this was a good week

Tea and banana bread, baby. Thursday, April 4, 2019.

This was a good week! Here’s why:

• After two weeks with my entire family being one place in the world or another, we’re back together again; also, I was hella productive this week, and my sweet friend Indrani came all the way from the other side of town to visit me for tea. This was a great week.

• This British guy broke dumb English laws in front of the police to see if they’d arrest him. So funny.

• This is my kinda co-working space.

• My inner neat freak is thrilled by this art.

• Speaking of art, my friend Mira Jacob’s brand new graphic memoir, Good Talk, is finally out. Friends, if you are at all interested in anti-racism work, you need to buy this book. It touches on racism, colorism, interracial relationships, immigration and so much more - all while being funny, thought-provoking, and wonderfully vulnerable and courageous. I got my copy on Monday, and since then I’ve read it, put it on my coffee table where I intended for it to live, ended up giving it away to a friend, and ordered another copy for myself. It’s that good.

• How to judge your work.

• And finally, something different for today’s soundtrack: this light-and-mirror-sculpture is mesmerizing. It was commissioned by the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and created by an organization called SOFTlab. Click here or the image below to watch.

Mirror Mirror was commissioned by the City of Alexandria’s Office of the Arts. The artwork takes the form of an opened circle, 25 feet in diameter and 8 feet high, that visitors can walk inside and around. This structure in-the-round, like a lighthouse, is both a place to look outward at your surroundings and a beacon to be seen from afar and watched. The materials and interactive nature of the artwork reference the special type of lens used at Alexandria’s own historic Jones Point Lighthouse – called the Fresnel lens - the most advanced lens technology of the 1800s, which used a series of prisms to concentrate the light source and direct it into a narrow horizontal beam that was projected outward. Playing with the ideas of reflection and refraction of light, Mirror Mirror’s interior and exterior are clad with a mirrored surface that reflects the surrounding environment in unexpected ways.  Through a panoramic array of mirrors and sound-responsive lights,  Mirror Mirror will visually blend the waterfront, the fabric of Old Town, and the activity of pedestrians in the new park.. While the exterior is a monochromatic mirror that reflects the urban environment, the river and visitors themselves, the interior’s mirrored surface is tinted with the full color spectrum, providing another layer of vibrancy and interest. The artwork is also programmed to respond to sound with light, allowing visitors to interact with the artwork and affect its appearance using their voices and bodies. LED fixtures inside each of the artwork’s vertical components are activated by sound and respond by producing light, transforming the front-facing panels from mirrored to transparent, while the interior panels remain mirrored, creating an infinite, colorful reflection and forest of light.

And with that bit of beauty, have a great weekend, friends. See you next week.

---

---