I just finished researching the ins and outs of owning art gallery for a while on my laptop... and I came out with more questions than before I started. It made me question the very definition of an artist.
The problem for me is that the title artist is a self given title; for an individual to be an artist, all they have to do is have some create something, call it art, and give themselves the title of artist. There is no organization or person out there that can formally qualify or deny someone as an artist, because art itself is so broad and in so many varieties it is difficult to say what is art and what is not. This brings me to my next point.
Photography is rapidly becoming nothing. Photography, at least in a classical sense, was a hard and respectable thing, because film was expensive, cameras and darkrooms were difficult to use, and the whole thing was a bundle of expense and talent that surely any average person could not pull off. Of course, I'm thinking of classic photographers like Avedon, Lange, Adams, Karsh, and the lot. That stuff was hard to do man! Karsh or Avedon are great examples of this, because of the sheer amount of equipment they used.. I've read things that said Karsh used to use at least 5 lights for most of his portraits!
But look at photography now. Digital photography is here to stay, and I feel, like a plague, diminish the title of photographer. Now more than ever, people can use a camera. Cameras are attached to almost all cell phones, ipods, whatever. Heck, you can buy a canon camera for 100 dollars that will give you tons of features to monkey around with. Being able to take a photograph is now no more than the click of a button, no juggling of film or negatives or prints anymore. Hell, there are SD cards with wifi attached to them that start to upload photos the minute we get inside of our home's wifi signal. Of course, this is a wonderful thing, to be able to do such things with such ease, but at the same time, this is slowly killing the need for talent in a photographer. Every year, the line between professional level camers and consumer level cameras is blurred, and it will continue in the future. I myself have a "Pro-sumer" camera, the Canon 7D. Its somewhere in between, and its fitting because I am training to become a professional photographer. They had to invent a word just for my type of camera.
And with the invasion and explosion of Facebook photos and Flickr, the worth of an individual image is at an all time low. If a photos were like stocks, I'd be a stock broker jumping out a window right now, because the volume of trading has just made this photography market the biggest bear ever. And this means that to be a professional photographer, you don't really need as much anymore. Because the line between pro equipment and consumer equipment is blurred, so is the actual line between professional and consumer. In short, the 200 12 megapixel photos you just posted on Facebook of you and your friends getting drunk for no other reason than "Its the weekend let's party!" are making my photos equally as worthless on the internet.
Okay back to the artist. The photography example is the biggest example of what I'm personally scared about. With things like Flickr, who's to buy art anymore? They can just go surfing about on Flickr if they want to see something amazing, free of charge. And they don't have to see the same painting or photo over and over, they can see millions of different ones. This absolute sea of art is now floating on the internet, and its creating the biggest problem in art ever. To have a flickr, you have to fill out a registration page and you're done, so there is no authentication that what you post there will be of any worth to the world or not. No one polices it, and no one filters it. Banksy, Karsh, Avedon, a five year old's drawings of dogs, a high school student in a photography 1 class, Its all in the same place.
Please buy art. Buy an art piece that you truly believe is good. Go to a local art gallery, support them. Its good for everyone, especially the art community. I suppose this is the only remedy/defense out there against all the awful art in this world. I'm afraid art means no one to anyone anymore.
I digress... Everyone's art starts from somewhere. I mean, I started posting on flickr when I was in high school, and my old stuff is awful.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Facebook is the devil
Why do we all love to waste hours of time on Facebook?
Why must we scour the ends of the website in search of random bits of information about our friends and family?
Since when has talking on the phone and in person been replaced by looking up somebody on Facebook and learning about them on a table of records? Why is that acceptable?
I recently did a multi genre research project on the social effects of Facebook on college students. The results basically make me want to delete my Facebook altogether.
I don't think that people surfing the site understand that any bit of information that they post on Facebook are still owned by the individual. All the information posted is owned privately by Facebook. Its nice that they give you options to delete, modify, and protect the information using privacy controls, because technically, its theirs and they can do whatever they want with it.
I don't know if I want random people to know that I'm addicted to Deadmau5, or that I like photography and the drums, or any of that information that seems so useless that I might as well post it anyway. Posting the information does give someone a personal identity on the Internet, and they do become more individualized as the amount of data they upload to the site increases. But putting all this data on the Internet could possibly come back to haunt someone. For example, having pictures of you and an ex-girlfriend you no longer associate with still uploaded to Facebook might mean that you're going to have people asking you about those pictures, and could stand as evidence against you in a legal issue. Or having "LGBT UNITED" as one of your groups up on Facebook might lead people to believe you are actually part of the LGBT community, altering their perceptions of you.
(But really, if people stop associating with you because you join a group based on alternate forms of sexuality, chances are that those people cannot handle being open minded about the connections and friends they make, and that probably casts more of a negative appeal to them than you)
I think social networking is pretty over rated, after thinking long and hard about it. I have a friend (who I will not name, because this person absolutely loves their privacy) that doesn't own a facebook. I used to question why my friend didn't, because this friend was one of the most popular people at my high school, and it seemed almost impossible for him to have so many connections without a facebook. I asked them about it several different times, and they responded with answers that really didn't make sense to me. At the time, I couldn't see myself without a Facebook: It was my second most used form of communication with my friends, following physical communication. I thought about it for months before I realized why:
If you don't have a facebook, your information won't be on the Internet for everyone to see, which in turn makes you mysterious. And this forces people to text you or call you to meet up, and this in turn makes people want to be with you. And because people are now coming to you through your cell phone, you can more easily choose who you want to respond to or not, giving you more control of your friends and personal information than facebook could ever give you. This is a good thing.
Not having a facebook makes you a more popular person in the long run, because the simple fact that people can't access all your personal information at once makes other people want to be with you. Its a bit of simple reverse psychology: people want that forbidden fruit, the thing they can't have. If people can't have your information, they will go to greater lengths to get it, which only means good things for you.
I might have to say goodbye to my Facebook. I want control.
Why must we scour the ends of the website in search of random bits of information about our friends and family?
Since when has talking on the phone and in person been replaced by looking up somebody on Facebook and learning about them on a table of records? Why is that acceptable?
I recently did a multi genre research project on the social effects of Facebook on college students. The results basically make me want to delete my Facebook altogether.
I don't think that people surfing the site understand that any bit of information that they post on Facebook are still owned by the individual. All the information posted is owned privately by Facebook. Its nice that they give you options to delete, modify, and protect the information using privacy controls, because technically, its theirs and they can do whatever they want with it.
I don't know if I want random people to know that I'm addicted to Deadmau5, or that I like photography and the drums, or any of that information that seems so useless that I might as well post it anyway. Posting the information does give someone a personal identity on the Internet, and they do become more individualized as the amount of data they upload to the site increases. But putting all this data on the Internet could possibly come back to haunt someone. For example, having pictures of you and an ex-girlfriend you no longer associate with still uploaded to Facebook might mean that you're going to have people asking you about those pictures, and could stand as evidence against you in a legal issue. Or having "LGBT UNITED" as one of your groups up on Facebook might lead people to believe you are actually part of the LGBT community, altering their perceptions of you.
(But really, if people stop associating with you because you join a group based on alternate forms of sexuality, chances are that those people cannot handle being open minded about the connections and friends they make, and that probably casts more of a negative appeal to them than you)
I think social networking is pretty over rated, after thinking long and hard about it. I have a friend (who I will not name, because this person absolutely loves their privacy) that doesn't own a facebook. I used to question why my friend didn't, because this friend was one of the most popular people at my high school, and it seemed almost impossible for him to have so many connections without a facebook. I asked them about it several different times, and they responded with answers that really didn't make sense to me. At the time, I couldn't see myself without a Facebook: It was my second most used form of communication with my friends, following physical communication. I thought about it for months before I realized why:
If you don't have a facebook, your information won't be on the Internet for everyone to see, which in turn makes you mysterious. And this forces people to text you or call you to meet up, and this in turn makes people want to be with you. And because people are now coming to you through your cell phone, you can more easily choose who you want to respond to or not, giving you more control of your friends and personal information than facebook could ever give you. This is a good thing.
Not having a facebook makes you a more popular person in the long run, because the simple fact that people can't access all your personal information at once makes other people want to be with you. Its a bit of simple reverse psychology: people want that forbidden fruit, the thing they can't have. If people can't have your information, they will go to greater lengths to get it, which only means good things for you.
I might have to say goodbye to my Facebook. I want control.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
I'm on a...plane?
I'm on blogspot while flying a plane! How amazing this world is, to be able to be on a plane going 447mph at 30000 feet above sea level while surfing the internet is nothing short of fantastic.
Anyways... I wanted to write a couple words about Delta Airlines. They might be my new favorite airline. I'm currently on a 767 and in front of every seat there is the coolest media center touchscreen television I've ever seen, at least on a plane. I turned on the device expecting the normal 30 some odd channels of satellite tv, and maybe a couple of okay movies you can buy at ridiculously high prices. But this was so much more than that. There's on demand TV programs for a dollar, a scrolling map of your airplane to the world, an extensive database of movies all at 6 dollars a piece, an HBO section for 2 dollars a piece, and the part that made me absolutely giddy: a music section. This music section has saved CD albums that you can play on demand from the TV for free. They far exceeded my expectations for the album and genre sections too... I mean, I was listening to Tiesto and deadmau5 on the damn thing! Dance collections? Proper ones? It made me absolutely giddy.
That wasn't it either. The plane was loads cleaner than an American Airline plane. there wasn't a speck of trash for my eyes to be blighted by. Seriously.
so yeah... Delta airlines, You rock.
Anyways... I wanted to write a couple words about Delta Airlines. They might be my new favorite airline. I'm currently on a 767 and in front of every seat there is the coolest media center touchscreen television I've ever seen, at least on a plane. I turned on the device expecting the normal 30 some odd channels of satellite tv, and maybe a couple of okay movies you can buy at ridiculously high prices. But this was so much more than that. There's on demand TV programs for a dollar, a scrolling map of your airplane to the world, an extensive database of movies all at 6 dollars a piece, an HBO section for 2 dollars a piece, and the part that made me absolutely giddy: a music section. This music section has saved CD albums that you can play on demand from the TV for free. They far exceeded my expectations for the album and genre sections too... I mean, I was listening to Tiesto and deadmau5 on the damn thing! Dance collections? Proper ones? It made me absolutely giddy.
That wasn't it either. The plane was loads cleaner than an American Airline plane. there wasn't a speck of trash for my eyes to be blighted by. Seriously.
so yeah... Delta airlines, You rock.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Ponder turkeys
Today I saw the most beautiful sunset in my entire life, and I used the FxCamera on my droid to take some sweet looking cross processed-like pictures. I thought they were so good that I plugged my Droid into my Asus laptop, downloaded them, and proceeded to upload them to my now Pro Flickr account. Unfortunately the wireless network at my school ground to a halt as soon as I began to upload them, and I didn't have the chance to. Go figure, technology.
heh, get it! I hit a wall with the wireless internet... Perhaps a... firewall?
I jest.
I have the photos on my computer now... Here's one:
Sucks that they came out so small... FxCamera has a resolution limiter for some reason, so even though I take a photo with a 5 megapixel camera, its only recording like 3.
heh, get it! I hit a wall with the wireless internet... Perhaps a... firewall?
I jest.
I have the photos on my computer now... Here's one:
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The beginning
This blog is meant to keep my strange thoughts recorded and organized in a chronological fashion, in order to keep my sanity.
I frequently have the strangest thoughts and experiences, and I thought that maybe someone out there might like to hear them. I think that my thoughts are sort of entertaining.
Plushbrains:
Came up with this randomly. I thought that I should relate it to my brain, and it should be random and fluffy. who doesn't like fluffy stuff?
I'll try and update it regularly. I hope you tell your friends about this site if you like it.
Regards,
Kyle
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