Wednesday, December 10, 2008

the incredible lightness of being

Yes let me set the record straight. I'm an artist on a number of fronts...one being computer, graphic image distortion, a kind of pop-art, poster art; I don't do vector art (yet) and have moved beyond xerox art which was an old passion. I also write and play music but you can read about that on other blogs...

I owe a lot to Blogger for providing me a place to get started with this genre- and it's also amazing that digital photography has made it possible for one to simply take pictures and waste no more than batteries, no powerful developing chemicals down the family sewer anymore. What a time to be alive! Businesses like Google may want to make money off of people like us (low-down free-blog-using image panhandlers) but they've been very generous so far and I've been able to 1) write volumes in hopes of becoming a better writer; 2) store photos that I've distorted, saturated and sharpened, 3) download & upload photos I've taken, taking up mbs of bandwidth, all free; and this is what, because someone thinks I'll click on a google ad? I might. But so far I've been taken with the opportunity to be part of the media in my free time. I'm a content producer...and I don't care if nobody notices me. It's just nice having an outlet...

As for pop art/poster art, I'll get it together. I plan to have a few exhibits- posted deliberately and prominently- in spaces that are genuinely and unequivocably mine. You see, I also owe a lot to SIUC- which provides most of my images too btw- by that I mean, it's the place where I see shapes, images, views, angles, and somebody, I'm sure, put in the gardens for just that purpose...but it also has given me a job, a place to go every day, and as part of that, web pages, a corner, a domain- all these old pages that nobody uses. I feel that as long as I'm using them for siuc- which I am, I'm helping them out. I'm here to help SIUC see itself from a different angle; hopefully a good one, but definitely a colorful one. It's a beautiful place, a garden; a paradise of its own.

But, back to the original problem, I got onto my own image uploading, and found out that I've only used 35 out of 1025 possible mb, or whatever. Plenty of space up there. Blogger obviously sets the terms, and does what it wants; simplifies the images because it wants to save space; doesn't let you organize what you put up there, because it wants to encourage you to sign up for Picasa and thereby draw you into its paid services. I've never signed up for Picasa simply because I don't want it immediately grabbing all the photos in my computer, which at any given time, any given computer, are both personal and work, two different kinds. I'm sure someone from Picasa will tell me, no problem, you simply organize after you have an account- but how can I know that from here? Since I find that to be hard to do on my present image host, I have to assume it's hard to do wherever one goes...

Signed up for Bubbleshare the other day because I like those moving carousels. But I never put anything on my account. This will either happen or it won't. It could be like one of those hundreds of accounts around there that I have but barely use & steadily recede into oblivion. Someday all the free providers in the world will band together and make "george washington slept here" pop art monuments in my name...

"I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money." -AW

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