Art + Math Turns 2
No, not a double play. It’s our birthday!
This month marks the second anniversary of Art + Math. We launched in 2023 with zero fanfare and even fewer subscribers. And yet here we are two years later, setting records as somewhere between the 27th-to-38th fastest rising newsletter in Substack’s “Art and Illustration” category, depending on the day. An achievement made all the more astonishing given my near total refusal to play the game of social media pandering. (If one of you is interested in pandering on my behalf, by all means hit me up.) My lack of self promotion skill aside, we are regularly hitting 10,000 views per month and we are poised to hit 1,000 subscribers any day now. (More on that in a minute.) So I want to take this opportunity to thank you for reading and subscribing and sharing. It really does mean a lot.1
I have for you this week a roundup of six notable items worthy of consideration.
Personal Projects
Last week I wrote installment number five in my Art of the Personal Project series. But it turns out a wider audience is interested in this subject too. I’m pleased to announce that I will be writing about the topic of personal projects — a favorite of mine — for the newly reborn Outdoor Photographer magazine.
Kinda buried the lede, huh?
Purchased at a blind auction for what I can only assume was a handful of beans, Outdoor Photographer will resume publishing this year. New owner “By Gamers, For Gamers” a U.K. publisher in the tech and gaming space, has hired an editor and is in the process of putting the band back together in an effort to relaunch the magazine this fall.
Part of that wrecking crew includes moi, very tangentially, as a freelance writer.
As someone who loves magazines, and even more loves learning from the best photographers in the world, I’m thrilled that O.P. is getting its shot at a comeback. It was a profitable publication that was unfortunately caught in the crossfire surrounding the sale and bizarre woes of the entire publishing company. It deserves a chance at redemption.
More details to come, for sure, but for now I hope you share my excitement that this photo mag will be reborn. It’ll be nice to see that familiar masthead again when visiting the newsstand. Until those go away too, of course.
Atarimatt
I have a new favorite song by a new favorite artist. And he’s legitimately unique and talented and indie, so I’m doing my part to help spread the love. I hope you’ll check out Atarimatt and his particular brand of 8-bit creativity. He makes music using Atari 2600 home gaming consoles from the 1980s. It’s all bleeps and bloops, of course, but I think it’s delightful.
If you’re so inclined, join me in supporting his art by purchasing a shirt and/or cassette. As the Atari-loving kids say, it’s fire!2
Speaking of Fire…
One evening, earlier this spring, as I cleared the dishes from the dinner table I glanced out the kitchen window and was surprised to find my backyard was on fire.
“Oh my goodness,” I said aloud. Or, you know, words to that effect.
The flaming area was about the size of a manhole cover. I looked for a bowl to fill with water and in the few seconds it took me to find one, the fire had spread to the size of a bedsheet. It was growing rapidly.3
While my son grabbed a bucket and began filling it in the sink, I called 911 and ran outside to connect the garden hose.
When the fire engine arrived roughly four minutes later, the lawn was still smoldering but the fire was mostly out. I’d managed to get the hose connected and turned on with one hand while my other held the phone so I could as calmly as possible shout my address at the 911 operator.
We drenched the smoking patch for another 20 minutes or so, all the while speculating about the cause. Our best guess, as it had been an especially windy day, was that a spark had somehow leapt from the overhead powerline. An unsettling thought.
After the firefighters left, as I was tidying up, the utility pole zapped and sizzled and sparks fell to the wet ground. I calmly said “oh my goodness” again and did not freak out in the slightest.
Given how fast the fire had spread, all I keep imagining is the myriad ways it could have been much worse. What would have happened if I hadn’t looked out the window seconds after ignition? What if I hadn’t been home? What if it happened overnight? What if, what if, what if.
There’s no moral to this story other than this: it is better to be lucky than good.
Speaking of Flaming Terror…
Jony Ive, the designer behind the look and feel of all of the stuff we’ve loved from Apple for the past 30 years, has partnered with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The joint venture is a company called io, and it began two years ago when Ive and his friend, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, decided to collaborate on something new. It culminated with this week’s acquisition of the Ive property.
The designer won’t become an employee of OpenAI per se, but 55 of his designers and engineers will. And from his external position Ive will be functionally responsible for leading the design of any and all Open AI hardware going forward.
Experts say io appears to be poised to release some sort of AI-based hardware, and it’s gonna be big.
But also it might not be. Who’s to say, really?
When did I become so skeptical of AI? Is it just because of its constant, imminent threat to my livelihood? I can’t quite put my finger on its origins, but I know it to be true. Generally speaking, I’ve become a skeptic.
It’s not that I don’t think AI is amazing, and rife with possibilities that I will surely someday fully embrace. It’s just that for now it keeps leaving me less than satisfied.
I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit and the best I can come up with is that I’m fundamentally uninterested in doing things faster and more efficiently. I mostly want to try to do things better and I don’t see a lot of suggestions that AI is better, at least in my neck of the creative woods.
Yes, I understand that sometimes faster and more efficient is how better manifests. But the way I’m seeing it deployed more often than not, in most cases the implication is “we’ll cut a few corners but it won’t be a big deal because from the right angle it’ll look great and the whole shebang is just going to be so freaking efficient!”
Jony Ive’s involvement in this venture makes it unworthy of dismissal. The guy was responsible for some of the best design and user experience of the last half century, after all.
Ive is what makes this special. His distinctive human-ness. His exquisite taste, his sense of what other humans want to touch and hold and carry with them wherever they go. That makes this announcement promising. It's also what fundamentally undermines the copycat nature of AI. There’s nothing fast and efficient about Jony Ive’s exceptional process. When you want something amazing, you want an amazing human in charge of it.
The Verge reports that there’s already some hardware prototype Ive has developed for io and that Altman has been using, and while he says it isn’t going to replace the smartphone (in the same way the smartphone didn’t replace the laptop) it is, according to Altman, “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.”
“I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us our better selves,” Ive said.
Oh, okay. It’s another one of those.
Forgive my eye roll. It’s possible I’m going to have to eat these words. Maybe even likely. I mean, after all, these two titans are the best when it comes to this innovation stuff. It probably is going to be pretty dang cool, whatever it is.
But, like, what if it’s not?
I don’t like being cynical, and I certainly don’t like taking the closed-minded, suspicious stance on this stuff. But AI keeps promising me the world but then has a really hard time doing some of the basic seeming things I ask of it.
I just hope that, whatever comes of this, we start holding AI tools to a higher standard. One that isn’t just “faster and more efficient” but that maybe includes something like “better.”
Maybe this io thing will be the start of that?
Oh, by the way. I thought the photo accompanying the Ive/Altman partnership seemed a little odd, so I asked ChatGPT to improve it.
Road Trip Time Lapse Nonsense
I’ve recently been doing a more than typical amount of driving across rural Illinois, and I’ve taken to sticking my camera out the window to record time lapse videos as the world floats by. I was inspired to do so by this cloud:
There’s no rhyme or reason to it, other than I thought it might be fun. And it just might show off some of the beautiful stuff I find in my home state.
I like these, so why not share a couple of them with you. Maybe eventually I will plan ahead and do one over the full course of a trip, start to finish. Until then these brief jaunts will have to suffice.
It Pays to Read to the End
I mentioned up top that we are approaching 1,000 subscribers here at Art + Math. (As I write this, in fact, there are 911 subscribers, which will henceforth be known as “the official count.”) Y’all have long been very helpful around here, turning this little nothing into a little something, and as such I’d like to recruit your help once more — and give you a bit of thanks in return.
We’re gonna run a contest. The official “Art + Math 1,000 Subscribers Contest.” And you’ve got two chances to win.
Everyone who subscribes for the next 30 days (or longer if it takes more time to hit the 1,000 subscriber mark) will receive one entry into the drawing to win your choice of an Art + Math t-shirt, sweatshirt or hat.
BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.
Every Substack-based referral for new subscribers (when someone subscribes, it shows me which subscriber referred them) will also receive an entry into the sweepstakes to win an additional Art + Math t-shirt, sweatshirt or hat. The more referrals you make, the greater your chances of winning.4
Second prize is a set of steak knives. No, wait. Second prize is a beautiful Art + Math bumper sticker, also chosen at random from everyone who didn’t receive one of the first two prizes.
Maybe by this time next year I’ll be raking it in and can offer some proper prizes for such things, like a medium format digital camera or a Leica or something equally covetable. But for now, alas, half fast schwag is gonna have to be enough.
But seriously, I really appreciate all of your likes and shares and subscriptions. Thank you for your support. And here’s to another year of publishing greatness. I can’t do it without you!5
It literally means a lot. I used to think all that “like and share” stuff was filler rather than an actual, meaningful plea. But I’ve learned it is absolutely essential to an endeavor like this. The algorithms are king, and if you don’t demonstrate to the algorithm that you have enough interaction, the algorithm assumes you don’t matter. So every time a reader likes, comments, shares, or subscribes, they are actually, meaningfully helping this project. So for that, truly, I thank you.
My 11-year-old, yesterday: “What’s Atari?”
The grass being early-season zoysia, still dormant and dry as matchsticks, it was incredibly flammable — not to be confused with inflammable, which means the exact same thing.
As a subscriber, when you share via the link in your email, Substack tracks it.
The fine print (Rules for Sweepstakes Entry): Every new subscriber from now through Sunday, June 22nd is a single entry into the drawing. Every person who, according to Substack tracking data, refers a new subscriber during that same timeframe will also receive a single entry into a drawing. One winner from each group (subscribers and referrers) will be chosen at random to receive their choice of hat, shirt or sweatshirt from The Art + Math Merch Table. If 1,000 subscribers are reached prior to June 22, 2025, the contest will continue until 11:59:59pm CDT on Sunday, June 22, 2025. If the 1,000 subscriber mark is not reached by 11:59:59pm CDT on June 22, 2025, the contest will continue until the 1,000th subscription is received. The current subscriber count as of this publication is 911. Drawing will be made with the aid of a random number generator. Winners will be announced at artandmath.substack.com. No purchase necessary. Not valid in places that say it’s not valid. Your mileage may vary.
That OG photo is downright creepy IMO. Congrats on 2. I do wish you weren’t paywalling some of your posts, but I guess that’s what happens eventually on SS
Congratulations, Bill! I'm having fun here and can tell you are too. Please keep going!