This story is one of many about potatoes, available in this delicious zine:
Author: Bryan Mathers
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Montaigne and the Open Web
Here’s another little visual absorption from the Reclaim Open blog-a-thon, relating to a blog post by Doug Belshaw. At the top of his post, he outrageously includes an illustration by me from many years ago that I’d completely forgotten about. So add that one to the synthesis pile – oh look it’s in the trees!
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My website is a junk drawer
This week I’m tuning into Reclaim Open to try and make some visual sense of it. I really resonate with the metaphor used by Laura Hilliger in her blog post My website is a junk drawer. Maybe it’s because I’m organisationally challenged, but attach meaning to everything…
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Curious Intelligence
Prepping for a Visual Thinking workshop at DCU in Dublin last month (part of a conference entitled “Education after the Algorithm”) had me pondering my current interactions with Generative AI.
I recognise that magical feeling of speaking a sentence into the void and being presented with an instant revelation – a conjuring trick. But if Visual Thinkery is about anything, it’s about listening to more than just the words, and following a series of small experiments – some conscious, some unconscious until finally the creation seems formed enough to be abandoned and released to the wild, before have meaning gathered and attached by others…
Curiosity is the seam of gold in the creative journey. And it’s with that very same curiosity that I’m experimenting with AI and wondering what it is – behind the magic trick.
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Eh? Aye!
I’m as curious about AI as the next guy.
Coding? Oh my goodness, I wish that had been around when I was learning how to program.
Imagery? Meh. Seems like a waste of electricity to me…
This mathematical cartoon about Artificial Intelligence was created using the Remixer Machine. So you can remix it here.
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Open Education at a Crossroads
I’ve really enjoyed capturing keynotes and conversations live. It involves being playfully curious about what’s being communicated, and wondering how the pieces of the puzzle could fit together in a visual landscape.
I’ve always prioritised the capturing of messy insight over the creation of beautiful art. Somehow the ideas start to tell me where to put them and how they should fit together.
Often this process is called graphic recording or live scribing. But I think that neglects the intensive listening and translation that is involved.
This sketchnote was created whilst tuning in to Catherine Cronin & Prof Laura Czerniewicz give their keynote at the OER24 conference in Cork last year. It’s available to use under a CC licence.
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Art vs. Idea
I met Grayson Perry at an event once. When he was asked what is art? He responded by saying that Art is stuff made to hang on rich people’s walls…
Personally, I think I’ve had to unlearn the classroom concept of art that I picked up at school. Whatever I created had to be a true representation of the thing I was trying to capture, which is essentially an impossible task for adult and child alike.
For a long time now, my focus has been the idea. I think on paper with a black pen. The art bit – making it pop – comes second. I don’t want the complication of a colour palette until the end of the process.
This illustration was created for my workshop on Visual Thinking.
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A Typology of Interpersonal Recognition
Back in the old days of social media, h/t was a thing. (I remember having to ask what it meant…) Being restricted for characters as was the trend then, hat tip became h/t. I often posted half-baked drawings inspired by hearing someone speak at a meeting or event and used these precious 3 characters to acknowledge the spark behind the thought.
I was doing a little visual thinking (start in the middle of the page and work out in as many directions as possible) about interpersonal recognition for a credentialing workshop with Badge guru Doug Belshaw for the N-TUTORR project. Trying to think of all the ways that humans give recognition to each other. If I’m missing one dear to your heart, feel free to write me!
A couple of days after the workshop I was talking with Alan Levine about recognition in Open Education for the OEGlobal Podcast, and we contrived to build a remixer for humans to digitally hat tip.
Get ready to tip your hat here: Hat Tip Remixer
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The Meaning of Recognition
I think in the early days of thinking about open credentialing, I got fixated on the credential part. The proof you might receive from an authoritative body, qualified to judge, rather than a human nod or tip-of-the-hat from someone in my community. Recognition – we all need it.
By the way, it’s a long time since I’ve woven a friendship bracelet. (Is it still a thing amongst the youth of today?)
This illustration was created for a series of credentialing workshops with Badge guru Doug Belshaw for the N-TUTORR project.
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How you made them feel
I was listening to a politics podcast at the beginning of last week (weren’t we all?) and a cursory reference was made to this quote by Maya Angelou. It nibbled at the back of my head until I was prepping for a workshop mid-week. I drew it up and used it as the focal point for discussion on visual communication, and why it matters.
Every communication has an aesthetic, whether or not it’s intended. A printed font feels a certain way. A hand gesture lifts the words being spoken. Certain colours transmit a cultural code.
And this is all happening subliminally…
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Microcredentials and Recognition
Hidden in conversation are a whole host of metaphors, which are pictorial clues to the stories being told. Contrasting two metaphors allows us to compare how different each one feels from the other. That being said, for those living in bungalows, this might need some explaining…
This illustration was created for a series of credentialing workshops with Badge guru Doug Belshaw for the N-TUTORR project.
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Elements of a badging policy
What creates the spark behind an illustration? There’s nothing I love better than playing idea ping-pong with a co-collaborator.
This illustration was created for a series of credentialing workshops with Badge guru Doug Belshaw for the N-TUTORR project.