popularity and perceived quality.

I've listened to the new Kanye West album, 808's and Heartbreaks, a couple of times now, and I actually enjoy it.  But it's a massive departure, and not one that will easily be accepted by existing fans.  That said, I think it will be interesting to watch how the album sells.

808's is for Kanye the equivalent of Common's Electric Circus: a huge step away from what he has done before, and a huge step away from what anyone who is considered a contemporary is doing.  But, there's something interesting to point out here; that the album preceeding Kanye's big departure (Graduation) has sold three times as many copies in a little over one year than Common's pre departure record (Like Water for Chocolate) did in it's first five.

The question is, how big will the effect of popularity be?  It's impossible to measure, because you can't compare quality, and the music industry is a far different beast now than it was then, but it's still sticking in the back of my mind.  Is Kanye popular enough that he can still sell an admittedly odd record to a notable portion of his massive audience?  Will people be more willing to give the record the multiple listens it may need?

Either way, the more popular someone is, generally the kinder the perception of their work.  It will be interesting to see how far one of the most popular artists currently making music can push the envelope before it all falls apart.

curation, projected identity, and value.

The internet has become a taste economy.

Most of my daily reads are very selected reportings that reflect a view point. Most of this isn't wholly original content, either - it's analysis, or opinion, of news stories, and other creative artifacts. The few items that I encounter that are wholly new creative work, are usually presented without context.

Blogging is about curation, more often than not. Curation is about, at it's core, the idea that some people have superior taste, or at least a greater ability to separate the boring from the not boring. Entire businesses are based on this idea, the blogging just takes it further, because there is no minimum level of 'class' needed to rate an item being selected. This is in opposition to the idea of, say, a gallery or museum, where value (perceived or otherwise) is set rather high.

Like most shifts related to the internet, this is based on the non-rival nature of digital information. A gallery has physical space, and therefore limits. While there are maximum amounts of traffic, or maximum space that a site can take, these limits aren't hard and fast, and are expanded relatively cheaply.

This is a large part of why internet culture is so interesting to me. With the lowered minimum judgment of value, culture incorporates a wider array of objects and ideas into the presiding taste. As well, taste is fractured deeper - I'd argue the larger amount of more specific sub-genres is in large part to the minimum number of interested parties per area being reduced. It's easy to have a community even if no one around you wants to be part of it.

Curation is an interest of mine for a lot of reasons, but foremost because it's a function of persona. Whether the identity of the writer, or the brand identity of the company, website, what have you, curation is an act of forging identity. Attracting readers, interested parties, a group of stakeholders is more or less clear validation of the curator, and therefore the person they have constructed.

In terms of understanding what someone means, and who they are, there are few better tools for analysis than an ever growing selection of what they find interesting, relevant, and worth sharing.

Projected identity, in terms of brands, people, and websites, is the most important differentiator available. Be aware of it.

yeah, the respected ones never lie.

I'm not going to read Keen's Cult of the Amateur. There are a lot of potential excuses I could use here, but the pertinent ones are that a) the basic premise is so wrong I can rarely make it through skimming an article covering the book, and b) I'm to busy to waste that time.

This comes up because two rather new pairs of jeans have been stained. not just like, regular use dirt stained, but (through different circumstances) the kind of stains that require effort. After struggling to get grease out (and potentially trashing the pants), I googled it. The experience was worth noting, because my normal pattern for searching for how-to's relates mostly to techy stuff. The most recent example of this was the attempt to get non-DRM ringtones to play on my Nokia 6300; it didn't go well.

Searching for stain removal tips was painless. I typed in grease stain, and clicked on the least spammy looking result. Quick, painless. The interface of the page was hideous, it wasn't supremely functional, but I got the advice I wanted. all sounds good to me.

I thought later, in the shower, how one of Keen's points (as far as I understand) is that the internet and it's ability to give equal access and weight to amateurs will result in a technocracy, where only the internet savvy will be able to find access to the good content. Well, looking for technology related stuff, people who are somewhere in-between in terms of tech savvy (I'm theory, not practice), need to parse dialogue they may not natively understand, and usually accept the need to dig through a lot of 'I know guy, MSFT suxx0rs' when trying to find drivers for an old scanner.

The internet is filled with information put forth by amateurs, and, unshockingly, the most accessible information in terms of content is usually the most accessible information in terms of accessibility.

The assumption that one needs to be tech savvy to get useful content via an internet connection has to come from someone who is either somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of the internet (such as my mother) or someone who forgets that anything needs a skill set to use it -- reading everything in the NYT as though it was gospel is just as stupid as reading everything online without suspicion -- and the assumption that less modern media are somehow easier to use forgets that the technology in play was not always invisible.

The cult of the amateur is another little thing in this society; at time we refer to it as democracy. Everyone gets an opinion, everyone has a RIGHT to that opinion, and each individual needs to decide for themselves. We go with the will of the crowd from time to time. What's enshrining old media as the high point in cultural representation is the exact thing that's presenting the internet as a better way.

If you're afraid that too many individual voices will drown out the 'respectable' ones, than the question is more about the power and validity of that assumed credible source, rather than an invading, more popular option.

accessibility versus disposability.

I was re-reading a few issues David Mack’s Kabuki the other day, and if you have ever seen anything he’s painted or drawn, you can understand why I had a moment that could be described as an immediate questioning of the definitions and limitations of the standard public definition of 'fine art'. It’s almost impossible for me to describe what reading an issue of Kabuki is like, except to say that it’s beautiful, engaging, and always feels to me like staring directly into innovation as a concept. The man tells stories in a way that seems completely new regardless if an issue or arc is read once or a dozen times. He mixes media, he shifts styles, and, from the one time I spoke to him at a Toronto comics convention, he does it without becoming arrogant, pretentious, or self-important in the least.

While those qualities alone would separate him from the ranks of ‘fine art’ in the eyes on many, many sarcastic people I know, I would assume he also has to deal with at least some level of ghetto-isation based on the vast amount of his work that is in the medium of comics. This raises questions. It can’t be said that any devaluation is an inherent part of created a reproducible work, because otherwise Starlight Over Rhone wouldn’t be considered fine art, as reproductions of it have been sold hundreds of thousands of times, on postcards, posters, prints, etc. This argument could be taken further (and, horrifyingly, I could reference Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art as Mechanical Reproduction) but I’d rather skip ahead to the current state of the artistic image, which is that anything that exists does so in a state of endless reproduction. Welcome to the digital world.

So, reproduction is out. Access into major galleries is circular reasoning at best (it’s not in the Tate because it’s not Art, which I can tell because it isn’t in the Tate), so the next thing to discuss is whether accessibility is a negative trait, and whether it is confused with disposability.

Kabuki (the last issue I bought) retails for $4.25 Canadian. Collections of past issues are readily available at any truly decent comic shop, and back issues are often still available for order. Kabuki is something that can be owned and enjoyed by anyone who reads it. There are original pages, and from what I can tell they can be purchased. The separation is that the reproduced option, the comic itself, is the intended form for consumption. This might be because Mack is a talented artist who just happens to love comics, it may be for specific benefits of the medium (such as being able to create complex and decipherable meanings while making beautiful static images), or it might both and many other things besides. However, this seems to be the point that people feel lets them argue that such a thing isn’t fine art.

I think this ties into the conflation of accessibility and disposability. I make the same mistake, and often drunkenly explain to people that any band who is loved universally has run out of meaningful things to say. This argument falls apart with the example of the Beatles, who were both insanely commercially successful, and unquestionably of artistic merit. Graphic art has different rules, however. Gallery art, where there is a single ‘true’ piece, fulfills needs of exclusivity and scarcity. There is only one Starlight Over Rhone, and everything else is a copy. The intended form of the painting is only the painting, reproductions are merely that. But a comic book is different. The original art is part of the process of creating the mass material. A comic is, more often than not, a universally accessible work of art, one that many can own, experience, and interpret. What confuses me is the assumption that because something is available and accessible, it must therefore be disposable. The assumption that because nearly anyone in North American society who cares to look can own an issue of Kabuki, it is somehow diminished in value, suggests that ‘fine art’ is not a concern of meaning, ability, or quality, but instead that meaning, like taste, is directly attached to having something others cannot. That ‘great’ artworks are those which only one person can own, attach to themselves as a statement of worth, and then loan to galleries in a gesture of generosity crossed with self-adoration.

I guess, at the end of it, I was re-reading issues of Kabuki, and I suddenly found it very depressing that David Mack’s work could be dismissed by anyone because of his choice of an accessible, available medium, with characteristics that no other has. I do, however, think that the commodification of visual art has lead to a situation where, beyond the confusion of comics as a genre, rather than a medium, there is brilliant work that melds both visual art and story seamlessly, which isn’t getting the recognition it deserves.

Then again, people are still complaining about Damien Hirst, so I suppose definitions of art are even tighter than the idea of exclusivity and scarcity.

[EDIT: David Mack's own thoughts are in the comment thread. Read them, and understand the intention of the artist rather than my own somewhat clumsy ramblings.]

explaining the last post.

1) Definition inherently involves limitation. If a definition crosses cultural or linguistic borders, there remains a limitation of possible meanings. (as in, blue will never equal yellow, if explained properly. Cultural gaps might make blue violet or indigo, but never yellow.)

2) The creating culture of a concept defines it. If that concept is introduced into another culture, that culture will only create an isotope of the original meaning, it will not create something related, but different entirely in explanation. (A culture only exposed to the western concept of time, before a separate one is developed, will not conceive of a meaning of time in which things do not move in a linear fashion, excepting insanely unlikely circumstances.)

3) If a concept is adopted from another culture, it has inherent limitations based on the limitations it brought from the culture that came with it. These may change over time, but they still limit possible meaning. (If up and down are introduced as opposing terms, they may take on different meanings in terms of intensity, but they will likely not become different levels of up. I am not including negative values, obviously.)

4) Just because subtext, and some bias, is lost in translations, in no way means that definition stops having inherent limitations. It just doesn't. This is excepting situations in which things are not explained properly, or not understood properly by either culture.

[Sorry, I just had an excruciating argument with Angus about the last post over msn. I'm sure he was just arguing because he disagreed, but it got beyond irritating. It is bothersome when bringing up fundamental concepts like time as a proof is responded to with a statement that those concepts are fundamental, and therefore different. He might be right, but goddamn is it irritating. The infuriating thing, however, is that Angus is smarter than me, at least most of the time.]