A real-life Wiki Garden?

#21

SheepyWiki2 is seems like one of the less confusing of the 7 versions I put onto my GitHub. Substitute the number at the end to see other versions

https://alexhough.github.io/SheepyWiki2.html

I hacked a documentation macro and instead of icon for a tip or idea I substituted for a sheep icon I found on the Noun Project

https://thenounproject.com

The idea developed from the documentation macro into a way of marking up different perspectives or voices into the text.

The sheep I had in mind was on a hill, overlooking the Cheshire Plain, out towards Liverpool, Wales and the Irish Sea. I imagined the sheep to be a cartoon character, and as a cloned sheep it would have certain attributes.

I was thinking about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and cloned that idea and adapted it to the dreams of a cloned sheep! Maybe I’d eaten some strange pickle… anyway …it interesting for me looking back at SheepyWiki!

#22

My thinking around wiki gardening evolved when I was recording a podcast in a hut devoted to selling coffee. The owner let me use it in the afternoons when he is closed. In conversation the idea that we were like hermit crabs, using someone else’s shell for our own purposes.

I made some artworks / artefacts, and displayed them so that the coffee business’s customers would see evidence of our activity.

We were like Cuckoos, laying ideas in someone else’s nest. The project was called Divergence and Drift to encourage creative thinking. We may have talked about memes but somehow I ended up searching “extended phenotype culture.”

I came across Kim Sterelny and 4E cognition. From this comes an idea that a culture is like scaffolding for the mind, the mind and culture works together.

For me, actually doing a physical project with some metaphorical meaning is like scaffolding. Taking wiki gardening a little bit further than the metaphor, creating real life thing (like Charles Jencks did with his Garden of Cosmic Speculation) is perhaps an inclination more associated with the arts than software.

Artists have a licence to mess about with metaphors and their origins. Conceptual art is all about playing with concepts without any immediate practical purpose.

I like the idea of coming full circle or closing the loop between the wiki garden metaphor, its origins in pattern languages and creating a new pattern language where wiki thinking (OK specifically TiddlyWiki thinking and culture) becomes part of a new pattern which could fit in with some of Alexander’s original patterns.

Wiki gardening comes from within a theory of adapting buildings, communities and public and private spaces.

I see the process of physically gardening and designing a garden as one which has spin off effects. By focusing on the task, invariably your thoughts diverge and drift.

A real physical task, outside with other people – having real life conversations – is somehow embodying a metaphor, and in my context a collision of contexts which may have little value than my own amusement!

[1] Kim Sterelny - Wikipedia

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#23

I think this is what Charles Jencks tried to bring into a garden, but instead of a mind map you’d go into a real garden which links to ideas. He takes the roman idea of using location to aid memory and takes it into areas of uncertainty: physics and his own discipline of post-modern architecture.

The walk around the garden is generative, creating new ideas: different from a map which shows what’s already there.

Alex

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#24

Brilliant piece of work, @AlexHough : not only is this a top-tier addition to my short list of TW learning resources, but moreover creative, and FUN! Love the sheep imagery, and the various metaphorical connotations of it; an idea w/ LEGS, man -bravo!

/walt

#25

I started with the sheep character:

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Then imagined a learning community. Of course we have bullies.

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I imagined a framework for telling stories, with characters’s voices adding to the text. I was inspired by hypertext fiction, Mark Bernstein and his tool Tinderbox. SheepyWiki would be like a hypertext comic, but also a way of bringing self criticism and reflexivity into the text.

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With the help of SheepyWiki it looks like I wandered off the plot and then lost the plot!

Some of the tiddler titles have three full stops at the end. This is unfortunate because they can’t be added to permaviews. The ones ending with three full stops are landscape pictures with the sheeps thoughts. Of course, being a clone, she doesn’t always have original thoughts

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https://alexhough.github.io/SheepyWiki7.html#Small%20is%20Beautiful:[[Small%20is%20Beautiful]]%20[[Rote%20learning]]

#26

I believe I can see a TiddlyWiki culture, even only if it is in my head. Certainly the complexity, the networking and alternative structure especially linking, provides plenty of room for creativity not unlike that found in art and philosophy as well as we find in community.

#27

Good to hear. If there is any topic that should be tasty enough to engage lots of interest (seeing as how everyone eats), it seems to me that this one ought to have that sort of broad appeal. The one hair i see in this soup is that TW tech does not lend itself so well to the development of real community (i.e. multi-contributor) applications… Tho i gather that there is some development along such lines in the works (am i right, @joshuafontany ? :wink:

GMTA, Alex! an idea whose time has come, IMHO. Of course it is inherently challenging, inasmuch as a Community Market Garden IRL (In Real Life) is about bringing people together in contiguous Space-Time, while a web community like ours is physically dispersed by its very nature. Still, that is no obstacle, from my perspective; in fact the very diversity of perspectives brings a richness of offerings.

For example: In your UK context, a focus on preserves makes perfect sense, while i am more focused on fresh vegetables, which we grow all year round down here in sunny Algarve PT… Though we also bring to market a few fermented products (e.g. kimchee & kraut, kombucha, etc.), mainly because of their probiotic qualities. Anyway: you are obviously more deeply immersed in that topic than me (i have skimmed S.Katz’s “Wild Fermentation,” but the Japanology ref is a new one on me. More to explore!).

Anyway Alex: i’m happy to engage w/ you more deeply about this topic -along w/ anyone else here that is likewise energised by this thread of potential collaboration. “Comida Viva,” as we call it down here; “Living Food” for not only thought, but action!

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#28

It sounds like you have an amazing set up over there.

In edition to the Japanese video, I tried to add this one [1]

Here I think we have a highly aspirational presentation of the world of small scale horticulture. It’s beautiful and takes gardening, combines it with food and takes it into the art of film-making – the kind of thing that transcends the work of the influencer.

Li Zi Qi is now one of the biggest YouTube stars in China, the video below has been viewed over 13 million times. Its about radish, aka Daikon. Check out how she cuts those huge carrots and hangs them from the trees!

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#29

Trust me when I say I am working on it!

#30

Wow: this short film is amazing on so many levels; thanks for sharing,m @AlexHough. So inspiring AND informative, even w/ voicetrack in a language i can’t follow, and SO beautifully filmed & produced. As for Li Zi Qi: I would give it all up to be her Intern (slave, whatever :-)), if only…

I will certainly be sharing this little gem w/ our farm team, to “raise the bar” a bit on our own standards. Like: compare that one to our little homespun video on making saurkraut:

…And it’s obvious how production quality trumps content

As it happens tho: there was a film crew here over winter, filming this other short feature (~8min) just published last weekend, whose 2nd half is all about our farm:

Voicetrack is all in Portuguese, of course, and, though i wish content was a bit more about farming and less about “feeling,” production values are pretty good, IMHO. Tough league, tho, that thar YouTube!

/walt

#31

Very true. Very good.

The lesser known Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang did interesting stuff in France with mirrors … VISAGE Tsai Ming Liang - Visage (You're So Pretty Dance Scene) - YouTube

#32

It’s wonderful to see these videos, what an amazing place!

Li Zi Qi has tapped into a the slow TV genre. There’s hardly any speaking. She’s realised that the background sounds and the music are very important. She’s creating a relaxing emersive experience that works for many different audiences - not just the horticulture and pickling market.

By using one camera on a tripod she reduces the complexity of the camera work. Instead she puts a lot of work into the shot beforehand. She’s basically created a film-set and has worked out standard shots and camera angles. Each camera angle is used over and over again. She uses the same knife. All the pots are beautiful. The interiors are simple, rustic and timeless.

She’s also tapped into a longing for a simpler life which many city dwellers have, a type of nostalgia for a past (that never really was). By having little of no speech, the films emphasise the quietness of working on your own outside.

#33

Dianxi Xiaoge is from Yunan, she’s similar to Li Zi Qi but her style is more rustic.

Both observe the “show don’t tell” rule that ArtTutor drills into her students

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Her video

#34

The Chinese thing you linked to was great! The physical making in it is spot on.

Footnote: In cinema the Tableau is under used … though we do have the genius works of Parajanov … The Color of Pomegranates FULL MOVIE Parajanov/ Նռան գույնը / Цвет Граната - YouTube

TT, x

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