Dear wonderful humans at Creativeland Asia,
What an unbelievable opportunity. Adventuring with you all would truly be a dream. I'm a passionate lady with creative spunk who has been hungering for India for almost a year now as I make my jump from the land of public policy to animation.
In 2012, I moved to Detroit with three of the most talented people I know to start a design collective, Wedge Detroit. We wanted to take creativity and art to a place with a rich history and a lot of need.
Infamous for its abandoned sidewalks, we had a crazy idea over beer one night--a world record long hopscotch. Too young and stupid to know how young and stupid we were, we went through with it, and Hopscotch Detroit went from conception to birth (video here).
Hopscotch grew past our expectations, receiving a lot of press locally, nationally, and internationally, and just earlier this month, a group of equally crazy folks in Seattle decided to create another hopscotch course for their town.
Also...I once gave a TEDx talk about aliens.
But that's another story and shall be told another time :)
Cheers to you all. Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ajooni
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
The Neverending Story
I started crocheting triangles two night ago to realize an image in my head of a geometric scarf.
I quickly became amazed at how much math is actually going to have to go into this project--crocheting the triangles to the right height, width, angle--so that they all fit together. The enhanced complexity got me excited. Maybe this will turn our beautifully... Maybe I'll make more, and they'll each be unique knit-mathematical wonders, and more people will want them, and I'll make MILLIONS!
Or maybe I'll say "Screw it!" when I get too frustrated and choose to get distracted by something else. And something else... and something else....
Or maybe I'll say "Screw it..." but continue through it anyway, knitting triangle after triangle, and force the pieces together and create an end product that will actually be something beautiful, and I'll take this to mean that we exist in a network of braided mystery, and that we often times plan too much when the best results are those we couldn't have planned for.
Or maybe I'll say "Screw it" and continue anyway, and create a truly beautiful end product that I hadn't planned on and take this to mean that there isn't a rhyme or reason to anything, that nothing is in our control, and therefore it doesn't matter what we do or what we create because it eventually will just be completely pointless.
Or maybe I'll become obsessed and keep knitting triangle after triangle, searching for that perfection I see in my head and maybe people around me will start to worry and, after failing to make me stop, will send me to a mental institution, which, to my pleasant surprise, I discover is actually a secret think tank where all the "crazies" get to do their work, each focused on themselves too much to focus on someone else being crazy.
OR maybe I'll cycle through all of these iterations, slightly different each time, just different enough to make them feel new, and then I'll open my journal to write about that particular time and accidentally fall upon a page from two years ago in which I describe having the exact same emotion, surprised in the present moment of how I have absolutely no recollection of it.
At which point I'll laugh. Or cry. Or journal about that. Or knit a scarf.
I just read the title of this blog post and chuckled again. First because I realize that I got completely sidetracked from writing about the book I am currently reading--The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. Second because I realize that in not writing about The Neverending Story, I ended up writing a neverending story.
Perhaps every story has within it a neverending story.
But that's another story, and shall be told another time....
Infinite love,
Joonia
I quickly became amazed at how much math is actually going to have to go into this project--crocheting the triangles to the right height, width, angle--so that they all fit together. The enhanced complexity got me excited. Maybe this will turn our beautifully... Maybe I'll make more, and they'll each be unique knit-mathematical wonders, and more people will want them, and I'll make MILLIONS!
Or maybe I'll say "Screw it!" when I get too frustrated and choose to get distracted by something else. And something else... and something else....
Or maybe I'll say "Screw it..." but continue through it anyway, knitting triangle after triangle, and force the pieces together and create an end product that will actually be something beautiful, and I'll take this to mean that we exist in a network of braided mystery, and that we often times plan too much when the best results are those we couldn't have planned for.
Or maybe I'll say "Screw it" and continue anyway, and create a truly beautiful end product that I hadn't planned on and take this to mean that there isn't a rhyme or reason to anything, that nothing is in our control, and therefore it doesn't matter what we do or what we create because it eventually will just be completely pointless.
Or maybe I'll become obsessed and keep knitting triangle after triangle, searching for that perfection I see in my head and maybe people around me will start to worry and, after failing to make me stop, will send me to a mental institution, which, to my pleasant surprise, I discover is actually a secret think tank where all the "crazies" get to do their work, each focused on themselves too much to focus on someone else being crazy.
OR maybe I'll cycle through all of these iterations, slightly different each time, just different enough to make them feel new, and then I'll open my journal to write about that particular time and accidentally fall upon a page from two years ago in which I describe having the exact same emotion, surprised in the present moment of how I have absolutely no recollection of it.
At which point I'll laugh. Or cry. Or journal about that. Or knit a scarf.
I just read the title of this blog post and chuckled again. First because I realize that I got completely sidetracked from writing about the book I am currently reading--The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. Second because I realize that in not writing about The Neverending Story, I ended up writing a neverending story.
Perhaps every story has within it a neverending story.
But that's another story, and shall be told another time....
Infinite love,
Joonia
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
German eye twitches
A German girl woke up one morning after a particularly fantastic dream with a peculiar twitch in her eye. She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. When she asked those around her if they could see the twitch, they said, "Nein." She left the matter there.
Thirty-two years later, a German scientist woke up with a distantly familiar twitch in her eye. She did not bother to ask those around her if they could see it. Her husband would have mentioned it, but did not want to make her self-conscious. After three days, the twitch had not gone away. The woman stared at herself in the mirror a long time.
The German scientist lady proceeded to dedicate the coming years of her life to studying every muscle in the human face; she wanted to know what each of them did, how they were connected to the human brain.
In 2008, she released a study. Of her many findings, one revealed that in every human--no matter race, gender, nationality, or musical preference--there is a small muscle located near the outer eye which, in 100% of homosapien sapiens, will twitch, ever-so-slightly, when one experiences pleasure. The twitch is so automatic, instantaneous that one cannot prevent the response, even if they tried, even if they really, really wanted to.
Perhaps we can never be on the "wrong" path. What else twitches in us that we don't realize? Where do our feet start taking us when we're not paying attention? What are the rest of our bodies saying that we can't or don't want to vocalize through words? How do the things we want but don't admit to, the things we're afraid of wanting, how do these wants bubble to the surface?
Perhaps we can never be on the "wrong" path because we can only ever be our own, twitchy selves. Perhaps we can just decide how much we indulge our twitches, follow them, how fast or slow we decide to move on our universal wavelength.
(German scientist back story may contain dramatizations.)
Thirty-two years later, a German scientist woke up with a distantly familiar twitch in her eye. She did not bother to ask those around her if they could see it. Her husband would have mentioned it, but did not want to make her self-conscious. After three days, the twitch had not gone away. The woman stared at herself in the mirror a long time.
The German scientist lady proceeded to dedicate the coming years of her life to studying every muscle in the human face; she wanted to know what each of them did, how they were connected to the human brain.
In 2008, she released a study. Of her many findings, one revealed that in every human--no matter race, gender, nationality, or musical preference--there is a small muscle located near the outer eye which, in 100% of homosapien sapiens, will twitch, ever-so-slightly, when one experiences pleasure. The twitch is so automatic, instantaneous that one cannot prevent the response, even if they tried, even if they really, really wanted to.
Perhaps we can never be on the "wrong" path. What else twitches in us that we don't realize? Where do our feet start taking us when we're not paying attention? What are the rest of our bodies saying that we can't or don't want to vocalize through words? How do the things we want but don't admit to, the things we're afraid of wanting, how do these wants bubble to the surface?
Perhaps we can never be on the "wrong" path because we can only ever be our own, twitchy selves. Perhaps we can just decide how much we indulge our twitches, follow them, how fast or slow we decide to move on our universal wavelength.
(German scientist back story may contain dramatizations.)
Friday, June 14, 2013
Ears
A few months ago, I was in California staying with a friend. He dozed off early, leaving me alone with a lump of clay.
He woke the next morning with this at his bedside:
I later gave the ear a cartilage piercing and made it into a necklace. He started to wear it, which led to more people wanting ear necklaces (???). I sculpted more ears for more people, feeling intrigued by them without any of us really knowing why.
A week later, Italo Calvino told me:
A few months out of the ear trade, the topic came up again with my friend, Alex, who was finishing editing a series of four films he had made over the past year, one of which we made together.
"I keep hesitating at titling the project. For me, the films have a connective thread, but I don't want to name that thread. That's for the viewer to create."
"You know, there's this quotation..."
Alex is unleashing the film project, "Shape of an Ear," online this month. The films are beautiful, each having that essential something which perks ears of all sorts. You can watch (/hear) it here.
He woke the next morning with this at his bedside:
I later gave the ear a cartilage piercing and made it into a necklace. He started to wear it, which led to more people wanting ear necklaces (???). I sculpted more ears for more people, feeling intrigued by them without any of us really knowing why.
A week later, Italo Calvino told me:
"It is not the voice that commands the story--it is the ear."
A few months out of the ear trade, the topic came up again with my friend, Alex, who was finishing editing a series of four films he had made over the past year, one of which we made together.
"I keep hesitating at titling the project. For me, the films have a connective thread, but I don't want to name that thread. That's for the viewer to create."
"You know, there's this quotation..."
Alex is unleashing the film project, "Shape of an Ear," online this month. The films are beautiful, each having that essential something which perks ears of all sorts. You can watch (/hear) it here.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Hopscotch Seattle !!! :) :) !!!!
Yesterday, there was a whole lot of sidewalk chalk happening in Seattle.
A few months after Hopscotch Detroit, a group in Seattle contacted us about taking our idea to Seattle. We were so happy--it's exactly what hopscotch was about: people putting initiative behind creative and crazy ideas to connect with those around us, taking it upon ourselves to use the resources at our disposal and create our own opportunity to engage our community, both its people and its public space.
Hopscotch Seattle happened Saturday, June 1st.
Eight months ago, Sol Neelman, a contributor for WIRED (and an intensely and wonderfully strange man), flew down for his first visit to Detroit to see Hopscotch Detroit for himself. Author of Weird Sports and living in Portland, Sol had the opportunity to go to Hopscotch Seattle yesterday as well.
Fortunately for me, he sent me the following photo. Unfortunately for everyone else in my check out line at Costco, I broke out into a combination shriek/smile/cry, and confused a lot of Saturday afternoon grocery shoppers. ("I'm really sorry. Whole sale just gets me emotional.")
Here are some of Sol's from Hopscotch Detroit:
Congrats to our Seattle hopscotch family. You took the idea and pushed it even further, transforming it into something so beautiful for your community. Inspired.
More from Wedge here.
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