Archipelago, Not Plantations
Hayley Mortin: Needlebound
Dear reader,
One of the joys of working on the same project over multiple years is witnessing how it slowly finds its form and community.
Take Tiny Awards, the annual award I’m organizing with Matt Muir and Matt Klein. Before it became Tiny Awards with its own handmade website and an A-list of judges, it was called WWWonderful Award and ran as a sixteen-week-long poll inside this newsletter. The nominated sites were good, but the name wasn’t. It was also my own little party, an insider celebration, and hardly anything aspiring anyone to make and maintain small, creative, and poetic websites.
It’s very touching to see how the silly idea grew into something that feels almost like an institution. This year, we have received hundreds of nominations. What’s even more motivating is how the flow of nominations is steady, representing the many different ways in which people discover Tiny Awards. The project no longer relies on any single person or group; it exists in a rich web of people, communities, and links.
With care,
Kristoffer
Ps. Nominations for Tiny Awards are open until the end of the month. It is free (as awards should be!). You can submit as many sites as you want, including sites by others who you think deserve recognition. The most important criterion is that the site was made within the past twelve months.
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Hayley Mortin: Needlebound
Hayley Mortin is a design researcher and textile artist working in Montreal.
What is Needlebound?
Needlebound is a fibre arts publication I started to hold space for writing that reflects the slowness, tension, and complexity of making things by hand. It brings together experimental essays, visual work, and reflections that explore the contradictory experience of crafting something slowly in an attention economy built to reward speed.
Why did you start it?
I kept looking for a publication that felt true to the kinds of exchanges I was having online— about process, materials, the tenderness of making something slowly. Most of what I found felt either too polished or too academic. I wanted to take the texture of online fiber conversations (Instagram comments, voice notes from a friend, Close Friends stories) and give them a format that didn’t rush or flatten their nuance.
Who or what inspired you?
Needlebound was shaped by publications that treat the internet as something tender and mutable. Are.na Annual felt like holding a digital rabbit hole in your hands. Press & Fold Magazine showed how you can approach craft with a curatorial eye and still keep it approachable. Both reminded me that publishing can be rigorous without being rigid which is the balance I wanted to strike with Needlebound.
Pre-order Needlebound Volume Two or learn more about Hayley through her website, Instagram and Are.na.
𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼
Field Notes
1.
The History of the Web. I really enjoy receiving this newsletter. In the latest edition, we travel back to 1995 and learn about how people explored the web 30 years ago. While I’m familiar with many of the stories, I’m always presented with details I didn’t already know, like Jeff Bezos choosing Amazon.com for its early placement in alphabetical directories.
2.
Tropical Technologist. I hope that whatever comes (now and) next for the internet will appear more like an archipelago than a plantation.
3.
»When a tutorial becomes too short, the clock becomes the stopwatch; and the stopwatch doesn’t just measure – it controls. It changes how we relate to ourselves and to others. When time is compressed into units of efficiency, we stop noticing the subtle transitions. The thresholds, the mood swings, the slow dawning of understanding… all become a disturbance in a system that values speed over presence.«
— Silvio Lorusso in Granular Time
4.
Calls for Participation: Game Poems (Due 15/6), Miss Video 4U (Due, ongoing), A Printed Poetry Leaflet (Due, ongoing), Everyoneisagirl (Due 15/6), form + foliage (Due 15/6), Protostars Grants (Due 16/6), Error 406 (Due 17/6), Believers Grant (Due 30/6), Peckham Digital (Due 30/6), Tiny Awards (Due 30/6), and HCI.Place (Due 1/7).
5.
Poetic Web Calendar: Touching Computers (NYC, 18/6), Web Archiving (NYC, 18/6), Tech-queries with Polly (Copenhagen, 19/6), Wordhack (NYC, 19/6), Computation Rehearsal (Singapore, 21/6), Synthesis Assembly (LA, 28/6), Vector Festival (Toronto, 10-20/7), FWB Fest (Idyllwild, 1-3/8), What Hackers Yarn (Geestmerambacht, 8-12/8), and POST Design Festival (Copenhagen, 12/9),
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Wayside Flowers
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