Thursday, May 17

 

 

Sunshine woke me at 4:00 and then at 6:00, just after I had got back to sleep. I got up at 6:45 and had a shower, as much to wake me up as to clean me. As soon as Sunshine had food he raced outdoors, never to return. Since the weather continued in a tropical mood this did not surprise me. I simply assumed (correctly as it happens) that he had gone to Selja’s back garden to lie in the plants by her compost.

When I got to Arcada I had a long conversation with Jutta on Skype to make plans for the rest of this year and the first half of next year. We discussed moving the furniture around in the Online Media Lab, and then we discussed the possibility of actually persuading Seti to get us new tables of an entirely different sort: the sort we had seen when we went round with her a week or so ago.

I then emailed all of the media students asking, “Who wants to make toothpaste?” One group of first year students had had toothpaste-making as their innovative solution to spreading awareness of environmental issues in the Concepts & Innovation course in January, and I now had a time and date for them to do it. Even as I sent the mail I knew that I would get no answer.

I prepared the final Interactive Storytelling assignment and assembled a greatest hits slideshow, pulling together elements from the previous eight slideshows in the course to make a coherent set of instructions for the assignment that also acted as a reminder of what we had covered.

I spent the afternoon researching different methods of toothpaste preparation. They all seemed woefully simple, which constitutes part of the point of the workshop. I also found the time and energy to begin bringing this site up to date. I added some diary entries and read through some essays to remind me of things I had done in the past. To my surprise more of the essays than I remembered allude to Peirce in some way, or base their arguments on thoughts of his.

I decide that I should go for a walk, as I try to do every hours or so. This time I stumbled upon Seti in the act of creating Toy Town on the ground floor of Arcada. I stop and photograph one of the new houses. Seti explains that the area we now know as the Small Square will become a much more inviting space for the students once it has houses and armchairs and big rubber balls in it. I notice that the Large Square, otherwise known as the Dining Area, also has two houses in it.

I suggest to Seti that we should get a huge over-sized play mat with roads and ponds printed on it, and stand all the houses and benches in the correct places on that. We could then add big plastic trees and it would seem perfect.

Seti doesn’t believe me.

I will stop at Alepa on my cycle ride from Puotila to buy milk and when I get home at about 16:10 Sunshine will race from the bushes to greet me. I will feed him and he will trot outside again. He will not return until about 23:00 when I have got ready for bed and started to lock up.

Sunshine will manage to avoid getting locked out by about three minutes. I will feel happy to see him: a feeling that will start to wear off when he refuses to let me get any sleep again.