afterSonoma

Black Friday, Black Market, Sony & Hackers

PS3 Salesman, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

American Thanksgiving Day today. We, at the etail site on top our block-long mother-ship of retail stores, were stressed all week preparing for the busiest retail day of the year tomorrow. The customary shopping part of the season of social events surrounding traditional end of the year holidays has been brought to a new low of crassness by us and others advertising "Black Friday Sales". The black refers to retail businesses' clearing a profit for the first time all year -- getting into the black on the sales charts. All profit from now to the end of the year! Hurrah! Happy Holidays!

I understand that ony profitable businesses can continue to provide the goods and services to the community and that people giving gifts to friends and family is lovely, but the public focus on a businesses' bottom-line is not attractive.

As to the PS3, Sony created a false scarcity in this country by not releasing sufficient quantities to meet expected demand of a previously popular product. Sony further limited the availability by releasing through only a few large retail chains. Sony gained a lot of free publicity to their (some say) sub-standard product.

Whether this marketing decision, made in corporate headquarters in Japan, was designed to draw attention away from the inadequacies of their product or if it was to counter the effect of a year of deservedly bad press stemming from their anti-public decisions, we don't know. We can see that they created a news-worthy demonstration of public demand for their product. In doing so, Sony also created perfect conditions for Black Market resellers. The release was attractive to those with a flexible schedule which allowed them to wait days in line to buy a PS3. After release, PS3s were quickly repurchased at twice or triple the $600 retail price.

Sony could have known, should have known and no doubt did know this would happen. They also knew there was a risk of violence and they chose to release the PS3 this way. The stores didn't like it, the police and civil governments didn't like it, but, evidently, Sony liked it. Interestingly, Sony did not create a scarcity in Japan.

Observers and journalists reported that the vast majority of American customers participating in Sony's stunt, were doing so in the hope of making a payday.

Our store was not chosen by Sony for their charade. Even still, we were adversely affected by it.

• When our store managers arrived to open the stores on the day of the release, they were met by an anxious crowd of over a hundred people who had trouble accepting the managers report that we had no PS3 to sell. The crowd stayed for several hours, making it difficult and scary for employees and customers to enter the stores.
• One guy broke through our inadequate security, went to the middle of the computer store, yelling, "I'm not leaving without a PS3!" Police were required to remove him.
• Meanwhile, online, our website was repeatedly hit by hundreds of thousands of searches for 'PS3", "Playstation", "Sony", "Game Players", "Video Games", "Game Consoles" and other related terms. The overburdened site ground to halt several times during the day. Customers looking for items we actually stocked were unable to make purchases, those of us working on the site were unable to do our work. The site was disfunctionally burdened by the PS3 searchers for two days.
• About noon on PS3 release day, a red van pulled up to the curb in front of our store, the guy in the above picture jumped out holding a PS3 box, shouting, "PS3, $4000 cash!". My friend, Toasty snapped and split. Fearing violence, he didn't wait to see what happened.

Now, after a week, it has calmed down to the more reasonable frenzy of New York retail, I don't know if the event is more typical of the American public or of the management of an unwieldy large corporation suffering bad press and failing product lines.

As to the PS3s themselves, the hackers say, they are a fine piece of hardware with bad Sony software. Strip out Sony's operating system, install a specially modified open-source Linux operating system and they say those who paid 2 or 3 thousand dollars to an unauthorized reseller will have a nice machine which can reach the internet, support common communication and media production applications, play and make HD video, play Blue-Ray, HD DVDs and a bunch of online and offline games.

More power to the hackers! They have the right attitude and are pointing the way to the kind of products the public wants.

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Skyline Painting on Auction

Downtown Skyline, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

Last Sunday, we started an eBay auction for this painting. It is our first time to do this and we're using all our web-venues to get the word out. The auction runs until Wednesday, November 29, 2006 13:41:05 PST. We put a starting bid in at $1500 and the auction has currently attracted one bid at $2000. We decided to cover the shipping cost ourselves, so the winning bidder will receive the large painting delivered to them anywhere, free. It is item #260054904882, the seller name is p0psHarlow, bids may be placed here. We were very nervous when setting up the auction, it is so unfamilar, such an odd thing for us to do. We're trying to tell people about it. Emailing all those who responded to the videos we published of the process. If you can't bid, pass the link to someone who might be able to and wish us luck.

Technorati Tags: HarlowParson Harlow Parson Harlow Parson NYC Skyline Collaboration painting art eBay auction

Love the Art

I really enjoy seeing your art on this site, Steve. I followed the link to the work ethic series, which I don't think I'd seen, and The Fish, which I love, and the others. I hope to travel to New York and see these things for real, to appreciate better the subtle effects of materials interrelating. The cable car photographer is also very cool - such an interesting perspective. Yes, I remember your practical reasons for painting grid style, but it's interesting to read your thoughts on the style.
   With Christmas approaching your retail business must be getting very busy. I saw a disgusting sight on TV news, of people waiting in line for a new playstation, trammeling each other to be the first to buy. There may even have been a murder. It was too disgusting to continue watching. That behaviour seems to come from a country that doesn't care, that isn't aware, but the mid-term election news has been heartening for people outside the country, and heartening too, I assume, for people like you and many others who haven't liked recent directions in the US. I hope this means real change.
   Two more weeks of classes. Actually one more day after the two weeks, too, but last days are generally easy. By this time in the term I know my students better and have come to like most of them. The other day I saw some real evidence that students in my ficction class had learned something, and that makes a teacher feel good. Soon my life will be more devoted to writing and less to teaching. That may happen before I even leave the college as I've just accepted a sort of commission to write a play about a "school" for special (meaning severely disabled) people, mostly children, that used to operate in the College's neighbourhood. It's an arts project for the city and I'm fascinated, yet also leery of the dark subject matter I'm going to have to work through my imagination. The inmates of the facily were often abused and no one ever listened to complaints - a familiar story. I don't want to take a documentary approach, but imagistic and ... not sure yet. It will be a challenge; I have no idea yet what the thread will be. My ambitious plan for non-teaching time is to work on the play while continuing the historical novel I had to put down when school began. It could be a good idea to have something lighter to turn to.
   Heavy rains, even for Vancouver, caused landsides that affected the water supply so that the entire metro area was under a boil water order. Funny to be in Vancouver, which is coffee crazy, and watch people try to get through the day without a cup in their hand. At least yesterday, the coffee makers in most commercial outlets were shut down. A bit of an overreaction, maybe.
   David played me that Drifters song, Sweets for my Sweet?, which you passed on to him. Great song. Also the Coltrane. D is good, a lazy correspondant, though. He says Hi. Lastly, the Canucks finally won last night. A weird team, maybe with potential, because they've frequently doubled the shot total of their opponents yet haven't been able to win games.

Why Grids?

Final NYC Skyline Painting Study Collage, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

There's many reasons we use grids when painting from studies, the first is that's its traditional. While having the grid visible is not, we prefer it, even tho, a few times, it has been hidden, as in this landscape or this cityscape. The Bauhaus design moralist in me says, if your process is to use a grid to transfer the information from a study to a painting, you should make the process visible, because it is the basis for the truth of the image, the source of the image's beauty.

There's usually a grid inherent in paintings, even if it is not used in the painting process. Our paintings are painted on rectangular stretched canvas support, hung on a rectangular wall, in a rectangular room. The subject of our current painting project is the view out a rectangular window at rectangular city buildings and their gridded pattern of windows. It's a riot of grids.

Another reason for using a grid is practical, as I wrote here describing my "Work Ethic" painting series, a grid allows us to paint short bursts of time, necessary, because we work day jobs. Turning a limitation into a strength, is the idea.

Another way for us to deal with short sessions divided by long periods of other work, might be to paint very small paintings, ones which could be completed in a few hours. Essentially that's what's going on with large gridded paintings -- we paint one grid area at a time, like painting a series of small paintings. But, with these, 100 small paintings add up to one big one, which we like better.

The image's link above, it leads here, to it's page on Flickr, where, the description gives an explanation of the process used to make the study. It is a collage containing many different ways to look at the subject, making the statement that the best truth comes from considering all points of view.

In this image, views are captured on different days, at differing times of day, in various weather conditions. In addition to these photographic representations, I've included some "Photoshop drawings" of some of the photographs, produced by using the various image adjustments and filters available in Photoshop to produce rendered images with drawing effects.

What is photography? What is drawing? Is there a meaningful difference between the two? These are questions I've been pondering since I was a kid. I'll consider them in another post.

Technorati Tags: art painting drawing photography collage grid Harlow p0ps

A hockey break

I just wonder, Steve, what you're going to do with this collage - make another grid painting? Interesting how you seem compelled to use the grid in your work, the patchwork of images. When I researched my book on snow geese, I studied perception to some extent. Your art reminds me of what a bee might see with its many eyes.
     Almost completely consumed by school now, but still revising on the weekends, and about to send my novel off to yet another publisher. I've rewritten sentences that I should not have let slip by. I've always had trouble trying to be objective about this manuscript, more trouble than usual. A new project, besides the novel I began in summer, is starting to form: a play idea which I'll tell you about next post. Now I'm going to watch the Canucks, hoping for the best, but with a heavy heart, as they must have, because they're working hard but having little luck. We'll see how they react to the situation this week, when they play two of the best teams in the Western Conference, Dallas and Anaheim. Strange to think of people in those cities watching hockey, eh?
     Loved the Dylan book. What an interesting structure. And an interesting, way more down to earth guy than I would have suspected.