Beware insecure good taste.
OCTOBER 21ST, 2026
GOOD LINKS
- Beware insecure good taste (The Creative Independent): Musician Molly Nilsson says: "It's very important to have people that you trust, so you don't fall for the opinions of people who maybe just have what I call insecure good taste. That can be a very damaging thing, because it could lead to you only making things that are secure. It can be the death of a lot of cool ideas."
- Art games and why they're blowing up (Rhizome): Artist Mitchell Chan offers this entertaining and educational overview of the growing world of art games. With multiple significant exhibitions on the horizon, is worldbuilding art through games the next big thing?
- Build things into being (Are.na): Wonderful profile of a new place in LA we've heard many great things about: Plot. Says owners Alice Yuan Zhang: "There's this magical feeling of when there are many hands in the space, things happen so quickly. There's a really beautiful reminder too, that in relying on others for help, it starts to take on a life of its own."
DFOS Spotlight: TIAT
Most of us keep a running list of things we’d love to make someday. Getting even one of them made, let alone into someone’s hands, is the hard part.
Ash Herr, also known as empowa, runs TIAT, an art and technology space on Powell Street in San Francisco. This fall, a cohort of artists, designers and creative technologists are working on that hard part through STUDIO WORKS, a studio incubator supported by DFOS. It starts from one question: can you build a practice around making things people want?
The cohort moves through desire, concepting, prototyping, production, distribution and sales, learning from people who have built practices of their own. Participants have a dedicated group inside TIAT’s DFOS space, where session prompts, homework and everyone’s responses live together.
The first prompt asked participants to share something they’d made recently, something they wanted to make, and a studio that inspired them. Someone had built a horse dating sim. Someone else wants to make a heart necklace that blinks faster when your pulse goes up. It’s the kind of list that makes you want to join in.
Explore TIAT: tiat.dfos.com
The moment you share
A few weeks ago we asked how you hold onto projects before they're ready, and dozens of you answered. This week we're curious about what comes next: the moment something you made leaves your hands for the first time. Some of us need someone, or a few people, to tell us it's good before we feel comfortable sharing it more widely.
Sharing can be the best part of making, and also the part we put off longest.
We'd love to hear how this works for you:
What feels special about the moment you share something you made, and what gets in the way?
A real example would be great. A song you finally played for someone, a draft you sent, a thing you still haven't shown anyone.
Tell us in the comments on this post. (Commenting needs a free DFOS account.)
<3
DFOS
