My Dawdlr

Russell Davis set up a little project called Dawdlr, which was based around the idea of slow communication, an antidote to the extremely fast communication streams we now experience. As soon as I saw the project I thought I'd like to take part, all you have to do is write what you're doing on a postcard and send it off. I knew I could do that.

I had been doing some thinking about the online / offline marriage which will possible get a lot more interesting as mobile web apps really take hold over the next few years.

So what could I do? Well Russell's idea is really lo-fi. I love lo-fi. There's something consistently charming about the lo-fi, the hand made, it'll always be nicer (to me) than mass produced goods. It's partially why I buy so many second hand goods. I somehow feel that they've lived, they have extra character, their imperfection gives them perfection, somehow.

I also wanted to make it connect to some online activity. So I thought about the most lo-fi thing I could do with my computer and displaying text came second after being a torch.

First I wrote my 'what am I doing' text.

I photographed the text and opened photoshop. Printed it out a few times and stuck it on some card.
I then cut out some of the letters, making the statement unreadable.

The card had then become like a spy coded note. I placed an image on my blog of the missing letters, not the complete text just what wasn't shown on the card.

The two pieces of the puzzle coming together online. The effect of the paper card on the screen was quite pleasing and hugely lo-fi, partially due to my limited skills with a scalpel.

Another thing I quite liked is that the result doesn't give you much, just the fact that I was thinking about windows...not really that interesting to most people. It may seem like all this was for Russell's benefit. Well, he set the project and he was the only one to experience the result of my efforts but I did enjoy actually doing it.

The piece of text was about windows so on the front of the card I drew a picture, turning the holes in the card into windows of a building.

This all took longer than I expected and ended up looking like a GCSE art project but I did enjoy doing it. It's nice to have little (almost pointless) side projects than can distract you and inspire you. Afterwards, I imagined that I could have created a statement out of the letters left behind on the card and one created by the random letters on the screen. So I could potentially could have made three statements from one. But at the end of the day I think that would simply have caused me too many headaches.

So much of what I do for a living is idea-based, and digitally inspired. I can't write code. I don't make anything. I'm not very good at making things but I like playing at it. I'm sure I made this much harder than it was intended to be but often a route that causes more trouble is more rewarding.