My Next Year Revolution will be to remove the obstacles I ( like most creative types) put in my own way. so in 2009 the rules are: No Rules! Artistic Anarchy! NO TRY ONLY DO!
Hopefully this will take my work to the next level. Which should start with my solo show at the FAC MOD, titled “Atomic Elroy’s Hometown” in late Jan 2009.
I’ve upgraded to HD in my video artwork, It’s so sweet to shoot, looks fab on the monitor. Great broadcast quality HD look. Now I’ve begun the learning curve of editing the footage. YIKES! I’m needing to reach down deep and drag out my inner tech-nerd. HD requires a bit more tech oriented know-how when it comes to out putting it for SD viewing ( which is what most of us use are SD DVD players. It allegedly looks fab when you shoot edit HD and then compress it to view on SD DVD… we’ll see.
Has the ‘net’ jumped the shark? I’ve been on this thing for 14 years now and WTFO! Let’s see in 1994 they added pix. That was an improvement. Porn shortly followed. By 1999 there was video if you had a fast enough connection, which took 6 years to spawn YouTube, OK there were some little things like teenagers chatting with pervy old guys on MSNBC in between, but generally when the dot com bubble burst it took any real experimentation and non commercial activity with it. The rest has been a bunch of Narcisistic Vidiots bemoaning some teenage tragedy on FaceBook, MySpace, etc. Not That I’ve done anything better, mind you, but I’m just a minor tech geek with little ability beyond cut and paste HTML and too much time on my hands ( which I should be putting to better use). I guess the shinny glow of the computer screen has become dull and we’ll need a real quantum leap in either technology or application to excite any other than the shallowest of minds. I guess it has done what it’s inventors had originally in mind, it’s gotten a bunch of nerds laid. I suppose like TV they’ll always be some fool who’ll pay to have their intelligence insulted.
Facebook brings out this sociopathic vanity in most who use it (self included), and you can’t EVER cancel your account only deactivate it, it is beyond evil mostly in it’s total banality. Besides how pathetic is it that we have to inform our so called net friends of each and every shit we take and zit we pop? Why must we monitor our so called net friends’ every movement and shift of mood and emotion. It’s also pathetic why so many people over 30 years old are participating solely in an effort to remain au current. I realize these social networking site are much more important ( and designed for ) young single people, but I started a page just as a PR vehicle for ATOMIC ELROY art, which i fell for FB’s PR and thought would somehow help. HA!
Then I came upon this…
Which made me feel like I wasn’t too far off the mark with my FB assessment, YouTube has become a visual 640 X 480 pixel version. I guess all these sites on the net, you get back what you put into it.
It’s been 28 years It was a Monday night, like today, I remember They announced it on the football game on the TV in the bar. I was doing a sketch comedy show at a disco that wanted to change it’s format. We did a sketch that was a parody of the Ed Sullivan variety show, With the BEE-tles, we only had 3 Bee costumes, so there were only three BEE-tles! Every time I think about it… I still get sad.
Artist Mark Leckly won the 2008 Turner Prize. Yes in England they award an Oscar of sorts to the “best” art exhibit/artist each year. There’s a cash award to something like $37k. Usually it’s quite controversial, and the Brit Press goes wild lambasting some conceptual work by what they call a YBA ( Young British Artist). Two ( or three) years ago it was a room with florescent light that were timed to switch on/off at regular intervals.
This year the Guardian was comparatively glowing in it’s praise, how strange! Any way I liked the concept of this work when it was first announced a few months back. I liked it as I fet some of my work had a shared esthetics of presentation (not content, I try to steer clear of what the art academia calls appropriation, but recently have warmed up to the idea), and sent the artist an email via MySpace saying Congrats on the nomination, and that I liked his work. He quite quickly replied to it, How nice.
WAIT! WTFO… niceness in the art world and the press that covers it… surely, the apocalypse is near!
Here’s some images from the work, from the BBC’s NICE article.
(and won a prize given by Amy Sedaris), Gallery of Contemporary Art UCCS, Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region, Rocky Mountain Biennial FCMOCA, and The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. A very good year, indeed!!
