The Favor Economy
This morning, Diane Ragsdale linked a great TED talk from 2005 in her brilliant-as-usual post on institutions supporting artists at her ArtsJournal blog, Jumper. Diane’s post is great, but I want to react mainly to the TED talk. Yes, it’s six years old. That’s why the video’s so SD looking and the speaker, Clay Shirky...
Louis CK Inspires a Thought Experiment
You’ve probably already heard about this. Hilarious and vulgar-but-never-mean comedian Louis CK directed, edited, and published his own stand-up special without a big production company. Sold it just online. $5, no restrictions. Much cheaper than the $20 region-restricted DVD a big publisher would have released. We’re three days from release now and he’s already made...
More things Amanda Palmer is doing right
I wanted to tell you guys about this brilliant piece of practice session/marketing/bringing in the audience that Amanda Palmer did, and I thought I’d try out storify to help with the whole embedding-a-ton-of-tweets thing. Let me know how it works! Also, how much do you love the phrase “party on the internet” for these live...
May I revise and extend my prior remarks?
My last post, about the weird prejudice in technical fields that the arts are easy and artists lacking intelligence, got a great response. It’s a difficult issue to talk about, and I’m glad that what I wrote hit home with some people. If I’m very lucky it’ll make it a little easier for a few...
Why does everyone think we suck?
Artists have a terrible reputation. I find it kind of insulting, but on the other hand I can understand where it comes from. Almost my entire family and most of my friends are deeply technical, scientific, quantitative people. And I’m an artist. These people don’t think less of me for my choice of field, but...
Wow is the internet beating up on Michael Kaiser today.
I think the backlash is a little harsh, but I also think the piece in question does really miss the mark. (Do I actually need to link it? Here ya go. As Amanda Ameer pointed out, it’s ironic that it’s on HuffPo.) It looks to me like he’s decrying the demise of arts criticism jobs,...
Amanda Palmer is so far ahead of us
Ukulele Anthem by Amanda Palmer So. Most importantly, this song is great. It’s just so mad and joyful. It jumps up and down on you and tells you why creativity is awesome while you giggle and roll around on the floor. Fantastic. How is that relevant? But why am I blogging about it? Because at...
Make It Simple? Hire an artist.
People keep talking about the new wisdom for building technology products, from web apps to phones to enterprise software: “Keep it simple. It’s gotta make sense to people.” “Focus on making amazing things instead of a profit.” “Trust your instincts and your talent, and push them.” “Refine and simplify over and over again.” “It can’t...
Diamonds, Olive Oil, Champagne and Creativity
Idle thought: It’s not often that the basic value of something changes. There are bubbles and fads, like tulips, mortgage backed securities and snap bracelets. But it’s not often that big changes in the value of something we’ve had all along happen in the minds of whole societies. Champagne It happened with champagne in the...
Step 2
I just found out about this community, and I hope it really takes off. It’s full of individual artists and their stories. People are talking about how they’re selling their art, and what they’re finding out. One the one hand it’s really great to read what so many of my colleagues are doing. On the...
The Fourth Wall Are Making It Up
The Fourth Wall Ensemble are old friends of mine, and I love them dearly. They play instruments and move around a lot on stage. That, in case you missed it, is totally up my alley. They’re uploading a bunch of great little youtube videos that do a lot of work for them all at once....
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