Tag Archives: artists

Commodifying Art -Damien Hirst

August 26, 2024 The Silo 2 Comments

All of modern life is a spectacle. Much of what contemporary man experiences in Western society is a false social construct mediated by images.

These mediated images create desires that can never be fulfilled; they create false needs that can never be met. “Many of our daily decisions are governed by motivations over which we have no control and of which we are quite unaware” (Berger 41). The constant spector of the mediated image creates an endless cycle of desire, consumption, and disinterest, fueling a banality in life that feeds the commodification of life.

Increasingly life itself becomes a commodity and the image more important than the reality it represents. This commodification infiltrates every aspect of human production, including the arts, and finds its pinnacle expression in the work of Damien Hirst. Hirst has carefully crafted a brand identity that has far surpassed the value of his art work in importance and worth. Working in tandem with former advertising executive turned art dealer Charles Saatchi, the spectacle of the Hirst image becomes the commodity. “Reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency towards the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself” (Debord
143).

No longer is the work of art itself a commodity, but rather the image of the artist (his/her/cis brand) that becomes the commodity.

It is this spectacle that drives the consumer to identify with a particular artist or brand. “The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be
traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products” (Klein 4). The image has increasingly infiltrated and dominated the culture and the whole of society and has become “an immense accumulation of spectacles” (Debord 142).

Butterfly by Damien Hirst

Where once the products of labor were the commodity, now it is the spectacle that has become the commodity.

A prime example of this spectacle is Damien Hirst’s sculpture, “For the Love of God.” The sculpture consists of a platinum skull covered with 8,601 diamonds. The sculpture valued at over $100 million usd/ $129.361,000 cad [exchange rate at time of publication] is clearly out of the reach of almost any collector. The sculpture itself is not the art product, rather it is the spectacle that is the product. “Mr. Hirst is a shining symbol of our times, a man who perhaps more than any artist since Andy Warhol has used marketing to turn his fertile imagination into an extraordinary business” (Riding, nytimes.com). Acknowledging that the sculpture is out of reach for the majority of collectors, Hirst offered screen prints costing $2000 usd/ $2,587 cad to $20,000 usd/ $25,870 cad ; the most expensive prints were sold with a sprinkling of diamond dust.

Karl Marx argued that the value of the commodity arose from its relationship with other commodities; its ability to be exchanged for other commodities. Marx used the the production of a table to illustrate his thesis:
“…by his activity, man changes the materials of nature in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless the table continues to be wood, an ordinary, sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness.” (Marx 122)

Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull remains mere diamonds, valuable yes, but still diamonds. However, when coupled with the spectacle of Damien Hirst’s identity, the skull becomes a fetishized commodity capable of selling screen-prints valued in the thousands. The argument can be made that diamonds on their own carry value, and could be commodities themselves, however that doesn’t account for the fact the Hirst was able to sell prints of the skull for over $2000 usd/ $2,587 cad. Nor do the diamonds alone account for the spectacle surrounding the art work; it is Hirst’s brand, his image that creates the spectacle.

“The mystical character of the commodity does not therefore arise from its use-value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determinants of value” (Marx 123). The value of a commodity arises from its spectacle, its ability to be desired. In Marx’s day that desire was its ability to be traded for other commodities; today that value is derived from its association to a brand, an identity, a spectacle. “Art reflects the illusory way in which society sees itself, it reflects the bourgeoisie’s aesthetic ideas as if they were universal” (Osborne 79).

The spectacle feeds itself through the mediating of the image to create desire for status and recognition, through associations.

“The ends are nothing and development is all – though the only thing into which the spectacle plans to develop is itself” (Debord 144). The spectacle’s main objective is self perpetuation. Its aim is totality. It must be noted that Hirst himself did not even create the work of art, but rather employed a studio full of jewelers to execute the sculpture, and printers to produce the prints.

Hirst exemplifies the bourgeoisie capitalist employer who retains ownership over the fruit of the employees’ labor. He is in many ways more akin to a captain of industry than he is to the romantic notion of an artist. “In the early twenties, the legendary adman Bruce Barton turned General Motors into a metaphor for the American family, something personal, warm and human” (Klein 7). Hirst has also turned himself into a metaphor, however, metaphors aren’t always true. This falsehod is at the heart of the issue. The spectacle isn’t concerned with what is true, rather it is concerned with what can be made to appear true. It is this appearance of truth that makes a commodity valuable. This fetishism of the commodity is why gold and silver have value, it is because people gave them value. It is the reason Damien Hirst, or any other brand, has value, because people gave it value.

Damien Hirst cannot be blamed for commodifying art, he is simply following a long tradition of turning objects and products into commodities. The fact that his commodity is his own image doesn’t seem to matter. “Hirst is just playing the game. It is a game played by collectors and dealers at art fairs throughout the year; it is a game finessed as never before by Sotheby’s and Christie’s; it is a game in which, in the words of Nick Cohen, a rare British journalist to trash Mr. Hirst’s publicity coup, ‘the price tag is the art’ ” (Riding .nytimes.com).

That final statement beautifully summarizes the commodification of art, ‘the price tag is the art.’ The fact that the art is obscenely priced, and out of the reach for the majority of collectors, the fact that it is made of diamonds, a precious stone known as the blood stone because of its association with brutal and oppressive regimes, merely adds to its allure, to its spectacle. Damien Hirst is merely playing the game, like many before him. He is a part of the growing culture
industry that sells image. Images are the new commodity fetish. Images are the new mysterious commodities exchanged for more the more durable and enduring commodities. The bourgiousie sell their images, which have no real value, to the public which consumes them, in exchange for goods of real value.

“The $200 billion usd/ $270 billion cad culture industry – now North America’s biggest export – needs an every-changing, uninterrupted supply of street styles, edgy music videos and rainbows of colors. And the radical critics of the media clamoring to be ‘represented’ in the early nineties virtually handed over their colorful identities to the brand masters to be shrink-wrapped.” (Klein 115)

Nick Cohen said of Hirst, “[he] isn’t criticizing the excess, not even ironically … but rolling in it and loving it. The sooner he goes out of fashion, the better.” What Cohen fails to realize is that the spectacle is a fashion. And when one image goes out of fashion, another takes its place. Hirst may indeed go out of fashion, but another art brand will take his place, perpetuating the commodification of the arts in increasingly bombastic ways.

Perhaps art has always been a commodity?

In the past patrons would hire artists to paint them into scenes from the gospels. Patrons could be seen on the outskirts of paintings piously praying, thus creating an image of themselves as good and pious Christians. By association with the sacred art, the patron was creating a mediated image. Rulers did this all the time. The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius is a perfect example. Its a mediating image that communicates power and authority.

But none of these examples reach the level of spectacle and fetishism that is Damien Hirst. While art may have been a commodity in the past, it was never commodified. In other words, while the art itself may have been exchanged for other goods, the artist himself was not treated as a commodity. The art of the past may have served a purpose, it may have contained a mediated message, but it was still a product, and it was the product that was valued, not its brand identity.

The commodification of art creates a unique problem in history. If it is the spectacle that matters, and the artist’s identity that has value, then what value is left in the art itself?

What then separates art from ordinary objects? Is there any aesthetic emotion that remains in the work of art itself, or does the aesthetic emotion dwell completely within the spectacle? These are questions that cannot easily be answered, and ultimately will require the lens of history to answer completely. But they are a pressing concern, for when art is commodified, it may cease to be art and instead become celebrity, product, or worse, advertising. For the Silo, Vasilios Avramidis

Works Cited
Berger, Arthur Asa. Seeing is Believing: An Introduction to Visual
Communication. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2008. Print.
Debor, Guy. “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture.” The Visual Culture
Reader. Ed.Nicholas Mirzoeff. New York, NY: Routelage, 1998. 142-144. Print.
Klein, Naomi. No Logo, No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. New York, NY: Picador, 2000.
Print.
Marx, Karl. “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture.” The Visual Culture
Reader. Ed.Nicholas Mirzoeff. New York, NY: Routelage, 1998. 122-123. Print.
Riding, Alan. Alas, Poor Art Market: ‘A Multimillion Dollar Headcase.’ The New York
Times. June 2007, Damien Hirst and the Commodification of Art http://www.visual-studies.com/interviews/moxey.htm

Art

Far Reaching Effects Of Visual Culture In Our World Of Appearances

March 30, 2024 The Silo Leave a comment

Dusty book stall archeologist and writer Jonathan Guyer oversees the far reaching effects of visual culture in our modern ‘all about appearances’ world.

*Jonathan Guyer on CBC -Canada Broadcasting Corporation*

Through frequent excursions to the bookshops of downtown Cairo in Egypt, Guyer has unearthed a wealth of forgotten political narratives and overlooked illustrative histories. Book-ending his fascination with the alternative story lines of locally appropriated Western comics, Guyer’s faith in the ethical and ideological potential of cartoons and satirical imagery extends to the underground artistic movements of contemporary self-published zine-makers. In his eloquent interview, the prolific and level-headed writer remarks on welcome shifts in the Middle Eastern visual landscape, the necessary and terrifying obligations of artists, and the autonomy of art in an authoritative society.

*Bascha Mon Prince Street Rag oil on canvas*

Adaptive and indomitable painter Bascha Mon has traced each frame of light between the new and full moons. Bound to spontaneity and guided by intuition, Mon’s practice feels out a logic from the sanctuary and purgatory of a blank canvas. Impelled by the psychic pains of a laboring human family, Mon retrieves the fragments of her commiserating heart from the cold grasp of reality, like pulling her distorted reflection from the surface of the water. Expressed in her stirring and poignant interview, Mon’s necessary attachment to art conceals a deep solidarity with the misplaced souls of the Earth, who struggle to make sense of an existence where whimsy and intense meaning coexist. The sage observer and painter is never dissatisfied by an individual work, as no piece is anything less than perfect if it belongs to a whole.

*Shipping Container is a book on Literary Theory by Craig Martin*

Reading something interesting?

Tom Allen, is ensnared by the vehement poems of mid 19th century writer Jules Laforgue, the progenitor of free verse in the French tradition and treasure to the great modernist poets. Laforgue fashioned his fervent style of observation from the fiery idealism of the symbolists and the microcosmic subjectivity of impressionism. Another one of our users, Niels Van Tomme, is pleasantly amused by the playful and engaging Shipping Container, Craig Martin’s contribution to the Object Lessons series. Martin’s colorful prose enlivens the itinerant existence of this ubiquitous transport vessel, the unsung hero of our convenient and mobile world.

Urging the flow of time and water is the promise of change made by a fork in the stream.

For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Finance

Streaming Royalties Are Bullshit A Musicians Case For Universal Income

February 6, 2023 The Silo 1 Comment

Royalties Are Bullshit: A Musician’s Case For Basic Income….. “This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

-Woody Guthrie, copyright notice, This Land Is Your Land

Royalties are bullshit.

I say this as a musician, and as a songwriter. But let me go a step further: royalties have always been bullshit. The first problem? They’re not going to musicians, and they never have.

If money is being made, something is being sold. That something has to be a product, something that can be counted. Originally it would have been sheet music, before recorded music was widely available. Later on, it meant records, then tapes, CDs, downloads, streams, as well as licensing rights – use in a specific film, or for a particular commercial. There is a product. Someone is buying it. Some of that money goes towards the cost of producing, distributing, and marketing that product; some of it goes to the artist, as royalties.

Well, a little bit of it goes to the artist.

As Billboard notes, “An accurate map of royalty pathways would be a tangled mess.” It’s not easy to get paid.

Some royalties are set by the government, some are negotiated, some are paid through groups. For example, I license my music through TuneCore, which strikes deals with a series of digital music outlets, like iTunes and Spotify, each of which offers different terms of payment. Spotify pays artists, on average, $0.007 cents per stream.

Example of royalties earned for artist Jarrod Barker. Russian streamer Yandex awarded 8/100th of a penny for track streaming. Mr. Barker would need 99,992 additional streams to earn a dollar!

Beyond that, if you are “fortunate” enough to work with a major record label, there are restrictive terms and conditions. Techdirt quotes Tim Quirk of Too Much Joy explaining the Kafkaesque math [emphasis mine]:

A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn’t mean Warner “lost” nearly $400,000 on the band. That’s how much they spent on us, and we don’t see any royalty checks until it’s paid back, but it doesn’t get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band’s share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let’s say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

Of course, none of this is new, really. The history of artists getting screwed by record labels is as long as the history of record labels, and includes everything from the creative math above to outright theft, failure to count sales, or inventive stunts like Fantasy Records accusing John Fogerty of plagiarizing himself. But bear with me, because it gets worse.

In the music industry today, there are a few people who are making money from royalties- and they’re making nearly all of it. More specifically, the top one percent of earners are taking in 77% of the recorded music revenue. Strikingly, these are many of the same artists who are now “at war” with YouTube. Artists such as Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney are convinced that YouTube is making money from their music by selling ads and subscriptions, and not paying adequate royalties. And they’re not wrong; YouTube is definitely making money by selling ads and subscriptions, and there’s no question that most of that is not going to the artists.

However, this is a stupid argument.

It’s a stupid argument because a tiny group of people that’s making the lion’s share of all recorded musical income is concerned that a new service doesn’t adequately compensate them; the major record labels feel the same way, of course. It’s a “war” that leaves out 99% of the musicians out there trying to make music and make a living, and it doesn’t really matter how they settle the conflict.

So let’s say, hypothetically, that we eliminate royalties. This raises a fundamental question.

How do we compensate and credit artists for their work?

I believe the answer is basic income, but first let’s take a closer look at that question. At a glance, it seems like it should be simple: pay them for their music. But what does that mean? It quickly gets complicated.

Part of the problem is that we as a culture equate value with ownership. If musicians have created a song, this thinking goes, and that song has value, they must own it, like any other form of property. But that’s ridiculous, and it’s pretty easy to see how quickly it becomes truly absurd.

For example, take a classic blues song, like Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog.” Is that her tune? Yes! Does she deserve credit for it? Absolutely. Big Mama Thornton has a special place in blues history, and rightly so. But is it the first example of a 12-bar blues? No, of course not. Is it the first time someone used lyrics about a dog? Is it the first time someone used the call-and-response verse structure of a repeated first line and different last line? No, and no. And even though she made it a hit, the lyrics were by Leiber and Stoller. So which part of the song does she “own”? Is it just that specific recording? If so, how much does the bass player own, or the drummer? Do you pay royalties for playing it on the radio? What if it’s on the radio, and you tape it? What if you give that tape to a friend? I know, I know, nobody tapes anything off the radio anymore. What if you cover it in a bar? What if you sing it in your living room? What if you sing it in your living room and upload it to YouTube? What if you share the MP3? Where do we draw the lines?

Woody Guthrie, speaking from the folk music tradition, said “New words, new song.” Bob Dylan took that lesson to heart, both in early works like “Masters of War,” which took a melody from an English folk song called “Nottamun Town,” and in more recent releases. On Modern Times he lifted lines from a Civil War era Confederate poet named Henry Timrod, and used the arrangement of Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” with re-written lyrics and the same title.

I don’t mean to discount Big Mama Thornton, or disparage Bob Dylan. I’m a big fan of both. What I want to illustrate is that “property” and “ownership” is a meaningless way to look at music, because it’s a living, inherited tradition. Everybody got something from somebody. Every electric guitar player owes something to T-Bone Walker, and T-Bone owes something to Blind Lemon Jefferson. Every folk singer owes something to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. And more to the point, if you ask any great musician, they will tell you who they got it from. Eric Clapton tells people about Buddy Guy, but if you put a microphone in front of Buddy he’s going to tell you about Muddy Waters, BB King, Guitar Slim. The greats are always ready to turn around and credit the people who came before them, because that’s how a living musical tradition works.

So again: how do we compensate and credit artists for their work?

Splitting the question

One answer is to split up the question. When you think about it, it’s really two different questions. Let’s look at the second part first: how do we acknowledge and appreciate and credit the work that artists do? This is especially important because many important contributions to music, art, and human history generally, were made by people who get erased from popular culture- in particular women, LGBTQ folks, and people of color (Ma Rainey, for example, was all three). They are erased, in part, because there is money to be made by erasing them.

The uninformed still think “Hound Dog” and “That’s All Right” are Elvis Presley tunes. And while Presley himself was quick to credit his influences, most people have never heard of Arthur Crudup, and everyone’s heard of Elvis. Sometimes people were erased several times over; early blues music was driven by women like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who were largely displaced by black men, who then had their music co-opted by white guys playing rock’n’roll versions of the same songs. Some made serious efforts to show people where the music had its roots – The Rolling Stones, appearing on the show Shindig in 1965, insisted that Howlin’ Wolf also get to perform. On the other hand, Led Zeppelin took Willie Dixon’s song “You Need Love,” and recorded it as “Whole Lotta Love,” without ever mentioning where they got it. It’s ironic, since Dixon himself was notorious for taking credit and royalties for other people’s work, often by offering to “take care of the paperwork” on a new tune.

So how do we make sure we credit and acknowledge artists? One way, I believe, is to end a system of compensation based on owning something that cannot be owned. In a system like we have now, where the focus is on ownership of a particular sound, or song, or style, there is a real financial incentive to take credit. In the case of the record labels, you can even get the actual rights to an artist’s songs. If we disconnect the money from the “ownership” of the music, we are removing part of the incentive to pretend that new music doesn’t freely flow from old music.

Universal Basic Income

To be clear, I’m not suggesting artists should not be paid. There are different ways to support artists, and the internet has allowed for a lot of direct interaction between artists and fans. There are crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Patreon, there are independent music platforms like BandCamp and CDBaby. They’ve got their advantages and disadvantages, but what I’m advocating is something simpler, more widespread and direct: universal basic income.

Universal basic income, sometimes called emancipatory basic income or simply “basic income,” is an easy idea to understand: you give everybody money. Everybody. Rich people, poor people, working people, the unemployed, the young, the old, everybody. Everybody gets a salary. It’s not a lucrative salary, but enough to make sure you can provide for yourself.

First, let me clear something up: this is not a wild, crazy, utopian idea. It’s a serious proposal, that is increasingly being treated as such. Even Forbes ran a piece called “Universal Basic Income Is Not Crazy.” Of course, it works better if you already have some of the social framework much of the world takes for granted: child care, family leave, health care. But let’s leave those aside for a moment to look at basic income from the musician’s perspective. What is the impact for working musicians?

Quit Your Day Job

Many, if not most, working musicians [and artists CP] support themselves with a day job. This includes long-time performers with steady gigs, people who have gone on world tours and recorded on dozens of albums. Buddy Guy drove a tow truck into his thirties. Composer Philip Glass worked as a plumber and taxi driver until he was 41. Wes Montgomery worked in a factory from 7am to 3pm and played gigs until 2am.

Let me tell you: it’s not easy. As a musician, you already have to balance many competing demands: playing gigs, traveling, booking and promoting shows, recording new material, rehearsing a band. Being a professional musician is, effectively, more than one job already. Now try to schedule all that around a conventional job structure that wants you working at 8 or 9 in the morning, 5 days a week, regardless of where you played last night or when you got home. It’s hard to fit all of it in, and that’s without stopping to consider that it might be nice to sleep occasionally or even see your family now and then.

One reason basic income is sometimes called “emancipatory” is because it frees you from this burden. You’re still going to be out there hustling for gigs, scheduling sessions, trying to record and promote and – let’s be real – get paid. Basic income doesn’t eliminate the desire or possibility for people to make money by working, it just means you don’t have to worry about starving or getting evicted while you do it. And let’s remember, most of the money musicians make doesn’t come from royalties anyway. People are getting paid for gigs, for shows, for studio sessions, for tours, sometimes for merchandise or direct sales (in particular if you’re producing your stuff independently).

Make The Music You Want To Make

Musicians make compromises all the time. Sometimes it’s about timing: you want to put something out, and you can’t afford to wait, so you settle- you keep a take that could have been better, you scratch a song that needs a few more sessions to come together. Sometimes it’s about the sound: a record label wants to market you a particular way, a track needs to be “radio friendly” to get airplay. Sometimes it’s just about resources: recording and producing music, even with all the advances in digital technology, is a laborious, expensive process. For some players, there’s also the trade-off between taking gigs that might pay better but be musically unfulfilling (think wedding band or corporate events) versus pursuing a musical vision that might not have a ready-made market. And, of course, there’s that most precious of all resources, time, which is often given over in huge amounts to the aforementioned day job.

Basic income removes the immediacy of financial pressures, and frees up a lot of time. Does that mean we won’t have choices to make? No, of course not. There are always choices, and there are always constraints, and even if we get basic income that won’t turn time itself into a limitless resource. But it changes the balance of the decision.

Creative Liberation: Supported By Research

Right now, across the country, there are brilliant artists whose music could change and enrich our culture in ways we can’t imagine, and we don’t get to hear them. They’re stuck working day jobs, playing the gigs that pay the bills, and trying to fit their creativity into commercial constraints. Pause for a moment, and imagine the explosion of new sounds and ideas we can liberate with basic income.

As a musician, that paragraph felt intuitively true to me. However, a number of people who were kind enough to review an early draft of this essay suggested that my point might be better served if I backed it up with “evidence” and “examples.” Of course, there’s not exactly a one-to-one comparison available, so I’m going to draw on some similar programs and related ideas.

First: the MacArthur “Genius” grants. These fellowships are awarded to people who are already recognized to be exceptional; they provide a no-strings-attached stipend of USD$625,000 over five years. Obviously that’s a lot more than “basic” income, but they underpin the idea that simply providing creative people with resources allows them greater freedom to explore, discover, and create. In a review of their program and its effectiveness, The MacArthur Foundation found that 93% of the fellows reported greater financial stability (no surprise) and 88% reported an increased opportunity to express creativity. Three quarters felt it lead them to make riskier, more ambitious choices in their work.

Some might argue that the fellowships exhibit a selection bias, since they go to people already known to be creative. However, there’s good reason to believe that supporting the poorest and most marginalized offers even greater benefits. Dissent magazine recounts the history of the Federal Writers Project, which offered “unemployed” writers guaranteed income by giving a fixed salary to produce travelogues or other commissioned writings:

…with regular paychecks, FWP writers could experiment with more creative projects at the same time. Over the course of eight years, the program employed over 6,600 writers, including Nelson Algren, Jack Conroy, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. The FWP enabled new classes of Americans to become “professional” writers.

While employed by the FWP, these writers—most notably writers of color—wrote fiction that challenged the political status quo, and they revolutionized literary form in order to do so. To be sure, many of these writers developed their politics in pre-FWP years, but stable employment facilitated their political and artistic ambitions—by providing them with steady income, connecting them to other writers, and offering literary inspiration. From 1936–37, between posts at the Federal Theatre Project and the FWP, Hurston wrote her beautiful and troubling novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, a book celebrated today for its inventive use of black vernacular. Wright spearheaded the “Chicago Renaissance,” a creative community strengthened and supported by FWP projects in the state of Illinois. Meanwhile, in New York City, Ellison was conducting FWP oral histories when, as he reported it, he stumbled across a man who described himself as “invisible.” This encounter would be the genesis for his Invisible Man, surely one of the strangest and most significant novels of the twentieth century.

I recognize that the subjective self-evaluation of MacArthur fellows and even the impressive work of FWP authors can be considered, to some extent, anecdotal evidence. But there is also controlled research, and what it shows is the flip side of the coin: that poverty impedes cognitive function. Lead by Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, the team found that “experimentally induced thoughts about finances reduced cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants.” They also found that farmers showed diminished cognitive ability before harvest, when they were poor, compared to after harvest when they were relatively rich. That’s after controlling for free time, nutrition, work effort, and stress.

If you’ve ever been broke and had bills to pay, this is not news. It’s hard to focus when you have a huge bill hanging over your head and no immediate prospect for paying it off. When you’re in a position of financial hardship, a portion of your brain is effectively set aside to repeating over and over again, “AAAH THE RENT AAAH THE RENT AAAH THE RENT.” Or the hospital bill, or the car payment, etc. You know the classic sci-fi trope that imagines what you could do if you could harness the full power of your brain? Turns out it doesn’t require genetic engineering – you just need to be able to pay your bills.

I would argue that we are effectively paying a cultural opportunity cost in the form of lost creativity. Coming back to music, anthropologist David Graeber puts it this way:

“Back in the 20th century, every decade or so, England would create an incredible musical movement that would take over the world. Why is it not happening anymore? Well, all these bands were living on welfare! Take a bunch of working class kids, give them enough money for them to hang around and play together, and you get the Beatles. Where is the next John Lennon? Probably packing boxes in a supermarket somewhere.”

The Robot Imperative – It’s Not Just About Musicians

I realize we’re covering a lot of ground here, and we’re about to talk about robots. So first, a quick recap

Royalties don’t go to (most) musicians.

Royalties don’t make sense because they rely on ownership of something that cannot be meaningfully owned.

This system of ownership creates financial incentives to take credit for other people’s work.

Eliminating royalties forces us to confront the fundamental question of how we credit and compensate artists for their work.

Basic income answers part of that question – compensation – while eliminating royalties removes, at least in part, the financial incentive to take credit.

Basic income liberates musicians from the constraints of a day job and the pressures of commercial music.

Evidence supports the idea that this liberation leads to more, and more adventurous, creative work.
In short, basic income separates the idea that people have value from the idea that they must own something valuable.

All of that has been true for quite some time, and in fact arguments for basic income are as old as Thomas Paine. But there is a huge, disruptive change happening that makes this a much more urgent question, not just for musicians but for everyone. Namely, robots. Robots and computer automation are about to eliminate huge numbers of jobs (think tens of millions). Some are in the news right now: Uber is testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Driverless trucking is not far behind, taking 3.5 million jobs with it. And it’s not just truckers: designers, fast food workers, accountants, financial analysts, doctors, hotel concierges. Thousands of news stories are being written by robots. An Oxford University study estimates that 47% of total employment may be at risk. Even jazz musicians have to be worried.

In short, the day job could be going away, and not just for musicians. The question is, what will we do with these millions of people, once they’re out of work? Will we insist that truckers can all get jobs doing social media? Will a few wealthy people retreat behind high walls and leave the rest of us to fight for the scraps of employment through a fog of financial worry and expensive, short term trade-offs?

Or will we embrace basic income, recognize that people have innate value, and unleash a wild torrent of creative exploration the likes of which we’ve never heard before? For the Silo, Anthony Moser. www.anthonymoser.com
@mosermusic

Supplemental: Basic Income Earth Network
HYPERLINK “http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/the-economist-just-came-o_b_7447312.html”The Basic Affordability of Basic Income
HYPERLINK “http://www.france24.com/en/20160825-finland-test-out-basic-income-scheme”Finland to try basic income
HYPERLINK “https://www.thenation.com/article/a-basic-income-would-upend-americas-work-ethic-and-thats-a-good-thing/”A Basic Income Would Upend America’s Work Ethic
HYPERLINK “http://qz.com/765902/ubi-wouldnt-mean-everyone-quits-working/”UBI Would Change The Nature Of Work

Royalties and copyright:
The Music Industry is a Parasite And Copyright Is Dead by Steve Albini
Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig

PS – My music is available on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, and a host of other digital music services. If you catch me at a gig, you can buy an album for name-your-price. And if anyone ever uploads it to The Pirate Bay, torrent with my blessing. As Woody Guthrie would say, “Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

Art

Textile Artist Spins Wool Into Metaphors

November 21, 2022 The Silo 1 Comment

Raw material: Wool. Operating mode: the hook.

Nice, France textile artist Stéphanie Lobry frantically fashions her art with an unexpected yet satisfyingly fitting leitmotiv: feminism.

A Teacher when she’s not at the loft, where she created and exhibited her works, Stéphanie Lobry is busy hanging a crochet. Entitled 1.8 cubic meter, “parce c’est la taille qu’il fait”, lies in the piece, in the middle of a crowd of scattered bodies which share this small space with balls of yarn and needles.

If we pay attention to all red wires that surround and hang throughout her living room, we realize that they are, in fact, a gun.

“I wanted to divert the everyday objects. And to do so with needles and wool. No, no to knitting scarves for her daughters in some kind of ‘good housewife’ role, but rather to rediscover the woman inside, and then to discover humans in general.”

Why crochet? Rolled cigarette in mouth, she passes a nonchalant hand into blond spiky hair. She thinks… “This practice is also ancestral, but has potential for feminist messages and aesthetics when it is diverted from its original use and put towards the service of art. I’ve always been very creative and a little hyper active yet the only compliment I could expect from that was to be commended for being a good mother…”. I got fed up.” Reduced once too often to the status of “the good historical female”, Stéphanie Lobry “lost it”and held her first exhibition.

Our compulsive crocheter remembers having hesitated….stalled somewhere between a choice of direction. Between science and art: “When I started my studies in molecular biology, my mother asked me if I was sure didn’t want to make fine art instead.” Would an academic focus on science bind her passions? In her artistic process, she discovered that there was in fact a synthesis manifested through the act of the creation, which after all, begins with the cells inside the brain. Fittingly, her art work began with a small croqueted skull which “immediately went to Gallery’. The creative process then dissected and took over other parts of the body.

An Ariane of modern times

Sweeping my gaze around her workshop, it stops suddenly on the croqueted heart, “it was a participatory project I created shortly after Charlie.” Surely a way to re – unite people, to reconnect, “everyone needed it.” The artist put out a call using social media, letting all participants know that their name would be displayed at the bottom of the finished work. In a few weeks, she received 763 balls of wool, from more than 120 donors, scattered to the four corners of the world, from Paris to Noumea, the Chile, the Belgium and the Greece.

A Runaway success requires a lot of hard work.
It takes almost a month to sort the fabrics and create a ball that weighs more than 40 kg. As for the hook… 45 days are necessary for the realization of a typical piece of finished work: “the ball weighed a ton! I couldn’t do more than five knots without being exhausted.” It is a technique so grueling and time-consuming, but I feel like I’m really at the beginning, I still have a lot to say.” She seems to have found her way alright and is brimming with ideas to express her commitment.

Worried perhaps about her peers who see their emancipation sometimes as endangered, this knitter doesn’t fail to hang onto a hint of conviction to her works. I remember especially this sort of determined representation that she had given at the Théâtre National de Nice, last May, dressed in a full suit. Knitted of course. Delivering metaphors spun into all of her creations. For the Silo, Marine de Rocquigny originally for Art and Facts www.artandfacts.fr

*photos by Florian Lévy

Stéphanie Lobry accroche l’œil au crochet avec son cœur. Ledit, intitulé 1,8 mètre cube, « parce c’est la taille qu’il fait », gît dans la pièce, au milieu d’une foule d’organes éparpillés, partageant ce petit espace avec les pelotes de laine et les aiguilles.
Pourquoi le crochet ? Cigarette roulée au bec, elle passe une main nonchalante dans ses blonds cheveux en bataille. Elle songe… « Cette pratique aussi ancestrale soit-elle, prend des allures féministes quand elle est détournée de son utilisation pour se mettre au service de l’art. » Car c’est bien avec une volonté libératrice et féministe qu’elle s’est lancée il y a maintenant sept ans : « J’ai toujours été très créative et un peu hyper active pourtant le seul compliment que je pouvais espérer c’était d’être une bonne mère de famille… J’en ai eu marre. » Réduite une fois de trop au statut de BMF, Stéphanie Lobry « pète les plombs » et organise une première exposition.
Alors que les curieux s’aventurent dans ses appartements, elle les reçoit en nuisette, repassant chemise après chemise, la main collée à son fer. Et si l’on prête attention à l’ensemble de fils rouges qui l’entourent et parcourent son salon, on s’aperçoit qu’ils forment, en fait, un pistolet. « J’ai voulu détourner les objets du quotidien. » Elle se munie dès lors d’aiguilles et de laines. Non, pas pour tricoter des écharpes à ses filles en bonne femme d’intérieur, mais plutôt pour redécouvrir l’intérieur de la femme, puis de l’humain en général.
Rencontre logique. La crocheteuse compulsive se souvient avoir longtemps hésité entre la science et l’art : « Quand j’ai commencé mes études en biologie moléculaire, ma mère m’a demandé si j’étais sûre de ne pas vouloir plutôt faire les Beaux-Arts. » Alors autant entreprendre une reconversion qui pourrait lier ses passions et ses connaissances. Dans sa démarche artistique, elle revient donc à la genèse de la création, qui commence avec des cellules. Elle commence avec un petit crâne « tout de suite parti en galerie », puis dissèque et reprend toutes les parties du corps. Du neurone au pied. Du sexe aux poumons.

Une Ariane des temps modernes
En balayant du regard son atelier, elle s’arrête sur le cœur, « c’était un projet participatif que j’ai crée peu après Charlie. » Surement une façon de re-fédérer les gens, de renouer les liens, « tout le monde en avait besoin. » L’artiste lance alors un appel sur les réseaux sociaux, tous les participants verront leur nom affiché au bas de l’oeuvre. En quelques semaines, elle reçoit 763 pelotes de laines, provenant de plus de 120 donneurs, dispersés au quatre coins du monde, de Paris à Nouméa, en passant par le Chili, la Belgique ou la Grèce. Succès fulgurant. Travail titanesque en perspective. Il lui faut près d’un mois pour trier les tissus et constituer une pelote de plus de 40 kilos. Quant au crochet… 45 jours nécessaires à la réalisation de l’organe démesuré. « Les aiguilles étaient énormes et la pelote pesait une tonne ! Je ne pouvais pas faire plus de cinq nœuds sans être épuisée.
Une technique épuisante donc et laborieuse que la « quinqua » ne compte pas abandonner de si tôt: « J’ai l’impression que je ne suis vraiment qu’au tout début, j’ai encore beaucoup de choses à dire. » Sorte d’Ariane des temps modernes. Elle semble avoir trouvé sa voie grâce au fil et regorge d’idées pour exprimer son engagement. Inquiète au sujet de ses consœurs qui voient leur émancipation parfois en péril, cette tricoteuse ne manque pas d’accrocher un soupçon de conviction à ses œuvres. On se souvient notamment de cette représentation qu’elle avait donnée au Théâtre National de Nice, en mai dernier, enfermée dans une combinaison intégrale tricotée comme dans sa condition féminine, attendant qu’on tire sur les fils pendants pour la délivrer. Une cause qui lui tient à cœur, une métaphore filée sur l’ensemble de ses créations.
Marine de Rocquigny pour Art and Facts www.artandfacts.fr

Art

Composition For Solo Piano With 40 Channel 1 Bit Electronics

September 21, 2022 The Silo Leave a comment

New Amsterdam Records releases are special and Surface Image, the album-length composition for solo piano with 40-channel 1-bit electronics, composed by Tristan Perich and performed by pianist Vicky Chow is no exception.

“Surface Image is a stunning marriage of Perich’s inspired electronic aesthetic and Chow’s nuanced yet fiercely virtuosic playing. The line between electric and organic is artistically blurred, as the simple hand-wired electronics fuse with the individual notes of the piano on the same, expansive plane. Recorded at EMPAC’s sound studio by producer Argeo Ascani and mix engineer Jeffrey Svatek.”

A look at the performance set-up in "Surface" by Tristan Perich for a piano performance by Vicky Chow — A look at the performance set-up in “Surface” by Tristan Perich for a piano performance by Vicky Chow

"Surface's" Tristan Perich and Vicky Chow — “Surface’s” Tristan Perich and Vicky Chow

Pre-Order Now: https://newamsterdamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tristan-perich-surface-image

Microtonal Wall in “Audible Spaces”

Curated by Alexis Lowry Murray, “Audible Spaces” presents three sound installations that encourage participants to explore the subtleties of listening. Tristan Perich, Zarouhie Abdalian, and [The User] have each created immersive environments using seemingly uniform sounds that dissolve into tonal, tactile, and temporal variations as participants engage with them. Perich’s Microtonal Wall (2011), on view in the Cohen Gallery at the Granoff Center, demonstrates the extraordinary complexity that can be generated using only the most basic electronic tools. Drone-like from a distance, this 25 ft long sound field of 1-bit noise dissolves into 1500 unique frequencies.

A look at Perich's microtonal wall installation. — A look at Perich’s microtonal wall installation.

Art

Colouring In The Bible Is The Latest Trend In Journaling

February 28, 2022 The Silo Leave a comment

An interesting new trend is on the rise—colouring in a Bible.

What was once frowned upon, is now encouraged. This new trend is called Bible journaling. Bible journaling is the act of doodling in one’s Bible, as a way to creatively express one’s faith. However, some people choose to illustrate outside their Bible; as for some, doodling on the Bible itself is still prohibited.

Over the past few years, the movement has grown significantly with many online groups, forums, Facebook communities, blogs, and church groups creating groups where people share their Bible journal artwork, offer techniques, and provide a supportive boost.

People even discuss where to get Bibles with the largest margins so that there is room for their designs, creating an interesting demand on publishers and retailers.

Complete Guide to Bible Journaling: Creative Techniques to Express Your Faith (Fox Chapel Publishing), by designer, inspirational speaker, and author of the best-selling Zenspirations® book series Joanne Fink, was created in response to this amazing trend.

The book features the works of top Bible journalers, offers drawing tips, the best tools to use, and even offers traceable vellum sheets to use on your own Bible. For the Silo, Elizabeth Martins.

Main image courtesy of biblejournallove.com

Culture

Angels In Starships? There’s Lights All Over The World

April 24, 2021 The Silo Leave a comment

images: courtesy of the author — Images: courtesy of the author.

A thousand UFOs are reported each month and are usually seen with lights or as bright orbs. They often appear to be signaling their presence. I have been told by high ranking personnel that UFOs definitely have a religious aspect involved in their presence. Most are friendly but some have their own agenda. The Ten Commandments has instructions for mankind to abide by rules or laws that mankind should use when they travel in space such as do not kill and steal.

The Bible frequently mentions lights.

“You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Matthew. 5:14-16: The Bible promises life after death. Are these ships here to pick up human souls as they die? People’s bodies are known to lose less than an ounce at death.

“A fourteenth century fresco of the Madonna and Child by St Giovannino, in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, attributed to the 15 Century school of Filippo Lippi. A UFO hovers in the distance. A blow up of this fresco reveals details of the UFO including port holes. It seems to indicate a religious involvement between UFO’s and the appearance of the Christ Child. ” from disclose.tv

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew … it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.”

Angels in Starships

There are thousands of books about angels and first hand contacts with humans. The book “Angels in Starships” tells of Angels or aliens in Italy. The book states, “And now the facts: Giorgio, Tina, Paolo, and other friends have a number of ‘eye-to-eye’ contacts with space brothers, with rides in starships, and with conversations, in which it is revealed to them that they are the so-called ‘angels’ of the Bible, or mediators and messengers of those who served God’s will, and still serve, to reveal the truth to men of Earth, and to guide them on the path toward higher development. During the encounter their car received tremendous heat and the engine was severely damaged.

In the course of such meetings, the group received important revelations and messages of utmost seriousness, which concern all the inhabitants of this afflicted planet. The invitation to follow paths to a better way of life is well advised, for the time of great catastrophes and dreadful happenings about which the Apocalypse speaks is coming nearer; the day in which “one will be taken away and the other left behind.”

On the occasion of one of these unusual meetings, the Earthly friends, who had been entrusted with messages and teachings, and had been guests on the flying saucers and the starships, were allowed to have the wonderful experience of visiting a distant planet.

A few examples of UFO encounters : In Indian Sanskrit, space vehicles are generally called ‘Vimanas.’ Cicero, in the 43rd chapter of his “De Divinatione”, writes of ‘balls in the heavens’; Julius Obsequens, in “Prodigia”, writes of ‘flaming shields’, and these descriptions occur likewise in Aschylos, Plutarch, Seneca, and Valerius Maximus. and Xenophon. Dio Cassius related that, at the first landing of the Romans in Great Britain under Aulus Plautus in the year 43 B. C., a round object flew like lightning from east to west. Roman soldiers had UFO like objects on their shields.

‘Dark globes’ were seen over Basel in the Middle Ages, and similarly, there were ‘airships’ in the skies of the United States toward the end of the 19th century. During World War II, ‘balls of light’ and so-called ‘foo-fighters’ followed both the Allied and the German aircraft. For the Silo, George Filer. Search “Filers Files” for more about UFO’s

Supplemental: Kniha angels in starships

Art

Coffee Table Book Expands Art Collecting By Including Original Works of Art

October 17, 2020 The Silo Leave a comment

Vivant Books brings to the world a very exclusive breed of coffee table book. Their Deluxe Editions are not only fine art coffee table books, but also include collectible works of art at a price most art lovers can afford. A select number of Deluxe Editions contain original artwork by the artist that is featured. Not only does this component differentiate VivantBooks amongst other publishing companies, but it also enables expansion of an art collecting demographic.

“We found that sold separately, an original piece by the artists we feature in our deluxe packages could range anywhere from $3000 to over $100,000,” says Mia Benenate “What we want to do and what the artists are really interested in, is broadening the audience that is able to acquire a piece of their work.”

Vivant’s book features internationally renowned artist Brett Amory. Amory has gained extensive acclaim for his haunting, mesmerizing series, Waiting. His work is often depicted as architectural and structurally elegant, stark and emotive. Waiting focuses on the transition of individuals in precise moments of existing. The lush book, which contains a collected array of work which includes the Waiting series, was first offered earlier this year by a release party at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Deluxe Editions includes the collected works, a biography, excellent essays by luminaries such as Gwynn Vitello and an original piece of artwork by Amory himself.

In this age of digitalization Vivant Books presents fine art in a way that’s both elegant, stylish and inventive. Upcoming Vivant Books will feature such artists as Kimberly Brooks and Gottfried Helnwein.

Brett Amory — Limited Edition

95.00USD

Brett Amory, the American artist who rose to international acclaim for his “Waiting” series is featured in this deluxe coffee table edition. Alongside four-color reproductions of the artwork, the book includes a biography and selected essays from art world luminaries and patrons. Hardcover book housed in a full-color protective sleeve.

Deluxe Edition with original artwork also available.

You can learn more at: book at http://www.vivantbooks.com/ or email: marketingdirector@thesilo.ca for ordering and price information.

Fashion

Celebrity Homes: Andy Warhol Home Sold For $50 Million USD

October 9, 2020 The Silo Leave a comment

Montauk, New York was celebrating its biggest estate sale ever after the closing on the 5.7-acre beachfront estate at $50 million USD that pop artist Andy Warhol bought in 1972 for $225,000 USD.

The most recent owner of the compound was CEO of J. Crew, Mickey Drexler, who bought it in 2007 for $27 million USD. He listed it in 2015 for $85 millionUSD that included a 24-acre horse farm and equine center, which the buyer, Adam Lindemann, opted out of the purchase. Lindemann is the founder of the Venus Over Manhattan Gallery and a major collector of Warhol’s works making the property’s history especially significant for him.

Warhol’s first gig out of art school was as a fashion illustrator for several of the top women’s magazines. With the money acquired from his illustrations, he purchased a large loft on New York’s West Side and opened the Factory, where he turned toward creating industrial art. It wasn’t long before the Factory and Andy were attracting like-minded modernists from hippies to wannabe journalists and actors to drag queens and drug addicts. It was the start of New York’s avant-garde scene where Warhol held court. In addition to his painting, he branched out into music, film and journalism where he met Paul Morrissey who became the director of some of Warhol’s early films.

In 1972 when Warhol’s popularity and success were peaking, he and Morrissey decided to invest in property in the Hamptons and purchased the family fishing camp of the Church family of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda fame. The estate includes a 3,800-square-foot main house and five cottages completely hidden from public view with wide beaches and ocean views. Totaling almost 15,000 square feet with nine bedrooms and twelve baths, Drexler had it all meticulously restored by architect Thierry Despont.

Warhol’s stream of celebrity guests and renters put Montauk on the international map. Frequent guests included Liza Minnelli, Liz Taylor, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill. The parties were legendary and stories of happy days idled away on the Hamptons’ beach are recounted in many celebrity biographies.

Even though the Warhol home sale set a record at $50 million USD, his most famous paintings such as “Eight Elvises” and “Silver Car Crash” have sold for $100 million USD and higher. The listing agent was Paul Brennan of Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Montauk, New York. Visit here for more information.

Supplemental– David Bowie as Andy Warhol in Basquiat

Culture

British MPs Say Government Too Slow To Help These At Risk Arts

August 20, 2020 The Silo Leave a comment

A friend of mine from Europe sent me this news story a couple of weeks ago about how the cultural landscape is facing its biggest threat in a generation.

It says the UK government was too slow to provide support for the arts industry, and that without more help, many parts of Britain could become “cultural wastelands”:

https://youtu.be/pPw8na16nuk

This should be a crude wake-up call for artists.

Realistically, governments around the world will NOT make it a priority to save art businesses. Why? Because governments care most about issues that will get them votes.

And, sadly, most of the public simply does not care about the arts the way artists do.

Want proof?

Check out the comments on that BBC video:

Then if you go down the rabbit hole and dig deep into the replies to these comments, you find a lot of artists desperately trying to show these people that the arts, and theatres, and galleries are very much “essential” to artists who rely on them to provide for their families:

The take-home lesson here?

Artists are on our own.

It’s unrealistic – unwise, even – to wait for the government to swoop in and rescue the arts industry.

In times like these individual initiative is more important than ever.

Artists must redouble their efforts to connect with curators, build a list of collectors, find patrons for their studio, maybe even transition to showing (and selling) some work online.

It is difficult, but it is not impossible. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Featured image- www.theatlantic.com

Comics

Set For Library Borrowing- Graphic Classics Adds Acclaimed Works To Digital Editions

November 6, 2019 The Silo Leave a comment

Graphic Classics use a variety of styles and each work has a unique identity.

MOUNT HOREB, Wisconsin- Graphic Classics, the acclaimed series of comics adaptations of literary classics from publisher Eureka Productions, has had multiple titles included in the Diamond Distribution Core Curiculum List. Of the nearly 100 books on the list, 23 were from the Graphic Classics series, including VOLUME 2: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, VOLUME 4: H.P. LOVECRAFT, VOLUME 8: MARK TWAIN, VOLUME 18: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, and VOLUME 22: AFRICAN-AMERICAN CLASSICS.

To help educators and librarians select materials to fit into their Common Core Standards curricula, Diamond Book Distributors have created the Diamond Graphic Novel Common Core List. Arranged by grade level, the Diamond Graphic Novel Common Core List offers 98 graphic novels from our publishers that will fit into a Common Core curriculum, along with resources including Library Classifications, Subject Headings, and Core Standards which apply to each book. The list is intended both as an aide to educators and librarians and to show that Diamond supports the Common Core Standards as an effective tool to prepare students for the challenges in college and the workforce.

Graphic Classics publisher Eureka Productions has also partnered with Overdrive and Comics Plus: Library Edition to make Graphic Classics digital editions available to libraries across North America and around the world. Among the library systems which have already started carrying digital editions of Graphic Classics are the Boston Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and the Dayton Metro Library.

Library users can borrow digital editions of Graphic Classics from their local library system for reading on smart phones, tablets, and computers. Digital editions are also available to consumers through the ComicsPlus and Ave Comics apps. Check with your local Library for Graphic Classics digital editions. CP

Culture

Leave Your Art Behind For Others To Carry Forward

October 19, 2018 The Silo 3 Comments

Random acts of kindness come in all shapes and sizes, something as simple as a smile to a stranger, or paying for the guy behind you in the cue at the coffee shop drive-thru counts. The idea is to leave someone, whether you know them or not, with a brightened day and a reminder that there are good people. There is an amazing movement happening in the artistic circles, created with the same purpose, it is called art abandonment and artists from all over are leaving behind their artworks anonymously.

Michael deMeng is credited as starting the Facebook Group, Art Abandonment ttps://www.facebook.com/groups/ArtAbandonment/ , although he says the group created itself.

“It’s something that I’ve done for a number of years now, albeit infrequently, usually on beverage napkins and the like,” says deMeng in an introduction to Art Abandonment on his blog. “About ten or so years ago I would walk to the same place by a river and leave a little charcoal drawing. So recently I started this activity up again…leaving little sketches with a note on the back”

deMeng acknowledged that he did not create the idea of art abandonment, but perhaps discovered its use as a random act of kindness as opposed to a political message used by many urban guerilla artists.

In fact, Haldimand-Norfolk artist Jarrod Barker created several guerilla art installations in Haldimand-Norfolk including one at Simcoe’s now demolished American Can property back in the summer of 2010.

Barker’s piece titled Iliad features an amoebic-like form that pays homage to the shields of the Trojan War, where an art piece in the form of a wooden horse was abandoned at the gates of Troy. The amoeba-like form lends reference to the “sleeping soldiers” within homemade preserves known as amoebic dysentery which was a serious cause of food related death prior to the canning industry boom. LW — ILIAD. J. Barker. Abandoned canned food factory Norfolk, Ontario.

deMeng outlined some of his theories behind the art of abandoning art and its purpose, including that its good for the heart and a little addictive once you begin and the simple fact that money is tight and giving a gift like this could encourage someone to continue to support the arts.

“I think it’s important to be able to let one’s art live beyond it’s creator, I love imagining what becomes of my art after it is gone…whether given or sold,” said deMeng.

“Some folks can’t seem to let go of their work, even when they sell it. This is a great way to learn to move on.”

The concept is very simple:

1) Create a piece of art.

2) Write or attach a note explaining it is a free gift, purposely left behind including contact information if you so wish.

3) Take a photo of your art and its place of abandonment and then sneak away unnoticed.

I myself am not an art abandoner, although if I had the time and resources I would, but I thought I could offer a unique opportunity for the abandoners I find so much joy in following on social media.

June 30, 2013 I will have departed to Peru for a ten day journey across a wide variety of landscapes including urban centers, Machu Picchu, and the Amazon rainforest.

I invited artists to send me their work in order to abandon on my journey, and I would share the photos of their abandonment locations with the artists as I continue my journey.

“Machu Picchu is on my bucket list,” said Burlington artist Heather Kuzyk who sent three art trading cards (atc) to be abandoned.

“So if I never perchance to make it there in body at least a part of my soul has been. ”I was excited by the thought of the photos I could take of the abandoned art on the Machu Picchu ruins with the beautiful Peruvian mountains sprawling in the background. Although I sincerely hope some of the finders will share of their discovery, I’m pleased just to imagine how excited I would be if I found something like that in such a magical place. For The Silo, Lacie Williamson.

Post-script: Remember to never install or leave behind work that contains string, toxic or synthetic materials, small pieces of plastic etc. Anything that can harm or interfere with the natural environment or wildlife must never be used.

Culture

Thoughts On Rejection And Concept Of Groundlessness

August 20, 2018 The Silo Leave a comment

Rejection. “We lived in Northern New Mexico. I was standing in front of our house drinking a cup of tea. I heard the car drive up and the door bang shut. Then he walked around the corner, and without warning, he told me he was having an affair and he wanted a divorce. I remember the sky and how huge it was. I remember the sound of the river and the steam rising up from my tea. There was no time, no thought, there was nothing–just the light and a profound, limitless stillness. Then I regrouped and picked up a stone and threw it at him.” -Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

This quote, about the moment Pema Chodron’s life began to change, the moment she experienced true groundlessness, applies to so many circumstances in life. Whether we are experiencing the rejection of a lover or spouse, or rejection from a gallery, grant application, art school, the list goes on and on, it is not uncommon for it to feel like the ground has slipped from beneath your feet. When the floor opens up and swallows you whole, it is human instinct to close up, distract, do whatever it takes to make the feeling go away. These are the moments when we must strive the hardest to open up and soften, allow whatever we are feeling to wash over us, and let that be okay.

If you are an artist, you may have tried applying for a grant. You may have given up after a rejection letter or two. But do you know that for every twenty grant applications you complete, you might receive one or two. Might. There are absolutely no guarantees, and the grant writing field is highly competitive. It is important to understand this going in and to have not only a system to keep churning out applications (because, after all this is an important part of many artists’ income and should be treated as such) it is also absolutely critical that you have your head firmly on your shoulders prepared to deal with the pain of rejection.

Let’s face it, rejection always feels personal. You put a piece of yourself out into the world only to have someone tell you it isn’t what they’re looking for. This hurts. And again, that’s OK.

What is important is that you never let the hurt get the best of you. Do not internalize rejection. Remind yourself that you are one of many. You are relying on the subjectivity of a person or group of people, and just because you do not win favor does not mean your art isn’t any good. Rather, it means your art wasn’t what they were looking for on that day for that particular thing. Accept this and move along.

Often, rejection has nothing at all to do with you. This is very difficult to get the mind around. Very often rejection is about the unspoken details being sought that someone else might happen to present.

Buddhist thought teaches us to accept groundlessness, work with it, allow ourselves to sit with it. We are all in the habit of glossing difficult emotions. We self-medicate sometimes with substances, or by tuning out and not letting the hard stuff in. Begin to notice when you start to check out and see how it feels to just be still with the difficult stuff.

Learning to deal with rejection will serve you in many ways. You will find the strength to continue your mission no matter what happens, and you will do so with grace. You will learn that just because you are not chosen one time doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again. Often, grants and galleries invite those who are not chosen in one round to apply again. And again. The people who run things like this understand what you must begin to internalize–that it really isn’t about you.

If you begin to incorporate these things into your consciousness, eventually they will become part of the fabric. You will begin to live by the new way of thinking you have cultivated. A mindset that puts rejection into perspective and allows you to pursue your forward momentum no matter what.

Life is full of rejection, big and small. Hiding away won’t get you far. Choosing the path of least resistance may seem like the easy way but it is a road to nowhere. Remember, if you are an Artist choosing to make your art into a career, it means putting the most intimate pieces of yourself out into the world for all to see. It is a warrior’s path and requires a warrior spirit. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Brainard is currently giving free webinars on how to write a better Artist bio and statement and how to get a show in a gallery – you can register for that live webinar and ask questions live by clicking here.

Featured image- entrepreneur.com

Sci-Tech

Vinyl Records Reconstruct History Of Moog Synthesizer

March 17, 2018 The Silo Leave a comment

One of the early (but not earliest) analog modular Moog synthesizers.

Original vinyl recordings of popular music provide a rich source of data to supplement other historical research. Vintage recordings and associated liner notes provide details about the chronologic, geographic, biographic, and artistic elements that contribute to an understanding of music, music technology, and popular culture of the time.

Information derived from a study of vinyl music recordings can fortify and supplement their forms of research in popular culture, artists, and music.

[Did you know that many early recordings of the Moog synthesizer went uncredited? The Beatles used a modular Moog synthesizer for featured tracks on their Abbey Road LP]

Dr. Robert "Bob" Moog- designer and architect of mainstream synthesizers. — Dr. Robert “Bob” Moog- designer and architect of mainstream synthesizers.

Click here to read the rest of Thom Holme’s essay on your device.

Culture

Streaming Companies Spotify And Labels Sony Making The Money Not Artists

September 21, 2017 The Silo 1 Comment

Potter Box

Definition:

Is it ethical for media streaming companies, such as Spotify, to take advantage of IP loopholes, which are known to negatively impact artist revenues?

Values:

>Balance & Fairness

>Legal Values

Loyalties:

a. Duty to service

b. Duty to subscribers

c. Duty to shareholders

d. Duty to Intellectual Property

e. Duty to Art & Commerce

Principles:

Aristotle’s Mean: “Moral virtue is a middle state determined by practical wisdom.” Virtuous people will arrive at a fair and reasonable agreement for the legitimate claims of both sides somewhere in the middle of two extreme claims.The two sides must negotiate a compromise in good faith. “Generally speaking,in extremely complicated situations with layers of ambiguity and uncertainty, Aristotle’s principle has the most intellectual appeal.”

BASIC CONCEPT:

Negotiated compromise.

>>Streaming Media Company

For the Purpose of analyzing an isolated streaming media company, Spotify will be examined through the lens of the potter box. Spotify is a streaming service with cross-platform availability that specializes in music, and generates income from its 20 million premium and 75 million free users, respectively. Spotify boasts an extensive catalogue for free and for a nominal fee. Spotify’s extensive catalogue is made possible due to established agreements between various record labels and media companies. Agreements that are known to negatively affect artists, while benefiting both Spotify & Record labels, plague the music industry. Payout deals between Spotify and record companies range from royalty payout to equity deals.

Spotify does not want to make adjustments to the model of its free service, because if their users are not able to find it on Spotify, they will utilize other streaming services such as youtube, which is likely to have the content. They have identified this free offering as being their driving force for getting new subscribers to the service. New subscribers that turn into increased revenue for record labels, as 70% of revenue from $10 per month subscriptions and advertisements are paid to record labels, artists, and song publishers.

>>Artists—Influence: Art/Media Creators

The Artists on Spotify collectively stream over 30 million songs across 58 different markets. Despite collectively making up a heart from which Spotify thrives, Artists receive 6.8% of streaming revenue, the smallest share of the pie.

Artists receive 10.9% of the post tax payout between artists, labels, and songwriters/publishers. Many artists including Adele, Taylor Swift, the Beatles, and Coldplay have opted for keeping music off of Spotify.

Spotify does not have direct agreements with most artists. The streaming company has agreements with labels, whom are responsible for not only securing licenses to music, but to are also responsible for payouts to artists. So essentially, Spotify pays labels, and the label is empowered with payout to artists. The problem is not that Spotify refuses to fairly pay for royalties; it is the trickling down of payment from labels to the respective artists. Spotify has wholesale access to music catalogues from record labels, which makes it hard to fairly split royalty payments amongst artists that are under contractual agreements with respective label.

Even with leaked contract between Spotify and Sony Music available, it is still unclear how much of payouts to record labels actually get to the hands of the artist. It is clear that Sony Music is getting a hefty payout annually, but the question is still whether or not these hefty payouts are passed on to the artists.

>>Major Record Companies

The music catalogue on Spotify is mostly populated by content from major record labels that include Sony Music, Universal Music Group, EMI, Warner Music, Merlin, and The Orchard. Self-published artists as well as artists from independent labels also help makeup Spotify’s catalogue.

Record companies have begun to further question Spotify’s free model since Taylor Swift and other artists have proactively opposed Spotify’s extensive free offerings to users. Streaming consumers of music increased by 54% between 2013 and 2014 according to the Nielsen SoundScan. Major record companies are often made better deals, which disproportionately disadvantage independent artists and labels.

Executives at major record label such as Universal Music and Warner Music have made statements about the extensive free offering of its licensed music is not sustainable long-term. It was suggested that there needs to be a more clear differentiation between content available to free and premium users. Bjork has suggested that Spotify should not allow access for certain content right when it comes out, but should allow for content to go through certain rounds of monetization before ending up on Spotify, similar to Netflix’s rollout method for its content. Major record labels are currently in the process of renegotiating agreements, and are mostly pushing for adjustments to free service offered.

Their goal is to have the “freemium” model disappear as time persists.

What is the current policy?

A legal agreement between Sony, the second largest record company in the world, and Spotify recently leaked, which further intensifies questions about fair payouts for artists. The contract confirmed that major record companies benefit from the success of the streaming service Spotify. The contract details advance payments of over $40 million, with a $9 million advertising credit. Sony has declined to comment on the leaked contract, as it was illegally obtained. Labels routinely keep advances for themselves according to an industry insider.

The leaked contract detailed agreements between Sony Music and Spotify, but not between Sony Music and artists. Such fruits of private agreements don’t necessarily trickle down to the artist, because in most cases they are not even aware of an under the table deal unless a leak has occurred. Unstated under the table deals are not ethical, because artists do not benefit from funds received on account of their intellectual property. The International Music Managers Forum urges European and American authorities alike to use the Sony leak as an example of why more transparence is necessary.

Artists are not being fairly compensated for use of their intellectual property.

Streaming companies have established a revenue arrangement with major Record Companies that often does not favor artists. The obvious shortfalls with existing policy include the lack of transparency when it comes to agreements between record labels and Spotify. There are no systems of checks and balances for ensuring that labels adequately and fairly share Spotify revenue with artists. There needs to be a streamlined system that puts everything on the table in clear view, for fair agreements between artists, label, and streaming company to be arrived at. Current policy also allows Spotify to take up to 15% off the top from revenue generated from ad sales.

What needs to be changed?

Spotify seems to be fairly paying for royalties, but the flow of cash does not always get to the artists. Substitute apps; try to compete with Spotify, by challenging the freemium model. Other apps such as Tidal aim to provide audience with exclusive content that they won’t find anywhere else. The problem is that apps such as Tidal market themselves as a music-streaming app by the artists for the artists. Nowhere in that equation is the interest of the average potential consumer considered. Artists may receive more money per stream, but the service is double the price of Spotify. Record companies, and artists alike, are moving away from Spotify’s freemium model. The digitization of music is not the problem, as most artists and labels generally trust certain digital services such as itunes, because it translates into revenue for artists with no veil or strings attached. Extensive free offerings seem to be the major issue that involved parties have with Spotify, but it is the only thing that drives traffic according to Spotify. The freemium offerings need to be changed in some way, but in a way that is non-disruptive to Spotify’s commerce. Since Spotify pays its fair share of royalties, a more streamlined agreement between record labels and artists should be established and transparent, as should deals made between Spotify and record labels.

Major record labels need to stop double dipping. Not only do they receive cash advances & royalties, but they also benefit from Spotify’s overall revenue stream as they have equity in Spotify of up to 18%. Billboard magazine interviewed two dozen record executives and they agreed that they were confused as to what Spotify was replacing, whether being a substitute for sales or piracy. Examples of setting limitations of the freemium service have showed signs of slowing down subscription growth rate. Spotify has stated that if artists are not fairly compensated from stream revenue, then it is a result of recording contracts and or label accounting practices. Some major record labels are fine with Spotify using their music to build business, because of their equity; they are looking ahead for profit from a future IPO. The artists would not benefit in the same manner, despite their content being the driving force for the app in the first place.

Scenarios

In a time of changing platforms and distribution methods, consumer trends has undoubtedly been in transition. The radio still accounts for an estimated 35% of music consumption, followed by CD consumption at 20%, free streaming at 19%, and paid streaming at 1%. Multichannel consumers, mostly millennia’s, account for 66% of music consumers. A multichannel consumer may pay for a streaming subscription, and make a physical and/or a virtual music purchase. The most common multichannel consumption combination is free streaming coupled with CD listening which accounts for 49% of multichannel listeners, followed by free streaming coupled with music downloads which accounts for 44%. Millennia’s are also known to engage in both free streaming and downloading.

Evidence

During the first quarter of 2014, Pharrell Williams garnered 43 million Pandora streams, which only paid him $2,700 as a songwriter. A statement from Pandora indicates that all rights holders were paid upwards of $150,000 within the first 3 months, and that the real issue is the financial dispute between labels and publishers. Pandora also indicated in the statement that labels are free to split royalties between themselves and artists, however they see fit. Clearly there needs to be more transparency for the cash flow between streaming company, label, and the artist.

Spotify returns 70% of its revenue to rights holders, with information about each artist to aid in the royalty split process. Streaming companies are engaged in fair due diligence where payment of royalties are concerned. The evidence is as follows:

Actionable Policy

The music industry needs a streamlined agreement between streaming companies, record labels, publishers, and artists. It is imperative that there is increased transparency, especially where cash flow is concerned. Artists should be able to see all cash and data exchanged between streaming company and label. Royalty holders need to publicly split funds amongst themselves and artists. Record labels need to be accountable to both their artists and streaming company, because an artist that feels swindled can create bad blood between the artist and the label and/or the artist and streaming company.

Recommendation

>>Actionable

1. Artists are cut into equity deals based on audience pull to streaming service per qtr

>>Streaming Services should provide analytics with specific data to aid audience pull observation for given artists

2.Major Labels are transparent with cash flow of compensation from Streaming Companies

Is it ethical for media streaming companies, such as Spotify, to take advantage of IP loopholes, which are known to negatively impact artist revenues?

Judgment:

It is ethical for streaming services to take advantage of IP loopholes, which are known to negatively impact artist revenues. Music platform are changing, and as such, better agreements need to be drafted to complement this change. Streaming companies have shown the numbers, and they are paying for royalties, which is essentially paying for the use of the music in their catalogue. Music streaming is an emerging market, which record companies themselves are invested in. The common mode of music monetization is moving away from CD sales, and that is undeniable. Music downloads take up a lot of data, so streaming is the most practical way for consumers to enjoy their music.

The freemium model of Spotify should not be eliminated, but it should certainly be reconsidered, or at least limited in music access. Premium, new, and sought after music should not be as accessible as music that has already exited the promotion stage. Their needs to be some sort of compromise between record labels and Spotify, to better differentiate between premium content and freemium content. Spotify does not want to compromise the availability of its music on either platform, and labels reserve right to pull any of their artists from Spotify as they wish. Spotify should do a better job differentiating free content from premium content, it’s only fair. Spotify should not compromise to the point that it becomes impractical, but should compromise in a way that is cost-effective for all parties. If this were to be attained, streaming companies, record labels, and artists would be happy, circumventing social dilemma. Jordan Muthra The New School University, M.A., Media Studies, Graduate Student

Click here to read PDF version: The_Ethics_of_Streaming_Music

Culture

Ancient Zen Story About Re-framing Failure Applies To Grant Applications

July 26, 2017 The Silo Leave a comment

When thinking about grant writing, it helps to first consider this story that tells about luck. In it, a farmer’s horse runs away and all his neighbors come by to say what bad luck this is. The farmer replies “maybe.” His horse returns and with it brings wild horses. The neighbors all say what good luck this is to which the farmer says, “maybe.” The farmer’s son, attempting to tame one of the wild horses, is thrown and breaks a leg. Bad luck, say the neighbors, “maybe” says the farmer. At last the army comes to town gathering up all the able bodied young men to go off to war. Seeing the farmer’s son with his broken leg they pass on by.

The story ends here, but it shows that things are often connected in ways we can’t possibly predict. A Lebanese saying reaches toward the very same point, “Don’t curse your bad luck because it may turn out to be your good luck.” Again the message here is that you can’t possibly know whether a single event is truly good or bad.

Failure can and should be viewed through the lens of stories and phrases like these. When we stumble, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of this one moment as some sort of endgame. On the contrary, every so-called failure is nothing more than the next step in your journey.

Failure feels personal. When you have worked hard on something, poured your very soul into it, only to have things not come to fruition, it can feel like the universe is pointing a finger directly at your forehead. Putting things into some context is one way to start seeing the bigger picture.

Shakey Graves- Roll the Bones. Bandcamp.

Grant applications are quite probably one of the best examples of this. There is so much riding on any given application, whether it is for a specific project or an artist’s general practice. Grants are one of the ways in which working artists stay afloat and they are not only time-consuming, they can feel extremely personal.

Not receiving a grant can set off a cycle of emotions. Everything from wondering what is wrong with your work or your application, to convincing yourself that this is the last chance and there’s no point trying again. Let’s unpack these very common reactions and shed some light on the reality of the situation.

For any given grant you may apply to, there are countless others also spending long hours writing up their own applications. Grants range all over the place in size and popularity, so to speak. Even smaller scale grants (say, those offered by lesser known organizations or tightly specified to certain disciplines) will often attract many applicants.

While there are certain strategies when it comes to writing a good grant application, there is no single, objective way to ensure that yours will be the one chosen. When it comes down to final decision time, there is a level of subjectivity built into the process. Art for example, is not a quantitative subject and nor are grants being awarded via algorithm. Rather, they are being decided by panels of human beings with a range of subjective emotions about a field that is as unscientific as it gets.

For the reasons above, when you do not receive a grant, think of it in terms of the many, many other applications rather than simply in terms of what you personally did wrong. Do not ignore this as a learning experience and do reach out the grant organization for feedback whenever possible, but do not let “no” from one or even a string of grant organizations stop you in your tracks.

Instead, recall the story and expression above. Think of every grant, in fact, every action, as nothing more than a single ripple on the surface of the vast river that is your journey. When you do not get into a gallery, carry on and find others. Down the line when you look back, you will have the clarity to see the progression of events. When you are passed over for a residency, apply to three more. If a project doesn’t work out the way you thought it would, evaluate what happened, learn from the experience, and move on down the road.

Brainard Carey. image: elmcityexpress.blogspot

No one is claiming that this is easy. This isn’t about somehow detaching from your feelings and letting rejection slide like water off a duck’s back. Of course not. Rejection hurts. No matter how impersonal it might actually be when we are told no it isn’t a good feeling.

But remembering that every moment is just that, a single blip on the screen rather than a career breaking catastrophe can help you heal and recharge sooner after you’ve had a misstep. Carry the simple answer of the farmer with you at all times, “maybe.”

For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Art

In These Days Of Alternative Fact And Secrecy It Is Difficult To Hold On To Truth

March 7, 2017 The Silo 1 Comment

The shape of truth is often difficult to discern. It bends and shifts or is manipulated to suit a particular narrative. Facts become the object of debate when power is at stake. Corruption breeds untruths. While objective concepts do not require belief in order to exist, we can not grasp what we simply do not know. In these days of alternative fact and secrecy, it is difficult to hold on to what constitutes truth. We are told by those on high to avert our eyes and ears while purveyors of truth are silenced. John Dalberg-Acton bequeathed these words to the world, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

Richard Vine is the managing editor of Art in America.

Richard Vine, art critic and managing editor of Art in America has recently penned his first novel. SoHo Sins follows the pulp tradition right down to the cover art created by Robert McGuire, one of the greats of noir cover art in the 1950s. The novel deals with the corruption of innocence by way of a murder mystery and harkens back to the 90s heyday for the art world in SoHo. Vine has also curated multiple exhibits including “Darkness Visible” in Beijing, China and “Golden Selections” in Iceland. Vine’s second novel will take on the political crimes enacted at Kent State when the National Guard opened fire on demonstrating students wounding nine and killing four. He was a student at Kent State at the time and witnessed this incident.

Installation View, Cynthia Greig's “Making Mischief” at Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI photo credit: Alex Gingrow — Installation View, Cynthia Greig’s “Making Mischief” at Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI photo credit: Alex Gingrow

Cynthia Greig is a native of Detroit. Her studio sits north of the famed 8 Mile. She says of her home city that while there is a great diversity of opinion, even in the midst of decay those who truly know the city could see the inherent beauty of the place. Her art takes on the topic of exhibitionism, investigating and deconstructing the concept of the white cube gallery space and breaking it down to its essential parts. She has watched the scale of galleries grow exponentially from white cube to international powerhouses and examined how this affects the value of the art within. Her art explores these themes often depicting interruptions in the pristine facade of the gallery space.

Additional interviews include: Nate Harrison, Christopher Richmond, and Melissa Stern.

While we can not ever know absolute reality, we can look at it from every angle and make informed decisions. What are you reading to shape your own reality? Tequila Mockingbird is a book written by Carter Ratcliffe, friend and colleague to Richard Vine, that bears witness to Russian oligarchy through the vapid eyes of a supermodel. Cynthia Greig balances intake of the barrage of political news with American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation by Erik Rutkow. Add your titles to our reading list here.

FIGMENT NYC invites artists to submit their proposals for an annual mini golf course. Artists create large, interactive installation pieces at Governor’s Island, New York to be enjoyed by the public. Deadline for submissions is March 10 and artists must be able to participate in installation during late May. All proposals must include an estimated budget.

For some, truth is malleable and to be used in order to bolster a particuclar need. We must always strive to stay awake, demanding transparent truths and examining from every angle. We must raise our eyes and our voices, crying out until the truth is spoken loud and clear. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Art

Light Informs Art In Ways That Cannot Be Disentangled

February 13, 2017 The Silo 1 Comment

We sit in the grip of deep winter, snow reflecting the moonlight at last. At this time of the year, the earth slows down and so too can we. It is time for us to reflect as well, upon the year that has been and the year ahead. During these dark months, light becomes a precious thing. Something to celebrate and embrace as we pass the days. Everything we see is light and light informs art in a way that cannot be disentangled.

“Light is also about…the passage of time,” says Norwegian artist A K Dolven. Living on an island in Norway above the Arctic Circle has given her a unique perspective about the interplay of art and light. Her work examines intimacy and large social groups, the relationships of nationality, population, space, and how this changes the work she does. In her village of nine people, a piece of art takes on a very different character than it does in a large city such as Brussels or London. Dolven incorporates balance in its many forms in the world we live in. Political balance, social balance, life balance, and other delicate equilibriums contribute to the nature of her art.

Milovan Destil Markovic recently participated in a Belgrade-based exhibition titled “The Pleasure of Love in a Time of Hate.” His work for the exhibition was in the form of barcode paintings that touched on sexual intimacy. Markovic also uses his barcode paintings in a series titled “The Abduction of Europe” in which he takes a hard look at economic power struggles within the European community.

The paintings resemble street graffiti with economically and politically charged statements spray painted within the confines of a barcode structure. Markovic also creates what he calls Transfigurative Paintings. These works employ a medium that reflects the subject in some way.
Additional interviews include: Karl Haendel and Paul McDevitt

Winter can be a time for personal reflection. We can create a space where it is safe for our minds to explore new horizons through literature. What are you reading to pass the cold days and dark nights? Click here to add your books. User Carla Cruz has been immersed in The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir, while M Chevska seeks winter solitude in Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

An example of Jarrod Barker's graffiti inspired landscape painting. — An example of Jarrod Barker’s graffiti inspired landscape painting.

Those interested in the opportunity to create a piece of permanent, public art can submit to Seattle’s Central City Connector Project. An artist or team of artists will be chosen to create artwork that defines the aesthetic of the Central City Connector Streetcar Line. Alte Schule Hohenstein has an open call to artists interested in a residency at their school in Germany.

As we run down the days until the world is reborn and spring returns, let us not forget to enjoy the respite of winter darkness. Invite light in when it presents itself and wrap your mind in the stillness of midwinter.For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Spotlight image courtesy of urbanchristiannews.com

Supplemental– The History and Creation of the Barcode.

Art

Light, Interviews, Books to Inspire, And A Call To Artists From Rome

January 27, 2017 The Silo Leave a comment

Consider for a moment the nature of light and time. Fleeting, infinite, unknowable, and yet familiar as our own minds. We long for more time while cursing its slow progress. Temporal matters dictate every aspect of our human lives. We are beholden to the times in which we live. We cannot grasp light and yet we are surrounded by it. When we enter into the unknown, art is a light guiding us toward better days ahead.

Mary Temple's "unsolved red white and blue" — Mary Temple’s “unsolved red white and blue”

Mary Temple has the ability to incorporate all of this into her artwork in the most surprising ways. She can capture a moment and freeze it for all eternity with the stroke of her brush. Her ethereal public art painted on existing architecture preserves the memory of a moment of light. Temple also focuses on the times in which we live, using her art to engage in global political discussion. Her series Currency depicted world leaders in such a way that ranked them according to their ability to achieve progress in matters of world peace. Temple uses time as a dimension in her work. Currency was an up to the minute newsfeed told through hand drawn portraiture, while her public artwork uses light to capture time and hold it still for all to see.

Susan Silton lets our life and times inform her art. Through performance, installation, video, photography, text, audio, participation and print-based projects, Silton speaks to the turbulence around us. She fuses humor, unease, beauty with the intention of shining a light on the failures and triumphs of our moment on the planet. Her video work “Turn the Beat Around” was a direct response to the 2016 attack on an Orlando, Florida nightclub. Her art is a conduit to process grief, come to terms with the violence in our society, and seek common ground.

Writer Murong Xuecun once said, “Literature is not at the service of the government; on the contrary governments should do everything in their power to create a favorable climate for literature.” In these uncertain political times, what are you reading? Click here to contribute your books in the comments or use the comments feature at the end of this post. Tony Maslic, is reading “The Dispossessed” by Ursula Le Guin. Lian Brehm has turned to Suzi Gablick’s “The Reenchantment of Art” while artist Mary Temple cites the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as well as her TEDx talk We Should all be Feminists as necessary fuel.

The Rome Glocal Brightness 2017 Light Festival has issued a call for artists. The Festival illuminates the sixth district of Rome allowing viewers to experience undiscovered corners of the city.

This bringing of light does not seek to diminish the dark, but to emphasize that the darkness can become a canvas in itself.
As we stand together at the edge of a new ravine, let us not fear what may be but embrace what is in each moment and never stop reaching toward the light. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Brainard Carey is an artist, author and educator. You can attend one of his free webinars for artists here. He also has an educational platform for artists called Praxis Center.

*featured image- Mary Temple “Currency”Series

Art

Boston Based Artist Jeannie Motherwell Draws Structures From Uncertainty

November 28, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

Dear Artist, Aristotle differentiated humans from their animal counterparts by dint of logos, the power of rational speech. Napoleon was attributed the quote, “four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” Human civilization was founded on the exercise of this divine faculty, and is destroyed by it in equal measure. Speech, in its complexity and weight, is the only world capable of rivaling nature.

This week, in view of two ponderous interviews, I ask you to summon to mind those rare and revelatory conversations that have left an indelible imprint on your life. What intimate discussion would you revisit and savor, if you were aware of the contents beforehand? What words of the past would be left unsaid or better spoken with the retrospective guidance of age?

Abstract acrylic painter Jeannie Motherwell refuses to grow cold in the artistic shadow of her father and stepmother, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler. As a stable ecosystem quells its wrestling constituents, Motherwell’s refined intuition hushes the spontaneous boundaries of dilating paint on clay board and canvas. Over a soberly spoken interview, the New York artist now based in Boston, admits in her work the faint pursuit of a faded horizon: the shifting waters from the view of an old home, replaced, in time, by a windowless studio. The methodology of Motherwell’s art – to draw a structure from an uncertainty – eerily echoes a ritual from her upbringing: discerning, with the right words, to the joy of her guardians, the spiritual essences behind their cascades of paint.

Jeannie Motherwell in her Joy Street Studios, Somerville, MA Click image to visit her studio website.

Inexhaustible curator and researcher Ele Carpenter maintains that the lasting footprint of humanity will not be a monument or an idea, but a radioactive glare. Radioactive isotopes of a unique breed first entered the Earth’s atmosphere with the testing of the earliest nuclear bomb, signaling the beginning of a geological period known as the nuclear anthropocene. Dedicated to disseminating information about the irreversible changes to the environment caused by human hand, Carpenter organizes discourse and collaboration on a global scale, uniting scientists, activists, and visionaries in the depiction of a haunting reality that eludes the senses.

Additional interviews include: Barbara Wilks, Nate Page, Frans van Lent, and Katya Gardea Brown.

Looking for new additions to your reading list? Rachel Wolfe, one of our users, is deconstructing and rebuilding her fundamental conceptions of nature and mind. Sensitive Chaos, by Theodor Schwenk, vacillates between rigorous and metaphorical depictions of the underlying systems of movement that govern aeolian and liquid dynamics, from the furious dance of a hurricane to the soft aria of a developing child. Strange Tools, by Alva Noe, is a philosophical text that sees artmaking as a faculty for reflection, a primordial instinct that consciously and unconsciously takes stock of the external conditions that govern our identities and worldview.

Occupy Museums is seizing the means of cultural production with Debtfair, an exhibition dedicated to the overworked and underfunded. Creators, performers, and thinkers with financial weights on their shoulders have until December 9th to see their arduous narrative showcased in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Debtfair serves to expose the aggressive business models that permeate leading art institutions, while encouraging solidarity amongst all encumbered populations of the economically segmented social landscape. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but no artist needs to bear the burden of Atlas.

The great American poet Wallace Stevens, envisioning life’s origins with a brain that thought without words, once instructed, “Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea / Of this invention, this invented world, / The inconceivable idea of the sun.”

As always, here are the links to interview archive and free resources page. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

*Highlight image: Absolute by Jeannie Motherwell. Visit Jeannie’s Boston Studio by clicking here.

Comics

Neal Adams Unveiled Bucky O’Hare Digital Comic At L.A. Comic Con

November 7, 2016 The Silo 1 Comment

LOS ANGELES – Bucky O’Hare – the original comic book series turned into a classic cartoon – made its debut in the digital domain with an 8-page exclusive Swipe Studio e-comic book written and illustrated by brand creators Larry Hama and Michael Golden together with Neal Adams and his Continuity Productions. Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Menace made its premiere appearance Day One of Stan Lee’s Los Angeles Comic Con recently held October 28-30 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Designed utilizing the tools available on the all-new Swipe Studio design app, the latest offering in the Bucky O’Hare legacy follows Bucky and his crew as they do battle with the Toad Armada. The special Los Angeles Comic Con presentation featured legendary artist Neal Adams together with Swipe Studio’s famed creator Satoshi Nakajima.

The 8-pager provided fans with a glimpse into the creative for the planned Bucky O’Hare theatrical motion picture now in the works with Neal Adams producing and directing.

The brainchild of software genius Satoshi Nakajima – the engineering architect responsible for Windows 95 and Windows 98 along with Internet Explorer versions 3 and 4 – Swipe empowers everyone from consumers to creators to easily animate everything from emails to digital comics with media-rich digital elements and make use of animation, video, vector graphics as well as full audio for voice, music and sound effects on tablets and smartphones. Created to take full advantage of today’s touch-enabled smartphone and tablet technology, Swipe eliminates the need for complex programming typically required to build animation or other forms of design content. As a result, creators, designers, animators and artists have the tools to create media-rich animated digital content for consumption via touch-enabled devices including smartphones, tablets and touch-enabled set-top-boxes, such as iPhone and Apple TV.

In addition to the Swipe Bucky O’Hare comic book, artist Neal Adams also worked with the Swipe team to load into the platform an impressive portfolio of Bucky art elements and animation that can be adapted by anyone for any digital purpose, including e-mails or presentations of any kind, including all main characters and several backgrounds.

Creators and artists can now experience the free Swipe app instantly by downloading Swipe Studio to their iPhone/iPad/iPod touch and begin to create media-rich animated digital content. To download the Swipe Studio, go to App Store https://appsto.re/us/hlcDeb.i Note- Swipe Studio is available only for iPhone/iPad/iPod touch users with version iOS9 or later.

Swipe Studio users are welcome to join Facebook group; Swipe Studio Users https://www.facebook.com/groups/1076516299084537/

“We are thrilled to unveil the newest Bucky O’Hare creative from the team responsible for this celebrated and enduring property at Stan Lee’s Los Angeles Comic con,” said Nakajima. “I [had] tremendous enthusiasm towards sharing a panel with the great Neal Adams whose brilliant use of the Swipe Studio design tools helps us usher in a new era in digital design.”

“It has been a lot of fun to work with Swipe Studio and I encourage artists to check it out for their own design projects. In fact, Swipie – which is Swipe’s platform for consumers – continues to offer a wealth of art and animation applications to enhance everything from emails to digital presentations. Mr. Nakajima has built an extraordinary platform and I am proud to contribute Bucky O’Hare as a way of underscoring its power as a design platform,” said Neal Adams.

About Swipe, Inc.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Swipe, Inc. is the parent company for Swipe™, an open source platform embedding the full range of visual and audio media into digital documents for smartphones, tablets and other touch-screen devices. Swipe, Inc. Founder-Chief Technology Officer Satoshi Nakajima is recognized industry-wide as the lead engineer and architect of Windows 95 and Windows 98 which he created during his tenure with Microsoft. Visit Swipe, Inc. online at http://www.Swipe.net/.

Art

Iconic Architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Last Home Now For Sale

September 1, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

Frank Lloyd Wright designed over 1,000 structures (532 were completed) in his 70-years-plus career – mostly homes but also hotels, schools, churches, the Johnson Wax Headquarters and the Guggenheim Museum. This iconic American architect’s final design was the Norman Lykes House in Phoenix in the same year of his death in 1959. It is now for sale priced at USD$3.6 million and profiled at toptenrealestatedeals.com.

The Guggenheim cameo in Men In Black (1min 25secs)

Wright had been working with his apprentice, John Rattenbury, on the Lykes House sketches and had already chosen the building site for the home when he died. Having come full circle from his start in Prairie style, to textile block, to organic and, towards the end, the functional Usonian for the masses, his last designs showed a new interest in circles and curves as he created buildings in the round such as the Guggenheim and the house he built for his son, the David and Gladys Wright home also in Phoenix.

With a site on top of Palm Canyon with views of the valley, Wright began the Lykes design by replicating the curves of the mountainsides, making the home an integral part of its environment and providing big views for its owners and visitors. Though Wright passed away before finishing the working plans, the Lykes hired his apprentice, Rattenbury, to complete the plans according to the details set forth by Wright. The couple loved the completed plans, though it was another seven years before they started construction. When they did, Rattenbury oversaw the build and the home was completed in 1967. In addition to the structure itself, Wright also designed the furniture and built-ins for the home.

In 1994, new owners wanted some updating, so they called back Rattenbury to do the redesign by expanding the master bedroom, converting a workshop into a media room and combining two other bedrooms into a guest room – all without disrupting the overall design. Rather futuristic for its time, the circular and curvilinear design has become a timeless piece of architecture that continues to be copied by today’s designers and builders.

Now for sale and registered with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, the 2,849-square-foot home on one acre of desert plateau has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, the signature large living room fireplace intended to bring families and friends together, a lower-level media room, two home offices with built-ins of desk, cabinet storage and walls of shelving, a distinctive curved kitchen with Wright-designed island and unique under-cabinet windows and timeless stainless-steel counters, contemporary tiled large baths, and a privacy walled crescent pool patio viewed from inside through glass walls. There is also a separate large office in the round with all built-in furnishings encircled by half-moon windows. Views of valley and mountains can be seen from almost every room.

Classic last Wright design before his death, contemporary for today including lots of storage space with furniture and built-ins designed by the famous architect, the Lykes House is now for sale and priced at USD$3.6 million. For the Silo, Terry Walsh.

Supplemental- Architecture nerds will love this videogame inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright

Art

Poetic Grace Gesture Is Needed In All Art Work

August 22, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

Dear Reader, it is difficult to deny that a side of art making is fatally concerned with the poetic grace of the gesture – it is expected that a work should exude a cosmic and ineffable air.

Regardless of your medium, I hope this glance into the minds of two established poets from very different walks of life can help dissipate the intimidating mist between process and product, as well as remind you that the transcendent and the familiar are often one in the same.

Global spectator Meena Alexander recognizes that even in the grand art of poetry is a desire to express what cannot be said through its own means. After eight books of poems and a lifetime of travel, Alexander continues to defend her craft as the most ordinary of entities, no more inexplicable than a child’s obvious and impossible sense of language or rhythm.

New York-based Eileen Myles approaches poetry from a reserved and humble perspective, with the intent of striking a tasteful balance between metaphysical grandeur and the habitual rhythm of the everyday.

Myles, a breathing artistic currency, treats poetry as an extension of the self with the potency of a movement and the collective memory of a civilization. Myles proves that common experience and abstract phenomena are synonymous when we step back to look.

If the weight of the world seems so immense that the few strands of creativity cannot unravel, the Mayer Foundation offers emergency funding for New York artists facing economic, residential or medical turbulence. Proposals may be submitted at any time, with over two thousand dollars granted to those with concrete objectives and a levelheaded art plan.

It is easy to forget that behind the polished mirror of history is a messy and cumulative reality. There is little difference between the intelligentsia of years past and the friends sitting at your dining room table. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Supplemental-

Art

Words A Spoken Word Poem

February 12, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

“Words”. Thoughtful contemporary poetry from Allen Minor.

Allen Minor is From Utica, New York and lives in Daytona Beach, Florida

@allen_minor (Twitter)

allen minor (YouTube)

allen-minor (Tumblr)

allen_minor (Instagram)

Website http://Amazon.com/author/asminor

Art

Alcohol Inks in place of Oil Paint has become my new Addiction

January 6, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

All Alcohol Paintings shown in this post by the Author- Dawn Bank

While searching for ways to expand “the oil painting experience” I came across tiny bottles of Alcohol Inks in all the basic colours, with an extender (strictly rubbing alcohol at 99%) as well as some clean-up solution.

Painting with oils has always been my favorite medium but on occasion I find it kind of rigid- you do this…then that and poof you have a beautiful tree. That’s why using alcohol inks as my new medium has become a new addiction. While doing so, I feel like I am being controlled without the ability to stop working. I have probably used up 3 sets so far.

I had never used inks before and I found myself in uncharted territory. Using inks changed everything. I discovered that they created many outcomes and endless possibilities which then opened up new means of expression to me.

Taking advantage of the translucent qualities of Alcohol Ink- lit (L) & unlit (R) candle holder by the Author

When I begin to ink, I sit down at my table the same way I would when using oils. I Toss little droplets of colour and rotate the tile. Next, I spray rubbing alcohol for a spatter effect and I add a sponging technique that forms a multitude of tiny blotches. I pick out a brush and paint with the alcohol itself paying attention to watching the delicate lines that form as the brush hits the nearly-dry ink. It’s a gentle process and I enjoy the thinning of colour effect from the alcohol spray . For more fun I sometimes go out and buy a can of compressed air. I blow the ink and watch as it begins to layer itself. This is almost magical. It’s so amazing how it all comes together. I think the greatest addiction with this technique is the fact that the results are unpredictable and will never be the same. This whole process takes about half an hour but to me it seems like mere seconds.

Even though the finished ink works are fully dry within a matter of minutes, extra time is required if you choose to work in more detailed designs.

Another view of the Author's candle holder. — Another view of the Author’s candle holder

Speaking of time….I am amazed that while I work with the inks I completely lose all track of time. I am in a completely different space. My house could be burning down and I’m not sure that I would notice because using this medium makes me extremely focused and relaxed. Peacefulness has added to my life and that is just amazing. I have become so “in tune” with the way that the inks move without totally blending together. It’s an exciting time. I have discovered a new way to express and share my world with the whole world. For The Silo, Dawn Bank of One Lady’s Art. To view more alcohol ink work please visit me at https://www.facebook.com/groups/OneLadysArt/.

Fashion

PRINT ALL OVER ME co-creates collection with WORKING NOT WORKING

November 12, 2015 The Silo Leave a comment

WORKING NOT WORKING is an obsessively curated network of the world’s best creative talent. With so many incredible artists in their arsenal, it seemed obvious that PAOM (PRINT ALL OVER ME) and WNW should create a collection!

Eight amazing illustrators and designers from around the world were chosen to be a part of the first WNW X PAOM collection. They are Tatiana Arocha, Laura Callaghan, Annu Kilpeläinen, Uli Knoezer, David McLeod, Karan Singh, Brian Vu and Shawna X.

On Thursday, November 12th we hosted a party at Rivington Design House in NYC.

For more from Working Not Working, check out their website and follow them on Twitter & Instagram. Shop the entire WNW x PAOM collection here.
All above photographs by Michael Burk, model Olu Alege.

Shining Hoodie by Jarrod Barker. Click me!

Sci-Tech

Getting Social: Living in the Age of Tech and Social Media

March 24, 2015 The Silo 1 Comment

Owner/ CEO at ArtPlusHome.com and VeryVeniceArt.com

When you’re a 20-something, what’s the first and the last thing you do? You check your Facebook or you tweet. When you want to buy a pair of jeans and you want to ask your friends’ opinions, you post a picture on Instagram with a #needyourhelp! And who needs to go to a store when Amazon is only a click away right? Social Media and E-Commerce have permeated your personal and social lives. Nowadays, to keep up with the rest of the world, you have to have a smart phone, a tablet and at least 3 social media accounts. Your thought process can now be summarized into: Click. Like. Share. Repeat. Information in an instant !

The coolest thing about Social Media and online stores is the ease by which you send and receive information. The idea that you can connect to a friend in Asia, check out the latest happenings in Europe, and buy the outfit you’ve been eyeing for on discount via Amazon still fascinates many. Not only does the connection happen in real-time, it is also extremely convenient for the hyperactive, multitasking yuppie. Who would’ve thought that you can talk to someone halfway around the world while riding the train? Or that now, you can buy everything you need online while working out. Literally, the world is at your fingertips.

What about Design my Home?

If social media transformed the way you connect with the world, then mobile technology is revolutionize the way you see and experience it. With its public launch in February 2015, everyone is expected to rock the new Art Plus Home Virtual app and two words are sure to be immensely popular: “Share and Buy” This new breakthrough promises to merge the real, the virtual, and the social. Indeed, the possibilities are endless. Two fields that can definitely benefit from this innovation are art and design, particularly for the home. As more and more young professionals climb the ladders of success, you find yourselves located in a condo or in an apartment at the heart of the city. And in the name of individuality, almost all of you are heavily involved in truly making your homes a place to call your own. “I’m a minimalist guy. I like a lot of black and white pieces,” shared Alex, a young accountant. “I’ve always had a penchant for quirky furniture and eclectic painting, both of which are very hard to find by the way,” explains Jessica, a law graduate.

Here lies the conundrum. In as much as you newly-empowered breed want to go all out to design your homes, you simply don’t have the time. “Designing your own place is a completely different animal. It’s almost a full-time job,” says Ashley. She went on further, “It’s almost like a cat and mouse game. You go to an art gallery to find a good painting. Then you have to go to another store for the drapes. Then you go look for a nice coffee table. They’re a perfect match in your head but after you install them in the living room, they just look horrible.” Dary Rees, an artist and a designer herself, knew exactly what Ashley meant.

It's really about using the latest in augmented reality to "try out" art pieces in your home before you buy. photo: iwearyourecho.com — It’s really about using the latest in augmented reality to “try out” art pieces in your home before you buy. photo: iwearyourecho.com

“Designing your home takes a lot of imagination. All the time, you have to close your eyes and visualize how every art piece, every furniture, and every drape will come together. That’s not easy. But it should be.” Then idea struck! Bringing together a team of people, Dary went to work. After months of development, the Art Plus Home virtual app was born. “With the Art Plus Home app, you can shop, visualize, and buy for your home in your own time and at your own convenience. You get to choose anything you like from the online gallery, superimpose them together in your space, and see how it looks – all in a matter of minutes. You can even share the design to friends! If you like the design, you can buy them right then and there. If not, you can start all over,” explains Dary. This is perfect for the Gen Y who is always on the go. You can design and buy for your home on the way to work, after a Yoga session, or even before you go to bed. The Art Plus Home app is also ideal if you’re on the look out for the latest in art and design. Check-out gallery openings, up and coming artists, or simply browse what’s hot (and not) so you have something to talk to with your date.. The Art Plus Home app is available in Android and in iOS.

Generation Y is a new breed. You’re motivated to succeed, you’re proud of your individuality, you’re always mobile, and you’re extremely connected to the world around you. With such a personality, you’re a perfect match for the Art Plus Home app! www.ArtPlusHome.com and download the free app at any app store.

Comics

TRDWTR “Treadwater” launches as new mature themed Superhero franchise

September 10, 2014 The Silo Leave a comment

TRDWTR, pronounced ‘treadwater’, is a mature take on the superhero genre, set in a plausible geopolitical future. The franchise will kick off with a graphic novel on September 30th, 2014. A live-action series based on the novel is set to follow suit in 2015. A preview of the graphic novel will be staged in America’s largest comic book store today, September 10th. To commemorate the launch, a teaser trailer for the TRDWTR franchise has been made available to the general public. And here it is!

All of modern life is a spectacle. Much of what contemporary man experiences in Western society is a false social construct mediated by images.

No longer is the work of art itself a commodity, but rather the image of the artist (his/her/cis brand) that becomes the commodity.

Where once the products of labor were the commodity, now it is the spectacle that has become the commodity.

The spectacle feeds itself through the mediating of the image to create desire for status and recognition, through associations.

Perhaps art has always been a commodity?

The commodification of art creates a unique problem in history. If it is the spectacle that matters, and the artist’s identity that has value, then what value is left in the art itself?

Dusty book stall archeologist and writer Jonathan Guyer oversees the far reaching effects of visual culture in our modern ‘all about appearances’ world.

Reading something interesting?

Urging the flow of time and water is the promise of change made by a fork in the stream.

Royalties are bullshit.

Well, a little bit of it goes to the artist.

However, this is a stupid argument.

Splitting the question

Raw material: Wool. Operating mode: the hook.

“I wanted to divert the everyday objects. And to do so with needles and wool. No, no to knitting scarves for her daughters in some kind of ‘good housewife’ role, but rather to rediscover the woman inside, and then to discover humans in general.”

An interesting new trend is on the rise—colouring in a Bible.

People even discuss where to get Bibles with the largest margins so that there is room for their designs, creating an interesting demand on publishers and retailers.

This should be a crude wake-up call for artists.

Want proof?

The take-home lesson here?

Canada's 'biggest little blogspace'