2022 Apps, A Bit Differently
Duane Hanson Janitor, sculpture at the Milwaukee Museum of Art (DCZ, photo taken 2021)
As you turn the corner into the museum’s main gallery space, you’re greeted with the small, unassuming figure of a middle-aged man. Fatigued, dirty, and weary from their labor, a familiar sense of exhaustion that arrives towards the end of the work week. For an instant, it’s real. And then, without hesitation, it becomes hallucinatory. All too quickly, you regain your wits and realize it’s a simulation. A gift. A hyperreal sculpture from the artist, Duane Hanson.
That instant, from hallucination to realization, perfectly describes the speed of the previous two years. Time feels impossibly condensed, dehydrated, motionless… and yet, somehow, more thoroughly exhausting. As if the unfolding of the last two years occurred while trying to determine the nature of the figure in the foreground. Once you finally realize that it’s a sculpture, you’d still be in the same place, but different.
I’ll be making few plans for 2022. It will be a year of recuperation, thinking, rediscovering inspiration, and adjustment. That’s why I’m creating a set of aspirations for the new year, rather than highlighting the tools that I’ll be ’taking with me into the new year'.
Perhaps, I’ll find some time to explore…
Nicole Fitzgerald, Experimental Design Language
But, I’ll be prioritizing restorative practices (consuming art, reading philosophy, etc.)
Derek C. Zoladz
Software Developer
Focusing on cultural heritage institutions: discovery applications, data (and metadata) wrangling, web development, process automation, and system integration.