afterSonoma

11 Spring - Grand Closing

11 Spring - Grand Closing, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

11 Spring was an abandoned building in North Little Italy or as we say, "Nolita", on the corner of Spring and Elizabeth (a block down from where Martin Scorsese grew up). Throughout the almost 9 years we've been in NY, living several blocks from it, street artists have been adding art work to the outside. The building was recently cleared for condo development, the new owner, who is sensible, wanted to win the goodwill of the street artists before she renovated. She knew she'd have to kindly ask the artists to stop painting on the building after it's converted. She contracted with a nearby Soho community art non-profit organization, Wooster Collective, to supervise the opening of all five floor interiors for decoration by the street artist. During a 7 week period, artists came from all over the world to make "pieces" in the building, then last weekend, it was open for a 3 day public showing.

Ruth and I went early to the first day and enjoyed it immensely. As I wrote in Flickr, it was the most exciting art event I've experienced after all these 50+ years of looking at art.

I shot video of all the art and spent the rest of the weekend stitching panoramas from video stills. Those panos are collected in my Flickr set, 11 Spring.

You noticed that most of the comments on my work in Flickr were about the technique. This is because the commentors were all photographers and my camcorder-panoramas are unusual. It seems no one thought of doing that before.

I've been using this method for several months, making panoramas of construction sites mainly. The technique proved to be very well suited to the 11 Spring art, giving an emotional impression of the event rather than only a dry documentary image. No one was more surprised and impressed by the way the panos came out than me. I was very fortunate to have my technique down in time to cover this mythic event.

You saw composition in the panos, and yes, to me, that's the most attractive part, because my method allows it to form organically from the technique itself and not from my eye. I am almost completely surprised by the way they look. Traditional photography is all about framing the significant detail which implies a larger view, panos are about collecting the details and allowing them to manifest the larger view. I was delighted by the views I saw at the end of my pano-stitching process, I was only vaguely in control of it. For 11 Spring, every one of them turned out well, I stitched together everything I shot and posted everything stitched.

My photo of the outside of 11 Spring made it to the Flickr Explore "Most Interesting" for 15 September

After the panos, I spent all my art time for the past week editing and creating the soundtrack for the 3 minute movie below.

I've embedded it in its most universally usable form - from YouTube. Of course, as the movie-maker, I think the YouTube quality sucks. A higher quality version, in QuickTime, is here on blip.tv, the highest quality, capable of looking good full-screen, is here on OurMedia.org.

I'm quite pleased with the little movie, though it was created from left-overs from the panos. I love video editing. And the making of the soundtrack in Garageband is so fun, kept me happily obsessed for hours.

If you're interested in explanatory movies about the 11 Spring, I found some on YouTube and put them into this playlist.

The building is now scheduled to be renovated, they plan to put sheet rock over the murals, divide each floor into several units, finish them as residential condos. I'll be interested to hear if any of the condo buyers, remove the sheet rock to expose some of the art.

There's a virtual 3D environment collaborative creation tool still in the lab at Microsoft, Photosynth, which will be perfect for re-creating the environment inside and out of 11 Spring using all the photos everyone took. Future visitors will be able to "walk" into the environment, see all the art, move up close, back away, go up and down the stairs, it'll be killer cool and should only be a couple years away.

In the meantime, I'm instigating the re-creation of 11 Spring in the online virtual world, Second Life. That discussion is going on at the 11 Spring Street pool discussion. Though the photo quality will be better in Photosynth, In Second Life, we'll be able to make a social environment, visitors will be able to experience the virtual 11 Spring with others, represented by their avatars, each avatar with a live person at the controlling end of their behavior.

The View From Here

It's fascinating to read your thoughts on the connectedness between our shared past and the future of the web. Also to view your "pano"s of the Spring Street art show - if that's what it was. From where I sit, you're walking the walk you describe in your Library a-go-go post. I've copied your thoughts and intend to send them around to some colleagues, because I think a lot of us are not making the move you've made, but tend to use technology as a way of facilitating old ways of communicating, writing our various works. I don't think I'll get as far as you, but I've made a small start by learning how to send photos from the computer to people on my email list. I know that most of the world learned to do this years ago. What can I say? In this area, I'm a slow learner. I hope you will post some of your "pano"s on this blog, or a link to them, as they are fun to look at. In the comments I read about them, people seem to be remarking on some technological feat, but I see composition - an attitude. Can't wait to see the video and find out what Spring is.
    Pretty quiet now in Gibsons. And that's good. David left for Winnipeg on Sunday. Annie flew from Halifax on Thursday and landed hours before the worst wind storm Vancouver has ever experienced. A rocky, but safe landing. That night I was glad to sleep in the city, because when I'm home I worry about trees falling on the house - the downside of living on the edge of the forest. Ironically, Vancouver got the worst of the storm. Many power outtages. Some shopping malls on the outskirts closed for days. Lots of stoplights out, which made driving to the bus station a practice in patience. Annie had intended to bus across the moutains to Kelowna, to go snowboarding with a friend, but the moutain pass Greyhound uses stayed closed all day. She was disappointed, but it's been nice to have her home. Such bubbly, positive energy. She turns 21 on January 9, and it's going to be satisfying for me to see he reach that milestone. She was so unexpected in the first place, and she has turned out to be such an interesting kid. Life's surprises, eh?
     She's going to try to get to Kelowna tomorrow,  and I'm hoping the weather will be moderate. It's not a given, as usually it is. From the second week of November we've had snow storms, record rainfall, record windstorms - three just last week. In an earlier post you commented on your disappointment in San Francisco, where you'd hoped to find the grey cool weather you knew when you lived there. Instead it was hot, right? Changes in the weather, radical ones in some places, make it one of the more interesting subjects to talk about, not just time filler. People wonder if the changes here are abnormal, or the new normal. Meanwhile, I'll finish clearing away the fallen branches from around my place and be thankful that the electricity in my neighbourhood was never out for more than 8 hours at a time.
    

Library-a-Go-Go: Value Immeasurable

Library-a-Go-Go: Value Immeasurable, originally uploaded by carolinecohenour.

Gaining an audience in blogging, developing a strong web presence is all about picking a niche and developing useful content for it. I think the web needs our mid-20th Century roots to help form 21st Century culture. As elders, as experienced culture producers, our unique experience, our abilities and those of others like use may be used to form a web-based legacy which younger generations may draw upon to guide their cultural development.

We are a transition generation at an important historical crossroads. Our generation is experiencing and manifesting an evolution from Industrial Age authoritarian mass culture to an Information Age democratic community of web-connected micro-cultures. We and others like us, with our roots in 20th Century Art, Literature, Music and cultural values, have several opportunities:

1. to help others of our generation enter into web-connected methods for sharing information, knowledge and wisdom;
2. to help others of our generation use web-connected means of cultural production;
3. to help pass into the web-connected body of knowledge an appreciation of 20th Century cultural achievements;
4. to bring valuable insights from our experience of the Arts to bear on contemporary 21st Century challenges.

Your introduction of web writing into your Creative Writing curriculum is right on time and should be very valuable for all. In the visual arts, the obvious value of web-collaboration suggests that programming, coding and scripting skills are as essential to artists as drawing.

We may establish helpful interlocutor positions for ourselves by:

1. gathering and reporting on web-based individual and collaborative projects which manifest the Arts sensibilities we value;
2. we can research and present guides to the use of web tools for cultural production;
3. we can produce and publish our own work on the web, when possible;
4. we can provide web access to our off-line work;
5. we can stimulate web-based discussion with our own statements and helping others to web-publish their relevant ideas;
6. we can convene conferences, on and off line, of the best minds of our generation to strengthen and expand our understanding of relevant issues.

If this seems grandiose, research into other's similar efforts will help us more clearly form the shape of our niche.

Technorati Tags: Literature Art 20th Century 21st Century blogs

More from Steve Harlow at p0ps.com

Wild Mind

A dilettante, maybe, or perhaps an e-age renaissance man. I was trying to imagine being you on a given morning, when your mind starts to race to all the thoughts and images from the previous day, and begins creating and absorbing new ones. Can't say it isn't an interesting life. The other day at our CRWR department faculty meeting I suggested we consider ways of introducing web writing into our program. It may be too early; we wouldn't know what to teach; but I find more and more evidence of web influences on students, and we're going to have to acknowledge it anyway, if not respond somehow.
            This morning, David and our neighbour from across the street finally got the last branch - a big one - from the roof. The snowstorm you learned about from a flickr friend caused  a lot of damage to my pretty Siberian elm, but none of the branches damaged the house, and I'm going to have more sun at the front, which will be nice. Our street is so steep that when snow sticks, everyone who plans on driving moves their cars to the lower road and the neighbourhood kids take over the street for sledding (thus packing down the snow and/or ice and making driving worse). I came home from Vancouver to find the cable line dangling about five feet above the street in front of my house. It just dangled there for about three days before I got home. Interesting that no one reported it, I thought. When I did, the repair crew came out swiftly and that was good, because the snow had started to melt and traffic was imminent. We're back to rain now and more normal coastal temperatures for this time of year, and I don't know anyone who isn't glad of that.
   Classes ended on Wednesday. I have just a bit more reading to finish, then must calculate final grades, then... a break! And lots of plans for filling it. I have to think of more potential outlets for my play, Casting the Angel; want to finish a children's story I resurrected and have been revising for my grandchildren; want to contemplate ideas for the play I'm being comissioned to write, about a former school for special needs kids; want to, perhaps, open up the file on the novel I started last summer and haven't been able to get back to ... Of course there's Christmas, too, and I like  a compact version of it. Annie is flying back from Halifax on the 14th, but will immediately bus into the interior to meet a new boyfriend and go snowboarding for a couple of days before she really gets home, on the 18th. My granddaughter Oola is playing cello tomorrow in a concert given by the Coast String Fiddlers, a very well trained group of young violinists, mostly, who will play Celtic music and Christmas songs, no doubt. Oola is the only cellist. I'm hoping to read for fun, and to that end just started a Julian Barnes novel.
  I'm enjoying the Mac and I'm glad you talked me into it. It's a pleasant machine to have and use, though, as I'm sure I've said before, I don't do much on it and haven't explored it much, either. But it was great to open the youtube video you sent and have it automatically play without me having to figure out anything special. I thought I recognized the name Joan Gratz from the filmmaking community I knew a bit when I worked at the Northwest Film and Video Center in Portland in the late 80's. Gus Van Sant was a part of that community then, and had attracted a lot of attention for his first feature, Malo Noche. He's since gone on to bigger projects.
   Yeah, I'm kind of a natural chatterbox. If I'm going to post, it's going to be a letter-type, local news post at least for now, in this transition time. Maybe I'll use the blog to work out some ideas on my new project. I'm leery of it because of the dark subject matter and its breadth. An idea on how to make a story work is starting to form, but if I write about it, who knows? I'm superstitious in the ways writers often are, about exposing an idea too soon, and losing it. We'll see. Meanwhile I enjoy your thoughtful posts on a wild variety of subjects, many of them web-related. Ironic that we knew each other during a time when our generation was rejecting a lot of what passed for "progress", and here you are dragging me into - what would you call it? Cyberland and all the various villages therein?

my wrists are killing me.

my wrists are killing me., originally uploaded by cam i am.

Mary, I should be writing conversational correspondence as you do. I like the way you write here in our blog. Trying to follow what the inventor of blogging Dave Winer's recommends, "Blog everyday and read 50 blogs" I got stuck on the "read 50 blogs" part. Since he invented RSS, he's not talking about reading a few posts from 50 different blogs, he wants bloggers to have fifty feeds in their RSS reader and read (or skim) everything that the feed delivers, daily or hourly.

Nowadays, I use Google Reader for RSS, find it to be the best screen reading experience yet. I have over 60 feeds. While some of those are our blog and other friend's blogs who don't post very often, some are audio and some are video podcasts, some are feeds showing me photos as they are uploaded by my flickr contacts, at least thirty of the feeds in my Reader are serious bloggers, many posting several times a day. I'm gaining an understanding and respect for the craft of blogging, studying it as a unique form of writing -- but, finding little time to post.

At my job, I've become the technical administrator of our company's experimental marketing blog, it's a 20% project in a company that doesn't know from 20%. Google is the company that has made 20% projects famous, if you haven't heard about the concept, it is a requirement that all Google employees spend 20% of their work time on a project not directly related to their job. This is to stimulate creativity, inspiration and has allowed Google employees to develop experimental products, some of which got rolled out as Google services -- Google Reader, for one. In our company, having a 20% project is more like "skunk works", projects that you could get fired for spending time on. With the blog, we do have the interest and some backing by management, but it's more like we do it on top of your 100% job. They can't quite get their head around giving the blog any priority.

Besides maintaining the technical (coding) side of it, I'm passing information on to the writers about optimizing the posts for search engine indexing. Last week, the blog editor and I had a day long workshop with a Blog S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization) Consultant. We've learned lots of ways to help blog posts get searched and gain a high page rank so searchers for any of our subjects have a chance of finding our posts.

Helping the blog rank higher on search results pages is done by connecting it to other blog's posts on the same subject and getting links to the posts from other bloggers. There's a whole art to this, but basically, it's finding others who blog on your subjects, commenting on their posts and emailing them your post and giving them permission to quote with linked attribution.

To reinforce the incoming links, posts need to be well organized on one subject, expanding on 2 or 3 keywords, whether the post is 1 or 10 paragraphs long. The keywords should be used strategically, in the title, repeated at least 3 times in the post and used as an illustration's caption. It's best if one use of each keyword be linked to other blog's posts built on the same keyword.

If the blogger wants more audience, for whatever reason, then the principals for optimizing posts are relevant.

Making linked quotes or references to other bloggers is similar to annotating citations in research writing and like academic papers, optimized blog posts are published for peer review. What is unique to this literary form, besides the instant publication by authors, is that the author considers marketing and distribution facilitation in the format of the text itself.

Bogging is a fast-paced, more direct form of the familiar literary conversations that has always existed through author's published books and private correspondence. Writers have typically read the work of other writers, whether for instruction, research or inspiration. To some extent, each writer writes in response to what they've read. The process is sped up in blogging with conversations swirling around the blogosphere in a matter of hours.

If a blogger wants to give their writing the best chance to be read, they will attempt to enter an on-going conversation in the blogosphere. An optimal post will insightfully respond to recent statements in several other blogs, drawing previously unseen connections between separate posts adding a big chunk of original insight, creating deeper understanding. After posting, the blogger places a brief summary of that understanding as a comment on the referenced posts, doing so while empathizing their post's keywords. The blogger then emails the post to another related, but unreferenced blog, permitting that blog to quote with linked attribution. When achieved, the repricocity helps readers and searchers find all the blogs.

I have the hope of building some sort of retirement business out of blogging, vlogging, podcasting, collaborative art projects, internet marketing, eBay selling, or what-have-you. My day job at the etail site gives me some insight into web marketing and selling skills, but the social context has not given me authority to innovate, the work-load gives me little time to learn new skills, its integration with a busy retail store allows the business to not be as web-dependent as it would need to be to thoroughly adopt new marketing methods and the family management slows the implementation of the customer-generated content which is now essential to modern, conversation-based marketing.

So, here I am with I an active interest in web business, a professional in etail, a web-media producer, a blogger, but unable to deeply follow through in the many directions my interests take me. I have too many interests, too little time. Living in an expensive city keeps us tied to the day job, being artists, keeps us busy in financially unproductive activities. We are having fun, we spend hours every week producing art, we are following trains of creative thought which have the potential of helping us and others, but I have the nagging feeling I'm not able to follow any one path far enough to reach its rainbow. I fear I will have spent my life being a dilettante dabbler on the edges of many culturally important developments, but never at the center of any of them, never the master of any medium.

Enough whining! -- I'm currently obsessed with using an original, eccentric method produce crazy-looking, (hopefully expressive) panorama views of the streets of my New York, Like these.

Ruth and I are continuing our Sunday painting with a new series, the first of which is based on this study.

I'm creating and maintaining relationships with other people showing their photography on Flickr, like my pseudo-son, Cam, a wonderfully expressive photographer in Spain Maria, an Art School grad student in Chicago Shellie, the beautiful single mother Rebekka with her multiple exposure self-portrait narratives and Steve making dramatic images in the Czech Republic.