Calling all artists: GET THE FLU SHOT

For whatever it's worth, this is my call to action to try to encourage all artists to get their H1N1 flu vaccine shot. With conspiracy theories zinging about the internet with all the fury of a balloon boy hoax it seems that more and more people are buying into unsubstantiated hype, and fewer and fewer people are making informed decisions based on the available facts.

Well here are some facts regarding the arts community:

Artists tend to be among the poorer elements of the population - and their low income level is significantly chronic. This is reflected in their ability to get, and maintain, a high level of health care, and their ability to follow up that care with prescription medications and other ancillary care. Most do not have drug or comprehensive health and dental care.

This is significant enough that when I have tried to arrange group coverage for arts communities, the insurers have been hesitant for precisely these reasons. On the whole, artists tend to have more complicated (read expensive) health issues as many issues have gone undiagnosed or untreated. It is community that scares them. So, for many artists, their health may already be somewhat compromised by way of economic circumstance.

Among artists, and economically speaking, women are particularly hard it, according to available statistics. Certainly, and quite sadly, women artists are among the lowest income earners, particularly here on Prince Edward Island. At the very same time, women seem to be amongst the most vulnerable to H1N1.

Not only that, but many of the people in the arts community, especially those in the high risk demographics, have families and children to support and care for. If they become ill, this could have a devastating impact on their families ability to simply make ends meet.

And so, I am calling upon every member of the arts community to get the H1N1 vaccine. I don't want to see anyone in this community fall seriously ill, let alone, perish. I also don't want to see anyone from this community spreading this virus amongst the community, and potentially endangering someone whose health may already be compromised, and whose family is relying on them.

In short, do your part, and help protect yourself and our community.

Theological discussion between me and my six-year old

So, today, I picked up my six-year old after school and was taking him to the shops to look for a proper fall jacket. On the way, we were listening to Beck (the iPhone was on shuffle) and one of his lyrics contained the word "afterlife".

L. "What's afterlife?"

Me "For some people, it's where they believe your spirit goes after a person dies... when they are old."

L. "Is that what you believe?"

Me. "I don't know what I believe - I do think that maybe part of your spirit does keep going after your body dies - but I don't know for sure. Nobody knows for sure. I think that part of you lives on in all the people you've loved."

L. "Do other people believe that?"

Me "Lots of people believe in lots of things. Some people believe in god, some people don't. Some people believe in lots of gods, some people don't. Some people believe in fairies, some people don't. That's the good thing about being a human. You get to decide what you want to believe in, and nobody can tell you your wrong."

L. (long pause) "But we all believe in Santa Claus... right?"

Me "Of course. Santa Claus isn't even up for discussion... we ALL believe in Santa."

L. [with big smile] "OK" [returns to his dot-to-dot book]

End of Discussion

A Canadian Story - Part I

Those reading this on Facebook will recall that, on the day my Grandmother passed away recently, I said I might write down some of the stories she shared with me. I've been putting it off, perhaps because I fear not doing the stories justice, or that I'll forget parts, or tell them incorrectly. At the same time, part of me knows that if I don't write these, nobody else will, and these stories will be lost. Forever.

So, for better or for worse, here's my best shot. The stories are short, but, to me, tell of important points in our collective, Canadian, history.

My Grandmother, Mary Lowe (nee Chic) lived the life of a Prairie child, sibling, then wife through the early part of the 20th century and lived right through to the early part of the 21st century.

She was born, literally, in the bush near Selkirk, Manitoba in September of 1910. Her birth certificate reads November, however, that is simply when her father finally made it into Selkirk to register her birth. Her mother was 15 years old, and her father was not much older. Her parents were Ruthenian immigrants who'd arrived a few years earlier.

Theirs was a tough sort of existance. The home was a sod-roofed log structure common to the time and the place. Here's an image from the Manitoba Archives of a Ruthenian home c. 1910.

The 1916 special census of Manitoba, Saskachewan, and Alberta shows her family. As mother tongue they listed Ruthenian, as place of origin Austria (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and their religion as Greek Catholic. She would later be excommunicated from the church for marrying my Grandfather, a protestant. You'll find my Grandmother, Mary, on line 38 of this census document.

This story begins two years after that census, in 1918 when the Spanish Flu was making it's worldwide sweep, killing millions of people. This flu, unlike most influenzas targeted the young, not the old, and affected, primarly, those between 15 and 40. As a result, in farming communities, those most responsible for farming and all the duties that went with it, were those most likely to be stricken.

In Selkirk, that is precisely what happened. The Ruthenian community of the day would have been tightly knit, bound by language, culture, and ancestry. It is certain that Mary's family knew all the other families in the area - the 1916 documents show that everyone in the area was Ruthenian from Austria.

An so, it is this community of scrub bush and farmland carved out of the bush, that Mary, eight years old, found herself to be the oldest, healthy person when the flu arrived. Everyone else was sick.

This meant that this little eight year old would spend months in the early part of 1919 waking before the crack of dawn, to do all the chores on their farm -milk the cows, feed all the livestock, take care of her younger brothers and sisters, and parents.

It is hard for me to image an eight year old doing that. I don't think I could keep that up for long. And yet, she did it because there was no-one else left to do it. It simply needed to be done, and she was the one who had to do it.

Remarkably, no one in my family had aver heard this story until I began to retell it. And I was lucky to hear it at all. In fact, it was one of a few stories we heard from my Grandmother when Gail, my wife, and I spent some time with her in Austin, Manitoba, the summer of 2000 in between trips to and from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. She was still in her little house in Austin (she and George - my Grandfather - had long since sold the farm near Carberry) and the early signs of Alzheimer's, while present, were not yet great enough for the family to send her to the MacGregor Nursing Home.

That visit was my first and last visit as an independent adult - free of parents and siblings myself. I'm glad we spent those few days with her, and it's those memories that I'll cherish. To close this story, here's a photo of my Grandmother, probably taken in the 1930's.

So, thanks for reading. In the coming days I'll post part II which continues with another story from the days of the flu pandemic.

Growing despite everything

One of the RSS feeds I follow (Lifehacker) listed, today, a conversation they’d had with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame. I am a huge fan of Mythbusters and decided to give the interview a read.

As part of that interview, which described Adam’s workflow and methods, as well of that of the shows, it was listed that he’d done a TED talk, and there was a link on Lifehacker to that talk. So I watched it, and loved every minute of it. Adam was as excited through it as he is typically though a Mythbusters episode.

(You can go there directly too: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/488)

I won’t give away the talk, other that to say that you simply must watch it. But at the end, I was thinking, once again, about Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Written in 1998, I come back to it time and time again. I was introduced to it through a Time-Based Art course I was taking at NSCAD at around that same time. I’ve posted it before, and I’m posting it again. Here, take directly from Bruce Mau’s website (URL: http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto.html) is the complete text.

Bruce Mau’s An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.


2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.


3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.


4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.


5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.


6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.


7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.


8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.


9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.


10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.


11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.


12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.


13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.


14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.


15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.


16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.


17. . Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.


18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.


19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.


20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.


21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.


22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.


23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.


24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.


25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.


26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.


27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."


28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.


29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.


30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'


31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.


32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.


33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.


34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.


35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.


36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.


37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.


38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.


39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.


40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.


41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.


42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.


43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.
    

Enjoy,

Darrin

Facebook considered dangerous?

Note to Facebook readers from my “Notes” section. If there are updates to this post, you won’t ever see them on Facebook. Instead, go to my blog directly, as updates will appear as they are made. I'm at http://mudderings.blogspot.com/.

How many of you have been following the recent debate (firestorm) over Facebook and its new Terms of Service (TOS) – recently rolled back but soon to reappear? I’ve been concerned about Facebook for a while, and this latest news gives me even more to worry about.

Not many of us, including me, read over those TOS when they pop up (often as just a link) when we sign up for something. But maybe we should be taking them more seriously.

You see, in the Facebook TOS it says, even now:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicence) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorise sublicences of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the licence granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

In essence, Facebook says if you post content here, we can use it however we want, and you’ve already agreed that that is “A- OK”.

Is it?

Is it “A-OK” with you that your images might appear in an advertisement, or a flyer, or anywhere else without your previous knowledge or permission?

According to Facebook, you’ve already agreed that it is, and you’ve also agreed that you will receive no compensation for the use of those images.

Now, the good thing (if there is a good thing) with this is that last sentence in the TOS. It says if you take stuff down from your Facebook site, the license that allows Facebook to use that stuff expires.

But… a couple of weeks ago, that last bit vanished. Gone. Now, by becoming a Facebook user, you’d granted permanent license to Facebook. Forever.

Didn’t they need to tell you that? Nope. You’ve also agreed that they don’t. It’s your responsibility, under the TOS, to keep checking the TOS in case they’ve changed anything.

Under considerable pressure from the Facebook community, Facebook has reverted to the former TOS. But even its CEO states that this is temporary.

Did I just hear you say, “Oh, crap! That’s bullsh!t?"

I think I did. Or perhaps that was me saying it again. I’ve been saying it a lot.

So, fellow artists. What to do?

Many of us, particularly artists, just might want to reconsider how we’re using Facebook. And there are a couple of excellent options that I’m going to outline below.

If you now store images in your Facebook account and want to continue to do so, start by taking all your images down while Facebook is still operating under the old (current) TOS. As soon as you do that, the Facebook license expires on those images.

Now, for any image you wish to put back on Facebook, do this:

Resize your image to no more than 500 pixels wide. This makes the image unusable for anything but the web. At 300 dpi (printing standard) it makes a print about 1 21/32 inches wide. Remarkably useless. Now, put a watermark or text on the image. Put a copyright, and a date, and your name. If you have a website, put that on it too.

You see, Facebook will accept images up to 5 megabytes (5 MB). When you load up an image at that size, or close to it, that’s what you give them to use – a big image with lots of detail – just fine for printing in any number of ways.

However, if you reduce the size before you upload, you give them much, much less. Indeed, an image properly reduced, and saved as a jpg file, should be about 100 kilobytes (100 KB) or 1/10th of a megabyte. It’ll also upload much, much faster.

Now your reduced, watermarked image can be uploaded to your Facebook account. It is suitable for viewing by your friends, family and followers but has been rendered pretty useless to Facebook overseers. Or anyone else for that matter.

You don’t want your images ripped off Facebook and used for anything other that what you allow… do you?

Almost any contemporary computer will have some software on it that will allow you to do what I’ve described. You do not need Photoshop to do this. If you don’t know how to do this, ask a friend or colleague. Unfortunately, lessons in how to do the photo editing are beyond the scope of this blog.

What are your other options if you don’t want to put anything back onto Facebook?

Why don’t you consider using on online photo/image sharing organizations like Flickr or Picasa? Facebook does let you “link” to other sites (making your links outside the scope of its TOS) and you can create galleries there, and link to them from your Facebook account.

What do these organizations have to say in their TOS?

Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!, states (and this is actually in the Yahoo! TOS):

With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.

Is there a difference? There is. You’ll notice no mention of commercial use, instead, it says “…solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available.”

Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m reasonably sure this means that they can do all of the above in the context of this being a photo sharing service. They can share your photos, since you’ve uploaded them to share. If you delete them, it’s over. And no permanent archive.

Picasa Web Albums TOS (Google) is a little less friendly. It says:

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.

Granted, 11.1 sounds a lot like Flickr… but 11.2 is a little disconcerting. Furtherdown you’ll see that you have to terminate the terms in writing and:

13.5 When these Terms come to an end, all of the legal rights, obligations and liabilities that you and Google have benefited from, been subject to (or which have accrued over time whilst the Terms have been in force) or which are expressed to continue indefinitely, shall be unaffected by this cessation, and the provisions of paragraph 20.7 shall continue to apply to such rights, obligations and liabilities indefinitely.

– which seems to say the legal rights never end anyway.

So Flickr seems the safest bet (with its current TOS). I was going to mentionPhotobucket but a quick look at its TOS reveals such things as:

“including without limitation, via the Site or third party websites or applications (for example, services allowing Users to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content).”

which is pretty bad. There may be other photo sharing networks with even better TOS (for you). Please feel free to send them and I’ll update this blog post with the new information.

If you go the Flickr (or other) route, make sure you “link” your Facebook account to your images, or galleries of images (probably your best bet) on a regular basis and include your public Flickr (or other) address in your Facebook profile.

You might even want to create an image to stick in your Facebook Photos section that simply has the text “My images are now all at [your account address].” That way, someone looking for your photos will get a clue as to where to find them.

The very best option would be to have your own website and host your images there. You can post your own copyright messages and retain all rights yourself.

Then, you can “link” as above, these images or galleries into your Facebook profile. Do it regularly, as in when you add new images, and your Facebook followers will get a steady diet of your art and images.

Is Facebook is dangerous, especially if you are an artist? I believe this to be so unless you take the proper precautions.

Should you go through all the trouble of doing something about it? You probably should. After all, you’re not in the business of giving your art away for free.

Harper/Nope Poster

(quick note for Facebook readers: Facebook removes images and video - read this post in it's orginal format at my blog http://mudderings.blogspot.com/

Following the Canadian Election then the American Election I was, well, dissapointed in what we, North of the Border, were able to generate in terms of excitement and vision and blogged about it in the post "Voting for Vision: How I wish I could have."

That wasn't quite enough for me, it seems, and I started work on a poster that encapsulated my feelings. I based it on the work of Shepard Fairey who had done the HOPE Poster. I had intended to include it in a recent show here in Charlottetown but, quite honestly, sort of forgot when I was hanging the show and then it was too late to include.

So now, inspired by yesterdays inauguration of Barack Obama, I've decided to post it for all to see and anyone to download and share.

So, you can grab it off my website here: http://darrinwhite.ca/en/harper/ in PDF format.

Please feel free to post your feedback. And please feel free to become involved in the political process and make the change you want to see.