Talking at TIFF: What it Took to Prepare Our SoOnCon Talk

Ever wondered exactly what it takes to put together a 30 minute presentation?

Brad and I knew that the opportunity to speak at SoOnCon was something that is unlikely to happen again any time soon. We also knew that we had nothing to talk about. We had given a lightning talk at Toronto Mini Maker Faire just months earlier, and we haven’t really done any new projects since then. But we still really wanted to do something.

I was on the phone with Brad, pacing around my apartment, trying to throw ideas back and forth, but nothing was coming to mind. Our conversation wandered off on some bizarre tangent. Then we started complaining about how horrible artists are, and how terrible a lot of art projects are. That’s when a little light bulb clicked on in my brain.

I suggested, “why people hate art”.

We frequently have long conversations about this very topic whenever we get together, so generating material wont be a problem. We’ve experienced enough art-BS first-hand to burn through 30 minutes without having to prepare a thing! This talk would be little different than any of our normal meeting, with one little difference: instead of ranting to each other in private about how horrible the art world is, we will be ranting in public! Brad thought I might be on to something. He prepared the application form and sent it off. We received our acceptance notice the next day.

That meant that we had to get to work.
Continue reading Talking at TIFF: What it Took to Prepare Our SoOnCon Talk

Occupy Toronto

I would like to begin by saying that for the most part, I try to steer clear of politics here. I recognize that I am not a political analyst or policy expert; I’m just a guy who sees the world through a particular lens and wants our planet to be a better place. For this post, I will try to avoid taking a firm stance on either side, and just report on my brief experience of Occupy Toronto from the perspective of an outside observer; an observer arriving with just bits and pieces of information.

It was early Monday afternoon, and I had just finished a meeting and location inspection for my next art exhibition. The venue I had been checking out just happened to be a 5-minute walk away from St. James park. I couldn’t be that close to the action and not go see it first hand.

I had read several online new articles and blog posts about the event, and I was still a little confused. There were questions raised over the point of Occupy Toronto. Politics in Canada aren’t as corrupt as the American system, and income equality isn’t as bad as it is down South. The general consensus on the blogosphere was that Occupy Toronto is primarily a display of solidarity for our friends at Occupy Wall Street in New York. This is the world’s way of telling the citizens of America “It’s ok, we got your back; we’re in this together”.

I don’t know Toronto’s South-East end very well, so I wasn’t absolutely sure what I was looking for, but the police and media presence made it easy to locate the park from the street I was walking down. Vans from each major news broadcasting network were sitting outside the park, and pairs of police officers were patrolling the parks perimeter. A few of the officers had an expression of boredom on their faces, but most were just having friendly conversations with each other.

I entered the park and was met with a sea of tents.
Continue reading Occupy Toronto

Getting Ready for a Show

Every time I have a show, I talk about how I really need to build myself a “show kit”, a box with all the equipment that is necessary to put up a show and cover for when something inevitably goes horribly wrong. That way, in the future, rather than stressing out and running around last minute, throwing a bunch of tools together and hoping for the best, I can simply grab the box and go.

At this point you might be thinking, “Oh, so Kyle has finally made this box and is going to tell me about it!”
Nope!
Sorry.
I’m going to show you a video of me griping about not getting around to putting it together. Hopefully by talking about the show kit here, I will find the motivation to build the damn thing in the near future.

The DRM BOX: Rough Copy of the Promo Video.

This is the same rough copy of the promo video that I put together for the DRM BOX. Since we planned on showing this video during our SoOnCon presentation at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, I had to have this video done and ready to go.

This has been sitting around quietly on YouTube as an ‘unlisted video’, but it’s been two weeks now, why keep it locked up?

Enjoy!

My SoOnCon ReCap

Being given the chance to speak at SoOnCon is simply too good of an opportunity to pass up. Having that event take place at the TIFF Bell Lightbox makes the experience that much better.

The work that went in to getting ready for this talk will be the subject of another entry. This post is about the event itself.

I arrived an hour later than I had wanted to. I missed the first few talks. Alex Leitch had started by the time I entered the building, and I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ who barges in half way through and disrupts everyone. Instead, I sat down in the hallway and put together my slide show.

I went for an extremely simple black-background-with-white-text aesthetic, because most PowerPoint presentations suck, and I wanted to keep it as simple as I could. Plus, I was using Libre Office, so any fancy stuff I did was unlikely to turn out right after being converted to .ppt format. The slides were more of a reminder for Brad and I than fancy visuals for the audience. Our talk was a series of short stories, and each slide was a key phrase that reminded us of that story.

I sat through several lightning talks as I got my own presentation in order. I felt bad for working during someone else’s talk, but I knew I’d feel worse if my own talk failed due to lack of preparation. Just moments after finishing the slide show, a fortunate turn of events landed my way: the talk going on in Cinema 5, the room where Brad and I would be presenting, ended 10 minutes early. That meant we had time to copy files over to the presentation computer and do a tech demo, set the levels, get the sound working, and make sure there would be no hiccups along the way. I took care of all that stuff without any problems.

Finally, I could relax and just enjoy the presentations. I bounced from room to room, catching whatever seemed interesting. I hadn’t really slept the night before, so my exhaustion made it difficult to get as much out of the talks as I should have, but I still enjoyed much of what I saw.

Then, it was time for my talk.

Continue reading My SoOnCon ReCap

Tiff Talk Tomorrow

Note: This entry was written Thursday, September 29th, two days before the talk. I didn’t have a chance to edit and post the entry until the day after the talk.

I have a talk coming up at SoOnCon this Saturday. Brad and I will be standing on a stage in the Tiff Bell Lightbox giving a 30 minute presentation about the problems we see with the art world.

Continue reading Tiff Talk Tomorrow

What I’ve got going on: Blue-Chip Show, TEDx, SoOnCon

Last year at this time, I was frantically working to get “Take a Picture” finished in time for it’s big debut at Nuit Blanche. Brad and I were spending an average of 18 hours a day hand-etching circuit boards, inserting components, soldering, and assembling. Between the two of us, we made just over one thousand boards.

When I wasn’t building, I was typing. I tried to get in as many blog updates as I could. The idea was to plant some digital seeds by writing about the issues that Take a Picture was attempting to tackle. That way, I would be mentally prepared for the questions that would undoubtedly arise throughout the course of the evening. These posts would also serve as a landing pad for interested spectators. If people really like the project, we owe it to them to ensure that there is more content available for them to look up later. Never launch an idea or project without first building the infrastructure to support it. This way, on the off-chance that the idea made it big, I’d be prepared for it.

During the event itself, it was decided that we would not be participating in Nuit Blanche in 2011. It’s not because we had a bad experience or anything like that; we just missed seeing Nuit Blanche ourselves. We were stuck in front of our project the entire night, unable to see any other work. We didn’t want to become disconnected from the experience of participating in Nuit Blanche as art fans.

In the days that followed, the reviews were harsh; too many projects were artists responding to other artists, there was little for non-insiders to enjoy. I fear that if I spend all my time presenting art, I will lose that powerful and direct “This is what I want to see, damnit!” attitude and start producing empty fluff. I don’t want to produce empty art fluff, I want to keep on making cool stuff. I hope this doesn’t sound conceted or egotistical, but I like to make art that I would like to see. So this year the plan was to do nothing. I’d Sit back, relax, enjoy some free time leading up to Nuit Blanche, and hit the sites in ‘art spectator mode’, I’m not going to have to do anything.

That was the plan. The next several paragraphs deal with with why that isn’t going to happen.

Continue reading What I’ve got going on: Blue-Chip Show, TEDx, SoOnCon

Lots of big things on the horizon, and New Toy!

Sorry for the slow pace of things here lately. (It seems like I’ve been saying trhat a lot here lately…)

I’ve made some changes to my lifestyle, and as a result, I have a lot less free time than I used to. On top of that, I’ve had a lot of really big, exciting stuff come up, and I’ve been doing a lot more freelance work than usual. (Thats right, I paint, and I shoot photos and videos, I have lots of creative outlets, because every time I practice one, I get better at the others. Seems like I’ve been doing a lot of everything these days. Who knows, I just might record an album some day!

As a result of everything that has popped up, the blog suffers. I’m sorry, dear reader, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather be making cool stuff than writing about how I was wishing that I was making cool stuff.

The good news: I’m going to be doing some big things in the near future, so I’ll have some new experiences to write about!

One of the things I can tell you about now is that I’m spending a lot more time in public transit than I used to. Far too much time. For upwards of seven hours a week, I’m stuck on a bus. That’s a lot of wasted time. I don’t like wasting time. Fortunately for me, I’m travelling on off-peek hours, meaning I always get a seat. After a few weeks of this, I decided to bite the bullet, and spend money on something not directly art-related: a shiny new netbook.

Here’s a picture of the little guy. Ain’t she adorable?

So, I’m currently stuck on a bus, typing away, and being ever so thankful to asus for still putting matte screens in their netbooks. If this were one of the far more common glossy-screened laptops, the glare from the sun would make writting in my current situation impossible. But here I am, typing away, making use of what would otherwise be wasted time.

Now, I’d better get back to work.

Don’t Let Yourself Become Some Company’s Bitch

Google recently announced that it will be closing down 10 services that get little use. I don’t have a problem with that. Google is a company, they can do what they want. There are people, however, who rely on these services, and are about to have them swept out from under their feet. If you find yourself in that situation, or if you fear that something similar could happen to you one day, it is because you’ve allowed yourself to become some company’s bitch. Building your business on their platform is like building your house on someone else’s land: sure, it’s easier and cheaper, but you just never know when they will come by and force you to leave.

Control of social media seems to be concentrating into the hands of a small number of big players. Twitter, Facebook, Google plus one, etc.

I used to participate in a number of online message boards. But not so much any more. It’s not from a lack of interest on my part, but a lack of replies coming from everyone else as the number of active users dwindles.
Some message boards have closed down, while others have slowly faded away as the majority of users migrate towards facebook groups. I imagine convenience is a primary motivator here, as facebook represents a one-stop solution for email, texting, message-boarding, posting ideas, ranting, and sharing links. The old way involved navigating between multiple websites, each with a different layout or design to figure out and navigate. This does seem to take more mental energy. Facebook made it far easier to do all of these things, and do them all in one place.

I fear that people forget that with the increase in convenience comes a loss of control. When a page, or a group is created on one of these third party services, you are agreeing to play by their rules. They could shut down your group, or close ‘groups’ in general. The whole company could collapse, close, be sold off, and you’ve lost everything.

Continue reading Don’t Let Yourself Become Some Company’s Bitch

Laser Cut Wooden QR Code

Summers tend to by play time for me. It’s not about production, it’s about trying interesting new things and seeing what happens. Last summer, the result was a collection of invisible paintings.

This summer, it’s a whole bunch of different things. In the middle of it all, I decided to play with veneer and lasers (who doesn’t have that urge from time to time…)

This was the result:

A functional QR code made from light and dark inset wood. It works!

More details and info after the break.
Continue reading Laser Cut Wooden QR Code