9 years of YouTubing!
Tag: blog
Moving Hosts
I’ve changed my website hosting company, because I’ve had some issues with my website’s former home.
This turned out to be a much bigger ordeal than I had expected.
When I first started my website, I had zero idea what I was doing, I just coded inside Gedit and kept everything inside a disorganized blob – an entire website with over 10,000 files, all contained within a single folder. Ugh…
When I upgraded from handed coded crap to WordPress, I made a few more bad decisions – I took some lazy shortcuts to save myself some trouble, which required a few creative work-arounds.
Over the years, more and more creative workarounds were introduced with every major change or update.
When I switched hosts, every single workaround broke, and the issues they were covering up reared all their ugly little heads.
What a mess.
With the help of a good friend, we were able to solve the problems…we think
I hope everything is working flawlessly, but if I missed anything, please let me know.
A Little Bitcoin Experiment.
Two weeks ago, Site 3 CoLaboratory held a little, informal bitcoin themes open house. Even though it’s likely too late to jump on the BitCoin Bandwagon to strike it rich, it’s still an interesting idea, and an interesting thing to play with, so I installed a BitCoin wallet
At around 4 in the morning, I created a little page, http://kyleclements.com/bitcoin.html.
All it contains is a single line of text, a number, and which is just that number in an easy, machine-readable form.
Send Kyle some BitCoins: 1Ns9ck9gr2BMrgThVNmF3uYGc5947cnuNt
I tweeted about it at 4:09, and by 6:34, I had receive my first transaction. Wow. The internet can be a surprizingly altruistic place sometimes.
Kyle Paints 2012: Pt. 3: Some Background Info on My Style
This body of work I’m going to be putting together might make more sense with an understanding of where it’s coming from, and how I got started working in this style.
Back in 2005, I was working a summer job as a landscaper; I knew that come September, I’d be starting my thesis year at art school, and I wanted to hit the ground running, rather than aimlessly wandering between styles and ideas. I laid out all these intricate plans, and mentally sketched out images that I would later paint.
At the time, I was making a lot of work that looked like this. While it doesn’t necessarily photograph all that well, the iridescent and metallic colours glimmer and shift like jewels, creating a very alluring effect. The challenge was integrating this technique into larger images an compositions, rather than the all-over textures I had been producing.
September arrived, and I started testing out my ideas; and every single one of them bombed horribly. Over the next four months, I produced nothing but garbage.
Continue reading Kyle Paints 2012: Pt. 3: Some Background Info on My Style
Kyle Paints 2012: Pt. 01 – Introduction
Over the next several months, I’m going to be putting together a body of work for my next big art show. Typically, whenever this happens, artists disconnect from the outside world and disappear into their cave for several months, only emerging once the work is complete – or the deadline has arrived (usually the latter).
For this body of work, I’m going to try something a little bit different. Rather than producing something in private, and only releasing the full finished series of work, along with a poorly written essay filled with confabulations, non-sequiturs and trendy art jargon to back it up, I’m going to pop up every week or so, pull back the curtain, and invite you into my studio. (virtual invitations only. Invitation does not extend to the physical world.) Discuss what I’ve been thinking about, explain how I see my work (note: what you get out of it may vary), I’ll talk about where I plan on taking it. But mainly, this series will be about my working process.
Sketches and Rough Notes
I’ve been working on a fairly large blogging project since last August.
The talk Brad and I gave at SoOnCon, “Why People Hate Art” was assisted by a mind map I had created in a program called Semantik. Since the talk, my mind has been exploding with ideas relating to that talk. As I was working on it this morning, I realized that I have over 9000 words in rough, point form notes. I really, really need to sit down and develop each of these points into a post here, but the way ideas are interconnecting, I want to do this this most comprehensive way possible.
The good news: a whole lot of content is being worked on
The bad news: it’s gonna take a long time…
Tiff Talk Teaser
I mentioned my SoOnCon talk in several earlier posts.
I’m currently in the process of editing the footage from the actual talk. The full presentation was 28:50, just shy of the 30 minute allotment we were given. My goal is to remove the dead space and redundancies without taking away from the actual content or tone of the presentation. I want to deliver the complete talk, while taking up as little of your time as possible.
Here is a little teaser to hopefully whet your appetite:
Wasting Time Online
I recently came to the realization that I was using the internet as a tool of procrastination far more than I was using it as a tool of production.
I have gotten myself into the nasty habit of coming home, having every intention of working on something, but first, I will do a quick check of some fun sites. I tell myself, “it’s not a big deal, I’ll only be spending 5 or 6 minutes doing this, then I will get to work.” Then I start loading up various social media and link-sharing websites. I quickly skim over the headlines, looking for something that sounds interesting. When I find something interesting (which I always do) I open it in a new tab. Then I keep reading, going down the page, looking for the next link to open up in the background. Then the next link. Usually by the end of all this, I have something in the range of 20 to 30 tabs open on my browser.
Now, I can’t get to work with all this interesting stuff loaded up in front of me. What if I find something interesting, or a new idea to get my work done faster? I’d better read these articles first, then I will get to work. The wordcount on these isn’t that high, how long can it take?
I start with the photos, since they take seconds a piece. Getting through a good 5-10 tabs feels good. Then I move on to blog posts that are written in accessible everyday language. They are usually fairly quick to read through. I end with the longer, more academic articles, which often stay open in the background for several days before I get around to reading them.
Occasionally I do come across a great new idea that merits taking down notes, but normally what I read is close enough to my existing body of knowledge that I can trust myself to remember it after a single reading. All this info will come in handy…someday…right?
When I have finished reading everything, my eyes drift to the corner of my computer screen towards the clock, and I am stunned by just how much time has gone by since I booted up my computer.
“I’ve wasted how much time on this stupid thing? Oh, man I need to stop doing this! From now on, no more….hmmm…I wonder if anything new has been posted on reddit”
Frank Schirrmacher might call me an informavore, someone who mindlessly consumes knowledge as a form of passive entertainment. Seth Godin might say that I’ve fallen into the trap of believing everything I do on my computer is work because the same physical device is used for work and play. I end up reading a ton of light-but ultimately pointless information because it feels like work, so I don’t realize just how unproductive I have become.
I knew this was something I had to change, so I installed a browser extension called ‘Stay Focused” (there is a similar tool available to FireFox users, but I’ve forgotten the name.) Stay Focused is a completely free extension for Chrome (and Chromium, which I use).
The Little Things
I had one of those weekends where everything lined up and I managed to get a lot of work done.
As an artist, making, showing and promoting art work often seem to dominate my attention.
Little things, like storage, supports, frames, lighting, and little studio improvements here-and-there often get overlooked.
Not this weekend.
A bunch of little things that had been on my “I’ll do it later” list are now sitting in my “done” pile. This is a good feeling. A really good feeling. Having a pile of cool new supports to try out gets me excited to start painting on them. Gonna be a good couple of weeks ahead.
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.