Week Notes // 6th November
Jeff Wall’s A Sudden Gust of Wind (1993) at Tate Modern
The Christmas ads have started landing. Which means we’re now in the phase of the year where hyperbolic discounting becomes an issue. Is present-day Tom always going to act in the best interests of future Tom? Only time will tell.
I am a little late to writing this note but I’m here now. And that’s the main thing. One of the things I’ve found myself doing this week, as I’ll reference below, is spending time with other people’s Week Notes. By comparison, feel like the categories I’ve alighted upon aren’t that useful - and lend themselves mainly to a list of links or recommendations about content one might consume, rather than anything more profound. Matt Edgar for example - who I found via website The Web of Weeknotes - organises his thinking under the following headers: Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? What did you learn? What would you have liked to do more of? What do you wish you could have changed? What are you looking forward to next week?
These are good questions to ask yourself about work in Edgar’s case. And whilst I’m using this exercise as a way of writing and thinking more about the connections that can be made between the ideas I find interesting, these questions could be easily transposed with enough thought. To the points I made in my blog post this week, these are good prompts to ask oneself or one another at the start of a project or experiment.
Reading (Watching, Listening)
Finished Number Go Up. Moral of the story, kids: don’t buy stuff on the internet without understanding it properly.
I love Matt Webb’s blog. His personal rules for blogging are a mainstay in my browser window. He’s just posted a rare ‘week note’ relating to his new project, leading me down the rabbit hole of week notes I mention above. His has a ‘sketch’ like quality - half formed thoughts or ideas or promises to himself. Lilly Pads he skips lightly across. Little Printer is still one of my favourite ever things. And reminds me of a time when the internet felt much more constructive and slightly smaller in scale. I enjoy the way he seems to have an instinctive understanding of what he likes, what the technology available may or may not yet be able to do and the things people will find useful. I can’t profess to understand everything he writes, but I always find useful things in his posts. Unoffice Hours is a really interesting social idea which I would emulate if I was brave enough.
Finally got to watch Oppenheimer. Looks amazing. Ludwig Göransson’s score is incredible. Enjoyed the circularity of Cillian Murphy’s career: from deploying a nuclear bomb to restart the Sun in Sunshine, to playing the man who was central to building the bomb. Lunch with Andrew and his primer on astrophysics meant I understodd some of the concepts in the movie.
Watched The Killer. Listened to the David Fincher fantasy draft on The Big Picture podcast. Had forgotten just quite how much depth there is in his body of work. And the fact he routinely makes the macabre beautiful.
The Bargain. The fact everything is shot to look like it’s a continuous take has really caught my eye. Has a fluid, hectic feel. Computer Game aesthetics everywhere. John Wick and True Detective come to mind.
Doing
Little Simz at Ally Pally. How one person can hold the attention of 10,000 people I’ll never know.
In spirit of asking better questions, I might investigate a small technical experiment, building a random question generator for the website. Or, perhaps it should be built with Chat GPT.
Spoke to Landy about the Street Art / Web3 project she’s working on during her sabbatical from Channel 4. One of those people you consider yourself fortunate enough to have worked with. She has such amazing enthusiasm for the stuff she’s working on it’s infectious. Looking forward to seeing where the project goes and what comes of it.
Capturing the Moment at Tate Modern. Particularly enjoyed the Gursky stuff on display. Really impressive in the flesh.
Working
Reached the ‘wet cement’ stage of a project I’m working on. Draft document landed well and is being progressed. Jerry Seinfeld wrote a book called Is This Anything? The title comes from an observation he makes about comedians, who he suggests spend their life thinking about the observations they make and whether they are amusing or not. Strategists in comms businesses probably do the same… right up until the moment work is presented that little nugget of doubt always exists. Is this anything we ask?
Research underway for next stage of a new project. Having to think about a portfolio of products, how they relate to each other and the way those relationships will inform the communications brief. The client is a media brand. Which for a media planner is always a very stimulating task. I think they’re probably the most interesting brands to work on, operating at the intersection of media, technology, commerce and culture in a way few other categories of advertiser can legitimately claim. Also having to think about the changes in the audience landscape. In particular interested by the emergence of ‘YIPS’ - young illiberal progressives. Progressive in their politics, but extremely intolerant of people who don’t agree with them.
“Theory will only take you so far”
