֍ Folklore_0x ::: Drip

“Media is no longer linear. Legacy outlets fade into noise, and communities have become screens through which all platforms are diffracted.” A few months ago, we curated a YouTube video where New Models talked through the future of critique. In this next article, Caroline and Lil Internet continue their exploration of the future of media — and especially interesting is the emergence of a new thesis: community as media (which Ive been preaching about since last year and am writing an essay about now, so exciting to see this conversation through other independent sources) https://outland.art/new-models-holographic-media/ “To understand what this new era of community as media looks like, imagine the Web 1.0 webforum—multiple nodes arranged in a circle, each equally connected to the others. Now imagine the Web 2.0 attention-driven network: a sea of individual influencers connected unidirectionally to tiers of followers. In a composable community-as-media model, a protocol synthesizes both. Members of a shared network interact in a non-gamified, horizontal way—as in webforums—while also broadcasting across social media feeds, cross-pollinating their community’s thoughts and attracting new members.” Bonus Read: Secular Churches for Continuity https://rosano.hmm.garden/01fqhhwczcs76rgy4fqestpmdb

“Beauty matters. It is up there with love and friendship and good food as one of the terminal values of existence, one of the reasons life is worth living. But what is it? Where does it come from? Why are we able to see it? Perhaps those questions are best answered by determining what beauty is not. I offer that beauty is not a property of things.” https://interintellect.com/beauty-and-the-brain/

“As such, the temple represents a mnemonic device specifically conceived to associate musical principles to architectural elements as in the “art of memory.” The symbols and allegories described on the temple (like Apollo or Pythagoras)  act as imagines agentes, images able to aid the recollection of memory in relationship with a specific place (locus) identified in a “palace of memory.”  https://socks-studio.com/2020/11/01/architecture-as-a-mnemonic-device-robert-fludds-temple-of-music/

Squads Squads Squads. When you practice community building, you realise there’s a piece of wisdom that is entrenched in coordination: small groups of people achieve monumental tasks. If you want long-term survival, you want a culture that nurtures banding and disbanding of squads anchored on values of kinship. Question: Can you name your squad(s)? Todays reading is a classic by OtherInternet: Squad Wealth. With a bonus reading for those who’ve already read it — in this bonus article the author explores the “cost of craft”. (Can you guess the thesis?) “For the squad to understand itself as a whole, it maintains boundaries circumscribing strong group norms. Fuck a Dunbar number—the ideal squad count is no more than 12. How can you really be present with more than a dozen people? Small groups are crucial for tight coordination. A greater network may surround the squad, making it appear big and fuzzy from the outside. But for the core crew, an invisible circle binds and protects a space of group identity.” https://otherinter.net/research/squad-wealth/ Bonus reading: https://gk3fyi.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-craft

Following our reading on AirSpace, sterile aesthetics from Silicon Valley, we can explore how “average culture” is developing across the globe. And this, in turn, is an opportunity for the creative minds who dare to dream of edgy alternatives — tailored to a niche community, and exchanging an opportunity of scale for meaning. "If you've ever wondered why every poster and every trailer and every TV spot looks exactly the same, it's because of testing. It's because anything interesting scores poorly and gets kicked out. (…) I've tried to argue that maybe the thing that's making it distinctive, and score poorly, actually would stick out if you presented it to these people the way the real world presents it. And I’ve never won that argument.” https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average

“Why do film and fiction routinely depict society and its citizens as fools?” In this excellent essay by David Brin, we talk about media, heroes, main-characters, and how collective entities like institutions and organisations play a role in our journey — even when we succumb to “Suspicion of Authority” blindly. “This rule of contemporary storytelling is so nearly universal that it has escaped much comment — because you never notice propaganda that you already agree with.” I’d recommend with a good ol’ cup of Joe. It’s full of passages that cannot be unseen, fuelled by the curiosity of the author. https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/idiotplot.html

"The trifecta of Product, Protocol, and Community forms the cornerstone of every organizational map today, as it navigates survival and growth. A complete strategy needs to address all three. Viewed together, the components address internal priorities and a participatory approach to the organization’s ecosystem. However, tradeoffs exist. Each founder must choose a Sequence of development which will influence their valuation, fundraising and growth strategy." https://folklore.mirror.xyz/Urj78CpaE8_flb0hUj_1AOGfSevCL9ysqob3pa_JHIM

“Negative advertisements, like ‘Models Suck’ t-shirts, are also advertisements: they too seek their own perception. Everything is not-not an advertisement. The use of multiple accounts/concealing social media as an exercise in lore-building, the anticipation of ‘being watched’. Psychic rupture now becomes subliminal branding. We have internalized the screen; it sees through us now.” Found via Twitter, @jayislate https://terminal27.com/editorial/hard-light-barrett-avner

“Juice is about the tiny details. It's about squeezing more out of everything. It's about serving the user's emotional needs, not just the functional. It originated in games but can be used in other types of software.” https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/design/juice

Today we venture, gently, into political discourse. For we cannot understand culture and technology without soberly evaluating its influence on western political ideologies. “As new technologies enter a society, they disrupt the connections between institutions, practices, virtues, and rewards. They can render traditions purposeless, destroy the distinction between virtuous and vicious behavior, make customary ways of life obsolete, or render their rewards meaningless or paltry. If the institutions that shepherd traditions aren’t regenerated, and if no one adopts their practices, traditions will fade into nothingness.” This article is focused on the conservative POV, and a call to action to reimagine our institutions of tradition. Next, I’ll try to find the accelerationist rhetoric to compare and contrast. https://compactmag.com/article/why-conservatism-failed

“Web3 is user-generated authority, enabled by self-certifying web protocols. These are a superset of technologies that include blockchains, but are not limited to them. Is this what other people think “Web3” is? Maybe not, but hear me out.” https://jaygraber.medium.com/web3-is-self-certifying-9dad77fd8d81

“When you’re first learning about something, there’s a fairly dangerous period between your desire to get enmeshed in the thing and acquiring enough knowledge to understand how different tools act together. During this period, you might be tempted to get cheaper equipment or, worse yet, find a getting started kit.” Courtesy of @keels223 https://andrewlb.com/avoiding-kits

“Abloh rejects the who-did-it-first mentality of previous generations in favor of the copy-paste logic of the Internet and its inhabitants. His new order is protected by a fortress of irony.” https://032c.com/magazine/duchamp-is-my-lawyer-virgil-abloh

Our hardware (and infrastructure) capability shapes our design. In this essay from 2013, we can learn about the transition to Apples Retina display,,, and how it marked the end of a ‘skeumorphic’ UX. However, where are we today? Is our minimalist clean aesthetic ready for a rehaul? Maybe it’s time to bring back texture into our digital flatland. h/t Dirt for the recent article on skeumorphism that linked to this essay. “The whole default iOS look — the textures, the shadows, the subtle (and sometimes unsubtle) 3D effects — is optimized for non-retina displays. It’s makeup to cover up the fact that 163 pixels per inch, though better than anything we had before the original iPhone, is still a crude resolution overall. Retina displays are no longer limited in such ways, and need no phony effects to create interfaces that are beautiful” https://daringfireball.net/2013/01/the_trend_against_skeuomorphism

“folkways are social conventions that are not considered to be of moral significance by members of the group (e.g., customary behaviour for use of the telephone). The folkways of groups, like the habits of individuals, originate in the frequent repetition of acts that prove successful for satisfying basic human needs.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/folkway

Reminder, please mint this token. We will be requiring it in 2 months: https://folklore.mirror.xyz/nft/0xFF7E4e1Ce8c7c02648e9878026b4493f95E1c881/0

Protocols are everywhere — across cultures, temporal spaces, and physical environments. Today, we have a reading curated from the Summer of Protocols reading list: *A Protocol for Death* “So I wanted to document one last model, which is how to die, given some upfront knowledge and time. I'm not going to write an RFC this time. :)” http://hintjens.com/blog:115

Previously, we shared an article exploring how media has changed the way we portray bodies and sexuality (“everyone is hot and no one is horny”). Sam KRISS continues to explore this topic in their latest writing on Spike. “somewhere in the twentieth century, cinema swallowed the inner world. Shitty blockbuster movies didn’t just show us alluring images; they taught us what it’s like to be allured. Occasionally, someone would get too absorbed by all the shiny patterns on the screen and decide to shoot the President about it. The system was not perfect. But now, it’s breaking down entirely. There’s a silent crisis in mainstream cinema: even as the franchises reel in their billions, the form has lost its ability to represent desire.” https://spikeartmagazine.com/?q=sam-kriss-death-of-fantasy Previous article here

Building blocks of media are available today… and now we’re entering a stage of “kit development” for online communities. It’s not just a launch membership, but a set of experiences for community development. “Talented amateurs don’t just build kits; kits help build talented amateurs. And healthy innovation cultures — and successful innovation economies — need the human capital that their talent embodies. Kits are integral, indispensable, and invaluable ingredients for new value creation.” https://makezine.com/article/technology/kits-and-revolutions/

One might say that culture has been ephemeral since the advent of the internet. Communities formed, and most dissolved. Tumblr deleted the content of many communities. In this article, Stark suggests what atoms, institutions, and now blockchains have in common: hardness. Then talks through how this might change our digital environment: https://stark.mirror.xyz/n2UpRqwdf7yjuiPKVICPpGoUNeDhlWxGqjulrlpyYi0