Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Friday, March 7, 2014

ART OPPORTUNITY

brought to you by 

PORKY'S GROOVE MACHINE:

"Calling all Porkchops,

Our new album, "Magic Brunch," is nearing completion. However, there is still something it lacks - album art. We are searching for anyone willing to submit artwork to be considered for the album and merchandise. As compensation, the person whose artwork we choose will get a free copy of the album and $50 (~140 RDE [Red Dog Equivalent]!!!), and the three runners-up will each receive a free digital download of the album and a case of Red Dog (30 RDE!!!). Themes for the album art could be but are not limited to: Brunch, Space, Robeert Beerchild, Dystopian and Syncopationless Starbucks-Infested Planetoids, Middle School Sex Education, and the standard Porky's Iconography and Mythos. Or any combination of these themes. Let us know if you're working on something, we're excited to see what comes in! Thanks, Porkchops!
[...]

Signing off,
Future Marty McFly"

See, I'm not the only radical calling for the overthrow of the art serfdom racket:


OWS Arts & Labor Working Group Calls for End to Whitney Biennial By 2014


Monday, March 3, 2014

Ugh... "ART RANK":
"These weighted qualitative metrics work in conjunction with our classification algorithm to identify prime artist prospects based on known trajectory profiles.



Art and money, art and money... sigh.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

ANONYMous FLIRTING##

LikeALittle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
LikeALittle logo
LikeALittle was a social network service launched on October 25, 2010, by Evan Reas, with the stated purpose of allowing users to post flirts about other students around campus, and make the practice viral across the web. The LikeALittle service was discontinued without explanation on July 10, 2012.[1][2]

History[edit]

Reas worked with two co-founders, Prasanna Sankaranarayanan and Shubham Mittal to try to make connections with other students outside of their own university. The newly launched site featured over 50 campuses[3] in just a few months.
When a user commented on a post, they were assigned the name of a fruit. This way users were identifiable within the conversation they are a part of, but were still able to retain their anonymity. Each time they commented on a new post, they received a different name. Users were encouraged to post flirtatious, complimentary, non-inflammatory content. Any user could delete or report posts that they found offensive or abusive.[4] Messages sent to other users remained anonymous.[5] Users could also "like" posts and comments, similar to the ability to like posts and comments on other social networking sites such as Facebook. Users received notifications if their posts, or posts that they had liked or commented on, received activity. These notifications appeared on the main page of the site if the user was logged in. They could also be sent via email or text message(SMS).

Popularity on University/College Campuses[edit]

Due to the location based nature of LikeALittle's flirting system, the website became quite popular among students at universities where a large portion of the campus community revolves around small areas, making them conducive to anonymous online flirting, such as large campus libraries or residences. Popularity and use of the website tended to spike dramatically during exam season and lower to near inactivity during breaks, though at some universities usage was high throughout the year.[6]

Criticism and Privacy Concerns[edit]

With LikeALittle's increased presence on university and college campuses, concerns were raised that LikeAlittle may make campuses unsafe by allowing a person or a group of persons to publicly stalk others. Others raised concerns over the increase in sexually explicit comments over more innocent levels of flirting that the site wished to promote.[7] In response to these concerns, the site maintained that it made a strong effort to ensure that cases of stalking, privacy breaches and sexually explicit posts were taken down immediately through the use of computer filters and campus-specific moderators,[8][9] as well as a small contingent of site-wide moderators.[citation needed]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ "LikeALittle Goodbye". Likealittle.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-21. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  2. Jump up^ "2studentbodies News". July 10, 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-07-20. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  3. Jump up^ "Like A Little - Did you just see that!?". likealittle.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2012-07-20.
  4. Jump up^ "LikeALittle About Page". likealittle.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-06. Retrieved 2012-07-20.
  5. Jump up^ "LikeALittle Privacy Page". likealittle.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2012-07-20.
  6. Jump up^ Er-Chua, Gloria (March 7, 2011). "Students like LikeALittle a lot". thestar.com. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  7. Jump up^ Anderson, Paige (January 12, 2011). "Likealittle: just a little creepy"Theknoxstudent.com. The Knox Student Online. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  8. Jump up^ Reimold, Dan (July 22, 2011). "Will anonymous online flirting take permanent hold on campuses?". USA Today College. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  9. Jump up^ Bailey, Charlotte (July 28, 2011). "Anonymous flirting comes to campus"Fulcrum.hotink.net. The Fulcrum. Retrieved 2012-07-21.

External links[edit]

Thursday, February 27, 2014

What I learned at SEA: A reflection

1.  If you leave your business cards tossed about the hotel like boats in a storm, you will get emails about how cool you are.

2.  I don't like most things.

3.  Getting drunk with artist friends is the best thing you can do for your career.
Artist resale royalty debate to be revived
A new version of a bill to give artists royalties on work resold at auction has been introduced in Congress


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Professional advice for your online presence

Hey guys, I happen to have a pretty neat connection that came in handy for me with this whole online-presence thing. About 7-ish years ago, I met this Australian guy online through a browser game we both played at the time. Despite mutually deciding that game was a cheating, time-sinking pile of s:!+, we've remained pretty good friends over the years. Anyways, he ended up working in what I refer to as basically being online-PR... though he assures me that's different. So you can see why, when it found out we had to make a web site and a business card for the class, I wanted to go and ask him for some advice. Here's the basics of what I got:

1) Wix.com is a pretty great website builder. It's free until you want your own domain name, and You don't have to know squat about HTML or anything. They have all sorts of templates ripe for customizing. I just signed up for an account, so I suppose I'll keep you posted on the specifics of it once I figure it all out.

2) Get an email address to go with that site, especially if you get your own domain! Doesn't "contact@[yourdomain].com" sound pretty sweet? It's not that tough to set up... You just get any old email address (like a gmail or yahoo email) to be routed through the site. Then, when someone sends a message to that address, it basically gets forwarded to the account of your choice. And it IS a good idea to make this account separate from your personal email, for what should be obvious reasons.
Alternatively, if you don't plan on having a personal web page just yet, at least make sure you have a professional sounding email, like johndoe@yahoo.com or doephotography@gmail.com. 

3) Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest pages/accounts are good things to hook up to a web site, or even use as your main presence. HOWEVER! Watch out for something called an "IP clause" in the terms of agreement. As you've heard, I'm sure, Facebook technically owns anything you post on their site. They have updated a lot of stuff and have mostly moved away from shamelessly and unexpectedly using your stuff for ads (now there are setting for that) but that clause IS still there, and it may be present on other places you post images! That means they seriously reserve the right to, at ANY freaking time they want, say "nope, this is mine." So think twice before you post ANYTHING like a logo or an image of your art to any web site!!
This is especially important for those who do digital photography, because unlike a photo of a painting, where the painting is the "art" and the photo is just simulacrum, the art IS the photograph. This leads me to the next bit of advice...

4) WATERMARK your stuff-- ESPECIALLY if you do digital art!! It's a little safer to skip this step if your art exists mainly in the physical realm (because it is VERY unlikely anyone will claim to own a photo of your sculpture...) but if you don't watermark, you're leaving the photo to potentially be used in ways you might not authorize. And while you could fight for ownership in a court case, that's messy and time consuming and expensive. So just watermark it. 
And using your own logo to do so is a good idea, too, as the watermark both deters unauthorized use and advertises your brand. 

5) Size totally matters. I mean, the size of your images. Again, this is a thousand times more important for digital artists and photographers, but this one really does apply to all of us. Do not make images of your art "HD" on your site-- a general good rule is to keep it at less than 1,000x1,000 pixels. Why? Because, this makes your image super easy to use elsewhere and print off. As in, make a big, framed print. 

If the stuff in numbers 3-5 seems over-protective, let's go through a freaky horror scenario together.

Once upon a time, there was an up-and-coming young artist who had their own (Facebook/Tumblr/Web page). They got lots of visits, and were finally starting to make it in the world. However, they didn't care to look for IP clauses, they didn't watermark their images, and they had nice, high resolution versions of their photos on their site. All was going just fine, until one day, they were walking through a (Big Lots/Gordman's/other shifty department store) when they decided to travel into the home decor section. And what did they happen to see? A lovely framed "painting"... of THEIR WORK!!! 
--dun dun DUNNNNNN--
They tried to get a lawyer on the case, but couldn't afford anyone crazy-good. The site they posted to didn't give a crap about backing them up, because they're a giant corporation, and don't give a crap about one teeny pissed-off artist. And the company reproducing the work denied that the artist was able to prove that the photo of the work was their own. Even worse, the company reproducing the work STILL had totally more money than the young artist, and had an at least decent lawyer. So even if the artist DID decide to put themselves through the shitty process of going to court, well... It probably wouldn't matter.
From that day on, every time the artist walked past the home decor aisle, they had to look at a copy of their work printed on shitty canvas-textured plastic, in a 'realistic-wood-resin' frame, on sale for just $14.99.

So, if you don't want your art to be on sale for $14.99, look for IP clauses, watermark your stuff, and keep your image sizes under 1,000x1,000 pixels.

That is what I learned from my wonderful* friend Liam.  Hope it helps!

XXX Lorraine



*He's pretty cool, despite being upside-down, using the metric system, calling sweaters "jumpers", and eating lunch when people should be getting ready for bed. 
Hey PAINTERS: New American Paintings Midwest Competition Deadline is February 28th, 2014.

ps. Painting is dead.

Monday, February 24, 2014


The 10 Best Cities to be an Artist


And no, it's not LA or NYC

Ten Best Cities to Be an Artist


Actually the full list has 50 (no Appleton didn't make it). But my adopted hometown, Long Beach, Calif. made #28.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Welcome!

I know we're going on eighth week, but I thought that it wasn't too late to start up a resource for all of us art majors to share ideas and information. Feel free to post to your heart's content!

In the mean time, enjoy this glamor shot of Rob


unabashedly yours,
Emma