Ocean ARTic Journal 8/VI/21

World Ocean Day, apparently. Also, my birthday, apparently.
I had a long, boozy lunch with Susan, featuring locally sourced, though bloody expensive, sustainable seafood. No idea if the wine was sustainable, but there was a lot of it, and it sustained me.
Not perhaps the best preparation for my late arrival into an Innovation showcase. Every time I attend or contribute to one of these virtual meetings its on a new platform, with various mute buttons, and comment flashes spinning out of every corner. Its impossible to tell how many people are out there, or what they were asking. I was grateful to Inge for hosting the session.

We spoke of the subjective nature of data, and questioned what pure objectivity might look like, and why it would be in any way attractive or useful. This, to me, seemed quite revolutionary. But later reflection forced me to realise is that my position is informed by my need to make a point, not to observe and record information. I recalled that subjective interpretation of data, the questioning of what appeared to be an unassailable truth is probably one of the key factors in enabling our political system to descend into the crepuscular cess pit that it has become. Maybe there should be nothing consensual at all about truth. Maybe the consensual is a concession too far and we have to accept that truth is solid, firm, sure. Something we have to accept.

We also touched on the tactile weight and substance of the material manifesting in this digital realm of bytes and flickering screens. The anticipated data from AWI is stored on cassettes, and has to be manhandled into machines, then spouted out into the network where it will take Lukrecia - after clearing her laptop of other data - approximately 36 hours to download. The data we require is a fraction of the whole, but the whole still needs to be in place to be queried and processed into a sub set. We remain at the mercy of the integrity of the network. Which makes it all the more prescient that today a CDN powered by Fastly had a critical error and brought down a significant portion of all web traffic - including, of course, our data transfer. And so it begins again in the morning.

In the evening, we walked down to the shore - low evening tide, sun low in the east, in a clear band between low cloud and the land - and jumped in to the sea, squealing and yelping.

The sea, the sea. My relationship with this force is altering as a direct result of this work. I feel it deep inside, almost hidden, still nameless. But it is less other, less elsewhere.

Comments are closed!