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Wednesday, January 31st
CIVILITY LIVES
In my last blog, I addressed how I think our society has become ruder,
cruder and less civil. I referenced the artworld simply because it's a
microcosm of our larger society and after all, this IS an online art
magazine and most of us do "art things." I love art, artists, and the
artworld. They rock! They're creative, insightful, inspiring and present
messages that can change the world.
It is BECAUSE I love art and the artworld so much that I wrote, "So Rude!"
Few people on the planet have the kind of power that artists (and art people
in general) have. Many don't even realize this.
Michael Corbin on 01.31.07 @ 09:52 PM EST [more..]
Monday, January 29th
Merchandise...On-demand manufacturing...
Someone once told me that putting reproductions of art on sweatshirts, or carry-on bags is to bastardize artists' work.
Bastardize!
Last time we met I told you about my Art Portals.
Phase 2 of my Art Portal project is to bastardize every single of my art works on the Art Portals.
Bastardize is - as you might have guessed - not at all my favorite term for this.
I call it merchandise.
I could not agree less with the phrase bastardize.
I call it to communicate the essence of a good art work to as many people as possible.
So Phase 2 of my Art Portal Project is to create merchandise products based on my art works.
Now I needed a piece of software:
that could help med create merchandise products
that could exhibit my merchandise products
that could allow me to exhibit the merchandise products on my Art Portals
that could receive orders and payment from the customers
that could allow the customers to customize the merchandise product
that could produce the customized merchandise product on-demand (...let us call it on-demand manufacturing)
that could send the product to the customer.
Until now my Art Portals have dealt with on-demand printing.
My ambition to create merchandise products on-line for sale on the internet presumes on-demand manufacturing.
I want to create T-shirts, mugs, posters, greeting cards, postcards, hats, bags ties aprons, ties, mouse pads, stickers, bottons etc. based on existing art works.
I have been looking around.
In Europe.
In Asia.
In Australia.
In Africa.
In South America.
And of course I found my piece of software in North America.
In The United States, in San Jose - in Silicon Valley.
This piece of software is made by real computer nerds.
Technically it is second to none.
It's called zazzle.com.
My new name is zazzle.com/lonvig*
The users of zazzle.com are young creative people with a substantial computer background and as far as I can tell most of the users are from north-west United States and south-west Canada.
I can use the technical superciliousness of zazzle.com and make it user friendly by integrating it into my Art Portals.
I found zazzle.com on 13 January 2007.
So far I have made 700 merchandise products and integrated these products into my Art Portals.
My goal is 1000 merchandise products.
No more talk.
Let me show you some samples.
Asbjorn Lonvig on 01.29.07 @ 04:04 AM EST [more..]
Monday, January 22nd
SO RUDE
This has happened to me so many times that I finally have to write about it.
Are some artworld people just flat out rude, or is it me? I was just
talking on the phone to a woman at an art center and I couldn't believe how
rude she was. I was calling to ask a simple question about an exhibition
and the woman was cold, terse and well, RUDE. It's not like I was calling
just to shoot the breeze. The conversation didn't last long and I never
really got an answer to my question.
This also happened recently when I called an art gallery. I won't say where
because I don't want it to reflect on the city. But I asked the gallery
manager about the availability of a painting. "If you didn't attend the
opening I can't tell you that!" the guy said. What? Are you kidding me?
Michael Corbin on 01.22.07 @ 07:28 AM EST [more..]
Thursday, January 18th
Doubts, Questions & Certainties […continued…]
I’m listening to ‘The Sea - Vol. 1’. Ketil Bjornstad sets the mood on the piano accompanied by a subtle murmur of the cello in the background by David Darling. The splashing of the waves on the shore and on nearby rocks is brought to life by Jon Christensen’s unorthodox, out-of-synch, drum-playing that somehow, mysteriously, keeps things together, and Terje Rypdal’s electric guitar, still subdued at this stage, responds to the cello. I can’t wait for the second track when the storm hits and they all go haywire.
But hold on, is it really the sea? Can’t it be something else?
Music is abstraction, is it not? A greater abstraction, say, than the words we read in a novel, not to mention the forms, colours and rhythms we detect in a painting. Nothing palpable exists on the outside beyond sound: harmony, rhythm and all the many other ingredients a musician has to master to bring things to life. And yet inside our brain the reverberation often evokes images, provokes feeling and sometimes even brings about new ideas – without ever having stopped being an abstraction.
Jose Freitas Cruz on 01.18.07 @ 02:22 PM EST [more..]
Monday, January 15th
Conformist or Nonconformist?
 As an artist, do you define yourself as a nonconformist or a conformist? I feel you can be either. There is no written rule that says you have to be radically dressed, tattooed and pierced, and to the left of center to dwell in the art world. All you have to be is open-minded. If you can’t be that, at least be bloody good at what you do. Chances are though, if you were born an artist you were also in some measure born a nonconformist. This is something you won’t be able to help, and shouldn’t want to.
Nonconformity, as I'm sure you know, is essential to the evolution of any democratic society. If we didn't have nonconformists, we'd still have slavery. Although the more reactionary of our politicians and corporate folk don't like admitting it, nonconformity is what encourages society to recognize its ills, and attempt to correct them. The conformists will resist this in the beginning, just as they did the Civil Rights movement, but will finally throw in the towel when they're left no choice—well, most of them will.
Paul Dorrell on 01.15.07 @ 04:08 PM EST [more..]
Thursday, January 11th
Destroying Art Part Two
 In the air on my way to the Fort Meyers airport, I have plenty of time to think. I haven’t heard a thing from any news media I contacted, or Jose and Brad contacted, or my agent in Italy contacted. Pretty much the same ‘wall of silence’ that greeted my appeal to artists on Michael Corbin’s blog, ‘I Don’t Get It’, save those two exceptions.
I think to myself, ‘well, perhaps I used the wrong words.’ Or, the idea of any kind of appeal to anyone was wrong. I tried to offer a carrot, saying if collaboration helped me to reach my goal, then perhaps in the future it would be a resource for any of us. Perhaps I broke the rules of some kind of code of conduct. During the last few days, I had read a book called Criminal Conduct, by Walter C. Reckless, about laws and those who break them. From there I learned that in our American society, nothing is a crime unless there’s a law against it, no matter how immoral. That seemed to me to explain all the troubles I’ve had with AOL. The book also examines primitive societies without written law. In such societies, although there are no laws, there are codes of conduct which, when not observed, are punished by – get this – a wall of silence. Our own culture has written laws, but also has societal mores, which change from group to group within our culture. From street gangs to yuppies, each group has its own rules, and all exert some form of punishment on its members who don’t observe the code.
Andrew Wielawski on 01.11.07 @ 07:44 AM EST [more..]
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