I’ve reveled in the anonymity of sorting trolley. Both as a blog & as an anonymous handle. I’ve had a chance to get my hands dirty w/ tech & artistic expression. Now I want to go public w/ my name & profession & go all serious on yo ass! Not really, but I do want to be more open & honest. So far, I’ve decided not to go public w/ who “D.” is. I’m not going to tell you my real name, my new twitter handle or the name of my new blog unless you ask. Rather I will slowly sign off here & off twitter, & quietly start tweeting & blogging as myself. I’m sure I’ll miss aspects of the anonymity but I want to learn even more & build a professional network & challenge myself by putting my real name to my netprint. I’m hoping I will meet more new ppl & learn from them by sharing my ‘real’ self. I will still play (ala Platea) and I will still make mistakes.

A HUGE thank you to my reader/s. Pls keep in touch :)

A special “oh-you’re-just-great” thank you to the ever-supportive @Platea team who have made blogging, tweeting, flickring, tumbling & anything online, an essential artistic outlet. I WILL keep in touch!

If anyone A. reads this post, and B. wants to keep in touch, pls contact @sortingtrolley or email: sortingtrolley at gmail dot com (or you could leave a comment here).

I am going to launch a new blog & twitter account – so I’ll give you the deets & we can still play. Yay.

Thank you for reading & take good care of yrself :)

Yours in anonymity,

D.
xxx

Until next time,
take care,
D.

Amos, T. (2009). Abnormally attracted to sin. New York, N.Y.: Universal Republic.

Find it in a library near you

official site

Winner: The book of words.

Erpenbeck, J. (2007). The book of words. London: Portobello.

To kick things off in the Judge A Book By Its Cover Awards (see this post about the JABBICAs), it seems logical to commence with the title category. You’ve got to know your market. Book lovers & acquisition librarians will be attracted to this excellent title. The cute cover helps too.
Oh and the copy I saw was a hardcover – bonus points.

Find it in a library near you

Have you read it?

Q. How many balloons were harmed in the making of UP?
A. 144

Happy Birthday @azzamckazza!
Welcome to the 3.0′s. You will love it.
Love on & Fang on.

Gaiman, N. (2007). Coraline. Burton, Miss: Subterranean.

Oh. Wow. What an excellent book! Scary, vivid, imaginative & playful.
One of my favourite bits, and it was very hard to choose, would have to be:

The girl’s plate was piled high with pretty flowers. She smiled at Coraline, as if it had been a very long time since she had smiled and she had almost, but not quite, forgotten how. Coraline found herself liking the girl immensely.
p. 151

Find it in a library near you

If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favour. If you have, what did you think?

originally uploaded by Freya_bean

It was performed on twitter, and so was called a twerformance. Similar to the idea of flash mobs, The Great Yawn was a playful exploration of the potential of synchronised twitter updates, AKA tweets. Individuals scattered across the world followed @Platea on twitter & learnt of (founder & director) @thatwaszen‘s idea – but no specifics. Then days before the event the @Platea twitter feed was locked & those who were enthusiastic & were followed back got updates. Then we were told the exciting plan & asked to keep it hush-hush! The Great Yawn saw twerformers tweeting the word yawn at exactly the same time, co-ordinated across different countries and many time zones. This was an exercise in generating multiple tweets in the public timeline with the word yawn in them. There was no set script and we were encouraged to be as creative as we wished with our tweets. We didn’t use a hash tag so as to keep it seemingly spontaneous. This from the blog:

It was a “twerformance art” flash mob, i.e., a statusing (online happening), aimed at examining the twin tensions of Twitter: that it’s boring and mundane and that it’s an exciting place for viral, up-to-the-second news….I [@thatwaszen] chose yawning because of its interesting parallels with Twitter and the way it breaks past the boundaries of digital space and into physical space. As traditional flash mobs’ effectiveness comes from their physicality, this latter part was key. It’s a basic psychological phenomenon that when you see someone yawn or even when you think about yawning, you can’t help but yawn yourself (are you yawning yet?). As I described this concept to @Platea members, a number of them told me they were yawning just thinking about it. And yet, the purpose of yawning is mysterious. Like Twitter, it has an unclear usefulness for human beings, and yet, like Twitter, it is highly contagious and spreads rapidly in social circles.

I tweeted an R.E.M. lyric via tweetlater (now known as socialoomph) as I was asleep at 1:15am.

We had about 100 yawn tweets, 350 followers, photos & screen shots, & other beautiful & artistic interpretations for the twerformance, and oodles and oodles of fun! Check out the recap here. & stay tuned for future project news & reflections. Be sure to follow @Platea &/or join @Platea on Facebook to get yr art on!

THE PLAN

Now & then I’ll post recipients of the JABBICA. These will include titles I actually borrow &/or read, books that get onto my to-read list, & books that are generally pretty &/or shiny. I hope to share some prize eye candy! I’d also love your input – so please leave a comment, tweet/dent me, or email me (sortingtrolley AT gmail DOT com) any JABBICA nominations. As they say: sharing is caring.
FYI: I’m also working on an equivalent negative/opposite award. Ideas so far are JABBICAF (F for fail) or The Mouldy Bookmark. Any ideas?

I am a proud member of a public art collective called @Platea. Created by the talented An Xiao, @Platea is a collective of individuals interested in the power of public art carried out in the digital megacity of social media. The group consists of artists and non-artists living in many countries who share a passion of the potential for, & the pursuit of, artistic expression in social media. As the collective’s performances are akin to the art of street performers, the blog which helps co-ordinate and document performances is called @Platea : Tales from the Stweets. Here’s the official explanation:

Some of the projects can be subversive, tucked away in hidden locales in online space for only the most dedicated to find. Others can be overt (but not obvious), causing most daily users to pause and take notice. Some can be playful. Some can be serious. Some “local”, some “city-wide”. Almost all, we hope, will challenge members of the digital city in the same way the best public art does.

I believe our projects reveal we are interested in creating closer communities who really know their online ‘friends’ and ‘followers’. At the same time @Platea projects ask performers/contributors and audiences to observe & analyse how we use social media, and how it uses us. @Platea takes street art online & puts the up in status update. We like to have fun: we revel in our Team @Platea twitter banter, love a good cyber-hug, support each other’s artistic and other pursuits & have formed a lovely @Platea community.
I heart @Platea.
And I think you will too.
The good news is there’s a public participatory art project co-ordinated by An and her shiny happy steering committee from @Platea ON NOW!
It’s called hopes/dreams/fears and is open to everyone – that means you.

“hopes/dreams/fears” began in New York City on June 12 during the FIGMENT NYC arts festival on Governor’s Island and runs till the end of July with participants across the world. Members of online public art collective @Platea are gathering individuals’ hopes, dreams and fears in the form of status update language (i.e., “Jessica hopes that she graduates with honors next year.” “Fred fears he might lose his job due to the recession”). These will then be broadcast to a broader audience via a Facebook page, with the goal of uniting diverse groups via social media and offering a collective picture of communities’ hopes, dreams and fears during this time of economic crisis and transition.

To join in this wonderful idea simply:
1.fill out this form (anonymity = OK)
2. join the hopes/dreams/fears facebook group
3. wait to see yours and others’ hopes, dreams and fears broadcast over the next month and a half in your Facebook feed.

That’s it!
Oh and check out the @Platea blog for more cool stuff. You’ll see we’ve had supersized-party-bags-of-fun doing two other projects & playing an intermission game already. (I’m planning on posting about these soonish too).
You may like to follow @Platea & (if you don’t already) myself on twitter to hear about h/d/f progress. Also check out Joanie’s, Ingrid’s & Jonny’s h/d/f posts (and sorry team I’m sure I’ve missed some others).

I think this is an awesome idea with a heap of positive potential for listening, learning, understanding, and communicating. So get on board and share your hopes/dreams/fears and listen to others’ thoughts.
We all know it will be interesting, but are we ready for how constructive it could be…?

Any questions, comments or ideas please leave a comment here, DM or tweet me, or dent me. Likewise, if you’d rather leave your h/d/f here as a comment, together with your location & a real or false name, please do & I’ll pass it on to the steering committee.
I hope you’ll join in what promises to be a very special project.

buy this on amazon

You can follow Cirque du Soleil on twitter