That Was The Week That Was — 17th March 2019

There seemed to be a big German theme this week.

I had an email from an agency in Germany asking if I would be available to speak at an upcoming event for their client to talk about my recent work for Trend Micro. Then a few days later I had another email from Germany about a new major city-wide exhibition and how they would love to feature the same work in their programme, appearing across the city on the trams and elsewhere. All of these received a massive yes from me. It was really nice to see how that recent work seems to have resonated with people. I now see it's been roled out across the Trend Micro brand, from their website to their marketing materials.

On the Tuesday I sent out issue 22 of the Dawesome Digest, which mainly talked about the Trend Micro thing as well as the update to Kennedy. Had a few unsubscribes which is par for the course, but also gained a few new subscribers which made up for it. I sometimes feel it's like shouting into a giant echo chamber but people do seem to like it so I keep going, even if it's just an ongoing record for myself.

I wrote a blog post called You Are Not a Tool which when mentioned by Sara Soueidan seemed to pick up quite a bit of traction. I guess that's why I continue to write this stuff — the occasional thing breaks through all the noise and makes it seem worthwhile.

Part of the week I did some more learning in Houdini, in particular delving into creating smoke and the like. I downloaded a model of a dragon and created this little test which seemed to get a nice response on Instagram. It would be good to explore how I can integrate this with some data at some point.

The rest of the time I got back into this title sequence I'm working on in Houdini, totally changing the colour palette to give more scope for the idea I have in my head, based on interactions from interference patterns. I was glad I left working on it for a week as I could now look at it with fresh eyes.

My old friend Manuel Clement is working on the soundtrack for this piece and we shared a few Instagram DMs, talking about the project and where it needs to go. Whilst we have a Basecamp site setup to share files, Instagram DMs are a great way to share some quick thoughts, as is Whatsapp. I will never use Slack though — like a Tsunami of noise.

I also had an email from someone in Panama City informing me they're having a tattoo done of some random thing I did many years ago. I think that's a first for me.

At the end of the week I watched The 12th Man — an amazing true story about survival and the kindness of strangers in Norway during World Was II. There's that German thing again.