Free Idea Factory

A while back I read this quote from web artist Dene Grigar:

My current topic of interest is ephemera..that is, I am fascinated with objects that are made in the moment without the goal of archiving or sustaining them in any way.

and have been ruminating on it off and on for a while; I’m really interested in this notion as well.

It ties into a lot of other things that interest me, in some very tantalizing ways.

The problem of perfect infinite copyability has made certain types of product a challenge to sell. Take music for example. I’m sure you’re are of the core meltdown going on in that industry due to the fact of perfect infinite copyability of digital music files. Prince did something very interesting, I thought–and it pissed off his label (which leads me to believe he’s onto something). He made a deal with a UK newspaper. They paid him millions of dollars to put a copy of his latest CD in every copy of a certain Sunday’s paper. What makes this lovely is it recognizes the fact that the CD itself isn’t what has value anymore, it’s the right to be the SEED, the first instance after which all the copies are made. OK, so there’s that.

Then there’s this issue of the problem of selling digital art in a gallery setting. What is being sold if there’s infinite perfect copyability? Here’s a fun response to that. There’s a guy who writes short stories. After he has one finished he destroys all drafts, prints out one copy, deletes the file, puts the one copy in a bottle and seals the bottle. He then sells them as art objects with a full explanation of the provenance of the object that indicates that the story enclosed is the One and Only copy in existence. To read it, you have to break the seal, and thus the object that indicates that the story enclosed is the One and Only copy in existence. To read it, you have to break the seal, and thus create another copy (in the readers mind) and the CHANCE for infinite copies to be made. The chain of provenance is broken. So as the purchaser of the art, you can EITHER possess the unique object, or, read the story, but not both.

William Gibson supposedly issued a short story on floppy that when the file was executed it scrolled the story by on a screen once, and once only, and then deleted itself from the floppy.

In a way, all performance art is ephemeral, and, it may also be true that all ephemeral art is performance art.

I do a lot of mail art. Mail art is wild. Anything is possible. No rules, anyone can play, what you get may be outstanding or total shite. Often I get back in the mail things that have taken something I sent and cut it up and re-worked it into something else. Talk about forcing you to lose your sense of ownership of your own art, wow. But, it also is a freeing thing, you send it out there, and let it go, and it lives its own life absolutely out of your control.

So, with all that backstory in mind, what that statement makes me think of is a digital installation in which nothing is archived. Every time you visit it’s different, and there’s NO way to see what came previously, and, no way to see what is happening right after your visit…no repeated refreshing, you have to wait a day, maybe. A lot of search engine art is dynamic enough, certainly. Jim Andrews’s dbcinema has a lot of the features I can imagine. Ideally, in my mind, it would be like a set of wind chimes that a visitor can brush with their hands to affect, and can maybe get a hint of the hand that brushed before them and a whisper of the hand after, but no more. I’ve seen the value of pi converted to a melody. What if viewers could modulate tempo of it in a way that was elastic, rubber bandy.

What’s that line–you can never step into the same river twice? Like that. Make the river, let people feel it on their calves. That’s a piece I’d love to be involved with making.

A magnetically mounted hood ornament with a wireless remote control. Inside the car is a button you can push. When the button is pushed, the hood ornament raises the middle finger salute. Should sell at least as well, or better, than the tow hitch testicles.

Been looking recently for a site that does what I want to do and am finding a few things that are close, but none that are spot-on what I think would be ideal for both artists and the business built to serve them.

The closest is ArtistShare.com, but they miss the mark on a couple of fronts. First, they’re expensive. Second, their model doesn’t incentive the artists to generate content for the site (what I mean is, the artist gets paid the same regardless of how much material they contribute to the “share” portion of the program–if they put up one photo a month they get paid the same as making a daily audio, video, and textual progress report). Third, they don’t allow for a monthly subscription option. But other than that, I like the general look/feel and functionality (horizontal timeline; allows for audio, video, image, and text content uploads; fan base communication tools).

I first heard about Kevin Kelly’s notion of “1,000 true fans” from Will Wheaton’s blog. Will, being a writer, makes a good point that the first obstacle to the idea that 1,000 fans x $100 per year = $100,000 in income is that he’s not sure he could even create $100 worth of material a year even if he had 1,000 true fans.

Would you pay $8.33 per month to follow a favorite artist’s progress from conception to completion? Over 12 months, that’d be $100. Using the “1,000 true fans” formula, that’d make for a pretty decent income for the artist.

Other “fan-funded” sites (do a web search on “fan funded” and you’ll find them all) seem to exist to help fund projects before the project is begun. You propose a project and if enough people are interested in seeing it completed to contribute, the project happens…but only after the fact of being fully funded. And then shares of the returns are disbursed among the “investors”. I’m talking NOT about pre-funding projects that don’t yet exist. I’m talking about documenting projects as they happen and providing a content-stream of sufficiently rich material that its worth subscribing to.

The monthly subscription angle would incentive participating artists to keep making new content available in the progress of the project, because subscribers would be able to unsubscribe, and resubscribe later, but only ever have access to the months they subscribed to, so it would be very much in their best interest to make each and every month loaded with content.

There could be zero up front cost for the artists (because they’re so heavily incentived to generate content), and the service could simply take a percentage (10%?) of the subscription fees as they’re paid.

If someone wants to code this puppy up, I’d be more than willing to beta test.

A new product idea: pre-packaged roadside shrine kits. Kit would include a cross, a set of large adhesive vinyl letters, slip-covers for easy photo insertion, a sheet of stick-on stock sympathy phrases (we miss you!, love you forever, party on!), a baggie of zip ties for easy lashing of trinkets to the cross, and a disposable camera for taking photos of the finished shrine.

There is a shortage of good writing with the limited vocabularies of early reading levels whose content is geared towards adults. Write stories and books for adults using only the vocabularies of early reading levels. Contact your local literacy council for the word lists. Donate your writings to literacy groups for their use.

An adjustable measuring spoon for coffee, such that once it’s dialed in to the desired setting, one scoop will do the job. Counting to five before I’ve had my coffee can be a challenge some mornings.

While having a bad putting weekend, I realized that I had so completely lost my touch that I would have really benefited from having putter with strike plate mounted to the blade that would register the amount of force being applied at impact with the ball. I couldn’t determine reliably for myself how hard I was hitting it. I didn’t know if I needed to blame (and thus adjust) the way I was hitting the ball, or if I needed to blame the greens for being wildly inconsistent in their speeds.

And golfers are famous for buying just about anything. I’d've bought one of these if it was there.

Websites and print publications that review books are uniformly about the new, always the new. In my readings I am continually surprised by books that are excellent today, that stand up to today, that are worth reading today and sharing with others, that weren’t ever reviewed when they came out and are thus somehow disqualified from being reviewed due to the fact that they’re no longer new. But if poetry (and by extension literature in general) is the news that stays new, then there should be a publication outlet that’s friendly to new discoveries of old news that’s still new. A blog devoted to reviews of not-recently-published books would be ideal.

A web-based anthology (so, a blog) that showcases the art of the mis-print. When the digital demons wriggle into files and play havoc, the results are often quite interesting. Two examples below (click to enlarge):

Construct lexan boxes of sufficient strength to withstand the detonation inside them of sufficient explosive force to blow apart a book. Coat the inside walls of the box with a clear adhesive. Place explosive charge and a book holy to some religious group inside the box. Make it go Boom. Repeat with additional boxes and other holy books. Let the final exhibit demonstrate that after violence is applied, all the holy words end up looking the same.