Having a blog ID of The Slow Smoulder, I was rather gratified yesterday at an event which talked about Slow-ness.
Indeed, the speakers on Slow Technology gave us a menu of the sections of their talk, which included Slow Technology, the first main course, being "infused over a low fire". Big satisfied smile :D
In fact, one of these speakers had taken the idea of sitting around a fire and designed a heated coffee table, the focus of a social setting in the modern age -- yeahh!
But it was really Glorianna Davenport's description of slow stories in the spectrum of stories in general that really interested me. Slow stories allow time for reflection; they don't follow a plot -- they represent an attitude, emerge out of a need to tell the story and respond to reactions.
She didn't talk about blogs, but it is what The Slow Smoulder is about. Another :D
Another aspect of a slow story is how it can represent real time, either really as real time or as a careful compression of the story. Glorianna reminded us of writings that represent real time in the reading (Shelley, ). She described the worth of having unedited real time footage: sunsets, children learning, creature's activities in a mud flat. But she also described her research with video and sound stories, both in terms of recording the events that happen and in terms of compressing time but keeping information. Food for thought on how the making of history works.
Also, my thinking about news, or fast stories, was ratified: news is a progression of ideas that should generate interest and feedback so that the overall story can continue. Food for thought on how newspapers rarely keep accessible old material on a breaking news item, as mentioned here (thanks to ms_wellwords). This also applies to me as a scientist: updating data while keeping that for old timepoints is essential.
Finally, take a look at myconfectionary.com, a result of Glorianna's work: multimedia slow stories!
Over and Out
13 years ago
2 comments:
You might be interested in Book of Idle Pleasures published by Ebury Press, ed. Dan Kieran and Tom Hodgkinson, which I gather is currently remaindered by The Book People (www.thebookpeople.co.uk) at £3.99.
Apparently it's about taking pleasure from simple things (hanging out washing, chatting to the postman, stargazing, watching the river flow).
There was also an excellent series on Radio 4 a few years ago which was, I think, presented by Carl Honore, the author of In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. (I think he also writes for The Guardian G2 sometimes.) See http://www.carlhonore.com/
Wish I had time to be 'slow'. Best I can muster is a moment or two to watch a kestrel hunting, while I'm dashing round and round the park with my dog…
Book of Idle Pleasures sounds like it is for me. In fact, Faster: the acceleration of just about everything by James Gleick has just landed on my desk from My Other Half. Oouch, this just sounds too fast for me. After the recent events in my life, I just need things slooow.
Shame there doesn't seem to be a Listen Again page for Carl Honore's Radio 4 series. He gave his inheritance tracks for Saturday Live at the end of August this year ... Missed that too, though I often listen to this programme, I was in a tent at the time :-)
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