Filed under: Art, NPR, Press, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Society, Writing stuff
I woke this morning, birds singing, the sun shining, and feeling wonderf . . .
No, wait. Scratch that. It’s winter. No birds. Greyness in the dark, as the sun wasn’t up yet. And I had the usual collection of aches and pains common for middle-age .
Still, nothing unexpected hurt, and while I’m not quite to the point where I am pleasantly surprised to wake up at all, I still tend to think that any day above ground beats the alternative.
Then I paid attention to the radio. To this, in particular:
Today AOL announced that it had agreed to acquire the Huffington Post website for $315 million. $300 million of this is in cash, the rest of the purchase in AOL stock. Arianna Huffington, who co-founded the site six years ago, will continue on as President and editor-in-chief.
Gah.
OK, I didn’t read the Huffington Post. No, not because of their slightly-liberal slant – their politics don’t bother me in the slightest. Rather, because I hated their overall design and shallowness. And their willingness to promote anti-science claptrap. And Arianna’s voice makes my teeth hurt, and I can’t read anything the woman writes without hearing her voice.
But still, something about the sale bugged me more than these little things would explain.
It wasn’t until I had some coffee and had a chance to get my brain completely up to operating speed that I figured out why the news rubbed me so much the wrong way: exploitation.
OK, let me explain. I used to own an art gallery. And for 8 years I, my partner, my wife, and my employees busted butt to create a great space to showcase lots of local and regional talent. Over that time we represented hundreds of artists, did well over a hundred featured shows, sent out tens of thousands of full-color postcards, and sold a bunch of artwork. We did everything we could think of to promote our artists, to display the artwork to its best advantage, and to make sure our partnership with our artists was to everyone’s advantage.
And one of the things which used to chap my ass the worst was local bars and restaurants which used to exploit artists by hanging their artwork on the walls and saying it gave the artists “exposure”. I even wrote about this in my newspaper column after I had closed the gallery. The bars and restaurants almost never displayed the work well, seldom had any decent signage about the work/artist, and rarely if ever sold anything. But in exchange for this “exposure” they got to put fresh artwork up regularly to decorate their walls, without having to actually, you know, buy real art from real artists.
And this is why it bugs me so much to hear that the Huffington Post has been sold for $315 million. Because they have a business model which doesn’t pay their writers – they just give them “exposure.” Oh, some celebrities may get paid for contributing. But the average blogger who creates content for the site doesn’t get squat.
Will any of that $300 million in cash from the sale be parceled out to the people who have been writing for the site? Nope.
So, the lesson is clear: there’s gold in them thar artists – so long as you’re the one to be doing the exploiting.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Music, Predictions, Publishing, Society, tech, Weather, Writing stuff
Last night, in the middle of a particularly impressive blizzard, I came in to my office to check the weather online and get the latest news. I clicked on the link for my favorite weather website, and was thoroughly confused. No, they had the blizzard there. But they had completely changed the design of the site – the switch had been made while I had dinner and watched a movie.
There at the head of the newly redesigned site was a friendly little note that scared the shit out of me:
Notice Anything Different? Click here to find out what’s new and improved at Weather Underground!
Oh, no!!!!
* * * * * * *
Three classic anecdotes/sayings, all related, but each with a slightly different lesson to offer:
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
2. Two cowboys are working on a fenceline. Without warning, a rattlesnake bites one of the cowboys on the leg, and he falls to the ground writhing in pain. “Do something!” he shouts at the other cowboy. The other cowboy draws his revolver and first kills the snake, then takes careful aim and shoots his buddy in the leg – right where he’d been bit. The first cowboy screams, “why the hell did you do that??” The second cowboy responds, “I don’t know how to treat a snakebite. But I know how to treat a gunshot wound.”
3. One evening, a guy is walking back and forth under a streetlight, looking down and obviously searching for something. Another fellow walks up and asks “lose something?” “Yeah, my keys,” says the first guy. “I’ll help ya look,” says the second. They spend about a half hour looking all around the lamppost. Finally the second guy says “I don’t see them around here anywhere.” “Oh, I didn’t lose ’em here. I lost them down there by the corner.” “Then why the hell are you looking for them here?” asked the second guy. “Light’s better here.”
* * * * * * *
I clicked the link, and got the explanation: they were introducing their new design tonight! After 2 years of hard work and functionality testing, they were confident that everyone was going to LOVE! the new site!
They were wrong. I didn’t love it.
And seemingly neither did a bunch of other people, as I found out on their blog and FaceBook page. Sure, some folks liked the ‘clean, fresh’ look (what, is this a mouthwash or something?) but a whole lot of others didn’t. Gone was a nice large page which gave you everything at a glance – current conditions, a small radar image, and easy to understand graphics forecasting conditions for the next five days. There was a ton of information there, and you could see everything easily, then go into further detail with just a click. It had been replaced by a series of smaller boxes slightly left of center, which contained much less information and in a smaller font. You could still find everything, but you had to scroll down the page or click tabs to do so.
* * * * * * *
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This is perceptual limitation. Quite literally, you see the world in just one way. There is no ‘other’ option – there’s not even an awareness that another option is possible.
We all have this for some things. It can be a religious belief. Or sexual orientation. Or how to cook. Or a thousand other things. We just see one way that things are, and are completely blind to any difference, usually very stubbornly so.
* * * * * * *
I couldn’t for the life of me understand why they had done this, why they had made the change they did. It was clearly an inferior product – harder to use, large amounts of whitespace on my monitor for no good reason. Until someone use said that the site had been “iPadized” – that is, formatted for the iPad.
Ah.
* * * * * * *
2. Two cowboys are working on a fenceline. Without warning, a rattlesnake bites one of the cowboys on the leg, and he falls to the ground writhing in pain. “Do something!” he shouts at the other cowboy. The other cowboy draws his revolver and first kills the snake, then takes careful aim and shoots his buddy in the leg – right where he’d been bit. The first cowboy screams, “why the hell did you do that??” The second cowboy responds, “I don’t know how to treat a snakebite. But I know how to treat a gunshot wound.”
Here is still a functional limit, but one based on an awareness that there are other potential choices. That doesn’t really change things – there is still only one thing to be done, at least in the current time frame, no matter how clumsy it is in practice. Perhaps later you can learn about the other choices, turn them from being purely theoretical into actual options.
* * * * * * *
After much complaining and gnashing of teeth on the part of many commentators, someone at Weather Underground added a “Classic Site” link to the above announcement. Word quickly spread of this, with people explaining how to change the necessary bookmarks and whatnot to get back to their preferred website design. I did – it was nice to have all the functionality I expected back.
Of course, others now started to chime in that they liked the new look, and that the complainers were just resistant to change.
* * * * * * *
3. One evening, a guy is walking back and forth under a streetlight, looking down and obviously searching for something. Another fellow walks up and asks “lose something?” “Yeah, my keys,” says the first guy. “I’ll help ya look,” says the second. They spend about a half hour looking all around the lamppost. Finally the second guy says “I don’t see them around here anywhere.” “Oh, I didn’t lose ’em here. I lost them down there by the corner.” “Then why the hell are you looking for them here?” asked the second guy. “Light’s better here.”
This one is really similar to #2, but I think with one subtle yet important difference: there is an awareness of the limitations of a given tool/choice, but it is nonetheless still so appealing that it gets used in ways which are really inappropriate or counter-productive.
* * * * * * *
And here I think the mistake was made by the web designers. Perhaps they didn’t intentionally set out to optimize the new site for devices such as the iPad – it is entirely possible that this has just become a prevailing design aesthetic because of such devices, and since they are relatively new, the whole aesthetic seems new and exciting.
Technology changes things. Long poetic narrative was suited for oral presentation or a scroll-format codex – with the development of the book form we know now (pages gathered together) back around the first century, that probably had an impact on the decline of that literary form, since the necessity to flip pages back and forth tends to break up pacing. Old 78 rpm records could only play for about four minutes – the slightly smaller discs about three minutes – and so that became the standard length for popular songs. LP records opened up musical possibilities and so saw experimentation with longer songs. There are countless other examples.
But that’s just my perspective – based on my preferences and expectations. I’m not used to using an iPad, and don’t own one, so do not consider it as an option. It could well be that such a format will become the standard – and those of us with large monitors still tied to a desktop machine will be nothing more than dinosaurs. Until the next big change comes along and redefines things again. (Perhaps the cyberware augmented reality systems I predict in Communion of Dreams? We’ll see.)
Jim Downey
Love it: Impossible Motions 2
Heavy snow. And my Good Lady Wife and I both have the latest cold/flu thing going around. I need diversions. So take what you can get.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Babylon 5, Ballistics, Bipolar, Failure, Harry Potter, Hospice, Humor, John Lennon, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society
“Vir, do you believe in fate?”
“Well, actually, I believe there are currents in the universe, eddies and tides that pull us one away or the other. Some we have to fight, and some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace.”
Recently, I came up with an audacious idea. This is something which happens to me now and again. Most of the time, I chuckle over it, consider the possibilities, then let it slide back into the creative froth. But every now and again I get an idea I take somewhat seriously, and consider practically – not so much on whether I think it will work, but on whether I think I can convince enough other people that it will work.
Through the last couple of decades I’ve done better at this than you might think, batting about .500. Here’s a list of the big ones, along with a synopsis:
- Opening an art gallery. This *almost* worked, but remains my most expensive failure to date. It’s very sobering to lose money that belongs to family and friends who trust your judgment, not to mention all the work of yourself, your partner, spouses and employees.
- Writing a novel, and getting it published. Looks like this one will actually work.
- Paint the Moon. My biggest artistic success to date.
- Glass Canopy. This caught the imagination of a number of people, and generated a lot of discussion locally. Now such structures are used elsewhere for exactly this purpose. A failure, but not a total one.
- Nobel Prize for JK Rowling. A debacle, in that so many people hated the idea. But perhaps I was just premature.
- Ballistics By The Inch. A huge success. This was in no way just my idea, and I only did part of the work, but I think the vision I had for how the project would be received was largely mine.
- Co-authoring a care-giving memoir. Still early in the evaluation period on this, so can’t say whether it is a success or not.
And looking over that list, thinking about it, one of the clear things I see which helps make something a success is the amount of work I (and others) put into it. When presented with a zany idea, most people will be amused, say why they think it is crazy, and then more or less forget about it. But if confronted with the fact of an idea made manifest, a lot of that skepticism disappears (or never occurs to people in the first place.)
This isn’t very profound, of course, and certainly isn’t at all new. But I am still somewhat surprised to see how much it actually operates in the real world. It’s like imagination is so difficult for people that they just can’t get past their initial dismissal. I asked for comments on my latest idea, and so far have only heard from one person, who pointed out potential problems with it (this was actually a very helpful response). I can only guess that most other people consider it too nutty an idea to even bother with – but in my gut I’m pretty certain that if this resource existed it would be hugely popular and widely used.
But who knows? Was the voice a ghost or just hallucination? Do you embrace the current or fight it? Failure is real – both due to risk as well as inaction.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Babylon 5, Gardening, General Musings, Music, Science Fiction
There is nothing wrong with referring at this point to the ineffable. The mistake is to describe it. Jankélévitch is right about music. He is right that something can be meaningful, even though its meaning eludes all attempts to put it into words. Fauré’s F sharp Ballade is an example: so is the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa; so is the evening sunlight on the hill behind my house. Wordsworth would describe such experiences as “intimations,” which is fair enough, provided you don’t add (as he did) further and better particulars. Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.
I’m reminded of a post from three years ago, and the words of a friend in it:
“Yeah, but it’s like the way that the people involved in your book – the characters – are all struggling to understand this new thing, this new artifact, this unexpected visitor. And I like the way that they don’t just figure it out instantly – the way each one of them tries to fit it into their own expectations about the world, and what it means. They struggle with it, they have to keep learning and investigating and working at it, before they finally come to an understanding.” He looked at me as we got back in the car. “Transitions.”
Gives me something to think about as I put the garden to bed this morning.
Jim Downey
The morning after a “wave election“, this seems like the perfect time to talk about: 
Wait – what?
I noted about a month ago that I was going to stop writing ‘reviews’ of the Sixty Symbols videos, though I intended to keep working through them for my own edification and enjoyment, and I left open the possibility that I might again blog about a particular video. Well, that particular wave form has collapsed, you might say.
So, let’s talk about art. (Trust me, this actually makes sense.)
One of the things I most loved about owning and operating an art gallery was getting to know more artists, better. I’ve always been fascinated by intelligent and creative people and how they view the world – how they can almost see more deeply into reality and understand relationships which are otherwise opaque to the rest of us. A good artist uses that insight, shares that vision, by translating what they perceive into a form which is understandable to others. The character of Duc Ng from Communion of Dreams is supposed to be this kind of person, and the insight he shares about the alien artifact is crucial to understanding the mystery at the heart of the book.
This idea is hardly new – indeed, it is one of the fundamentals of good philosophy as well as good art. And so while I was very pleased to see it brought out in the “wave function” video (at about the 8:00 mark) I wasn’t terribly surprised. The point made was that Claude Monet, founder of the Impressionist school of art, had the ability to mentally ‘step back’ from his paintings, and envision them as they would be perceived from a distance, thereby providing a bridge between the microscopic and the macroscopic.
And this is a very good metaphor for the differences between the quantum mechanical world where the wave function rules and the classical physics world we live in.
See, this is the problem – quantum physics is so counter-intuitive that the tag line for the Wave Function video is: “If you think you understand this video, you probably don’t.”
So why make it? Well, because.
Because you can start to approach an understanding of what is happening at the quantum level through analogy and art and metaphor, even if you can’t quite wrap your head around what is actually going on with the math. Or at least you can be pushed to realize that the reality you have been living in doesn’t exactly jibe with the one which actually functions in terms of probabilities and possibilities. We deal in hard facts – or at least think we do. We make decisions. We put that daub of paint in one particular place, and so freeze our vision into a frame.
And yet . . .
And yet we edit. Stories are tweaked. A line sketched here is erased. A new daub of paint is put down, covering the last one. A new fact appears, and our understanding of the past changes – the universe changes before our eyes. We realize that the world we live in is somehow in flux – unable to be pinned down.
Just as a certain alien artifact appears just a little bit different to everyone who sees it.
Just as an election is interpreted from each unique vantage point.
Jim Downey
Via Phil Plait, this may do the trick:
TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes.
Sorry for just the link – I still haven’t figured out to get WordPress to let me post vimeo content. But it’s two minutes of loveliness. Phil’s description:
Rapture is a paean to the American Southwest, one of my favorite regions on the planet. But the video’s loaded with gorgeous, sensuous astronomical skyscapes as well. Tom takes time exposures long enough to register faint night sky objects, but at the same time uses slow tracking to move the camera. The superposition of the ground and sky motion is simply mesmerizing. The music by Nigel “John” Stanford is incredibly compelling, too.
Enjoy!
Jim Downey
So, in spite of the fears of some of my friends, I made it to Chicago and back.
Er, what’s that? Fears?
As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve had some ongoing issues related to the pneumonia that had me so sick through all of August. Well, this past Tuesday I saw my doc, who poked and prodded, listened and queried. Then she told me she wanted me to get a CAT scan, since it would show more of what was going on than did the normal X-Ray I’d had the beginning of September. It was possible I had some leftover pneumonia, or a pocket of pleurisy, or possibly even a partial collapsed lung. I told her I would have to schedule the scan for Friday, since I was going to be gone the next two days.
“Where to?”
“Quick trip to Chicago.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure.”
“Well, enjoy it.”
Note – she did not tell me not to go. She did not tell me to change my plans because I was gonna die if I did such an insanely dangerous thing as drive to Chicago. She told me to enjoy the trip. Because I have been fighting whatever it is that I have going on for two months, and it is unlikely that just driving anywhere would be any worse for me than anything else I’ve done.
* * * * * * *
What pleasure so tempted me in Chicago?
Art. And an old friend.
Norma Rubovits, who studied under the same bookbinding mentor that I did (but 20 years earlier), was having a show of her bindings and her incredible marbled papers at the Newberry Library.
I first heard from Norma almost 20 years ago, when I was starting to make a name for myself with my own paper marbling. She dropped me a note, said that she heard I was making marbled paper vignettes. She said she wanted to buy some of my marbling – would I send her a selection, along with an invoice. At first I didn’t have a clue who this woman was, and I didn’t know whether to take her seriously. But after a few inquiries, I had some idea – and I sent her some of my work.
It was the start of a solid friendship. As I got to know her, I also came to understand what an incredible artist she was, working in both bookbinding and marbled paper. On one of my first trips to visit her, I got to see some of her work. She could do things in fine binding that I can still only dream of. And her marbled papers made me almost embarrassed to call myself a marbler.
See for yourself:
(More images of Norma’s show here.)
What that shows are twin marbled vignettes – two small, highly concentrated marbled ‘paintings’ called ebru. This sort of work was a specialty of Norma’s. That example is particularly fine because the two pieces had to be done quickly before the pigment would start to break down on the surface of the marbling tank – you can see this already starting to happen if you look closely at the lower image, where the center part is starting to develop small imperfections as the color bubble and concentrates. Altogether, she just had a matter of several minutes to place the multiple layers of pigment, then manipulate it into the form she wanted, then to transfer that to the paper. When I was really ‘in the zone’ while marbling, I could manage this feat with one image but I never even tried to do a pair like that.
* * * * * * *
We met Norma at the entrance to the Newberry. She graciously introduced us to her companion, a woman who serves as her care-giving assistant. Norma’s still getting around fine, and is as sharp mentally as anyone. But she is 92, and her balance isn’t what it used to be.
She escorted us into the exhibit, fussed to make sure we found the magnifying glasses you need to appreciate her most detailed work, and then had a seat to the side, popping up to point out specific works and tell us each one’s history. That we knew about the binding techniques involved, and most of the people in her stories, just added richness and encouraged her to go into greater detail than she would with the general public.
After, it was a nice long and relaxing lunch at Russian Tea Time – her favorite place to take company. Be sure to have the borscht.
* * * * * * *
My doc looked at me: “Where to?”
“Quick trip to Chicago.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure.”
“Well, enjoy it.”
“Thanks. Art exhibit of the work of an old friend. She’s 92 – and while she’s still doing quite well, you never know.”
My doctor nodded, and handed me the Rx for more painkillers, which I knew I would need to get me through the trip, at least overnight so I could maybe sleep.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 