Art 2.0

This CNN article is particularly interesting to me because my sister is someone who is trying really hard to promote and sell her art in addition to her day job and being a single mom of two kids.

LONDON, England (Reuters) — Collector Charles Saatchi has launched a Web site for art students and a handful have already sold works online as the Internet begins to change the way the art world works.

With prices for contemporary art soaring, collectors say they have less time to travel to galleries and shows to see new works for themselves, while aspiring painters and sculptors find it hard to get noticed amid the pressure to find the next hot young stars.

For many, the Internet is the answer, offering low-cost access for thousands of painters, sculptors and buyers and, at the same time, providing a Myspace-style social networking site for artists the world over.[cnn]

Player by Elizabeth Bollwitt
Elizabeth Bollwitt: “Player”

My sister is a ways out from attaining extreme success with her endeavors on the web, but presence is important for sure. Beth took a hiatus from the world of art for a short time. In the last few years, my sister has gone to a variety of shows in the midwest. Painting is her true knack, but she can also do graphic design and wood carving. I can almost swear that some of her pottery projects from college are still floating around, but it has been a long while since I’ve see her do much in that realm.

Pointillism[wiki] is the style Beth specializes in. That might seem to be a painful process to some, but she has a real talent for it. Her inspiration comes from a variety of places. The collection has probably doubled, maybe tripled, in the last few years, and a print of her “Sunset Flower” sits on the wall in the living room of our apartment. The recent expansion of her original works has seen some incredible progression in the use of color and technique. “Player” has to be one of my favorites. At least when I first saw it, it really impressed me. I love the bold use of colors, and she has gone on to expand that concept in other paintings she has done since then.

Sunset Flower by Elizabeth Bollwitt
Elizabeth Bollwitt: “Sunset Flower”

Being an artist that offers themselves on the web is not as easy as it might seem, and I think my sister can speak to that quite clearly. Presence is the simple part. Gaining attention is the next big step, but actually achieving success is the golden ticket. Seeing the digital image won’t get people interested in buying as much as seeing the original up close will.

It’s comparable to when I saw Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”[wiki] for the first time. The reproduction that you’ve seen a thousand times before is like an over played song. It gets old, stale, and you don’t think twice the next time you hear it. However, with art, when you see the original painting, you get it. I had to be pulled away from that Van Gogh it because I couldn’t quit staring at it.

If you enjoy the samples of that you see in this post, then please visit my sister’s website, elizabethbollwitt.com.

Maybe I had a little part in it

I caught this story on PunkNews.org, and the main thing that I find incredible is the second city on the tour date list. Iowa City! And if you listen to the interview that RadioZoom did with Jim Ward, lead singer of Sparta, in November[rz118], you might recall that I lobbied for the band to consider swinging through Iowa City if they were ever in the area.

Toss this one up to the power of new media? Maybe. It would be really interesting if Jim had any part in putting IC on the list. It’s a U.S. tour only, so check out their site for details on any changes or additions.

Take that, Ames!

(Cross posted from RadioZoom)

Pluggd is fixing the meta issue with podcasting

Wired published an article about Pluggd, a company that is developing new technology to search the internet, and we’re not just talking about text anymore.

Pluggd has found a way to index podcasts, talk shows and other spoken-word content. The company’s service then allows users to search the audio files for specific words.

You can try Pluggd’s word-searching demo yourself right now. Enter your search term and you’ll see mentions of your word highlighted in various colors — heatmap-style — on a timeline of the show. The redder “hot spot” areas represent denser clusters of your search term, and clicking on one will cause the player to jump straight to the discussion about your desired topic.

Rather than just reading a transcript of a conversation, you can search for a term and hear it spoken in context by the original speaker in seconds. The ramifications for podcasting and more traditional spoken-audio formats are significant, and that’s just for starters. [wired]

If they get this right, the podcasting medium stands to take a huge boost. Take a look at the demo. It gives a nice preview of the service that they are working on. I’m still picking my jaw up off the floor a little bit.

Additionally, Digg did a design overhaul to their site plus some other goodies. They’ve added support for podcasting. That basically means that the same way that you can Digg a news story or blog post, you can Digg a single episode to share with others. I’m not too sure how it works from the podcasters end, but please feel free to Digg any of the RadioZoom or The Crazy Canucks episodes. 🙂

RadioZoom Episode #122 – Six Song Donut Spectacular: December 2006

Putting my best foot forward, here is this months six song.

This is getting out a little later than normal, but I’m blaming the holidays on that one. However, the theme for this installment is in regards to a blog post that I made regarding music at Vancouver Canucks games. It’s gathered some attention from people who are actual hockey DJ’s from various parts of the sport. I’m putting my money where my mouth is and explored the Podsafe Music Network this morning to quickly find some potential new blood for venues around North America.

52:39 minutes
radiozoom.net

Braving the winter takes on new meaning

IMG_9689 We’ve been busy with getting everything set for the holidays. That pretty much means shopping. I’ve been taking care of a few various projects in between, but we ventured out to Stanley Park today with Rebecca’s dad. I went running yesterday, and the park was in pretty bad shape.

Last Thursday night, I woke up around 3AM to the sounds of wind. Massive amounts of wind. You could hear various pieces of debris rolling around outside, so I got up to peak out the windows. They are saying that we experienced hurricane force winds in the category two range, but it didn’t take me very long to make sure that everything was okay in the apartment and gather flashlights in the event that we lost power. Rebecca, on the other hand, slept all the way through it.

Luckily, we didn’t lose power in our end of the city. Other folks were not so fortunate, and I got a message from DaveO that tells me that North Vancouver experienced some outages. Word from Surrey said that some folks took a hit as well. Trees are damaged all over downtown through.

About running the park yesterday, it was a mess. I had to tiptoe around a lot of fallen foliage, some much larger in various spots. Heading back in today, I was sure to bring the camera along(see them on Flickr here). It looked like a war zone in some spots.

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) – It looks like a crime scene.

And the trees are the victims.

Crews are asking the public to stay out of a battered Stanley Park.

Yellow caution ribbon is strung across pathways littered with branches and tree-trunks.
A trades foreman with the park board, Gary Gilder, says the wind damaged trees are a real danger.

“……and a lot of trees in the bus hung up…..against other trees….that have not quite fallen over so it’s…I would say stay out of the park until the end of the weekend”

The park itself will be closed for the weekend. That includes the seawall, the Vancouver Aquarium and bright nights Christmas attraction.[cknw]

IMG_9690 Yeah, I guess you could say that the park was closed, but we got ourselves inside and checked out the damage. However, I wouldn’t recommend it at all. Trails are cut off all over the place, not to mention that the seawall was blocked off at the point where you can take Beaver Creek trail up to Beaver Lake. And what trails you can find access to are bound to be blocked off at some point. You get past one tree to only find another.

When I went running through yesterday, there was no automobile traffic whatsoever. Getting around Brockton Point, I couldn’t even run on the bike path. They’re doing some reno to the lighthouse area, so all Seawall traffic is forced onto the upper route around the backside. Just beyond that, you could see that they worked a path through the fallen trees and branches for authorized vehicles to get into the area, but it was a tight squeeze. I actually passed a variety of people walking on the road in the opposite direction who, like me, didn’t know that the park was officially closed.

It’s really sad to see. I fear that it’s going to be a long time before anyone can safely or completely venture through the entire park. It’s a great place to go running or wandering through. I hope to see things restored as soon as possible. For only living here as short as I have, I’ve really come to love that park. It won’t be the same, but I’ll be anxious to see it back again.

The Skype free ride is about to end

SkypeI have been greatly enjoying the free, unlimited calls to regular phones on Skype for nearly the past year. It’s been a wonderful way to call up friends and family back in the states. The quality is pretty good, but on heavy traffic days on the internet, not so much. How are you to argue with it being free?

Enjoy it while it lasts. The free, trial period is coming to a close at the end of this month. I had hoped that Skype would just eat the bandwidth and keep it free, but that stands to not be the case.

Internet phone service provider Skype plans to start charging U.S. and Canadian users US$29.95 per year for unlimited calls to regular phones in both countries, as the end of a free trial offer looms.

Users who sign up before Jan. 31, 2007, will receive a special rate of $14.95 a year and 100 free minutes of international calling, Skype said on Wednesday. Any user wishing to continue using Skype to make calls to regular phones or mobile handsets after the free trial expires Dec. 31, but does not want a yearly plan, can pay for SkypeOut at a rate of 2.1 cents per minute for calls within the U.S. and Canada.

Computer-to-computer calls using Skype software will remain free. [macworld]

Still, that’s not a bad deal to pay that much per year for free calls between the U.S. and Canada. Naturally, there will be some people who will think that this is a load of crap. In my hometown, we used to run a free, local BBS[wiki] (yeah, remember those things from 1995?) and users flipped when they had to pay $25 a year to dial in over their modems. Sometimes you just need a little help with bills, and I could really see paying to use Skype’s service. However, I am a total sucker for free stuff.

Some things shouldn’t go to Broadway

I have an extremely soft spot in my heart for the film version of High Fidelity[imdb]. Yes, it would be in my top five, all-time favorite flicks. It’s clever, has a great soundtrack, and has John Cusack. Don’t know why, but that third ingredient always brings me to check out any project that he is involved in. I tried to read the book it was based on, but it was one of those many things that I picked up and simply failed to get past the first fifty pages. It’s not that it wasn’t any good. I just didn’t have the attention span.

But did you know that it was being made into a Broadway musical? I certainly didn’t, and it looks like not very many people will get a chance to see it.

It might not rank on the list of the Top 5 Broadway Flops, but it comes close.

Last Thursday the stage adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity opened at one of the biggest theatres on Broadway. The story of a nerdishly dysfunctional record shop assistant, the hit novel had translated into a hit film. The hit stage musical, it seemed, was assured.

But on Tuesday, after just 14 performances, the show’s producers announced that it was closing. [guardian]

Ouch. I can’t say that I’m too surprised though. For the life of me, the character of Rob singing on stage, prancing around, and singing off his top-fives just doesn’t play out well in my head. In fact, I call the images of thinking about such things to be down right scary. There are certain things that work well for musicals, but I’m not sure why someone thought this would be one of them.

This American Life going to the little screen

It almost seems like a trend right now. First, Garrison Keillor[wiki] took A Prairie Home Companion and turned it into a movie[imdb]. Now it’s This American Life, probably one of my most favorite programs in the world of public radio that I hardly listen to. But hey, it’s a podcast now, so I think I’ll have to subscribe.

That’s just one of the many odd discussions that took place in the process of transforming a radio program into a television series. The show is This American Life. The host is Ira Glass. The TV series will debut in March on the Showtime cable channel.

There’s a certain simplicity to the art of radio. At its heart, it’s all about storytelling. And This American Life is a radio show that revels in storytelling — quirky stories, sad stories, scary stories.

This American Life seems so wedded to the medium of radio that when the Showtime cable network first approached Glass about turning it into a TV show, he couldn’t imagine it.

“We basically said ‘no’ for a year and half,” Glass recalls. “And we kept saying we have no idea how to… be filmmakers. You have to hook us up with people who could design something that got across the feeling of the radio show.” [npr]

I’m not too sure how I feel about it. The beauty of radio is the theatre of the mind and how it comes across the airwaves. Being an audio junkie, you would think that my gut reaction would be to hate the whole concept, but I take comfort in the idea of Showtime(or potentially in Canada, Showcase) being the network to throw this on the tube.

Audio Doc - Ira Glass
Photo credit: transomradio on Flickr

I’ve had the brief, but not the most up close, pleasure of working with Ira Glass[wiki] during my days in public radio. In fact, it was just a one day sort of thing, but he really is a fascinating guy. Not in the omnipresent, starstruck sort of way, but he is a person that knows what he’s trying to do and how that should be done. Based on that, I know that he wouldn’t make a venture into television without making sure that the end result was going to be good.

I’ll say what I have always said about television. It’s five times as expensive and takes just as much time to produce worthwhile content. That’s not to say that working solely with audio is easy. Both mediums are their respective art forms, but you should never compare the two. If you don’t believe me now, then start listening to the This American Life podcast now and see how it compares to the TV program when it comes out. The effect will simply not be the same. We have yet to see if we can call it good or not.

The Crazy Canucks #11 – Looking for a streak

DaveO came over earlier tonight. Rebecca and I made a podcast with him, Alanah, and J.J. The last two people weren’t actually here with the three of us, but it’s amazing with what you can do with VoIP these days. Check out the episode we recorded here.

Dave joins John and Rebecca in “the studio” while we have Alanah and J.J. on the line for this slightly longer edition of the podcast. We tackle the latest news regarding the end of Alanah’s blog, Vancouver Canucks Op Ed, and look ahead to what we can expect from her new role with Kukla’s Korner. You can read her first feature article on her new home, “Bringing Hockey to the People“. So yes, the hockey blogging will continue.

That also sparks a brief debate over blogger and podcaster fans of the NHL in general, and their role in covering their favorite hockey teams in this age of new media. Whoa… deep.

Canucks! Oh yes, we talk Canucks as well. Carolina, Calgary, and Phoenix are the latest foes to face, so we do our best to cover our likes and dislikes over the games. The way things have been going, we have all been surprised with who we’ve been liking on the ice. We also get a little bit of a Vote for Rory update, tackle goalie mask designs, and toss around various thoughts about who’s hot and who we’d like to see contribute some more.

The Crazy Canucks

I have a thing for lines of code

I’m redesigning the RadioZoom site again. Ok, it’s not a redesign, but I’m porting the design, mostly, into a better layout. I’ve worked so hard to not make the website look like a blog because, let’s be honest, it’s a podcast, right? Anyone can start a blog and shift it into a site for a podcast. I’m just going to stop fighting the inevitable.

The current theme that I’m using, as it is a WordPress driven site, has so much code that is cobbled and hacked together that it hurts too much to clean up. I know it’s bad taste to take someone’s theme that they put out there for public use and then tear it all apart for my own amusement, but I’m picky. It has to look right, at least to me. I ain’t no design genius either, but beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Well, in this case, the programmer.

PodPress is really the reason I’m revamping the design. Subtle changes makes it not want to play nicely with the current design. They recently released a new version of this great podcasting plugin for WordPress, so I think it’s high time to dive into fixing it. At the same time, it keeps the geek skills sharpened.

If all goes according to plan, the new design should be live next week. Don’t expect any huge surprises. It should look similar to what it is now, but functionality will be the true improvement, perhaps more so on the back end.