Pat Carroll

  • I want my things to be scratched up with character

    I’ve got this weird thing that I’m being drawn to currently: the desire for character being reflected in the things I own and use regularly. I have a lot of things that look new — in top condition. And it’s nice having new things, but on the other hand, these things don’t have use on them. They’re all still fairly pristine.

    For example, I have a great keep cup which I’ve been using now for a couple of years. It still looks brand new. This is a good thing I guess, but I just want it to be a little more beat up. I think having something that is beat up represents an element of frugality: not giving in to the temptation of buying the next shiny thing. Instead, I want to get proper use out of what I own, and I want this approach to be reflected in these things. I want that keep cup to have a few bumps and scratches on it. The same with my water bottle: it just looks so new and clean, and it is only a few months old. But I want the scratches and dents!

    A big one is my phone. I got an iPhone 15 Pro at the end of 2023. Firstly, I have no idea why I bought the Pro version — I actively try to not use my phone these days. The camera is great, but I also don’t take heaps of photos and videos — I have a really good camera for that. The phone itself is in great condition, even after a couple of years of use. So I don’t really see why I would trade it in for the new one. Doing so would be undeniably wasteful. Instead, I want to keep it until it is all beat up. I want to run it into the ground!

    In many ways, the iPhone is almost like a subscription model — for many consumers, it’s a common practice (cultivated by Apple) to upgrade it when a new one comes out, encouraging users to pay again each year or couple of years for the new features. Of course, it’s not exactly like a subscription model, as if I choose not to, I can still use my current one. In that way, it’s like Bitwig, where I pay for the current version, which gives me updates for a couple of years. After that time though, I have to pay for another round of updates for 2 years, or just stick with my current version.

    But not buying all of these new things, and instead having a few things that you then build a strong connection and history with is, in my mind, a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to modern consumerism. It’s a way of demonstrating not giving into coercive advertisement. With this iPhone, I have paid a big bunch of cash for the silly Pro version, and I’m going to use it for as long as I can, to get the most value out of that money as I can.

    I want to look at my things, see the scratches on them, and know where they’ve been with me and why they are the way they are.

  • It’s been raining a lot

    It’s raining so much at the moment. Days and days and days of it. It’s interesting being in the thick of one of these periods of weather—it feels impossible that it could ever be sunny and warm again. It’s the same with being in the thick of a cool winter; how could it ever be hot again? It’s this sense that this is the way things currently are, and that’s how they will always be. It’s similar to times of political and social problems; how could there ever be harmony again? Of course, there will be, just as it will be sunny and warm again.

    Having said that, there’re indicators that we’re heading into a very wet spring. There may be a negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) occurring, the waters around Australia warm, leading to more rain than usual. A negative IOD typically doesn’t last as long as a La Niña event, but it still means it’ll probably be rainy for much of the time until early summer. Though, I’ve been actually enjoying watching the rain come towards my apartment. Because the recent weather has been going from North-East to South-West, I’ve had this great view of it pouring over Bondi Junction, approaching via Centennial Park, and then raining right over where I live.

  • Plans & progress for Machine Hall installation

    I’m currently working on an Installation that will be presented on the 26th of September at Machine Hall in Sydney. The event is called “Elysian”. I’ve sent over the references to the visual artist I’m collaborating with for it, Kevin Nguyen.

    I’m now in the process of building a big foundation of music, which I’m going to send over to Kevin by the end of the week. It will be good to have this all as a framework to then build new material on top of. I want to play with some generative music approaches to create that material—a bunch of randomness and unpredictability on top of more stable material. Bitwig will be great for that. I’ll record long takes from a generative system built in Bitwig’s ‘The Grid’, and isolate the useable parts to work into the foundation.

    At times, I want the generative material to be the sole focus, and at other times, I want it to sit behind or embedded within the foundation layers. I want there to be a decent flow to the music, but also areas where the focus does shift between different types of material. In other words, I want there to be a kind of contrast between different sections. I want this contrast to be in the types of sounds used—presenting textural and atmospheric materials, and then more pulsatile and transient ones. Sort of like a mix between the Hypnus Records sound and Ryoji Ikeda’s approach to minimal-glitch (but no one can do it as good as Ikeda—he’s just an example of someone who nails the installation approach. It almost feels cliche to reference his work, but there’s no denying how good it is).

  • My thoughts on ‘The Shallows’ – Nicholas Carr

    I recently finished The Shallows – Nicholas Carr. It was a really interesting exploration about how the internet is changing how we think. It was also super interesting as it was written around 2009-2010, so everything Carr was saying was based on just working on laptops, browsing the net. As I was reading, I just thought about what happened over the next 15 years; what he was observing absolutely blew up in proportion.

    He starts with McLuhan’s phrase, “the medium is the message”, and begins with a history about how “intellectual technologies” such as clocks, maps, documents and books, changed how we humans thought about things like time, geography and space, and knowledge. He then takes a surprising route through the discovery of neuroplasticity, and sort of points to this as how the media we consume shapes our thinking. From here, he dives into how internet media, which is fragmented, and filled with hyperlinks to encourage rabbitholing, has led to more distracted and fragmented thinking. He points to this as the reason why he and so many others have found it more difficult to finish books or even long articles. By using the media on the internet, he wasn’t exercising the abilities to sit with a long, cohesive text for a long time, developing sustained focus.

    I loved the book, and found it both informative and reassuring. I’ve been interesting in the ideas about how technology shapes us (rather than the other way around), and this provided a nice historical overview of this concept. And, I simply liked the message that developing the skill of sitting with a text for a long time, focusing on its ideas, avoiding distractions and competing texts, was a very valuable and productive way to spend one’s time.

    The book definitely made me feel like reading long texts is essential for deep thinking, and sadly is also a skill that is under attack through the flood of addictive short-form content. It makes me worry quite a lot for students and their abilities to learn, if they’re spending large amounts of time scrolling socials or skimming webpages. I don’t know if I’m catastrophising, but I genuinely feel that this is a very serious issue — where young people are being brought up using social media, which obliterates their abilities to sit with a text, have cohesive thoughts and learn/think deeply. I feel like this could lead to a feeling of disconnection with the world and the self. But, I’m also seeing quite a bit of backlash at the moment against short-form garbage – young people valuing critical thinking, rejecting algorithmic recommendations, and taking control of their attention. So there’s hope!!