Discovering non-algorithmic oddities & serendipities

garden ornaments, record store rituals and overheard conversations

This blog is inspired by tech commentator Kate Cassidy Fletcher. In one of her articles, she poses the following questions:

She talks about how we have a global ‘algorithmic aesthetic’ in public spaces now, based on what’s popular online, and how important it is to discover things on our own accord.

Btw, my workbook Intentionally Online will take you through a 5-step digital detox without losing what feels good, it is free.

This struck a chord with me, because I really really don’t want to live in an algorithm aesthetic. I am a bit anal with these things, as you’ll discover in this blog. I want to make my own magical discoveries.

So here's my list of activities I regularly do to find non-algorithmic serendipity

• The library, a space of unpressured discovery, has been my second home since I was a child. I browse and take books home without looking them up online. I find cozy corners to read. I also go here to sketch, because this place is full of uncurated people, contrary to cafes where the algorithm aesthetic does indeed reign. I see things I wouldn’t have otherwise, like how this man must be a total spy:

My neck hurt osmotically from drawing her, but I love her haircut.

• Record stores. I don't have Spotify since I don't want an algorithm to determine my music choices, plus I want to switch off my phone whenever I can—all not compatible with the Spotify lifestyle. So instead, I go to record stores, take pictures of albums I might like, and look them up leasurely on YouTube back at home. If I am really impressed, I go back to buy the CD. Then, I once again switch off wifi, get my ecoline brushpens, lie on my rug (that one’s for the dutchies, get it) with the lights low and space out for an hour. Often, I’ll start drawing:

  Winter Cocoon drawings & putting on a CD in the evenings

  Another tip: check out record labels of music you like to find more like it.

this one was my soundtrack to my winter cocoon drawings, pure underwater music

• Thrift stores. I went twice in 3 days lately. Why? I have nothing to buy. It is because I love discovering old books with interesting titles (‘how to think more about sex’), clothes years out of fashion that make me wonder if they were hand-sewn (even better), tv collection boxes from the 90’s (Cold Feet!), old darkened jewelry from dowagers-since-passed… I don’t buy, but I gorge on it! Some things have funky energy, sure, but I am unlike other empaths in the sense that I love absorbing the used-and-loved imprints attached to this stuff. It makes me feel all cozy.

• Long bike rides in and around my city. Good for befriending cute mini horses and such.

• Day trips to other cities or nature spaces. When you take some kind of art medium (video/photo/drawing/notebook etc) and collect your impressions on that, you’ll have a Magical Day, 100% guaranteed.

• Walks around the neighborhood, and looking in windows or at interesting garden ornaments. Someone I know started photographing these things and has now set up a whole group text situation to exchange the fruits of all of our respective neigborhoods, and ever since, I have been looking. There is a lot to discover about the world through questionable decorative endearments. When you take pictures to share with others, you enter a nice moral grey zone of ‘am I laughing at people’ versus ‘am I lovingly capturing humanity's brave attempts at making life beautiful'—dealer's choice.

  

  a cramped garden with 4 buddhas

• Sitting in a cafe and listening to conversations. You never know what you will hear. I especially love listening in on chats between females on coffee dates, since they are often so stilted and that fascinates me: how did this friendship originate? Are they fake with the other people in their lives too? I think female conversations really give an insight in how our culture wants to present itself.

  

  clinging to your cup + right leg for dear life while talking to your friend

Remember: when you look, things become beautiful. I sketch and take pictures because these things thrill me, beyond boring moralities. I collect my impressions in order to make my life into art and learn more about people. It is simply the difference between existential crises or feeling like life is indeed a beautiful gift, something one cannot reach authentically without a marinade of loving judgment. This sense of loving judgment is the friction that sparks our art.

For any of my fellow new agers-gone-artist that want to open their third eye without boring meditations, some didactical questions:

How do you make space for serendipity and non-algorithmic discovery?

Why don’t you photograph your fellow buddhas more?

Do you even have a library pass?

Where did you leave your keys?

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