Pure RESPITE

Checking my algo at the door

[Happy new year! The bulk of this post was written in more or less a single go on a gorgeous October afternoon, a day or two after moving into my studio. Since then, it’s evolved from a gleeful brain dump to one of my personal projects for 2025, which excites me. FINALLY!

I doff my winter hat to composer/modular synthesist Loula Yorke, whose work soundtracked much of my thinking this fall. Coincidentally, she mentioned in her most recent newsletter that she carved out her own studio space a year and a half ago and it was a gamechanger, as rooms of one’s own¹ can be.

Inspiring stuff! Yes! Let’s keep it going!]

---

I think often about how 2008’s introduction of hand-held “pocket” computers into the mainstream pointed the way to our current age of extreme connectivity. That anyone with access can build an audience and share (with countless² “others”³) news, information, media, advertising, opinions, TSA tray aesthetics, straight up lies, cat memes, and so much more is now a comically banal (yet somehow compelling) reality driving many of us to literal distraction. But back then, it felt like we might be at the beginning of something both cool and momentous that would change the communications game and allow us to more easily use our powers (and technology’s) for good. Didn’t it?⁴

Whatever the case, that democratization and the continued evolution of this technology has resulted in an ever-increasing presence of what is colloquially referred to as The Algorithm. As readers are no doubt all too aware, The Algorithm calibrates and delivers a personalized flow of information designed to keep individual “users” in a passive, consumption-oriented mode (being fed), rather than an active, discovery-focused mode (searching).⁵ This often results in us(ers) not knowing what we don’t know (and maybe not even knowing what we think we know) as we get caught up in our very own, just-for-us, dopamine-releasing flow.

While The Algorithm shapes us regardless of how we get around online, it is the hand-held and exceedingly portable nature of pocket computers, and the attention they demand, that most frequently impede attunement to our surrounding physical environment… and to each other. Devotion to these devices (and the “content” they relentlessly push) frequently interrupts or replaces meaningful in-person interactions, hands-on learning experiences, and/or tactile creative practices. Both analog and digital activities produce dopamine; the former results in what is essentially old-school/“earned” dopamine, and, depending on how much time one spends online, the latter results in a hitherto unimaginable firehose of “unearned” dopamine.

The Algorithm is most efficient when it keeps us in the palms of our hands. I love technology, but am tired, so tired, of stopping whatever it is I’m doing in order to “check” (Instagram, email, the weather, texts, the score of the soccer match, whether those socks I finally gave in and bought have been delivered, if I’ve gotten any “likes”, Reddit, whether or not the Australian Open has started). What to do? I need a break.

---

RESPITE (Rare, Easygoing Space Prioritizing Internetless, Tactile Experience)⁶ is an ongoing project encouraging creative thinking, learning, communication, and practice in a largely algorithm-free environment⁷ similar to what many of us experienced after the mainstreaming of high-speed internet, but before pocket computers were introduced in 2008.

RESPITE is currently headquartered in my 180 or so square feet of partially remodeled garage in Urbana, Illinois.

RESPITE’s guiding principles:

Rare | We’re removed from our own flow and dropped into the algorithmic flow many, many times each day in countless spaces - our workplaces, lines of any kind, in bed at 2 AM, at the dinner table, lunch dates, our vehicles, public transit, movie theaters, walks in the woods or in front of traffic, rock shows, etc. Spaces and places where attention-draining handheld devices are not centered are, indeed, EXTREMELY rare.

Easygoing | Time in the studio is not intended to be an ascetic, austere, over-governed experience. Leaving The Algorithm outside doesn’t mean we can’t listen to music at top volume or read unexpected material or have intense, heartfelt conversations about current events (or whatever). On the contrary - we can have MORE of these experiences, plus many other experiences, alone or together, surrounded by provocative visual art, hundreds of books, art supplies, a natural backyard environment, and excellent speakers.

Space | As mentioned, the studio is an environment where technology is available and useful, but is in the background, rather than centered. An important detail: The garage, whose back third now houses the studio, is detached from the house, creating an entirely separate place for ideas and creativity to flourish via selective/strategic inputs⁸. Visitors must walk through part of the garden to arrive at its entrance.

Prioritizing | Spending time in the studio by no means requires, or even recommends, the removal of all current-day technological inputs. It is merely a place where handheld devices are left outside the room; once visitors are inside, decisions can be made about internet use. At root, it’s about taking responsibility for inputs and striving for attention and attunement to our work, ourselves, and, when applicable, each other. In these 180 square feet, visitors commit to doing their best to make active choices and selections, rather than letting another entity make those choices for them. See “Rare” above.

Tactile | Turning pages. Putting another CD into the player or a tape into the deck. Writing postcards. Sorting seeds. Tending to plants. Arranging flowers. Lighting candles. Blowing them out. Painting. Collage. Typing. Arranging tchotchkes on the window sills. Singing loudly. Mining physical archives. Recording. Sweeping the floor. Stretching. Conversing. Cutting fabric. Stitching. Maintaining. Repairing. Adjusting the bass. Opening windows. Closing windows. What else?

Experience | All experiences are experiments, and all are honored here. Many will be attempted, but the meta experiment remains:

What do we do, and how do we feel, when we’re not left to our own devices?

I plan to spend this year investigating. Wanna come over?

---

Backyard Industry Radio Wayback Machine: January 2011

Inspiration, Please

This piece was broadcast 14 years ago?! Oh my god. Not much has changed, though I now religiously order seeds in early January to beat the rush. It’s interesting to hear myself muse on the expectations rising, around that time, around “experiences”, as I’m currently reading The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World by Christine Rosen. Suffice it to say we’re in uncharted territory 14 years later.

Also, Joan Dye Gussow remains one of my major influences and will be 97 years old later this year. Not that Joan will ever read this, but just in case: Thank you, Joan. You’re a badass.

1. As it happens (and as LY mentioned in the newsletter), Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own entered the public domain on 1/1/2025.

2. I mean this literally. We never really know.

3. Quotes added since AI-generated user accounts (aka fake people) are now more of a thing… except maybe they aren’t now? Who knows?

4. Perhaps. I don’t know what this says about me, but my first smartphone (2009?) felt like I’d just been handed an unlimited amount of Turkish Delight a la Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

5. “Sharing” is also part of this equation, of course, though some sort of reciprocation is nearly always expected, especially at scale. Examples of the vocabulary used around big-time sharing includes “harvesting” likes, “farming” engagement, etc. Hmmm.

6. I work with a lot of researchers at my day job. Researchers love a good acronym.

7. Anyone electing to hang out in the studio is asked to leave their devices outside the physical space for the duration of their visit. Once untethered, they’re encouraged to spend their visit engaging in conversation, reading, napping, and other activities free of digital distraction.

8. More on this idea in a future post.