effort

so now that the semester's almost over and it's super crunch time, I've been thinking about the nature of effort and how it compares to todays issues, for instance copywright law, and why there is such a problem with piracy. So normally money is supposed to represent effort in a physical form. now normally to give credit to someone who does something in the real world, you pay them with your equivilent effort. for instance I buy a ham from a butcher and pay him with the "effort" I earned through my job as an artist. normally this effort also includes a middleman's effort to get something to the consumer, the effort of a brand's head and several others in between. now the problem today is that digital goods don't require those middlemen. If I wanted to produce an album I can get it straight to my audience. This is a problem because the physical object is the same product, but it's much more expensive because of the work that went into it. As for how this relates to copywright law, we recently talked about how in order to give someone your work for free, you need to be credited with creating it. Now the reasoning for this goes back to effort. If I want to give my product to people without them having to spend their effort on it, then they need to at least acnowledge that I put effort into creating it. Why? why if I were extreemely alturistic as well as being humble would I absolutely have to be acknowledged for my work? It's because legally there needs to be some recognition of our work, there needs to be a record somewhere that we put in effort. But why is this necessary? Where does this benefit our economy? Where does this benefit our society? If someone wants to give something away compleetely why should we stop them? Because they need to proove that they have the item in the first place. If there is no record of you having it to start with how can you give it away?

How far is art allowed to go?

As of posting this I just got back from the play “the shape of things” which my girlfriend and I hated until we saw it performed (it's true you can't take a play's transcript and judge it as the play). I liked the play because it brought up a lot of questions for me as an artist. In the play the main antagonist Evelyn modifies the main character through manipulation, making him a better person physically, a different person mentally, and then shatters his life by putting his transformation on display. Now it is easy to condemn Evelyn for doing this But I like being the devil's advocate, because it makes people think. So I will present my defense of Evelyn , not because I believe morally that she is right, but because I hope it will make you think.

Making people think is the point of art, it's why we constantly try to do the unexpected, why new mediums are adopted as art and why what was thought provoking years ago will not be anymore. So when does the line get crossed for art? This is difficult because artists are supposed to cross the line. The famous quote (of whom I forget the source) is that “it's not art until it pisses someone off” and as a society we are constantly becoming more open minded. This is a good thing because it allows us to know more about our world and make educated moral decisions. However where is the REAL line? Can you mess up someone's life forever in the name of art? Think of all the thought that the action alone will provoke in the person and all who view the work. Can you kill in the name of art? Can you condemn your or someone else's “soul” by proving that their entire life is built on ever moving sand, and then show them that there is a rock beneath? What if it makes people think? What if it causes epiphanies everywhere? It's easy to say that it's not worth it, but how many lives have we sacrificed in the name of science for the same purpose, or for politics? Can there be acceptable losses for art?

To complicate matters even further, what if these losses are a risk? What if there's a chance someone or something will be killed? A real life example of that is the piece by “Guillermo Vargas” an unpopular man with pita and other animal lovers because he starved a dog as art. However what if his purpose was to explore whether or not humans would do the right thing in the face of legal action? What if the exhibition was the piece? What if he hoped that someone would ignore his wishes, get up, dodge the guards and feed the dog? Even with the obvious consequences? People all signed petitions, hell I did too, but facebook petitions obviously do nothing, when anyone at the thing could have actually done something. And did it not make us think? Was the poor dog's potential death (it happened it's over, it died, so not really potential) worth it? I ask you this?

Pieces of the Puzzle

After reading works like cult of the amateur, wisdom of the crowds and
the tipping point, and learning about the history of media up until
this point I'm only seeing some of the puzzle pieces. I understand now
that media is directed by people, not by events. That the internet did
not become a cultural landmark upon inception, it became a landmark
after one billion people used it. This is because the telegraph, TV
and radio were the same way. It takes the crowd to deem whether an
invention is worthwhile. The car was invented long before Ford, but
people don't just snap up a good idea, they wait to pick the right
idea. It wasn't until we got the combination of the right fuel type
(like it or not we chose gas over electricity) the right manufacturing
method and the right price. The same goes for new media. we tried Myspace, and Friendster, and people dropped them to cling to Facebook.
What I don't understand is this idea of clinging to the old, when
things no longer work. Cult of the amateur had some good criticisms of
web 2.0, namely that we don't appreciate experts and we are sciphoning
money out of the economy by trusting these amatuers for free. However
he seems to want to cling to the past, and is mournful that these jobs
are going away. While I am incredibly sympathetic in these regards tot
he people who are no longer able to make money off of advertising
because of Craigslist, or cannot write news stories because bloggers
will do it for free,  I say, innovate. People are tenacious creatures,
and when the going gets tough the tough will find a way to forge a
living. Maybe it's time for tv to loose it's chunk of pie to online
video. maybe we need "web critics " that will tell us who is an expert
on line and who is  not worth following. Maybe we need to create more
value, as Rich Nadworny was so adamant about. If people are doing
things for free, then we need to take it as a blessing because we can
then find other ways of creating value.
       This in't to say that I see the system as being fine as it is. There
is still a lot of crap online and wading through what is valuable and
what is not is hard work. and even if we were to have an online critic
to do it for us, so we can see what is worth our attention, how would
we pay them? The other problem is that we are making mental labor less
valuable. I'm all for automation and having computers do tasks that I
know humans shouldn't need to perform, but news and music and culture
is our THING. That's what we will always do better than computers, so
why are these things being devalued? It's because these are the things
people want to do. People will always want to make art and music in
their free time, and people will always love spreading the news to
anyone who will listen. But if people will naturally do this, then why
should we move away from it? Shouldn't we be working to create a world
where everyone enjoys going to work? In an ideal society wouldn't we
have everything taken care of already and have people free to create
culture? And shouldn't this be getting easier with computers being
able to perform ore and more jobs that people do not want to do?
Hopefully I will find these answers as I continue this semester, and
hopefully I will be able to move humanity to do what it truly does
best. Imagine.

jumping in head first

The first three weeks of the program have been challenging to say the least. I quit my part time job so I could focus, and I constantly feel the need to prove myself. There is a lot of work to be done each week, including a book, some other articles, web work, a blog that requires maintenace, and art that needs creating. but thankfully it is all interesting work. I have no doubt though that this will be a trial by fire, and that I will succeed it.  so far we've had a great deal of theory work, with talks about how trends get started and how people work in groups, which is very important to doing any work meant to be viral. we are also learning the basics of Photoshop and Dreamweaver, two programs I'm pretty confident in. But I'm sure that i'll be learning some new software soon, along with more of the theory that I find so intriguing. so bring it on , I will definitely rise to the occasion.