If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.
What an interesting morning. Apparently, Google's search features malfunctioned for a bit. I woke up to a little Facebook chatter about it, and when I logged into Twitter, my contacts were abuzz with talks about it. Being the dramatic artist that I am, I started to wonder aloud if it was a deliberate attack, perfectly-timed for Saturday morning web surfing, and if we were witnessing a "hack of Rome," so to speak. It eventually turned out to be a programming glitch, as a more rational friend of mine predicted.
Got me thinking, though, about digital hegemons. It's great to have standards and unification, as they ensure we all speak the language and can have general expectations about our global Internet usage. And yet, while it's incredibly helpful to have Facebook and Google as lingua franca online systems, I wonder if this coding mistake is a wake-up call that the best part about digital hegemons is also their worst: that a unified entity is more vulnerable to error than disparate but connected services.
Reminds me of images of Confederate soldiers cutting down telegraph wire during the Civil War:
During Second Manassas (Bull Run) the Confederates cut the telegraph connections with Washington. Unable to communicate with his key generals, Lincoln opened a telegraphic dialog with a subordinate officer that continued for several days. The telegrams between the president and Colonel Herman Haupt were at one point the national leadership’s best source of information.
Don Welch lives in Nebraska and is one of those many talented American poets who have never received as much attention as they deserve. His poems are distinguished by the meticulous care he puts into writing them, and by their deep intelligence. Here is Welch's picture of a 14-year-old, captured at that awkward and painfully vulnerable step on the way to adulthood.
At 14
To be shy, to lower your eyes after making a greeting.
to know wherever you go you'll be called on,
to fear whoever you're near will ask you,
to wear the softer sides of the air in rooms filled with angers,
your ship always docked in transparent slips
whose wharves are sheerer than membranes.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2008 by Don Welch. Reprinted from "When Memory Gives Dust a Face," by Don Welch, published by Lewis-Clark Press, 2008, by permission of Don Welch and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Today, we are dangerously close to having a government without newspapers. American newspapers shoulder the burden of considerable indebtedness with little cash on hand, as their profit margins have diminished or disappeared. Readers turn increasingly to the Internet for information — even though the Internet has the potential to be, in the words of the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, “a cesspool” of false information. If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved.
I quite enjoyed this article, which argues that "there is an option that might not only save newspapers but also make them stronger: Turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions". As much as it seems inevitable to me that paper will die, I keep thinking to myself, there has to be a solution. I'm a big fan of citizen journalism and crowdsourcing (duh - why do I wrote a blog? :), but journalism, with all its editors and standards and professionalism and bureaucracy and in-fighting and competition, also has an important place in society.
There's nothing quite like in-depth feature articles in the NY Times, or a well-researched local story in the LA Times, or a bare bones wire from AP or Reuters. Something just seems right about having professional sources of information that we can more or less believe are more or less reliable. Something seems right about having singular institutions that monitor and disseminate information centrally. Even if good (and maybe even better) alternatives exist in the blogosphere. If blogs are dispersed, then newspapers are centralized; both have their place.
I'm no businessperson, so I have no idea just how feasible it would be to actually put this into place. It seems, though, that if newspapers and publications go nonprofit and carry an endowment, they could very well continue without the burden of profit margins (though with the burden of fundraising). I just can't imagine this is easy to swallow for a megapaper like the New York Times Company, whose shiny new building (pictured here) I've watched come together over the past few years.
There is something vaguely embarrassing—even narcissistic—about our new era of mass photography. Because we're always carrying cameras, we're moved to document every moment of our lives—sometimes to the exclusion of actually experiencing that moment. Take a look at this picture of Barack and Michelle Obama at one of the inaugural balls. Everyone in the audience has a hand up with a cell phone pointed at the stage, but nobody is actually looking at what's going on.
The above comes from a great article about Microsoft Photosynth overall, including a fascinating talk about composite images and authenticity. But I wanted to hone in on this one quote, which I found striking for its veracity. I'm remembering the day when I came across the sight of people staring up at the sky in midtown as a fellow scaled the New York Times Building. What fascinated me most was that the city, at least for a moment, stood still. And why?
So we could take pictures:
I wonder what the motivation is to record, to document. I have a hunch that any technology that is quickly assumed into the daily habits of the general population taps into a basic trait of humanity. I'm starting to think that maybe the need to photograph our lives taps into that same need to draw on cave walls and to tell stories around campfires.
After all, what's the first thing you ask someone when something remarkable has just happened? "Did you see that?" It seems like reality, for the most part, only becomes real in the remembering and the sharing.
I must say I've quite enjoyed reading Terry Carbone's posts to the Brooklyn Museum blog about the portrait career of Samuel Morse. It was quite a surprise when I heard that Morse was himself an artist, and not only that, but two of his portraits are housed in the Brooklyn Museum's collections. According to Ms. Carbone, he "established a thirty-year pattern of alternating work as an artist with his scientific pursuits, often switching gears in reaction to the cool reception of his art."
These posts have gotten me thinking about the idea of the Renaissance (Wo)man, i.e., the kind of person who works across many disciplines. It's difficult to see, exactly, how portraiture and communications technology intersect, but that's the point, I think. The fact that the two disciplines are so different is probably what helped Morse think in new ways, create new connections, open his mind to new ideas.
At a "dive" in SoHo. In a totalitarian society, imagery of political leaders is projected onto the populace. In the case of Obama, the imagery is volunteered by the populace.
A few weeks ago, I got the following text message while in Point Loma, CA:
Welcome to Mexico: to call US dial 00-1-area code-number. To call Sprint Care dial 00-1-817-698-4199.
At first, I was confused: why does Sprint think I'm in Mexico? A few others also received a similar text message, and we concluded that we were close enough to the border to warrant a note. But after a little while, I realized a larger implication: so long as my phone is on, my mobile carrier knows where I am. I knew this intuitively but hadn't really given it much thought till I received that text.
Cell Phone, An Xiao
With the development of the telegraph, communications suddenly came with the price of mediation. Certainly, the postal and messenger services have always come with that price, but most of these messages are sealed in envelopes, the opening of which is illegal except by the intended recipient. On the other hand, even if telegrams were private, it was essential to their function that a total strange would read it, and another total stranger would transcribe it.
This is the price of instant communication, a price almost all of us are aware of but almost none of us care very much about: everything we say and do with our various devices can potentially be read and monitored by someone else. Telegraph users often used code to disguise their messages, and since it took effort to send a message to begin with, this deliberation was probably adequate security.
The difference now is convenience. More and more in the 21st century, the ephemera of daily life are mediated and even recorded through digital devices. Our personal correspondence bounces through multiple computers to get to their destination. Our friendship networks are housed in private data centers. Everything from flirting to chit chat to picture taking to miscellaneous intellectual discourse can now be logged on IM and Facebook and blogs and Twitter. And this is the legal, normal stuff that we're at least partially aware of and willingly participate in.
This isn't so much a sound for alarm, because, frankly, who cares that anyone knows what I ate for breakfast? Rather, it's a pause for thought, a reflection on identities and experiences that are no longer deeply personal but, at least potentially, quite public. Maybe the key difference now between the average individual and the tabloid-victimized celebrity is that millions of people care about the latter's daily doings, and only a few dozen care about the former. Both, however, are available to anyone.
Me flashing the classic Asian girl peace sign. I am also sipping a cup of Italian wine, wearing Donna Karan glasses and a scarf from India, and I'm probably about to talk to someone about American pop culture and media. All this at a Chelsea art gallery.
"Where are you from?" For most people, it means, "Where were you born?" or "Where did you grow up?" but for an ethnic minority, it's an ambiguous question. Sometimes people are wondering where I grew up, but sometimes they're wondering about my ethnic background. My usual answer is Los Angeles, and then I'm happy to share more if folks say something like, "But where are your parents from?" (Incidentally, I know a few 4th-generation Chinese and Japanese who have fun with that follow-up.) It's an innocuous question and a good conversation starter in general.
But then, when I'm really thinking about it, I wonder, "Where am I from?" The question, at least in my case, doesn't really answer much about who I am. Technically, I am from two places: Manila and Los Angeles. I was born in the U.S., raised in Manila, I grew up for the most part between there and a Filipino and Mexican community in Los Angeles, and I picked up a lot of Chinese culture. Genetically, I have a mixture of Philippine and Chinese ancestry, with helpings of Spanish in the mix.
And yet, there's so much more to me than that: I studied mostly in the classical Western tradition, I'm a published writer and speak English fluently, I fell in love with the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson, I watched mainstream American television like The Simpsons and The Daily Show, I analyzed the philosophies of Kant and Seneca but took up Zen as the background for my work, and, for whatever reason, I've come into my own in New York City, a hodgepodge of cultures that somehow feels very much different from Los Angeles.
The phrase "citizen of the world" comes to mind, but it's awfully pretentious, and besides, I've actually not been to many countries outside the U.S. But as I look at a President who I imagine also struggled with how to answer the "Where are you from?" question, and as I look around at my friends, who come from all manner of countries and ethnic backgrounds, I wonder just how relevant the question is these days. In the end, it's probably just a good conversation starter.
I recently posted the following art statement to my web site, to try to encapsulate what exactly I mean by "Zen and the 21st century." As you can see on the list of topics to the right, I blog about a lot of apparently-random, disparate things, as I try to make sense of them in my day to day life. I've always had a natural curiosity about the world, and this blog kind of reflects that, as does my art, which runs the gamut from street photography to delicate scenes from nature to, well, Twitter art feeds.
"Zen" is a vague term, I admit. There's the pop sense, of course, meaning simplicity and calm, but there's also the deeper philosophical sense. I tend to mean both. "21st century" is a bit more obvious. The basic idea is that I want to look at contemporary issues and pop culture through the lens of what I find to be a powerful metaphysical and ethical philosophy that, appropriately enough, has come into popular parlance and contains a historical aesthetic tradition. Whether or not I'm doing that with any success through my art or my blog is another story entirely. :)
Anyway, I'd be curious to get any feedback on this statement and to hear what you think (either via comments or email). I worked quite a bit on it and mean it to be a summary of sorts.
In my photography and digital media work, I explore what I consider three important pillars of the 21st century: the natural environment, human societies and settlements (i.e., cities) and individual human beings. In these pillars, and their complex interactions, we can find the underpinnings of many contemporary concerns. Climate change, once the province of hippies and radicals, is now a key focus of business and government worldwide. Urban living is rapidly becoming the norm of human social organization across the globe, as the UN predicts that more than half the world will live in cities by 2010. And, of course, the role of the individual and his/her identity has shifted and been redefined by the rise of the Internet and social networking tools.
Conceptually, I’ve formally studied a number of Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, which serve as the background for my work. I’ve found that Zen thought in particular helps bring clarity to a rich number of 21st century experiences. I draw upon notions of impermanence and change (anitya), true nature (tathagatha) and constructed, fluid identity (anatman), among others. These concepts, while not perfect analogues in my art, shed light on 21st century culture at a deep level and serve as a helpful backdrop to the more contemporary concepts I explore, such as modern psychology, technological innovations and implications, and others.
Aesthetically, I borrow heavily from formalist traditions while simultaneously seeking to break new ground. As with my conceptual background, I’ve found that the Zen aesthetic approach, in its preference for simplicity of form and suggestion of content, complements the rich concepts I explore in my work. Aesthetics such as mono no aware (an awareness of the passing of things), miyabi (elegance and simplicity) and wabi-sabi (a rustic perfection) feature prominently in my work, as I practice in the tradition of mushin (no mind, no effort). At the same time, I seek to push the format of digital photography and media by marrying traditional eastern aesthetics with more modern western ones, such as Cartier-Bresson’s notion of the defining moment. I also look toward new modes of expression allowed by digital media and editing tools, especially in the realm of branded, templatized expression. It’s this cocktail of medieval, modern and my own aesthetic experimentation that excites me about my visual work.
I use my art practice, as much meditative as it is intellectual-aesthetic, to serve as a stepping stone toward understanding the 21st century and as a bridge between contemporary concerns and more universal ones. I keep a foot in the past while simultaneously walking forward, and I consider myself successful if I don’t trip all over myself in the process. I’m humbled by this opportunity to share my work and hope the statements below, which dive deeper into the particular series I’ve produced, can help my viewers understand a bit more about the thinking that went behind each piece.
Each year, I look forward to those moments when winter and autumn come together. Last year, I focused a lot on red leaves and yellow leaves, and this year, I looked at ones scattered on the ground as the sun set. The interplay of color and light thrilled me. I hope you enjoy these shots.
See more here, and embed it in your own blog if you'd like:
Even as a professional photographer-artist type with a snazzy Canon Digital Rebel and a suite of lenses, I openly admit that I'm a huge iPhone photo aficionada. Of course, its tiny lens and low resolution could never compete with my main camera, but each tool has its purpose. Here are four reasons I'll whip out my iPhone instead of my Rebel:
An Xiao (me!) at work with my Rebel
1. Ease of Uploading To upload a photo to my blog, I simply take a picture and email the photo to my Blogger account. Blogger automatically pops it onto Picasa and creates a draft entry for me that I can refine and sharpen before popping it online for public consumption. With my Rebel, I have to sit down at my computer, connect the camera, download the photo, upload it to Flickr, and then write a blog entry about it. Sometimes, speed is all that matters when I want to share something.
2. Aesthetic Interest Just as Holgas and (until recently) Polaroids have become popular tools for exploring photography, so does the iPhone have an aesthetic appeal to me. Its tight constraints force me to look at photography in a new way and challenge me to think more about colors and composition rather than rely solely on a high-quality shot. In many ways, it's like forcing yourself to write your thoughts in Twitter--the limitations alone get you thinking about things in a different way.
3. Casual/Nonthreatening When I whip out my Rebel, people often say, "Wow, that's quite a camera." It draws attention, and as a photographer, I don't always want attention. I often want to capture the world while influencing it as little as possible. As the iPhone has so many purposes, I can take a picture without anyone realizing I took one, as the tap-tap of my thumb could just be me scrolling through the New York Times. This sounds a bit creepier than it is--I always respect people's right to privacy :)
4. Sketchbook vs Art Writers have notebooks, and painters have sketchbooks. What do photographers have? Until recently, we had Polaroids, but now that those have gone the way of the dodo bird, I've come to appreciate the value of the iPhone as a means of experimentation, of recording ideas, of jotting down "notes" about subject matter. At the moment, at least, I don't think of these shots as "art" per se, but rather as sketches.
There's a fabulous new issue of Boxcar Poetry Review out, featuring the photography of Charley Star. I met Charley in Los Angeles during a show we had together, and I was struck by the poetry of her work. It had a very literal poetic quality, as she combined her images with words, but it also expressed a figurative poetic sentiment. Thus, I reached out to her about featuring with Boxcar, and I'm thrilled to show images from her Untitled Storm series, which speak to me like Rothkos, but with a touch of realism.
While you're there, I also encourage you to check out the interview with Ilya Kaminsky, and the featured 2008 Oboh Prize Winners, Matthew Olzmann, Lafayette Wattles, and francine j. harris.
I've not yet seen the original in person, but it's quite striking to see myself in a painting. I'm so used to seeing myself in photographs, from informal to artistic, but seeing my image in the classic medium of portraiture really brings home Matt's idea that when you take a collection of Facebook portraits and place them in a gallery, "you see a community of individuals- their likeness elevated and memorialized like the original commissioners of portrait painting".
How fascinating it is to connect the very contemporary practice of Facebook images with the old school practice of commissioning a portrait. Gets me thinking that this is yet another way technology has democratized areas of life once considered marks of affluence. From inexpensive colorful clothing made possible by modern chemistry, to the explosion of citizen journalism via the Internet, to the ubiquity of spices thanks to enhanced farming and harvest techniques, human invention has made once-rare things common. The ease with which we embrace certain new technologies, like Facebook portraits, suggests they tap into something deeper, something essential to our humanity.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
Certainly, I agree with much of Obama's policies and vision, but to be honest, every time I think of him, I think more of the compelling life story and the dream he represents. He is not just an African-American president, but a president who was raised by a single mother, who never knew his father, who has a funny name, who understands the immigrant experience and who, through sheer intelligence and determination, with no meaningful family connections or inherited funds, ascended to the highest office in the land before his 50th birthday. He is such an unlikely president, and that is what moves me so.
I wrote in November that Obama's victory speech brought me to tears, and that I'd explain why eventually. I figure the day of his inauguration is as good a day as any, and it has to do with the quote above. Barack Hussein Obama himself has never publicly made a big deal of his race and humble upbringing, but everyone else has, including me.
For when I think of him, I can't help but think of my own story. I rarely speak about this, but I often wonder how the granddaughter of a Philippine mango farmer, born to a single mother and raised in a low-income community, ended up featuring online with the Brooklyn Museum. I wonder how I ended up with a diploma from Georgetown University, and invitations to dinner parties on the Upper East Side. I wonder how I even had a chance at all, or how anyone from a humble upbringing could be so bold as to imagine themselves president.
Today, I am proud to be an American, because in America, the story of Obama is possible. His story is my story, and that of so many others who've come to this country in search of opportunity or who've been born here with the dream of a better life. I have always suspected this, but today, I've found the confirmation: in the United States, who you are and where you come from do not have to define you if you so choose. Rather, with a little hard work and a little luck, you'll be known more for who you've become.
Congratulations to Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States, and truly an inspiration.
Green tea, ice water, Kaori Umeshu (plum sake)--even our palates these days have a short attention span.
On a side note: I'm coming to realize how much I enjoy sake. I've never been much of an alcohol person: I tend to order the same beer, and I enjoy a few good wines. But sake... well, sake is just right for me, and I like the various ways to consume it, from boxes to dishes to little cups.
I've talked a lot about microblogging as an artist, but not so much as a poet. I think part of what fascinates me about microblogging is that it creates the need for brevity in much the same way as Japanese short verse forms like haiku do. And like a traditional haiku, the words are confined to a single line, rather than broken up into three separate lines.
Twitter, of course, is ripe for haiku poets. Tinywords has a presence, as do a whole slew of writers who are placing haiku in their tweets. One of my favorites is Adriaan Jacobsz, with a lot of nature-based poetry (and in two languages, no less!).
But I'm interested in the microblog as not simply a medium but a form. The rules on a site like Twitter are clear: 140 characters, one line, no decorations like italics or underlines. It's similar for other microblogging media like Facebook status updates. So, rather than write haiku per se, I've been experimenting w/ fragments as poems in themselves - almost like zuihitsu, or thought-scribblings, but with more precise restrictions:
- the way rain collects in discarded coffee cups.
- flurries... only yesterday, I brunched in the sun
- the tiny kitten resting in my lap - not even a purr
- insomnia - late night tap-tappings at the computer
To that end, I've created a group on Facebook called the Status-ku Collective. The use of "ku", meaning poetry, references "haiku", but I don't intend to restrict the content to a Zen-like aesthetic. Far from it, really: I've invited a number of different types of poets on my friends list, from haiku to slam. If you're on Facebook, please join as well. It's super experimental at this point, but it will be an interesting dialogue, I hope, and a quirky way to explore poetry in the digital realm.
I've been thinking a lot about how communications technology has closed the world, but I had a quick exchange with Birgitte Sværke Pedersen that made me realize just how far apart we are anyway. Birgitte wrote a little about my 1stfans Twitter Art Feed project, but it was entirely in Danish! I saw my image and my name, and I could more or less figure out what she was writing about, but I wasn't entirely sure till she kindly provided a translation.
And yet, the simple fact that I had to ask for one got me thinking that maybe the next step in closing the world of communications is through automatic translation. I know we're getting there, thanks to services like Babelfish and Google Translator, but it's still a bit choppy for most languages. I know firsthand from translating poetry that conveying the right sense of words and striking a balance between literal meaning and nuance are incredibly difficult for a human being. Teaching a computer to do so would be even more difficult.
Let’s take a simple example: if a book is titled “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in English, and the German title is “Also sprach Zarathustra”, the system can begin to understand that “thus spoke” can be translated with “also sprach”. (This approach would even work for metaphors – surely, Google researchers will take the longest available phrase which has high statistical matches across different works.) All it needs is someone to feed the system the two books and to teach it the two are translations from language A to language B, and the translator can create what Franz Och called a “language model.”
Also makes me think about how international the art world is. I remember, before I took up photography, I would lament the fact that my writing could only reach a limited subset of people, and that I could only read a certain subset of written prose in the original. But with the art world, I've experienced so many world viewpoints, as language is a limited barrier in mainly-visual media, and I've been able to share my work with folks I could have only a limited verbal conversation with.
A few months ago, I think, a few friends and I ran into a shoot for Ugly Betty. It was a dark, relatively cold night, but the spotlights cast an eerie sheen down the street. They created what, in my mind, seemed to be a "midnight sunset" of sorts..
They were actually quite tall, and imposing looking. Strangely enough, no one stood guard by them, despite all the expensive equipment. I have to admit that the fancy tripods to hold up extra lights were awfully tempting. Got me thinking about the potential for these large spotlights, and how light can so easily define a photograph. Also got me thinking about the surreal 'scapes of Gregory Crewdson.
You can view a few more photos here. I'm also testing the use of the Flickr slideshow feature, a la Change.gov's frequent use of it. Feel free to use the share feature to embed the slideshow in your own site, if you like it, or simply to view the images full screen.
So interesting: a men/women bathroom. This isn't, I suspect, a gender neutral bathroom for the sake of being gender neutral (though it certainly has that benefit for those who prefer it), as the other restroom option was for women only.
Rather, as these were single-occupancy restrooms, this sign seemed to be the institutional acknowledgement of an oft-seen phenomenon: women, faced with impossible lines outside their restrooms, will use the men's restroom without stigma. Why not recognize this with a sign?
Both male and female respondents are significantly more likely to say that it's okay to for women to use the men's room than for men to use the women's room. There's no significant difference between each gender's response to these questions.
It was funny to watch news of the Hudson River plane emerge over various channels. I saw my first inkling of it on Twitter, when a Twitterer in Houston posted a link to it. Then, maybe five minutes later, everyone (especially NYC-based tweeps) started posting about it.
Soon after that, I start to see the news pop up on my Firefox news ticker, followed by Facebook status updates from folks. Next thing you know, I hear someone yell out, "Whoa, an airplane just crash landed in the Hudson not that far from us" (we were in the midtown area), as he waves around his iPhone.
And pretty soon, I hear sirens all around, as they presumably race to the scene.
And then, to top it all off, I get a phone call from my friend Regina, who lives in Battery Park City and saw it all firsthand.
By the evening, at a gallery opening, I heard everyone talking about it, and in the taxi ride to another part of town, I saw news coverage in the car, and then when I got home, I saw a few articles dissecting the story.
Shelley Bernstein and Will Cary have opened up threads on the Brooklyn Museum blog addressing some of the concerns folks have expressed about the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed. I feel like I should post my own thoughts as well, though to be honest, I have nothing extra to contribute. But hey, I was a philosophy major, so I always enjoy a good debate. I just want to make clear that I'm talking about the Twitter feed as a museum benefit, and not January's Twitter feed as my conceptual art project (and I know people have loads of opinions about conceptual art :), nor the idea of Twitter as an art form in general. For the latter, you can find some initial thoughts in a previous post of mine.
The Anti-Feed Argument The gist of the anti-feed argument, if I understand it correctly, is that paying for the feed runs counter to the heart of Twitter and the Internet as a whole, the premise being that web-based content and social media ought to be free. Hrag Vartanian articulated this notion on his blog, but you can also see folks' thoughts in the comments on the posts by Shelley and Will. We can see how this premise has presented unique challenges to the music industry and digital rights management and to the current newspaper crisis. People want and expect a free Internet, and I completely agree: the power of the Internet is that it's available to anyone with basic literacy skills and access to a computer. It's a perfect tool for democracy and personal expression.
So it seems logical to draw from that premise that the 1stfans feed should be free. It utilizes a free service (Twitter) on a free Internet in association with a free Saturday evening at a museum that is optionally free (if you choose not to pay the recommended admission fee). And let's take this idea outside an institutional context. Imagine, or instance, if an artist, even a very famous and established one, were to start tweeting but asked money in exchange for the privilege of hearing his or her thoughts and creative ideas. I doubt anyone would pay. I certainly couldn't imagine paying. Heck, folks don't even want to pay to read the New York Times.
Putting Things Into Context: Museum Memberships And yet, when I think about the 1stfans feed, I think about it within the context of a museum membership program. As Will writes, the purpose of the 1stfans membership is to give members "access to something that isn’t available to regular online visitors to thank them for supporting our non-profit institution." This is quite common, and even expected: from exclusive opening nights to VIP dinners and receptions to special guided tours, museums and nonprofit institutions find ways to thank donors in cost-effective but meaningful ways available only to members. In traditional memberships, these benefits allow museums to do at least three things:
1. Grant exclusive access to areas of interest to donors (in this case, art): The exclusivity in itself serves as a form of thank you, a sign that the gift is appreciated 2. Give members a chance to socialize with museum staff, other members and guest artists 3. Demonstrate and maintain fiscal responsibility: The less the events cost, the more the money can be used for arts programming, and the better donors feel about their investment.
I'm sure there are other aspects of membership benefits we could think of, but these three intuitively strike me as key.
A Question of Scale I'm an artist. I'm not at all a museum professional, nor am I a finance wizard, and I don't think I'd be very good if I tried (in fact, I know I wouldn't be very good!), so I'll grant that I could be completely off base here. But it seems reasonable to me that these three aspects of membership scale up or down with the amount given, especially with regards to fiscal responsibility. I think it's important, then, to keep in mind that 1stfans costs a mere $20 a year, which is the going rate for dinner and drinks in Manhattan. So let's look at what you get in return:
1. Mingle at exclusive events during every Target First Saturday 2. Access artist-created content on our 1stfans Twitter Art Feed 3. Receive updates via Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or e-mail 4. Skip the movie lines at Target First Saturday
All four of these seem to meet the three qualities of traditional museum memberships I outlined above, just at a smaller scale. They grant exclusive access to areas of interest (i.e., art): this is especially true with the Twitter feed, which utilizes Twitter as (rather than about) art, but certainly true with the great photos and discussions on the Facebook and Flickr groups, and the easy access to films. And they give members a chance to socialize: 1stfans can meet online and off, with museum staff, other members, and guest artists. And, importantly, they are fiscally responsible: except for the in-person events, they cost the museum nothing except staff time, allowing the leftover dollars to go straight to programming.
Conclusion: The Twitter Feed as Part of a Modern Membership Within this context, the Twitter feed strikes me as the $20 version of a museum-sponsored studio visit or artist talk. More generally, the entire suite of 1stfans benefits follow in the model of traditional memberships, just scaled for fiscal responsibility and modernized for an Internet age. Importantly, 1stfans allows and encourages even more people to support the museum and to support the arts, particularly in this economic climate. As we saw with the Obama campaign, an Internet-based small giving campaign can be just as powerful, if not more so, than a traditional fundraising campaign. I see so much potential for 1stfans, and similar programs in the art world, and I'm thrilled by what this new form of membership will mean both in terms of fundraising and access to the arts.
These are my initial thoughts, and they are in no way comprehensive of my full thinking, nor are they final, but I did want to throw in my two cents into this discussion. I invite you to comment here or email me at thatwaszen on gmail to discuss, but if you do have thoughts, I also encourage you to post them to the Brooklyn Museum blog and join the discussion.
The new Pepsi logo has caused a bit of a stir lately. It's interesting to look at this ad campaign and realize that the general form of the logo (round, red-and-blue with a wavy white middle) is so well-established in the popular mind that they can take a risk and market the modified one without explicitly referencing the word "Pepsi". The closest I was able to find in this particular subway car was "Sodapop".
Also gets me thinking about conditioned responses. There's a clear attempt here to associate the logo with positive words, like "Lov" and "Hooray!" Or maybe it's just an attempt to reinforce the logo.
The big question, of course: do they have the right one, baby? I guess we'll see.. the new cans certainly look much more sleek and modern.
Stopped by Art Gate Gallery tonight and ran into my friend Jinsoo Kim, who's showing some new work alongside that of Jenny Chen, Renee Magnanti, Bill Pangburn, and Philip Simmons. The show is entitled Journey of Amalgamated Dreams, curated by Soyeon (Sylvia) Kim. Hope to see you at the opening! - this Thursday, 6-8 pm, at Art Gate.
Sylvia also kindly passed along some gorgeous handmade paper by artist Seungchul Lee. I'm thinking some experimenting will be in order -- something with inkjet inks and some of my more meditative work. Staaaay tuned!
The question of access: with only 30 minutes to connect with x number of people over the phone (thanks to a call list), multiple time zone considerations, and only enough time to speak with 1 or 2 of them, who do you call? How do you balance factors like the purpose of the call, the talkativeness of the callee (or caller), the likelihood that you'll get them directly or their voicemail (and which you'd prefer), etc., to determine whom to call in those 30 minutes?
I already do something like this with the help of AIM, Facebook, and email. If someone's online, or recently sent an email, I assume they're probably free. But what if there were a way to integrate this? Imagine picking up a phone, and, next to your call list, seeing who's available to chat (per syncing with a public calendar), the time zone they're in, and whether or not they're already talking to someone else. Imagine your phone telling you as soon as that person is available and then automatically dialing them?
In the back of a building in the San Fernando Valley - do spartan surroundings like this heighten the stigma of smoking? It's interesting to me that they installed an ash tray into the wall itself but essentially placed it next to an old trash can and some beat-up chairs.
A British friend once pointed this out to me during a particularly hectic month for travel: no matter where I was, whether it be New York, Los Angeles or Manila, he was able to reach me via the same email address, blog site, and AIM account. And within the US, I'm reachable via the same cell phone number, regardless of the city I'm in. The only factor that really varies is the time zone.
A decade or so ago, this would have been unimaginable. When we traveled, we had to research our phone number and address for each point on the way and provide a detailed itinerary to anyone who needed to contact us. Now, services like Dopplr and TripIt, and the simple possibilty to send a text message ("Are you back in New York yet?") make it so easy to figure out where any individual is and when (not how) we can reach him/her.
I'm thinking about a locationless world--more and more in the 21st century, it seems like where you are doesn't limit what you're able to accomplish. I don't pack certain items, because I know I can get them in most cities for pretty much the same price, using the same credit card. I pay my bills online, sometimes at home, sometimes in a hotel room. I catch up with friends and business contacts with the same Bluetooth headset and same cell phone. I play the same asynchornous games with my friends. And since most of my work is digital, I can work pretty much anywhere, even when it comes to physical prints, so long as I have a trusted professional printer and framer in the region.
Check out the video coverage for the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfans launch with Swoon's studio - what a fun event! And guess who makes a quick cameo about halfway in ;)
This column has had the privilege of publishing a number of poems by young people, but this is the first we've published by a young person who is also a political refugee. The poet, Zozan Hawez, is from Iraq, and goes to Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington. Seattle Arts & Lectures sponsors a Writers in the Schools program, and Zozan's poem was encouraged by that initiative.
Self-Portrait
Born in a safe family But a dangerous area, Iraq, I heard guns at a young age, so young They made a decision to raise us safe So packed our things And went far away.
Now, in the city of rain, I try to forget my past, But memories never fade.
This is my life, It happened for a reason, I happened for a reason.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from "We Will Carry Ourselves As Long As We Gaze Into The Sun," Seattle Arts & Lectures, 2007, by permission of Zozan Hawez and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Hit up Monster Sushi in Chelsea, a very cute sushi bar, with collections of Japanese monster toys up above. I'd not been but have always walked by, so I'm glad we decided to stop in. I didn't order anything fancy, but I did enjoy their peanut sushi, which is pretty much what it says: honey roasted peanuts in a traditional sushi roll. This seems like a fun place, and I'd like to come back and try their monster line when my appetite is a bit bigger!
An interesting quality of Morse code that I think is missing from my Twitter project is sound. There's an aural quality to telegraphy, a mystical beep-beep-beeping over the wired ether that's difficult to replicate. You can hear it interpersed throughout my video interview, and I especially like how the sound is superimposed my dialog with lunaparknyc. But imagine, for instance, typing at a computer without hearing that tap-tap-tap as your fingers press the keys, or dialing a phone without hearing the tones for each number. It just wouldn't be the same.
The power of sound. There's an inherent sense of impermanence with sound, isn't there? Most sounds float in and out, and they linger with a slight ring if loud enough. There's no such thing as an ear witness. "I hear" doesn't have the same connotation of understanding as "I see." You're more likely to have a song stuck in your head than a painting. For most people, sound feels a step removed from reality, not as ghostly as scent but not quite as solid as sight.
I remember listening to shortwave radio when I was little. Before the advent of Internet radio, it was the only way to hear radio programs from other countries. Those clicks and beeps and the soft hush of static acted as a kind of auditory fog to the voices coming through the speaker from countries halfway around the world. How much the more so if the sounds weren't even human voices, but mechanistic beeping over a solitary wire strung across the Atlantic Ocean?
I wish I could travel back in time, to the height of the telegraph's usage, and wander around an operating room and listen to all those dots and dashes. I'd sit next to an operator and watch her transcribe and translate the sounds into English, and tap back a response. Imagine: a world without email, or Facebook, or phones, or web cams. Just the beeps of a distant stranger whom you may never hear or see, save through the rhythmic tapping of their hand.
Note: My preferred Morse code translator does allow for a sound simulation, and I love it--I'll click "play" just to hear it and imagine what it might have been like.
I just want to say a quick "hello!" to all my new readers. I think most of you have been coming because of my work with the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed at the Brooklyn Museum, which is quite exciting! I'm going to make a post very soon about what exactly "Zen and the 21st Century" means, and what drives me in my art and in my blog writing, so keep an eye out for that. In the mean time, though, you can expect what I hope is thoughtful commentary on contemporary culture, with a focus on the various topics listed at right.
I also want to note that, as I've become quite the Web 2.0 junkie as of late, I've set up a Friendfeed page. I like to manage my social media in discrete chunks, so I don't use Friendfeed to follow folks, but a few people recommended I get a page set up so they can see my digital goings-on in one place. It contains my Facebook, last.fmTwitter, Flickr and blog feeds, along with news updates from my professional web site.
Anyway, I hope you're enjoying my posts and certainly welcome feedback and comments at any time. I'm excited to meet you here and in social media land. :)
What do you do when you know you're supposed to throw something away but the nearest trash can is nowhere to be found? What's interesting to me with a lot of subway litter is that, in the midst of violating one rule (don't litter), the individual has the common courtesy to avoid placing it in the middle of the platform where someone could step on it. I've seen a similar phenomenon in the mountains, where folks throw plastic bottles in the bushes, far away from the trail.
Why is this? It's not like tossing trash by the wall is any less noticeable than dropping it in the middle of the floor. But maybe the rule against littering is too abstract a maxim. The subway floor is filthy already so what's the damage of one little bottle? It certainly seems minimal, and placing trash by the wall saves more time than walking all the way over to a trash can. On the other hand, it's easy to see a stray bottle inconveniencing someone, or worse, even hurting them if they slip on it. That would help explain why I see most bottles and cans upright, rather than rolling around on their side.
I'm struggling a bit to understand the thought processes here. Even if one person dropped a plastic bottle on the floor and another person moved it to the wall, that latter person didn't take the effort to drop it in a trash can. Why not? (And yes, I imagine some folks simply sit their bottle down and forgot about it, but I'm going to assume those are a minor percentage.)
This morning on the subway, I read Paul Krugman's "Fighting Off Depression", in which he writes, "Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression." That probably primed to see so many signs of a struggling economy. I started interpreting the massive Christmas sales as disconcerting rather than exciting (I think I even drove by a DKNY store that looked like it said items were 90% off). I saw similar things--empty shops and steep discounts--in Los Angeles and on Venice Beach, and it looks like Guy Kawasaki saw signs all over at the Stanford Shopping Center.
Add to that the fact that people close to me have been laid off, and a few have even been mugged, and I must say these are worrisome patterns indeed. The advice for the Year of the Ox is to lay your foundation and think and move carefully--sounds like sage advice for this climate.
With the development of social networking sites, I've developed an interest in how people take simple or complex snapshots of themselves, post them to their page as a representation of who they are and what they want people to see. It is an interesting form of control and, in a way, self-preservation. However, there is a strong likelihood that many people whom don't know you will see this photo representation and make passing judgments as to who you may or may not be, much in the same way we make passing judgments on people we see in our neighborhoods every day.
Take a collection of these portraits and put them into the context of a gallery space or like setting, and you see a community of individuals- their likeness elevated and memorialized like the original commissioners of portrait painting; the rich and powerful – displayed as a portrait's original intent: expression of an individuals' character and moral quality.
This idea sunk in a bit more after I visited the portrait gallery on the fifth floor of the Brooklyn Museum. With the rise of blogs, cheap digital cameras and social networking sites, we are all micro-celebrities, with micro-images to manage and micro-public faces in micro-tabloids. Be sure to check out "I'll have my Facebook portrait painted by Matt Held," the Facebook group he created to solicit volunteers.
An example of a reminder system at a friend's apartment. How do you remember the important things you need for daily functioning? As a general rule, I keep everything I need in one bag, with each individual item having a specific pocket. That way, I just pick up my bag in the morning and get going, without a second thought. This means I use the same bag most days, but it also means less stress and a lesser chance of forgetting something.
Equally as important,though: what do you consider critical for day-to-day life? In other societies and cultures and times, it might have been a sword, or a rosary, or identification papers. Makes me think of Jan Chipchase's fantastic talk about cell phone design and usage for Ted. One of the basic messages? As a rule, we would never leave our house without three things: our wallet, our keys and our cell phone.
Had an amazing time last night at the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfans launch, featuring Swoon's studio making free prints for all 1stfans members. There were so many people, and so many smiling faces, and the prints were of course beautiful. I've always been a fan of the museum's First Saturdays and was quite happy to meet others who think likewise and are willing to support the event through a membership. Big kudos to "membership guru" William Cary and "chief geek" Shelley Bernstein for throwing a successful launch!
The evening was exciting for me personally, as I got to meet a few of the folks I'd known only online via my work with the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed, and I sat (or "stood," more properly) for a video interview with the museum about my Morse code proposal. I also took some time to sneak out and see the Gilbert and George and The Black List Project exhibitions, both of which are worth the trip alone. Overall, it was quite an eventful evening, and I went home smiling but exhausted.
A few select photos, starting with some of the fabulous artists from Swoon's studio:
Brooklyn Museum videographer Bob Nardi examines the drying rack.
The different print options were displayed on a sign so folks could choose which print they'd like to receive.
I've written before about how great 1stfans is, but I want to say again how brilliant it is to develop the museum world's first "socially-networked membership," i.e., a membership program that utilizes both online social media and offline events to connect art lovers with each other and with the museum. And at $20 per year, it will definitely attract a new crowd, especially young people, families and artists (and young artists with families), who want to support art but haven't always been drawn to the more traditional memberships.
We saw the stunning effectiveness of online tools and small donors with the Obama campaign, and, with the economy faltering and businesses looking at low-cost ways to reach customers, we're going to see so much more development in this area across all industries. 1stfans is well ahead of the curve, and I'm excited to see the future events and activities they have planned. I'm really thrilled and humbled to be a part of it.
Anyhoo, enough babbling. I know you just want to see more pictures of the event in action :) The rest of my photos can be found in the slideshow below and on the Brooklyn Museum's Flickr page.
Hi there. I'm An Xiao. I'm an artist, designer and writer An Xiao looking at the intersection of the digital and analog in the 21st century. I photograph, install, perform and tweet and have shown my work in publications and galleries internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum, Yale/Haskins Laboratories, The New York Times and Art in America. I founded and direct @Platea, a global online public art collective, and serve as a contributing columnist for PBS-affiliate Art21 and a contributing writer for the New York Foundation of the Arts and Hyperallergic.
That Was Zen, This Is Tao is my journey in haiblog -- brief, crisp prose about everything and anything that crosses my mind (which is a lot!), as I try to make some sense of the 21st century and bring a little Zen into it. In no particular order, I enjoy writing about the contemporary art world, Web 2.0 and the Internet, Zen and poetry, modern marketing, fashion and style, GTD (Getting Things Done), American politics and anything else of interest. I lead a hectic life, and I often use my iPhone to make updates in subways and parking lots. I also regularly post my most recent photography. I do hope you enjoy your stay! Below are some news updates from my web site.
