Every year, I take part in Fun a Day. I hesitate to describe it as a challenge or a contest because you’re only competing against yourself, but it’s an encouragement to create something during the month of January. This can be one project for the month or something you update every day, and/or some combination thereof.
I’m pleased to report the exhibition opened on Friday of last week, but more on that shortly.
In previous years, I’ve tackled projects involving writing, such as the fragments I penned in 2018. I’ve also come to realise that I don’t like keeping my work, instead preferring to recycle or reuse the materials after I’m finished with them.
The preparations for 2025 began earlier than ever: on 1 January 2024. I’m in the habit of weighing myself every day, although only the Monday figures are normally recorded.
So for every day in 2024, I tracked my fluctuations on a spreadsheet. A red cell represented an increase from the previous day, a green cell marked a decrease, while blue marked a stable weight or a day I didn’t have access to my scales. To save too much manual work, I quickly learnt how to program Google Sheets to show the colours automatically.
I then converted the colours into a corresponding chain of loom band. As I’m not artisitic in any way, however, I told the organisers to display it in any way they wished. It’s difficult to see in a picture, but it ended up in an M-shape on the ceiling of the café:
There was also an information panel on the side, along with rough notes about where I was in the chain.
You can see the exhibition at Blend on Dock Street all this month. The website on that panel takes you to the official website for the project, which will stay up all month, but I make no guarantees beyond that.
Gavin Cameron 