Free Idea Factory

Infinite perfect copyability has always made it a challenge for photographers to make it in the fine art world, because the fine art world is about selling unique items, and a print (analog or digital it doesn’t matter–or at least it didn’t used to matter, this idea may give digital an advantage) is by its very nature one of potentially many.

I’ve seen various photographers adopt various strategies–the most common I see is signing and numbering a limited edition of prints. This is not a bad solution, but, it effectively limits the possible high end. A photographer makes an edition of x number at $x.xx per print and solves for a reasonable value after already recognizing that the value is being artificially reduced by a market that views “copies” as lessening a value. So a search for a sweetspot of pricing happens. The more I make the less each is worth, but, the beginning value is too low because even the theoretical possibility of more is enough to make the item less “rare”.

But what if an SD card were manufactured that were write-only, tamper-proof (well, that would show visible evidence of tampering if it were to occur), and would erase itself after one unlocking.

Now a photographer could offer for sale the SD card and its original contents. The images could be previewed on a digital frame or other device, but to make a copy of any image or all images would require activation of the key that would erase the contents after copying. The buyer would own his copy of the data, along with the ability to make more copies or prints as desired. It breaks the unique-object chain after the first buyer, so it doesn’t totally solve the problem, but it does give a buyer/collector something of far more value than a print of an image the photographer retains.

Excepted from an email from 2006 inviting collaborative help from someone who was not interested.

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Here’s what it is:

Mortimer J. Adler created this thing he calls the Synopticon, it’s basically the 102 “Great Ideas”. He contends that every idea there is can be situated cleanly within one of these 102, without there being a compelling need to add a 103rd.

Which is kind of neat, but the real meat (for this project) is this list of 102 ideas, because they’re all abstract nouns, or abstract concepts, anyway, which makes them ripe for interpretation, which to poets means making metaphors.

I’m hooked up with a great bunch of visual poets now (through a range of activitities) so I was thinking it would be a wicked cool, long term, project to put out a call for submissions, maybe monthly or bi-monthly, for work that fits the concept of idea N (where N is one of these 102 Great Ideas).

And work through them all.

So it’d end up with these galleries (102 total/only) of visual poets’ take on each of these concepts. Or visual artists. Or poets, too, it’d be an open type call, but the key determining factor in inclusion would be that the submission be a) good and b) that it fit the exact format restriction (I’m thinking along the lines of a 400×400 px .jpg or something like that–but, it could also be anything that can be dropped into Flash, I suppose–a movie even). I want them all to be exactly the same “frame” so that the design and upkeep can be simple, simple. I want to be able to review the submissions and just drop them in a directory and push a button or two and have them be up. Which is to say, I want to have one look, a shell of a design, that is the same for every idea/issue/call, so that there’s continuity throughout the time it takes to work through them all.

There will probably also be limited bio information too, as in: title, author, author email, author website URL, that kind of thing.

It’s really basically like making a themed monthly magazine that isn’t designed to run forever, it’s designed to run for exactly 102 issues. Period. Ever.

And submissions for any given issue will never really close (until some point a while beyond the last one) on any given issue–if a year from now someone wants to submit to the first issue, they could. And would even be encouraged to do so. It really circumvents a lot of traditional notions of publishing, which I like.

So what I’m looking for is a design that will scale to allow maybe as few as 2 and as many as, oh, gosh, maybe 50(??) pieces per issue, and have navigation that grows as the number of issues grows. I want to release the “great ideas” one at a time, over the course of 102 months or 102 bi-months, rather than list them all as forthcoming. So that aspect of the navigation will need to scale a bit too.

I think I want to call it “Respond” but I’m not sold on that 100%. I don’t want to call it Synopticon, I don’t think, but I may want to reference the history of it somewhere. Ideally, though, I’d want that information to be known as a kind of spoiler–if people want to know, I guess I have to say the ideas aren’t my own, but I don’t want people looking ahead to see what’s coming if I can avoid it. I want it to be a regular and ongoing process of prompt and response–because the whole Big Point is artists responding to these abstract
concepts–which is a) what artists are really good at and b) what other humans turn to artists FOR.

I’d need the design in advance of the first call for submissions, because I need to decide on what the exact file specifications are going to be, and I don’t want to compromise the design decisions by making up some random set of specs that have to be designed around. I have the ability (and I want to exercise this ability for ease of administration) to dictate file type and size in absolute uncompromising terms, but have no particular prior preference for any given size or aspect ratio or anything like that. I’m guessing a thumbnails and pop-up full-sized images is a workable concept, but if there’s some other schema that makes more sense I’m totally open to anything that looks good and is easy to admin once it’s built.

Does this sound like something you’d be interested in? What I’m proposing is that if you can design it and host it, I’ll do all the editorial and promotion work and the upkeep. Once the design and interface are in place, it should be a really low-impact project for us both, relatively speaking–a lot of bang for the effort-buck.

I genuinely believe this can be a hugely successful project. Like, cover story international coverage successful. It is calling vispo to do what it does best, and calling on all kinds of artists to give
people what people want from them–help in understanding these great abstract ideas. And the web is the perfect place for it. And the publishing innovation of every issue remaining open keeps it from
getting stale, and will allow momentum to grow in really exciting ways.

The Sticky Pickles

A laminated business-card sized piece that contains the convention city’s most common (basic) menu terms defined and translated into the major conventioneer languages. Terms like: vegetarian, beef, pork, chicken, etc. would help visitors navigate menus. Recently I was in Germany for two weeks, and when you travel on business you eat out for pretty much every meal. There were quite a few terms in each city I was in that kept appearing, and I would eventually learn them, over time, but having a cheat sheet would have helped a lot. There’s a core set of terms that every city shares, but then there’s also a specialized set of terms that’s unique to every city. Maybe one side of the card is general and one side is city-specific. Philly has cheesesteak lingo (wiz wit?), Scrapple, etc., Chicago has deep dish or thin crust, italian beef or combo (you want that wet?), Dusseldorf has Lieberkase which has neither liver nor cheese in it, even though it translates to livercheese, and the list goes on and on.

Cards could be printed in large numbers and sold by the convention centers, as well as by restaurants popular with conventioneers. Many shows it might even be profitable to have a booth at the show that sells the cards to attendees as well as exhibitors. Lots of potentional ways to bundle/package/market them. Heck it could even be a promo item for a company that offers translation services.

Standing waiting for a table at a restaurant recently and listening to the hostesses repeating the mantra “10 to 20 minutes” to everyone who walked in the door while watching servers enter orders into the restaurant’s POS system I realized those systems are not currently integrated at all. But there’s some huge scheduling benefits to integrating them.

When servers key in orders to the POS system they put in a table number. So the system could know not just what tables were “in use” but also where in the process each table is. Knowing where a table is (these people ordered appetizers, these people did not, these people have ordered dessert, these people just ordered a pitcher of beer, etc.) in their meal flow could make wait times far more accurate. And could also do a better job of ensuring there’s no double-seating or triple-seating of servers without an override.

Examine Your Addictions

The following will describe a portion of the current state of matters related to “previously published” within the poetry community, point out a profound flaw that is a contributing factor to a host of other problems, put forth a theory of how it happened, and suggest a simple and effective fix that could change the face of poetry publishing.

Today, the overwhelming majority of poetry publishers will not even consider for publication work which has been previously published. Why is this? I have spoken personally with many publishers and have heard a wide range of reasons, but they all generally fit into several identifiable categories of answer.

The first, and most compelling if you follow news of copyright law and litigation, is that the small publisher is at real (and increasing) risk of being destroyed by copyright litigation. Poetry publishers, by and large, lack the money to even apply for bankruptcy, so the prospect of defending themselves against any claim (valid or not) from someone in Big Publishing is unthinkable. The only possible defense available to most small presses would be to shrivel up and blow away.

Another is that the administrative cost (in time, effort, and actual monies) associated with securing reprint permissions is prohibitively high. Since most small presses are made up of, at most, a few people responsible for wearing a large number of hats (typically simultaneously) and may not keep regular business hours, this is certainly a valid concern.

There are also several variations on the theme of prestige/pride. If a publisher is going to invest the time and money to publish a poem, the publisher is justified in wanting to eat a fresh meal, and not get stuck with leftovers. Reprinting is seen as something somehow less than first printing. Despite the fact that being “widely anthologized” is seen as a good thing.

This all seems reasonable on the surface, and makes a certain kind of sense, in isolation. But by looking at what comes before (goals) and what comes after (unintended consequences) this middle point it becomes clear that “no previously published” is a less than ideal solution. It is, in fact, so badly suited to the realities of the situation that these suggested reasons begin to read like justifications after the fact of acceptance of the terminology. When people are hypnotized and told to do something silly, such as hop on one foot, and are then asked to explain why they did it they consistently fabricate similarly plausible reasons: “My foot itched” or “It just feels good” or “I do this all the time.”

The primary goal of a publisher of poetry does not need to be “avoid prosecution”, “spend your resources on reprint rights”, or “disqualify based on previous success.” The primary goal of a publisher of poetry needs be “to publish the best possible poetry.” The trouble here is how the problem has been defined. Small presses have mistakenly adopted terminology from, and subsequently the practices of, Big Publishing which simply do not apply.

There are exceptions, of course, but in broad general terms, Big Publishing buys–practically by default–”all rights”. Small Publishing, on the other hand, more often than not, buys “first time rights,” and after publication the remaining rights revert back to the author. This is the crucial distinction.

In a world where the rights holder for any given previously published piece is almost certainly Sony or AOL/Time-Warner or Microsoft Press (and aggressively enforced by their lawyers with the support of current copyright laws) a policy of “no previously published” makes total sense. It’s the prudent business decision to make in that world.

However, in a world where the rights holder for any given previously published piece is almost certainly the author themselves, “no previously published” ceases to make the same kind of sense. The ramifications of this ill-suited policy are subtle but far-reaching.

The flipside of the “no previously published” coin is “one shot, goodbye.” Poets recognize, when submitting, that this poem has only one shot at being published. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that if a poet only has one chance at having a poem published they’re going to tend towards submitting to the markets with the most perceived value. This is the upward/downward spiral of the blockbuster mentality which currently drives Hollywood and mainstream publishing, and runs counter to the notion of publishing the best possible poetry. As a trend, it tends towards publishing the most likely to succeed, which puts the emphasis on conservative sameness rather than on quality alone.

“No previously published” also results in an imbalance of submissions, such that publications like The New Yorker and Poetry are the only markets attractive to both new and established poets–because regardless of where you are on the ladder the motivational thrust of “one shot, goodbye” is away from reaching an ever wider range of markets, and towards consolidating into fewer and fewer markets. Instead of researching markets for a match of material to mission, poets will research as far as circulation numbers and stop there.

“No previously published” leads (logically) to “no simultaneous submissions” which ends up being untenable when you have writers submitting to publishers who are, after all, human and taking care in their reading of submissions, and thus have slow turnaround times. It is not uncommon, at all, to wait over a year for a reply from a publisher of poetry.

The sum total of these factors is an economy that is inherently conservative, rewards quantity more effectively than quality, and jerks good poems out of circulation faster than necessary.

A good poem should have the chance to be widely circulated–in fact, this can be one of several metrics for quality judgment. The more widely published a poem is, the more literary journals who’ve seen value in publishing it, the better it is.

Instead of asking “is it previously published?” we need to be asking “is it any good? what rights is the author able to offer?”

If the poem is good, AND the author owns the rights to have it printed again, all of the problems that have been argued as reasons for “no previously published” evaporate. There is no copyright being infringed, no additional resources need to be expended to secure rights, and the publisher has the pride of publishing the best possible poems, instead of settling for the best of whatever’s left after everyone else is done removing their slices from the pie.

An informal group of people based within any suitable specific geographical area who all agree to attend the same small arts event. There was a one-off event by some positive pranksters that got me started on this idea. The way the story goes, the group of improv actors attended an unknown band’s first-ever gig and packed the audience with (pretend) superfans. There was a mosh pit, they made band t-shirts, and no matter how the band played the crowd went wild. The band figured it out, early on, but said they didn’t care, it was the best night of their lives.

And I got to thinking about how there’s arts events in our area every Friday night that could stand to have a big crowd turn out to support them. Much of the time, the difference between a lame night and a great night is a half a dozen to a dozen people. I know this is the case anywhere in the world.

So the idea is have one person be The Decider, and have an email list of participants. Participants can suggest venues, certainly, but one person is The Decider (some groups may want the role of Decider to change in some fashion, maybe it’s required that everyone do it for a month, or, maybe if you make a suggestion that gets acted on you become the next decider, or whatever). Every Friday morning The Decider sends out the event details, and as many people on the list as are able to do so show up at the event. The crucial point is that the events chosen NOT be the big event, the popular thing, that the events chosen be events that are not likely to draw much (if any) crowd.

It commits a group of people to attending and supporting arts events in their area on a regular basis, and, it occasionally consolidates several small groupings into event-changing groupings, thus making for regularly successful art events. The world needs more of that.

The bARTer system would allow artists to exchange their art for products or services offered by individuals or businesses who are willing to barter for their goods or services. The web has faciliated many barter sites, this one would model itself on those, but limit itself to those able to offer art and those willing to accept art as barter.

Trade a painting for some plumbing work. Water plants for a week and be paid with a watercolor. You need a root canal…a dentist in your area needs a sculpture for her entryway, the bARTer system is here to help.

A lightweight (fall/spring) jacket with a pocket/pouch in the back big enough for a laptop and a couple of file folders. Easier to sling on than a backpack going over a jacket. Less bulky, but able to carry the essentials.