Metafiction and metaphor

Most fictional writing makes generous use of figurative language: hyperbole (exaggeration), anthropomorphism, simile. This much is obvious. As a reminder, here’s a fragment of imaginative writing from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities: “The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city.…More

The threat

“You told me you would start writing now you have time on your hands. You have plenty to write about since you came out of confinement.” I took that as a threat. If I didn’t give an account I could end up inside again. Then it dawned. My inquisitor was writing everything down. “Do you…More

Metafiction and melancholy

A metafiction typically reflects on the writing process of the author as the work is being written. Either fictional characters assume the role of the author of the piece, or actual authors weave themselves into the story and reflect on their own processes. Metafiction is an appropriate genre with which to explore melancholy. Scholars have…More

Pastimes revisited

I’m looking back at some of my blog posts from 2013. The posts canvas the topics: gaming culture, time management, design transitions, and online inference. As it happens, they each circle around the subject of evidence. Evidence is material for narrative, delay, aesthetic judgement, and inference. Let’s Play introduces the sociability of play, including video gaming…More

A tissue of citations

I’ve just completed an essay for a special edition of Architectural Theory Review in honour of my friend and former colleague Adrian Snodgrass, who passed away last year. Adrian introduced me to structuralism, semiotics and hermeneutics. In part of that essay I reference the writing of the literary theorist and cultural semiologist Roland Barthes (1915-1980).…More

How to explain art

Here is an audio of a sequence of blog posts I published in 2013. Some were written while on a trip back to Australia after an absence of 16 years. These reflections of a traveller later informed my books Mood and Mobility, Network Nature, and Derrida for Architects. My current challenge is to see what…More

Not everyone isn’t unhappy

I’ve just emerged from an interaction with ChatGPT reviving the following posts from 2013. I was interested in my early attempt to explain what we now think of as “confirmation bias.” The example I led with was of people arguing that nature settings can instil a positive mood. Scholars and everyday observers tend to select…More

What was I thinking!

Past writings, diaries, letters, course notes, publications and blog posts reveal what I was thinking 10 to 20 years ago and beyond—or do they? To read them now is to be reminded how much any authored text is steeped in the artifices of language, culture, and circumstance. There is no direct access to an original…More

Beyond attention

I’m still reviewing my blog posts from 2013. In keeping with the unstructured nature of blogging, I didn’t plan sequences of posts to follow particular themes. However, a thread does emerge from this sequence of six posts — that of attention. Soft fascination (138) introduces the theory that sustained concentration on a task induces “attention…More

Geometry and affect

I’m reprising some older blog posts from 2013 that consider vertigo, oblivion, melancholy, the motion of swings, and the emotional experience of urban spaces. Later on I drew this material together in my book Mood and Mobility (2016). With assistance from ChatGPT I’ve updated the sentiments of these posts under the rubric of geometry. I also attach…More