And Then My Presence Went Dark

Taken on Bainbridge Island,WA - Spring 2009

My website is gone. I couldn't bring myself to pay Apple for another year of hosting an aesthetically stunted site, yet I currently have nothing to replace it with either. All my attention at the moment is turned toward finishing up work for my exhibitions this summer and starting a second film. There is little chance I will be snuggling up with Dreamweaver anytime soon so, to prevent my complete disappearance from the electronic ether, I'm having my "tidal wave" of home page traffic forwarded to my Flickr account. I hope Flickr is up to the bandwidth requirements!

* * * * *

I've read many articles and books about the professional practices of artists, but none of them come close to offering as much good advice as an instructor I had in college— he said that you should never be spending more time on promotion and business than you were on creating. As soon as you'd violated that percentage you just had a job like anyone else. 

Over the past year I've invested a significant amount of time establishing a "web presence." It has been something of a boon to the five or six friends who would care about what I'm working on or thinking about even if I didn't spill it all out online, because it makes it easier for them to check in. But as for garnering an online community of supporters and compatriots; that demands a commitment of time and energy I simply cannot give. I admire those who can do it, and I wish them the best of luck Tweeting, Tubing, and Facebooking. For me, Flickr will act as a substitute until I can sit down and enjoy the creation of something beautiful for the web. Perhaps after two months of intensive work in the studio I might actually embrace a little time with Adobe as opposed to days of breathing in charcoal dust. Perhaps not. . .

Self Portraiture 2.0

February 17, 2005

There are probably millions of photographs online showing a person taking their own picture in the mirror. Many of them have a massive glow of white where the flash reflected in the mirror and obliterated all other reflections. When I see such images I'm always reminded of the throngs of people firing off flash bulbs in the Louvre with the hopes of taking home their own postcard picture of the Mona Lisa*— didn't they know that nothing would come of such images. At best they could hope for a poorly composed ball of white light radiating from behind the rows of heads also jostling for the same useless photograph.

* * * * *

While chatting with a salesperson at the Apple store one day he revealed his utter disgust with the iSight camera that had been placed on every Mac,** for it made his work day a living hell. Countless adolescents would stroll into the store to camp-out on the demo computers and take dozens of crummy digital photographs of themselves. This was often accompanied by hours of incessant high-pitched chatter, silly faces, and giggling. The mall had provided yet another avenue to foster vapid narcassism among tomorrow's future leaders. . . and this, in some great degree, is what passes for the next chapter in the history of self portraiture.

* * * * *

So I'm a hypocrite, right? At the top of this post is my image in the mirror. I've posted it on the net for all to see. And without any context it's probably as easily dismissed as any other online portrait. 

Some context is in order. You should know that on this night I was at a loss for what to film. I didn't see the point of the daily project. The TV was buzzing on the ground level of the house and I was alone upstairs trying to justify this creative endeavor that had no relevance to anything I'd done before. And I was very, very, tired. I stared at myself in the mirror and my neck muscles began to spasm. My eyes burned. I started to sob.

And I turned the camera on.

*Or, whatever passes for the Mona Lisa, as theories abound about the authenticity of the image on display behind layers of glass at the Louvre.

**This ties in nicely with a topic I've broached before. . .

I Heart Analog

I miss my hi-fi. To be honest, the iPod* has been a woeful substitute despite its space-saving allure. I realized the depth of my regret at having relegated my audio components to the closet only after purchasing a few albums this month. I came home, used cds** in hand, flush with the excitement of shopping in the midst of financial catastrophe, ready to throw them on and bliss out. But life isn't that simple now.

First I must load the tracks into my computer and then I must plug my iPod into the computer and allow the songs to trickle onto the music player. Then the iPod demands more juice if it's to deliver a continual stream of music for longer than sixty minutes, which leaves me sitting about waiting for the battery to charge. 

It is at this point that my interest in listening to the albums begins to wane. I wash the dishes or sort the recycling. I add items to my TO DO list. I contemplate the exact date when JP Morgan will slap their branding on all of WAMU's printed collateral. I look up the word collateral and realize I'm not applying it correctly in the previous sentence. I check the iPod. Still charging. . .

When the earbuds are finally wedged into my ears I'm subjected to a very tinny sounding Cee-Lo. The Cure suffers from an aggressive treble and half the tracks on Bjork's Telegram are bogged down with mushy bass. I think back to the first time that I heard Massive Attack's Protection on something other than a boom-box and how the quality of the sound seemed so expansive and engulfing. Exactly how I managed to stray again from that experience I'll never know. I fell victim to the hype. I chuckled at those silly Mac and PC commercials and I lay my money down on the shiny counter of the Apple store. 

Now my ears often ache from the pressure of formed plastic and I can't remember what it was about the album art of OK Computer that affected me so much in my teens. My hi-fi collects dust in the closet, ashamed of its bulky cases and thick speaker cables. The CD collection has also entered the closet and is only briefly perused when a new album has been loaded onto the computer and needs to be stored out of sight. 

Meanwhile, the iPod travels about with me, delivering far more storage than sound. I watch everyone on the train nod their heads half-heartedly to the music being drowned out by the screech of the wheels on track and I think that we've all been fooled yet again. Now we own music; because experiencing it doesn't sell albums with the same frequency.

*I would put a TM symbol after every instance of the word iPod because I respect the Apple and do not wish to anger the Apple, but I cannot find this feature on Blogger, so let this serve as my disclaimer that iPod is a registered trademark of Apple. I understand that I have no rights to type the word iPod without a TM symbol but I respectfully submit that it is Blogger, not I, who has violated international intellectual property rights by not providing the appropriate typography to legally credit copyright and trademark holders.

**For those of you who care, the purchased cds in question were:

Gnarls Barkley- The Odd Couple

The Cure- Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

Bjork- Telegram

Peter Gabriel- Peter Gabriel

MC Solaar- Paradisiaque

Massive Attack- Danny the Dog: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Underworld- Pearl's Girl

Poisoned Apple

The French have a saying for that moment when you’ve had enough; it translates into English as, “My bowl is full!” Tonight, my bowl is full of Apple. I’m tired of Apple’s veneer of utilitarian design. I’m fed up with the constant optional software upgrades that render my system obsolete before I’ve even started exploring under the hood. In short, I’m more than a little cross with Apple for succumbing to the Capitalist pitfall of blatantly pandering to stock rather than customers. Honestly, have they watched their own Ridley Scott commercial lately?

For two weeks I’ve been unable to easily load new posts in iWeb (and no, this does not ‘serve me right’ for using iWeb). My program frequently crashes, taking all my most recent witticisms with it. The Oz-like fellows over at Apple Core send nice emails saying they’ve fixed all the problems so that I’m lured back to clicking the Publish button yet again, only to have it malfunction.

iMad. iFrustrated. And tonight I’ve decided, after yet another game of nebulous run-around with the poorly implemented MobileMe, that I’m going to move this blog elsewhere.

So pay attention my three readers, because soon I will be leaving, and if I don’t take you with me, I’ll have to bribe other people to read my posts.

Helvetica: The Movie

I watched Helvetica last night. Again.

My initial viewing in my Beginning Design class left me with impressions only, and I wanted to revisit the film after a few months of dealing with typography, grids, and visual hierarchy. I’m assuming that I don’t differ from most fledgling graphic designers (an acceptance of reality that undoubtedly does separate me from the majority of fledgling graphic designers) and I’ve been using Helvetica as the default font for every project I’ve taken on.* As many of the eccentric pillars of the design community** mention in the film, Helvetica is clean, ubiquitous, and safe to use on just about any project. It won’t make waves and you’ll appear to know what you’re doing. Really, if it’s good enough for the majority of corporate America, it’s probably good enough for my homework assignment.

Now, if you’re reading this and not a graphic designer, then you’re probably scratching your head at this point and wondering if it’s even possible to make an hour and a half movie about a font. I assure you it is. Helvetica is such a powerful cultural force at this point that whole books have been devoted to it (in a cultural critique kind of way, not in the sense that it is the font for the book, although there are those examples as well). One of the most interesting things my instructors stated in the afore mentioned design class was that an understanding and appreciation of typography is “what separates the designer from the desktop publisher.”

Statements like this seem to be bandied about in the design world all the time. As Helvetica points out, designers are an opinionated lot. Ironically, they are all right in some way so, like most heated debates, the question over Helvetica’s prominence and use will continue ad nauseam. In the meantime I will be sharpening my typographic vocabulary (ascender, serif, x-height, et al) and compiling three fonts that will work for every*** project, and three fonts to perpetually vilify. Watch out Comic Sans, I’m coming for you.

*But I only used Helvetica in the beginning: in every instance but one (when I was designing a movie poster for Helvetica, appropriately enough) it was transformed into a different font that seemed to better suit the content. I don’t want you thinking I’m a one-trick pony so early on in my career. Becoming that pony takes at least a few years in the professional world.

**Old skool Massimo Vignelli, naughty David Carson, and the chillingly astute Stefan Sagmeister to name a few.

***Ahhh, type crime! You never just hit the bold button to fatten up some highlighted text. Big design no-no! This just adds weight to all the edges of the letter forms without a commiserate handling of the white space between the letters. Such an action brands you as the amateur that you are. It’s akin to using iWeb as your web design and blogging program.

iControl

A friend of mine once joked that he often expects a pop-up widow to appear on his iMac desktop informing him that his desktop is cluttered and unaesthetic: Would you like to aestheticize your desktop? Aestheticize. Don’t Aestheticize. Cancel.

While working with iWeb (the program, I’m embarrassed to admit, that currently holds my web site) over the past year something has caught my attention that I’ve frequently mulled over. Apple has always marketed itself as a provider of creative ease— a manufacturer of tools devoted to the advancement of individual expression. With the current versions of Mac OS Apple has reached a pinnacle of marketing to the ego: iWeb provides a concrete example of this. Nearly every page of every template contains the word “Me” or “My.” A pronoun and a possessive adjective. Individuality and the ownership of that individuality. My photos. My favorite songs. My trip. Me.

But does the Mac, or any computer for that matter, truly foster more personal creativity among the masses or simply promise a potential audience? Is it the inspired act or the hope for attention that fuels the digital revolution?

I’ve been trying to formulate a theory about passive creativity in the digital ear ever since computers became a fixture of my daily life. That theory is, in part, powered by a Mac.