linguist and talks here mostly about languages and “language ecologies” from Northern Australia and Southern Papua New Guinea. He also mentions some communities in Cameroon in Africa.

Multilingualism has historically and traditionally been very important in small-scale speech communities
That is it is not really a modern phenomenon that resulted from urbanisation and the like
Inter-language marriages are common in many places
Extraordinarily high levels of fluency in multiple languages is fairly common many places
High levels of receptive competence are common, that is people often know to understand but not use a language themselves

Multilingual song-lines against hegemony

In Northern Australia he mentions that:

Midlife Crisis

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 22:38:18 +0100

Some notes from the The Royal Society’s video lecture:
Life begins at 40: the biological and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

One should marry three times

Margaret Mead proposed (mentioned) having several marriages throughout our lives; with or without it having to be with the same person.

Mead suggests

For young desire and adventure
For child rearing
For companionship in later life

Yuval Noah Harari on History

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 15:51:23 +0100

Part 2

A Brief History of Humankind - Lesson 1.2 - Dr. Yuval Noah Harari

Systems of increasing complexity and their fields

Harari talks about something I’d like to call a ladder of increasing complexity in history; more and more complex systems have been formed.

The major fields of study that make up human science can thus be said to be the study of a particular rung on this ladder: