swimming within the analog+digital estuary:

I’ve seen two distinct digital experiences: I’m both passively floating although the digital sea of social media and on-line information, or I’m actively partaking with a digital instrument (like Canva) to make a video or flip an analog object right into a digital picture. When I’m making one thing in a digital house, there’s no pool noodle to maintain me afloat whereas I scroll. I’m swimming arduous. I’m gathering new expertise and studying apply them to the factor I need to create, similar to after I make analog objects.

Today, I’ve carried out somewhat of each, the passive digital floating and the lively digital swimming. The first left me feeling spacey and out of sync with how the sides of my physique work together with my atmosphere. The second felt fresher, however I nonetheless forgot my physique was an object held in place by gravity and need.

I lose monitor of time. A couple of minutes in the past, Yme got here out to my studio to inform me he was leaving. “But your meeting isn’t until 3,” I stated. When did 12:45 turn into 2:45? The digital sea swallowed the afternoon.

I ignore my physique’s wants. I don’t rise up to stretch my achy again. I don’t rise up to go pee. There isn’t water close by, so I keep thirsty. As I write this, the nerves of my left hand are tingling. I do know I ought to step away from the keyboard and provides my hand a break, however I don’t need to lose the concept I’ve been chasing all afternoon.

I play with concepts and generally have artistic breakthroughs. It isn’t simply after I’m within the digital sea that I lose monitor of time and ignore the wants of my physique. This additionally occurs after I’m messing round with watercolors or utilizing my typewriter. Analog rivers even have sturdy currents, and like a canine that smells a deer within the woods, after I’m on the path of an concept, every part else falls away.

In The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Disruptions create gaps, openings and edges between the new and the dominant…[I]ncremental change and creative disruption…are available to us as agents of cultural transformation.” Estuaries, with their brackish water, embody the hole edges of artistic disruption. The ingenuity and adaptation of the creatures who reside in estuaries (and different hole edges) makes them various and vibrant…

I wrote this paragraph in November in a post about estuaries. I additionally wrote an apart to Jenn:

(Note to Jenn: It simply occurred to me that if artistic disruption is our speculation, then Joyful Practice is our lab.)

At the time, that assertion felt like a philosophical lodestone as we set off on this new journey of making The Joyful Practice Handbook. Our work nonetheless looks like a creatively disruptive and extremely fertile experiment, and we’re swimming in a brand new sort of Joyful Practice estuary. We’re engaged on turning our analog-created ebook pages right into a digitally accessible doc.

We anticipate some pages will go into the ebook just about precisely as they had been scanned, and we’re interested in what it would seem like to play with turning scanned analog objects (just like the one under) into pages which have been altered utilizing digital software program.

I name this house the analog+digital estuary. What new hybrid format will emerge?

Today, I experimented with an analog web page about estuaries.

This is the unique hand drawn and typed picture:

This experiment is closest to the unique. I just like the second picture greatest, most likely as a result of the primary picture feels too claustrophobic, like my eyes want extra space between the typewritten phrases and the physique of the estuary. I’d like to determine make the ultimate two phrases (GAP EDGE) present up a bit extra—I wager it might be a straightforward factor to do. On the opposite hand, I would sit in entrance of my pc display till 1 am attempting to make it seem like the picture I’ve in my head (additionally a actuality when working in analog).

These are enjoyable as a result of they remind me of one thing I may have made for a zine, reducing up a picture to create house round every concept. I like how the estuary is damaged up by the black background, however my eyes nonetheless observe the curve of its motion. I feel the second picture works higher. It feels extra textured and human than the primary picture.

Playing with a digital scan of the picture is far more low stakes than really reducing the unique analog model. I don’t get to vary my thoughts or play with dimension the identical approach I can with a digitally scanned picture. The stakes could also be increased after I experiment with the analog model, however its additionally a enjoyable problem as a result of the errors I make create extra constraints to work with. If I make a mistake within the digital model, all I’ve to do is hit the again arrow a number of occasions.

The first picture on this experiment looks like a extra sincere model of what’s occurring within the analog+digital estuary. I feel it’s my favourite. I really like how the estuary appears to be like fogged over, and you may see traces of typewritten letters smeared throughout the clouds. It is doing what the unique picture says an estuary will do: mingling earlier than with after.

The second picture on this experiment might be my least favourite as a result of it’s hanging in house with no anchor. I attempted including a background coloration, however that felt too clean, too digital.

Its potential none of those experimental pages make it into the ebook, however I’ve received tons extra concepts to check out. I’ll hold swimming within the analog+digital estuary. Go deep, it tells me. You by no means know what you’re about to find.

P.S.: I simply appeared on the time. Somehow 3pm turned 6pm, and I actually gotta pee.

Note to reader: Every week, we’re writing a couple of Joyful Practice precept. These rules supply pointers for approaching artistic work. This week’s precept shouldn’t be really a precept. Last week’s dialog about thresholds received me occupied with estuaries, so I made a decision to observe that impulse.

On Fridays, we launch a podcast (The Joyful Practice Podcast) obtainable right here (on Substack), on Apple Podcasts, and on Spotify.

Also on Fridays, we provide an immersive immediate for artistic exploration. This function is known as Prompt Portal, and you could find it right here on Substack.