Asni: Multimedia Art & Design
Newsletter 24
May/June 2009
you are here: home < read < about Asni < newsletter < May 2009
Getting into Gear
- In this newsletter:
- *** News & Current Projects
- *** X Media Labs in Auckland and Sydney
- *** Cool Things Friends Do
- *** European Diary
If you have been wondering what happened to my May newsletter, I quite unapologetically decided it was too much work, and skipped it. One reason was that there really wasn't much to write about, other than this artist's struggle to get back into a productive frame of mind after my trip to Europe. That's what I've come to hate about travelling: It's so disruptive. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the trip, and of course it was great to catch up with my family and friends. But at this stage of my life, I am so much happier just sitting in my friendly little hermit cave day in, day out, and getting some work done. There sure is a stack of work to be done.
The Earthsea illustration project I've reluctantly put on hold until the weather gets a bit warmer and the days a bit longer - it is very awkward to paint indoors with oils, if you can't leave the doors and windows open and air the place properly. Instead, I've started to use my tablet and paint in Photoshop - I now take my laptop to my weekly life drawing sessions, instead of pencil and paper, and I am also working on a couple of digital illustrations. The portfolio building is progressing well indeed.
More importantly, I now have no excuses left to not get seriously into gear with my new web design business. Since March, I've been attending classes in Small Business Management, which is excellent because all our homework consists of putting together the bits and pieces of a proper business plan, which I need to be doing anyway. The real good news is that last week I got accepted into the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, run by Work and Income New Zealand. I'll have to take another set of business classes which will start in July, and write up my business plan, and get it approved, but if all goes well it means I'll be given a chunk of money to buy things with, and another six month's support without the pressure to apply for cleaning jobs, until I can stand on my own feet. So wish me luck with that!
Actually, you can also help me with my business plan! I've put together a questionnaire as part of my market research, and I would appreciate it very much indeed if you could take the time to fill it in. It shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes. Everyone who participates will go into the draw to win a website designed for them by your's truly entirely for free! I hope that will provide some incentive to give that much of your time. :)
X Media Labs in Auckland and Sydney
The X Media Lab has come to this nook of the world again. This year, I decided not only to make the trip to Auckland for a day crammed full with up to date information about the internet and mobile phones industry - I even invested in a plane ticket to Sydney, to attend the "Serious Games " conference day.
Like last year in Wellington, the title and focus of the Auckland lab was "Commercializing Ideas". Apparenty, the internet and mobile phones are the way to go, these days, if one wants to do that.
One of the stranger developments of recent times are Alternative Reality Games - happenings that use the internet, mobile phones, and even, on occasion, mass media such as TV, to plant mysteries and fake information that make people get up from behind their computer desks and search for hints and clues out there in the so-called "Real World". Scary! Although I suppose, if you got your iPhone, you don't really have to go offline even when you go down that rabbit hole.
What started out in the weird and creative underbelly of the internet community, with fun nonsense such as flashmobbing events, and more serious political action like the co-ordinated worldwide protests against the US invasion of Iraq which were organized through the internet back in 2003, has now caught the attention of the marketers, and is being turned into an advertising tool by companies like 42 Entertainment, whose CEO Susan Bonds gave the first talk at the Auckland conference.
Funny that - it seems that as soon as a group of people comes up with an activity that is spontaneous and self-directed and does not involve massive marketing budgets aimed at making people buy something, the marketers are hot on their heels trying to take them over, in the attempt to cram their consumer messages down our oversatiated throats in ever more complex and thorough ways. Does it ever occur to anyone that the very reason for engaging in such off the wall activities might be to try and get away for a while from the constant bombardement with slick consumer brainwash ?
After the first couple of speakers - who, incidentally or not, both hailed from the US - had filled me with an amount of unease with their unapologetic recipes for total consumer manipulation, it was a relief to hear a different perspective. Two of the most earnest and thought-provoking presentations I heard that day were given by participants from India: Parmesh Shahani of Mahindra & Mahindra, also editor of Mumbai fashion magazine Verve; and Vishal Gondal of Indiagames.
India has come a very long way from the days of my youth, when we were taught to think of it as this poor and backward "Third World" place that needed all the technological aid it could get from the West. Does anyone else remember how, sometime during the 1990's, the German government, whose policy up to then had been to regard the Digital Revolution as a passing fad that could safely be ignored, suddenly woke up and decided that it would be a cool idea to get lots of Indian software engineers streaming into the country by oh so generously offering them special residency permits? Hahahahaha.
Obviously, these people had much better things to do. By now, India's computer and multimedia industry is decidedly cutting edge. Maybe one of the reasons for that is that, instead of the overstimulated ennuy one encounters in the US and other western societies, in India these technologies are actually making a massive difference to people's lives. It only took a short video presentation about the creative use of mobile phones to bring affordable school education to outlying rural areas in India, to drive that point home.
Vincent Heeringa of New Zealand's Idealog apologized profusely for being a paper magazine guy, then proceeded to make a plea - in the day and age of Twitter - for such old-fashioned ideas as complexity of thought, lengthy well-researched articles, and paying one's contributors. All of which I thought were excellent points.
Design pioneer Dale Herigstad introduced the future of technology - interfaces that can interpret hand gestures, making clumsier devices such as mouses, keyboards and remote controls potentially a thing of the future past. His video presentation of how to operate these devices made me think of a beautiful slow dance - whatever else may come from it, I suspect that we had a glimpse of the new performance art of the next decade or so.
Canadian author Juliette Powell confirmed what I know ever since I've done my CD fundraiser, with her talk about how to effectively use social networking sites, while the second half of the day was given over to the ins and outs of making a business succeed in this sector.
Compared with the hard-nosed money making focus of the Auckland lab, the "Serious Games" conference day in Sydney was far more academic and even artsy in its outlook. Organized as part of the Sydney Film Festival, it defined "game" in fairly broad terms.
One of the highlights was certainly film maker Ondi Timoner's talk about her recent film "We Live in Public", a documentary about internet pioneer Josh Harris, whose experiments with Big Brother style camera surveillance reveal some of the darker aspects of contemporary media craze. This was followed by a talk by the film's subject himself, which struck me as either completely mad, or strangely inspired. Not that that seems to be an unusual reaction to the man.
The title "Serious Games" refers to games that have a purpose other than pure entertainment. Applications range widely, from education, staff and professional training, to health care, to military simulations, and of course, marketing and advertising. Ian Bogost, author of "Persuasive Games", gave a lucid introduction to the topic, stressing that in an environment where the media increasingly favour easily consumed information fragments and soundbites, games are a place where complexity can find expression.
Games design veteran Lee Sheldon gave us a short run-down on the games production process, and Michel Mol, head of Innovation and New Media at Netherlands Public Broadcasting, talked about the situation in the Netherlands, and his struggles to successfully integrate new media concepts with and olde and established public broadcasting organization.
The panel discussion and question and answer session that rounded off the conference brought up some interesting points about attitudes, and like all the other labs, the day ended with drinks and extensive opportunity to network, talk to other attendees and to the speakers. I had some interesting conversations in Sydney, and I had also brought along my illustration portfolio, which I managed to shove under quite a few noses, and was very gratified by the reactions I got. That alone was probably worth the trip - whether or not anything in the way of actual opportunities (read: paid work) will emerge from it I do not know, but these things work in weird and mysterious ways, and it can't be a bad thing to show one's nose and keep up to date with what is going on in the big wide world. Besides, I wrote this review and can now send it on to all the other participant's websites, tohé! :D
Cool things friends do
Hutt Radio Update
Catherine Anne's thingy
It appears that work on the long awaited "Hobbit" movie is now well and truly under way. Of course everyting about it is top secret and everyone is entirely close-lipped, but the rumours fly, and besides, one one cannot help to notice that some of the key artists involved in the project are now in New Zealand - especially when they keep doing entirely public book signings at the Weta Cave! In June, conceptual artist Alan Lee will do a signing on 20 June, and Guillermo del Toro, the director himself, will be presenting his brand new novel in a signing session on 17 June. Lucky you if you live close by. Check here - also interview clip with Richard Taylor
European Diary
One sketch I didn't get to make. I had planned to spend a day in Colmar (near Basel, but in France) mainly with a view to visiting the Unterlinden Museum, which houses one of my all time favourite paintings, the Isenheim altarpiece by Mathias Grünewald. I also vaguely remembered that the museum is situated in an old monastery with a beautiful inner courtyard - just the thing I needed to see and sketch for one of the "Earthsea" illustrations I have been working on, and struggling with.
To Colmar I did go, on a beautiful sunny day in spring. The town is pretty, if in a fairly touristy way, and the Alsacian food is excellent, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself up to the point when I went to the museum.
First I was tripped up by their slightly offbeat opening times - they close the place for a two hour lunch break in the middle of the day, so one can either have a three hour slot in the morning, or three hours in the afternoon, or one must go away and come back. I did the last. I was lugging my A2 sketchpad through Colmar all day, and while most people reacted friendly to this - in one of the other churches I was given permission to take photos of the stained glass windows despite the general ban on photography, presumably on the strength of looking like an artist - at the Unterlinden museum it earned me suspicious glances right away. One would think that an art museum's purpose should be to foster artistic activity in living people, but I suppose the people working there adhered to the dogma that only a dead artist is a good artist. Or maybe they were really only interested in the mega tourist bucks that roll in from the tour bus crowds they shoo through the museum all day?
What makes me think that? Well, it so happens that the Unterlinden museum does indeed have the very courtyard I was looking for. So after spending some time catching up with the Isenheim Altarpiece, I happily settled in to sketch. I comfortably sat myself on the low parapet surrounding the courtyard, with my
feet dangling inside, and started to work away.
After a good little while one of the wardens came and spoke to me in French. I think he told me I wasn't allowed to dangle my feet into the courtyard. Well, if that was the case it would have helped if there had been a sign or something pointing it out, before I was well into my sketch. Three hours isn't long to do a decent sketch of a complex subject, at least not for me!
Besides, I had come all the way from New Zealand to sketch there. And it wouldn't have been the first time that someone who has the personality traits that make them take up a job like that hassled me just because they could - it seemed such a silly thing to insist on. So I decided to ignore the man. He went away, and presently another fellow returned who still spoke to me in French. But he was a lot ruder. I tried to point out that I couldn't very well sketch with my back turned to my subject. When I asked him (in English) to speak to his supervisor (who, I assumed, in a place that lives off international tourism, would at the very least be required to speak English and German) he appeared to claim that he *was* the man in charge. Yeah right.
I realized that this was going to be a lost cause - nothing much you can do when a Nazi takes you as target - so I decided to sketch away for as long as I could until the fellow got violent. Which he did, eventually, first yelling into my face for a good length of time, and when I continued to smile back at him, he just barely suppressed the impulse to hit me (apparently even he realized that that might be stepping a step too far), but eventually grabbed my sketch pad and crumbled up the piece of paper I had been working on.
I went to the police afterwards, but they didn't want to know. Perhaps I should have insisted on seeing someone who spoke any of the several languages I am fluent in, and not the inept receptionist, but perhaps there wouldn't have been much point. She told me that the police could not intervene because the whole thing happened in a private space. Are people in France still allowed to beat their wives and children, as long as they do it privately in their homes, and not in public? I guess I'm glad I don't live there.
I was planning to write a glowing account of my visit to the Unterlinden museum in this newsletter, with links and recommendations and all, but now I'm telling you this little story instead. And it's definitely been the last time I've set my own feet anywhere near the place.
I call this fellow a Nazi - and with no disrespect, I wonder how many of you my readers now have a mental image of a tall, square-chinned, bullyish blue eyed and blonde guy - or perhaps a skinhead - possibly with a slight German accent? All those Hollywood movies, eh? WelI, it so happens that this particular Nazi was around 30 I think, slim, medium height, with curly hair and milk coffee brown skin. And no ability to speak German at all. Being Nazi is a state of mind, not a nationality. Just thought I'd point that out.
Arohanui, from Asni
NB: Some of the text links above are Amazon Affiliate links. I only recommend books, CDs or movies which I have read, listened to or watched myself, and been impressed by. Linking directly to Amazon is a service to my readers, AND you can help support my website by ordering through these links. Your support is much appreciated! :D
