Dynamic Subspace

Category: Art

  • Joan Slonczewski Added to Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT)

    An image of a woman walking through a tunnel toward an ocean's beach and a sky filled with stars inspired by Joan Slonczewski's novel A Door Into Ocean. Created with Stable Diffusion.

    I added a whole new section on the Hard SF writer Joan Slonczewski (they/them/theirs) to the Feminist SF chapter of the OER Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT). It gives students an overview of their background as a scientist, writer, and Quaker, and it discusses three representative novels from their oeuvre: A Door Into Ocean (1986), Brain Plague (2000), and The Highest Frontier (2011). Like the Afrofuturism chapter, I brought in more cited, critical analysis of Slonczewski’s writing, which is parenthetically cited with a full citation instead of using a works cited list or footnotes.

    Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean was the inspiration for the image above that I created using Stable Diffusion. It took the better part of a day to create the basic structure of the image, then there was inpainting of specific details such as the woman’s footprints in the sand, and finally, feeding the inpainted image back into SD’s controlnet to produce the final image.

  • A Raccoon’s Hidey-Hole in a Stately Mausoleum

    Raccoon resting in the gable vent of a mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

    When I was walking past this mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery last month–a mausoleum that I had passed many times over the past two years–I did a double take, because I thought there was a sculpture in the gable vent that I hadn’t noticed before. What I thought was a stone carving was instead a cute creature–a rascally raccoon enjoying the sun on a mild day from the safety of his hidey-hole in a stone structure, lacking context, is akin to a wee mammal’s mansion. Or, repurposing William Gibson’s aphorism, the raccoon “finds its own use for things.”

    Raccoon resting in the gable vent of a mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

  • Naming the Lost Memorial Activation and Dedication Ceremony at Green-Wood Cemetery

    Naming the Lost Activation and Dedication Ceremony at Green-Wood Cemetery, May 19, 2024.

    Last weekend, there was an activation and dedication ceremony for the Naming the Lost Memorial at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York that I posted about here last week. There were speakers, music, and rituals performed. The banner to the left of the speakers in front of the chapel has written on it, “A Big, Slow, Majestic COVID Memorial.” It couldn’t have been a better day–pleasant and sunny. Afterwards, I walked a few miles through the cemetery with my N95 mask off and hanging from my backpack’s sternum strap.

  • Life is Fun

    The words "Life is Fun" written in white chalk on the metal guide of a roll-up shutter outside the VFW post on Third Avenue, Brooklyn.

    I saw this white chalk scrawling–“LIFE IS FUN”–on a roll-up shutter guide outside the VFW Post on Third Avenue near the federal prison.

    I detected a hint of sarcasm.

  • Wee Bee on a Solar Cell

    Bee walking on a solar cell at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

    While I was admiring the solar-powered headstone in Green-Wood Cemetery, I saw this tiny bee checking out the solar cells on the memorial’s left side.