My professional background is in writing fundraising applications for small charities and community groups, working with migrant and refugee organisations and steelbands in Ladbroke Grove, West London.
I have a long association with Metronomes Steel Orchestra (Instagram) and co-authored their first proposal for a Steelpan Study Centre to be based in the old factory building in Meanwhile Gardens.
I was late-diagnosed as autistic at the age of 58.
I wish I had been diagnosed as a child.
One of my three sisters has two autistic children. We believe our mother was autistic.
As well as being autistic, I have Schizoaffective Disorder ~ a combination of symptoms of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder ~ and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
I have the language disorder Palilalia, where I repeat my thoughts in speech, and a severe problem with autistic self-talk which started as a result of being a victim of online stalking: in simple terms, I frequently talk aloud.
The stalking has mostly taken the form of hacking. One thing done has been described by my GP as “despicable”, by a mental health professional as “contemptible”, and the tech companies involved repeatedly use the word “sadistic”.
What the stalking has taken from me is the thing that has in the past allowed me to thrive: solitude ~ the quiet time communing with myself that some autistic people need so much.
If all of this isn’t enough, I’m dyslexic.
I often dictate things using my mobile phone ~ including when I am walking around in public ~ so people think I am talking to myself when I’m not.
Being a weird loner has never been so hard on the nerves.
Fern Designs is a therapeutic AI art project. It’s intended to help me better understand my neurodivergent experience, and that of others, through research, writing, and creating art.
I am currently unemployed, and a long way away from being able to undertake paid work. But the skills I acquire undertaking this project might get me a little nearer. Or at least, get me to the point where I am doing regular voluntary work.
Given my work background, understanding how AI works and how it can be implemented in a creative setting, could also be a route back to paid employment.
Alongside writing fundraising applications, I had a parallel career in web design, and before that, paper-based publication design. My skills in these areas are very dated, but they may get an upgrade that’s deployed.
I don’t listen to people who say I am too old for AI at 60, for the same reason I didn’t listen to people saying I was too old to become a web designer when I was in my mid-30s.
However, being 60, I am unashamedly interested in a gentle approach that de-amplifies brashness, and makes AI art similar to a quiet walk around the Chiltern Hills, or a stroll around the Chelsea Physic Garden.
While British bio-artist Mileece Abson has used biodata sonification to create “Plant Music”, I won’t be trying to get fern-driven AI art to recreate the guitar riffs from Wet Leg’s “mangetout”: I am very happy to get out of the way, get lost forever, and I don’t want to stand in anyone’s light.
I am interested in asking questions: idée fixe questioning of the sort autistic and other neurodivergent people do so well.
I am disturbed by the current randiness in the arts for ideological certainty. I look at the work of many contemporary artists and curators and wonder what is their problem with question marks? What have question marks ever done to them?
I live in Ladbroke Grove west London, a few minutes from the Portobello Road.
Just about every day I travel to the Chilterns.
I have been going to the same spot in Amersham, the east facing edge of Bury Farm Wood, more or less every day for the same reason that I used to go to St James’s Park more or less every day. My life is built around repeating patterns. I go to the same places, wear identical clothes, and, if I allowed myself, I would eat the same food.
The Chilterns countryside gives me the one thing I desperately need: solitude.
I am attempting a new form of patterning: picking three different locations in the Chilterns and alternating between them. They are the east facing edge of Bury Farm Wood (51.65970° N, 0.60819° W), the north side of Carpenters Wood in Chorleywood (51.65810° N, 0.53624° W), and one of several locations I’m investigating near Chalfont & Latimer train station.
I had a need to follow rigid patterns of behaviour that lasted throughout childhood and into my late-twenties. I overcame it, but it’s returned due to the online stalking mentioned above.
People will note that I am very confessional when it comes to my health and various issues. However, I see myself more aligned with radical Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau than Tracey Emin, especially in his autobiographical works Confessions published in 1782 and 1789. That said, I do admire Tracey Emin, and I like a lot of her work.
Finally, I like to bore people about being vegan.
Antony Stuart Nunn, 5 August 1965 (he/him).
FERN DESIGNS 