I make felt effigies of the 'orange one' in my spare time.

Hi everyone my name is Dd and I’m excited to be part of Steemit despite a tricky start where it repeatedly refused to acknowledge my password. Why Steemit? Well I am sure over time my answers will be many but my initial response to such a question is that @lloyddavis who I greatly respect suggested I sign up and join in. So here I am. Everything Lloyd has suggested over the years has been either super useful, super informative or super fun and often all three.

I am currently studying for an MA in Fine Art and my work is often political in nature and almost certainly interactive. A place where technology meets art with a social or political message. I don’t create in isolation either, I do not have the skills I need to create the work I do and so collaborate with a myriad of other people. In the main, software and hardware engineers who give their time to my projects for the fun of being involved in something entertaining or meaningful. I am currently working on an interactive sculpture that is due to be shown at Quay Arts on the Isle of Wight in February as part of Island Hero’s and I have just had an exhibition at Newspeak House in Shoreditch, London. For Quay Arts I am working with ‘island hero’ Andy Stanford Clarke that of MQTT fame (in collaboration with Arlen Nipper) not to mention the hacking of dinosaurs on the Isle of Wight with a Raspberry Pi and working with Marwell Zoo using IoT and machine learning to make the Nylala that much happier when it comes to bedtime and they need warm beds. It is a great joy of mine to work with such talented people.

As I said my work in very often interactive and participatory with work including a felt effigy of the ‘orange one’ whose eyes light up when you stab him in the goolies. If the word goolies does not translate, its one of the many words in the UK for ‘balls’ as in testicles. Yes, stab #DicktatorDon in his Y-Fronts and his eyes light up. I am also working on an alternative Statue of Liberty and some other work around the subject of guns and violence.

Another reason for being here is that it is a requirement of my MA course that I keep a blog and so I would rather be on here blogging for you than anywhere else. On my last University assessment they said my work was about de-territorialisation, accelerationism and technical singularity (I can assure that was not intentional !– two of those three concepts I had never heard of before) so expect blog posts on all I have learned with the respect to those themes. The term accelerationism I have learned, comes from the ‘Accelerationists’ a group of people in the book “Lord of Light” by Roger Zelazny, a Sci Fi novel written in 1967.

I am currently reading “Enchanted Object: Innovation, Design and The Future of Technology” by David Rose. I try and do yoga three times a week. I’m trying not to eat sugar and the lack of it in my diet is causing me to cry a lot but I am hoping that will stop soon. I like dogs and cats in unequal measure. I love laser cutters, CNC machines, textiles and mould making. In fact I love combining traditional means of production, craft-based processes with machine-based fabrication. I listen to endless podcasts and rarely any music. I make large scale sculptures for Burning Man and I live in Hampshire in the UK. I am happy to be here. I don’t understand block chain but I am willing to learn and cryptocurrencies have been on the ‘learn about’ list for a long while now, though I feel I am rather late to the game. I am yet to learn markup so be warned my next post will be full of italics and bold lettering and blinkly lights.