Shared Creation Projects

We speak here of writing, film and other media, but I’ve been taking a look at a blog that speaks about design. Design tends to sit about and when its good - we hardly notice it, when its great - we go “Way Cool”, and when its bad we tend to gripe. Yet despite the impact it has on us - how much do we actually think about design?

If you’re creative then design is important, it affects how people interact with your work and how they actually find your work. Design is something that is important.

So take some time to stop and think about design once in a while and use it check your own actions and creations.

Of course sitting and thinking isn’t as good as understanding - hence the Laws of Simplicity. This is an excellent blog and is a recommendable read. However once you start you realise that the latest entry is a little bit in the past. Fortunately this is more - once you’re done with the original Laws of Simplicity website move on to http://our.risd.edu/ This is where the story continues. RISD by the way is the Rhode Island School of Design - and the blog lives up to the name.

So next time you need a quick snippet of good reading and design go here.

There comes a point in many creative projects when everything seems to come to a halt. It is a totally languid time. We’ve hit it a few times in the making of Consumed and we’re in such a time at the moment. It seems to go a little like this.

When things take a long time it is impossible to keep everyone involved busy all the time, without being busy over aspects of life take over from the project you are involved. The habit of doing what you were doing is lost and so getting back into the zone of doing what you were doing.

So if a break occurs galvanizing everyone back to work can be hard. Its not a question of commitment, its a question of trying to make time to do something different. Remember once you stop doing something it stops being what you are doing and then becomes something to add onto your life.

In a sense I think it means this - manically working on something of a creative nature is great. Pausing is ok, but the longer you pause the harder it is get going again. Its like Newtons First Law of Motion - a creative project keeps running unless an external force is applied. The external force can be anything that causes a pause.

Pauses are the enemy. You have to keep moving.

So if you are embarking on a long and large endeavour make sure that you can keep people busy. That increases your chance of success.

This may leave you wondering where that leaves Consumed. Well we are in pause, but all the signs are that it will take off again. The plan is to hire a location that we now well for all exterior and some interior shots. Its all a matter of agreeing on dates to work to.

In the meantime we are in a lull a sort of creative conservation of energy, but one that is the calm before the storm.

Tags: Creative, Inertia, Consumed, Film

10 days ago I announced the Eggy Challenge, and now it is time to announce the results, but first a few discoveries I made along the way.

Last year we focused on amateur videos from You Tube. This year there were videos, but I had a look around You Tube and one year on it is dominated by commercial adverts. They look cool , but it is a sign of a times that viral marketing by the man is getting more prevalent on You Tube. Of course one search isn’t a trend - and everyone does love Cadbury Creme egg adverts but I hope the massive results of commercial work don’t make it harder for small producers to find their niches.

Here though are the video results. Despite what I’ve just said all from You Tube. I’ll just post the links here, and let you have surprise when you see what’s behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsCGWpQSwfQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCb_fNmSTA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl6ggWqpB1c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uDJK9NxwVg

Now it is time for photographs. No photos were send to me so I visited my favourite stomping ground for pictures - Flickr. What I found here were plenty of very documentary and representational pictures of Cadbury’s Creme eggs, and things didn’t get more interesting until I widened the search somewhat. It would seem that photographers don’t get quite so creative with the Great British pastime of creme egg abuse.

So here are the pictures. Again - I’ve avoided description so you’ll have to click to find out more

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonkimber/413757286/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/azredheadedbrat/392296378/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/-sel-/128179574/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsuler/449660891/

All that remains for me to do is to say have a wonderful Easter.

Tags: Cadbury, Creme, Egg, Easter, Video, Photograph

Time to mention a useful and free resource to all artists working in a digital medium. I am referring to the digital artists handbook. You can pick it up from:

http://www.digitalartistshandbook.org/

The objective of the handbook is to be a source of valuable content that bridges the gaps between arts and various platforms and resources. The handbook is built by inviting articles from artists and specialists who are given reign to talk about tools and methods of working.

This makes this not a one publication - but a growing, living and breathing arts project that could turn out to be a great boon to those wishing to work in the realm of digital art

Interestingly it focus on Open Source - in terms of both free software and open content - it wishes to facilitate collaboration and working together by using these structures to make it possible. that means we have to mention it - we share a common goal.

All this makes it a resource worth keeping an eye on. It is a grand project and it is brought to us by Folly whose first rate arts projects have been mentioned in Shared Creation before. Great news to see that they are keeping up with invaluable and useful projects.

They in this case are the people with money.

If you review the postings in Shared Creation Projects you will notice some links to Idealo at the end of a number of posts. These are advertisements bought by Idealo for their price comparison site. When I was approached by Idealo - I looked at their site and discovered that they helped provide the tools that Shared Creation readers need at a good price. It seemed like a good match and a deal was struck. For this I thank Idealo very much.

This has gotten me to think - what is the best way to gain advertisers?

It was in the end a bit of a no brainer, but before the answer - here’s some background.

You can go out and tell people how wonderful your site is (or will be) and take on the challenge of hard selling your wares; or you can take the other road - work on your content and let the advertisers come to you. The second approach emphasises the democracy of the web and is very much the legendary web approach. Best summed in the ‘Field of Dreams’ line - “if you build it they will come”. This has been the Shared Creation approach. Write, publish and let the web guide people to you.

The first approach is very much the modern business view. Make sure you can have an idea to reach an audience, get money and then build from there. It may make business sense to encourage the money first - but it is very hard to build from nothing. I’m not saying it doesn’t work - Flickr and YouTube were built on venture capital - on this approach; but unless you have a vast idea and a solid business background - it will probably not help all that much. I’ve met web entrepreneurs - trying this on a business to business approach - and having a hard time of it.

Of course the downside with content first and let your work do the talking is that it takes a bit of an ego, a bit of patience and the ability to finance what you are doing for a while. In a world of instant gratification these are not attributes taken as virtues. But they are the attributes of an artist; and Shared Creation is all about creatively expressing yourself.

So why was deciding between these a nobrainer? Because more sites have become legends from their content and not their backers. Because its the most effective approach for some one working on limited resources and because it makes content king. Content is everything, without it why would anyone come to you?

So whilst getting a big money backer and building a multimillion dollar site may make sense - just expressing yourself can achieve the same results - and all you have to do is what you love.

Isn’t that a no brainer?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Idealo, advertising, Field, Dreams, Create, Ego

Folly – a not for profit digital arts organisation based in Lancashire and

If you have any contemporary sound work take a look a the Folly website for details on how to join in with this project.

Part One: The concept of the Personal Portal

When Facebook recently opened it’s doors to everyone the inwards rush to grab and secure a place in it’s virtual world was nothing less than rapid. It shouldn’t be classed as surprising. Take a look at the number of accounts on Myspace and then also at the other networks - Flickr and Youtube instantly spring to mind. Also do not forget the long established social sites - never discount the good that locations such as absolutearts can do, plus of course the very many Web 2.0 variants. A look at the plethora of social services all say that people want to interact. We are after all social animals.

The fact that so many places exist to talk about ourselves and show off what we do means that we now live in a world where an awful lot of people have a virtual billboard that advertises themselves. Yes they are sold with the concept of contacting other people and showing of your own cool stuff in mind, but a primary effect of all these networks is to raise your visibility to anyone who wants to see it.

For most people this is straightforward. You want to chat or show films or pictures. You simply choose the site that best suits your needs and you work with it.

However if you find yourself spread over more than one creative project, or you find that you need to more that just say here I am - what do you do? Existing in multiple social networks can mean a veritable workload of messages. If you’re tight on time this can be a burden. What you need is a way of compressing these networks into one. What you need is a personal portal. A mashup that brings all of your online interactions together in the most convenient way possible.

I am therefore starting out on quest - it’s aim is simple to let me promote Shared Creation, publish photographs, publish artwork, and to move along the Consumed project by seeking assistance. This is a pretty tall order, especially as I am a very busy person. I’ve started by going to Facebook.com and creating a profile for myself and not my projects. The coming weeks will determine if that is the best move or not. You can see this profile at: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=603733091#

Once I am happy that the facebook profile does what I need it to to I will start examining what I can do with my current repositories - a myspace page, blog feeds and accounts with Flickr and Youtube.