Archive for the ‘ Musings ’ Category
Should educational materials be provided for free? There’s been a large movement over the past several years that says “yes!!”
Here’s a good background article from the New York Times.
Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be many classes in the visual arts – at least not that I’ve seen. I hope that can change.
Access is key!
Health care, nukes – yes folks, he’s made himself a target. So we’re brightening the whole idea up with a version of our own. Enjoy.
# Average user has 130 friends on the site
# Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
# Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
# Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
# Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
# Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month
# Average user is invited to 3 events per month
# Average user is a member of 13 groups
This is something I wish I would have thought of myself:
“AFP writes that five French journalists have agreed to lock themselves in a farmhouse in France for five days, where they’ll write news based only on what they read on Twitter and Facebook.”
You can read a bit more about it here.
So we’ve been interested in identity and its implications in the digital age. In fact, a lot of our work has been a version of the analog investigation of avatars.
Here’s a link to an interesting article from WIRED about what happened when one man tried to disappear without a digital trace – into an entirely new identity.
We were babysitting my 12 (soon to be 13) year old niece this weekend, and I couldn’t help but watch and wonder at her communication forms and habits. She was generally texting and on facebook at the same time, but she only used the telephone as a phone (a live voice transmittal device) twice: once to ask her babysitter for the week if there was more baloney, and once to let her friend know that she was leaving the house and would see her in about 5 minutes (said friend lives about 3 blks away).
Anyhow, it’s got me to thinking a lot about the way that we will communicate in the future – will any of our communication be technologically unassisted? Is a voice-conversation turning into a nostalgic event? (This is also something we’re exploring as part of the UPP) Anyway, here’s a quote from an interesting article in the NYT:
“But the children, teenagers and young adults who are passing through this cauldron of technological change will also have a lot in common. They’ll think nothing of sharing the minutiae of their lives online, staying connected to their friends at all times, buying virtual goods, and owning one über-device that does it all…”
Read the full article here.
You can really learn a lot reading facebook status updates. A few of my favorite quotes from some of our facebook friends (fbfs):
Dax Tran-Caffee “successfully traded a painting for poetry – creativity is the currency of the FUTURE”
Tif Bullard “life is full of flakes – some snow, some human.”
Joshua Esmanuel-David Slater “I wish I didn’t have to pay rent and medical bills and school tuition and other bills so I can shop all day. But then I would be living in my mama’s basement…I still look good so it all works out.” 
It all started with trying to identify a painting with nested green squares.
We had a strong feeling that the painter’s name started with an A.
A few Google searches later, we found it. But the image led us to this great website out of Amsterdam.
“The Institute of Artificial Art.”
Enjoy.
“…Never has the American art world functioned so efficiently as a full-service marketing industry on the corporate model…” [full text here]
From February of 2009, but still relevant none the less. Worth a read.
The last paragraph in particular might even give one hope.
