I don’t have writers block, that doesn’t seem to be something I suffer from, but none the less.. It seems to be a challenge to bring blog entries to completion.. 

Latter:

Well I suppose some of my peeps seem to like my more random entries.. so maybe that is what this entry shall be.. I’m over tired as I write anyway…So.. I suppose why not return to the theme of the plot of the life of you’re truly? I mean what the hell, right?

My instinct is always to try and trust the natural processes of the psyche.. and if anything to just try and help facilitate those natural processes.. if you’re having an anxiety freak out.. well maybe that’s what you need to do, you know? That is maybe that’s one small part of a larger process.. I think a lot of times the way we look at our selves.. and our psychological realities.. we compartmentalize stuff.. put things in boxes.. we look at that box and say “this is a bad thing.” Sure.. its a bad thing.. but what is bad about it has more to do with the conceptual box we put it in then the thing its self!

So.. my advice is to try and see the larger order of things… lets not impose our will on our selves so much.. which is not quite to say I’m anti imposing will on thy self.. just that I want the wisdom to do it correctly.

My psychological reality.. subjective experience.. its as if I’m moving through a storm cloud.. and I can’t quite see properly or operate properly.. at least on some levels.

There are levels on which I seem to operate more or less perfectly no matter what. The are areas that are.. special areas.. I wont try to bother explaining why this is.. or how it all works.. cause it would take quite a long time to get through it all.. but these are areas that I’ve really dedicated myself.. sacrificed for..  gone to hell and back with.. and as we say in the cheesy hipster bizz.. these areas are “solid.”

Hmm… you know its as if there’s this huge part of myself that’s like.. damaged goods? Do you ever feel like that? Most people I know feel like that.. Is it what’s fucked up in our society.. the mistakes the generations that brought us up made? I have no idea.. all I can really tell you is that there’s a portion of my being that’s.. well, should never be put in charge of my destiny anyway, right?

When stress, pressure, and what not.. get going.. they can activate these damaged parts in ways that make them behave.. well lets say they make you behave like a none-fully integrated personality. Can you dig that?

So when I say I’m going through a storm.. in part what I’m saying.. the flight path of my life.. if I’m going to make it off that island I was talking about a blog entry or so back..  the part of this that has me worried is that.. in order for the things to work out.. I must depend on parts of me that are not totally 100% well integrated personality parts…. or it looks that way to me.. and that is really the basis of my fear… 

Now as I was saying before, there are parts of me that are “solid.” These solid parts of my being.. I’ve tried to cultivate to super hero status.. in part just to compensate for the other parts.. The dream I had, while cultivating them, was that they would help to carry me through the parts of my life when.. I would need those other parts in order to function..  let me give you an illustration of the theory.

The theory that goes into digression rathole

Say one day, you became a rock star. If you’re a rock star.. a lot of things are going to come easily for you.. that would not come easily for you if you were not a rock star. I mean.. you’re going to get laid.. by the pretty girls.. I mean if you’re into that sorta thing.. you don’t actually have to have a lot of social graces cause everyone wants to be your friend.. it’s ok if you’re no good at doing laundry…  umm… and blah blah blah..

Ok, so you think.. “yeah, ok.. but you know, being a rock star isn’t exactly a reasonable expectation for one to have about there life.” To this I would say “do you mean to say that that business about wishing upon stars is just a lot of hours shit?” Now listen, stop here for a second and contemplate what I’m trying to say to you.

1. If you wish upon a star, it apparently makes no difference where you are… blah blah blah.. you wish it, you dream it.. you put in the dedication, you can do anything.
2. Being a rock star isn’t not a realistic thing to wish on stars?

Do you get what I’m driving at? Is it wrong to dream too big? Is that a mistake? I mean to go and put everything you got into that one dream, and just go for it? I mean.. lets face it.. having a “back up” plan is not exactly how you climb the highest mountains! The highest mountains are climbed with “do or die.” 

Well maybe not, I don’t know.. haven’t actually seen any studies on the subject.. but it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? 

Ok.. so I don’t mean to suggest that I’m trying to be a rock star and if this doesn’t work out I’m going to go blow my head open.. I mean I’m not exactly shooting for rock star-hood.. .or, I don’t know.. maybe I am.. but the point is more like.. say you cultivate within your self… stuff that’s really aiming that high.. or maybe even higher then that.. 

I mean lets get serious here.. Matt has issues. Matt would not be happy being a rock star unless… he cast a shadow bigger then Beethoven..  another words.. my ultimate sin is probably dreaming to big… Hmm.. I smell a music cue in here.

Ok, that was pretty unnecessary, ha? 

So this big dreaming started at an early early age..  From what my mom told me before she passed away, I more or less came out of the womb this way. So you know, what are you going to do?

A few latter:

I’m too freaking tired to finish this line of thought..  So let me summaries where I was going with all this: 

The summary 

So we all have our strong sides and week sides.. and it makes sense to live in a way where you maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses..  There is a question of.. what is critical.. and if the strong sides are strong enough.. can they make your weaknesses less critical?

Sure.. that’s all groovy and all.. but what I wanted to get to was this sense of an transformation going on inside me.. which is a very crazy thing indeed…  Transformations have to do with.. shifts in energy flow.. shifts in psychology.. shift in.. what’s getting cultivated.. and as near as I can tell.. somethings going on in me that just might help me cope.

Any who..  I think I’ll post it at right here… I’m just too tired to finish this sucker up as I’d like.. and given that I probably wont be blogging as much as I’d like coming up.. well.. we should get down to business, right?

I have a few post on the drawing board, of course last weekend was Boston Podcamp 3 and much of the week since has been recovery mode.. as I only had about 5 hours or so sleep as a result.. it was an amazing time.. I should add, but more on that latter. In any event, that’s reason why I haven’t been posting as frequently.

In other news.. stress and anxieties are up.. but I’m dealing..

This weekend I’ll be going to a cookout at my sister’s school in.. well more western-ish Mass then here. Have I spoken much of her? My sister has saver mental retardation and autism.. her and I are both adopted… from different parents. She’s older.. When my my parents adopted her they were not informed of her handy caps.. and um.. well not an easy scene.. anyway.. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I’ve seen her.. my father and I haven’t visited since mom passed away.. so it’s really important that we do.

The week coming up is looking to be.. well another one where I’m likely to slump off on the blog.. have a friend flying in.. one who’s helping me with my promotional efforts.. and we’ll perhaps do a bit of that while she’s here.. and maybe have her help me straighten out my life a bit.. which leads back to the stress and anxiety issues…

The long and the short of the anxiety issues.. well its broader then anxiety.. but basically I haven’t been coping well since my mom passed away..  Most of which has to do with new responsibilities that I wasn’t really prepared for.. I must say it’s an interesting plot. Ever hear the voice of God? Something about a merger between the unconscious and the unfolding of life.. or something.. who knows what it really is.. but the feeling like something is speaking to you from “the other side” so to speak. It seems to speak to me about the unfolding plot of my life. If I were to listen / trust in it.. I’d tell you everything is groovy.. which is a part of why I never quite know how I’m doing.

I can feel it and taste it.. opportunities… the chance to take flight.. for the time being my existence feels a little as if it were taking place on an island that was slowly falling into the sea.. one that if I don’t find my way off.. disaster strikes.. at least with respect to my dependancies..  which makes it quite a transition.. But the way the plot seems to be unfolding.. it looks as if disaster will be diverted..  and really, this feeling of impending doom.. it’s not likely doom at all..  or the sense of doom is just a construct of where my head is at at the moment.. It’s as if we took the whole of reality and magnified a portion of it.. and other parts sorta reseed.. and this image we have.. we took as the actual thing.. which it is.. but, its actuality is other then it’s image..  

None of that should be to diminish the reality of imposing doom.. It is “a psychological reality” which makes it, at least in my book, no less real then material reality.. It speaks to the psychological transformations needed to make it all happen.. and if this transformation doesn’t happen.. well.. then you have disaster.

Anxiety, as near as I can tell, is the voice of those parts of me that.. are dragging there feet.. and the question, the fear, it’s what roll do they play in the unfolding of the whole. Could the derail it all? I wouldn’t put it past them..   

I don’t mean to paint such a bleak painting of things.. but its not a good strategy to avoid these things ether.. so what the hell.. and with that I post. 

I’m trying to work on communicating what I’m up to.. so I thought I’d try and fill in the artist statement section of my website. This is kind of a rough draft I guess, so I’m looking for feed back.

Matt’s Manifesto 

The arts, as I see it, are key to the health of culture and society. Big media influence on the collective consciousness of our times is at the root of what’s wrong with the world today. The solution to this is to develop new models for the business of art, media, and culture. There is a digital revolution, often referred to as “new media” or “social media” which to one extent or another addresses this problem. My podcast, The Asymmetric Biz Cult, talks about this and the deep systemic forces at play… along with how artist and media folks might engage with these forces, and how this could lead us collectively.. as well as the issues of our individual careers, to a new kind of world worth creating.

My arts project is one that tries to utilize this new existential relationship to the markets in order to facilitate a deeper more radical art. In my art and thought I am wrestling with the foundations of modernity and our collective shadow sides, and I try and throw light on where there might be cause for hope.

Central to my work is a exploration of consciousness and the depths of the human soul.. This journey takes us through Jungian psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, the world’s various religious traditions, history, politics, and business: We see everything in a radical new light, for so much of our understanding of all these things fails to appreciate the influence of what is often thought of as the irrational mind, and both our individual and collective unconscious.

Principle to to my art and thought is the idea that we must get beyond our inherited ideas on the nature of reality, to see what reality really is, and then build from there.

It is ultimately a journey towards wholeness and human potential.

So what do you think? Does it work, or not or I don’t what.. any thoughts? 

So I’ve been looking into 3D software. 3D software tends to be a little on the expensive side.. well for serious 3D.  The price range seems to be anywhere from $1K to $6K…. a lot of money. The result is people don’t usually buy this kind of software unless they are really serious about 3D. And not only is it expensive in terms of money, but its expensive in terms of the amount of time it takes to learn this stuff. Indeed, in some cases people don’t actually learn all the software.. they specialize in specific parts.

From my point of view, the question is “what’s right for me.” What do I want from a 3D package? This then gets weighed against price.. and my perception of my own price sensitivity.

Modo 

My quest started with a program that goes by Modo. You can read Franklin McMahon review of Modo here. I’ve been hearing lots of good things about Modo for a while now. From what I’ve been able to gather, Modo might be the best 3D modeler on the market today.

The trouble with Modo, though it got some more robust animation abilities as of it’s last update, it has no character animation abilities. It also has no abilities for particle systems or….

Shit, I really need to explain some of this techno mumbo jumbo, ha? Ok, 3D animation is made up of various constituent parts.. we could call them disciplines.. let me try and give you a broad brush stroke picture of this:

Modeling 

When you do modeling, you are create 3 dimensional objects. That’s about it, though depending on how you want to slice it, 3D modeling could include rigging…  by “rigging” I mean the process of turning a 3D model into a kind of virtual puppet. This involves a process by which you define how a model can be animated. 

Texture Mapping

Texture mapping would be the art of coloring your model.. make in shiny, transparent, this that or the other thing.

Animation

Animation would be the process by which we move stuff around / animate it. You know “breathing life into the model,” or perhaps.. you basically create the performance.

Digital Cinematography

Digital cinematography involves stuff like…  animating the camera.. figuring out them camera angles, the framing, etc. It also involves how you light your scene.

Special Effects

By special effects I’m talking about “particle systems,” and “physics engines.” We could roughly call these “algorithmic animation systems.” This is animation driven by number crunching.. where you basically manipulate parameters…  You use these to create smoke, water, fire, fog… all sorts of fun things.

Wether or not the industry use these terms as I’m using them… well that’s another question.. I really just want to give you a framework for conceptualizing what I’m talking about.. so… back to software: 

Back to Modo

So modo is super duper uber groovy on the modeling front..  but you can’t actually rig up your models for animation.. though that’s not to say you can’t do animation in Modo.. but if you want to do the sorts of animation that involves a lot of character rigging.. you’re going to have to export your models into a another program.. that has such abilities.

So.. I think I could be relatively happy with Modo.. but there’s a point where I might like the special effects tools and the character animation abilities..  so…  time to look for what else might be out there. Oh yes, and we should mention that Modo runs at $895.

Cinema 4D 

Here’s the best review of Cinema 4D I found. As product lines go, Cinema 4D is perhaps one of the more interesting: You have a basic core program, plus a number of add on modules. You can ether buy the core app, plus whatever module might look good to you.. or you can buy a higher end version of the core program.. which is basically the core program with a particular bundle of modules…. and you basically end up with 3 tears.  

Ok, lets run through the modules:

• Advanced Render: Judging from the stills on this page, Advanced Render is the bomb. Cinema 4D’s rendering engine, without Advanced Render, doesn’t impress me so much.. but with Advanced Render.. yeah, I’m impressed.
• MoGraph: MoGraph is your motion graphics tool.. it’s digable..  and I suppose, though I’m not sooo drawn to it, it’s something I’d want to get into.
• Mocca: What’s up with these names? Mocca is your hard core character animation stuff.
• Hair: I probably shouldn’t have to explain this but.. Hair is a set of tools for dealing…  mmhmm, you guessed it, hair!
• Thinking Particles: Yeah.. particle systems.. 
• Dynamics: My impression is we are talking about.. a sort of employment of physics engines on animation.. 

There’s other modules to the Cinema 4D system.. but these are really the ones that interest me… so now lets look at the bundles:

• Cinema 4D:  $895. This is just the core app.. so you got modeling, animation, texture mapping goodness.. but none of the above mentioned modules.. 
• Cinema 4D XL: $2195. We got the Advanced Render, Mocca, and the thinking particles (to say nothing of net render.. why do you have to pay extra for that?)
• Cinema 4D Studio: $3495. Studio has all the modules of XL, plus Dynamics and Hair.. to say nothing of a less limited net render (your seriously making me pay even more for this) sketch and toon.

Ok, so lets review this a little bit… Basically I have to go to XL if I want to do what I want to do.. and I can go up to Studio if I’m really serious.. But I mean.. if I’m going to drop $2K, why not go all the way to Maya? I mean its as if there are all these categories we are interested in.. and in order to actually have our bases covered… we gotta really invest..  *sigh*

Maya 

I have an irrational desire of Maya. Maya grew up on SGI machines. SGI machines were computers that would cost you $100,000 or more..  and then, even after that, you’d have to spend a whole lot of money for Maya.  But then one day they ported Maya to the personal computer.. and the Mac.. and dropped the price of the basic unit to $2,000. Something about all this.. has always given me a perception of value.. that somehow Maya is worth a whole lot more then that.  However.. the cost of upgrading Maya to a new version, a yearly tradition, tends to be about $1000.. which makes it.. well every time a new version of a tool in my library gets to the point where it needs an upgrade.. I have to choose which tool is going to get the upgrade. If you have one tool that’s costing you $1000… at a certain point, that tool is just not going to be getting upgraded.  So I mean.. that’s really the big problem with Maya.

So here’s a review of Maya.

Maya comes in two flavors: Complete and Unlimited.

Complete: As near as I can tell, complete offers all the basics you want really.. for modeling, animation, character animation…. soft and hard body dynamics, particle systems..  Unlimited: Adds Fluid Effects, cloth, hair, fur, “live” and the Nucleus Simulation Framework (as described in the above review). The above review used a test computer that is fairly equivalent to the Mac Pro I’ll be using… Nucleus is basically about having multiple physics / dynamic systems interacting with one another… or at least thats how I understand it.

You can see the full feature list here, along with how they break down between Complete and Unlimited. You can watch video demonstrations of features here.

Ok, so actual prices..  Complete: $2000 Unlimited: $7000

To evaluate what might be the right choice, we might like to look at what we plan to do with the software, what are budgets look like, and what our future plans might be, and general expectations.

Expectations 

Serious 3D graphics.. getting to a point of.. not mastery so much as proficiency.. you’re looking at about a 6 month learning curve. (this is some complex stuff) Now I’ve done a fair amount of 3D in past.. just not at this level, so I expect that my learning curve might not be quite so steep.. Indeed I imagine that I’ll be able to produce results in fairly short order.. though those results will in no way be representative of the full potential of this kind of software.

My plan is to start by “creating stuff.” Stuff, in this case, being: characters, worlds, objects, and.. well, just stuff. The idea being to create a library of stuff, which I can then draw from.. for creating work.

What type of work do I want to create? I suppose this would fall into a number of categories:

• Shorts, of a quality worthy of animation shows. 
• Elements.. from special effects, to characters, to worlds to composite stuff into… for video projects
• Elements to be a part of multi media projects.. wether we are talking Flash / web presence stuff, or if we are talking about print material.
• At some point, getting commercial work / a career in 3D might be nice.

Of budgets and realistic thinking

At the same time as I say all this.. we should be realistic and remember that 3D is likely to be but one part of a broader media mix. So if the learning curve takes 6 months.. and only half our time is dedicated to this software, it’s probably going to be a year before I get through it all.. and the chances are high that it won’t even get have my time and energy.  So on some level.. when you think about how this fits into a larger budget.. You have to ask: what are all the tools I need, across the full media mix, and how important is 3D in all of this, and then budget accordingly. 

With 3D, I think we are at least in part thinking long term. Another words.. it probably makes sense to start out in a small sandbox.. and then work out over time. This, of course.. brings us to the subject of upgrade paths. I suppose the trouble is.. I want to at least start with character animation as a part of the mix.. So we are really talking about spending at least $2000 to start with. Aww, but wait, there is still a software option we haven’t yet looked at! 

Lightwave  

My understanding is that Lightwave fits into the same league as this other software, and yet is the cheapest we’ve seen yet. As I say this.. the impression I get is that Lightwave might be a little in the dark ages at this point.. which is to say..  It may have many of the same features.. particularly as pertaining to what we want to do.. but perhaps these features aren’t as mature of well implemented.. If nothing else, Lightwave appears to be a bit of an underdog in the 3D arms race.  When you take a look at the Lightwave web site.. comparing it to the sites for Maya and Cinema 4D, it just looks junkie-er.

On the other hand.. take a look at this video, produced by Lightwave “enthusiasts.”  There’s some very impressive stuff in there.. that looks as serious as you’d likely want to get.

What’s more, there appears to be a special upgrade.. for those using particular programs.. of which After Effects is included.. which indeed is in my tool set. This upgrade costs under $500! The full version is just under $900.

So for much less then the cost of Maya or Cinema 4D XL, I could get both Lightwave and Modo!

Here’s a review of the latest version of Lightwave. 

A few latter:

What bothers me about the Lightwave site is.. mainly user interface design. Not that any of the sites are exactly ideal from this perspective but..  If you go to system requirements for a Mac you get “G4 or G5.” Umm..  Apple has been on Intel machines for something like a year and half or more. The power advantage the Intel’s have over G5s, never mind G4s, is crazy huge. When we are talking 3D graphics we are talking about some of the most demanding applications, in terms of power hunger. As a result, you expect 3D apps to take advantage of computer advances faster then any other sorta application.. So to have, what is supposidly a major 3D app, talk about these old system specs.. with no mention of Intels.. is… scary. Not that you wouldn’t like software that does well on old machines.. but without mention, you’re kinda going “can this even run on an intel?” What’s worse is I’m buying a computer with 8 processor cores.. which is something that most apps don’t take great advantage of.. but you expect 3D apps to take advantage of… so all this left a question mark.. let alone the question of if Lightwave would even run on the new Mac OS!

So there were lots of details that were important to my decision making process.. that the site didn’t address.. to address them I had to head over to the lightwave forums.. where I discovered that things were better then I feared. Still, this leaves questions in  your mind as far as how well they have there act together… over at New Tek.. Still.. after looking over much, I’m left with the impression that Lightwave is a very complete package. It clearly has many of the features you’d be spending $2K for elsewhere.. or in my case, 4 times what I’m likely to spend. Plus, of course, there is a plug in architecture that allows you to add to Lightwave… so there’s room for future growth.

Back to Evaluations: Pipelines

On of the items on my to do list was “get professional work.” So one of the questions you must ask is.. how does learning one program or another effect your marketability? As I understand it, this brings us to the question of “pipelines.”

Major studios, believe it or not, are notorious for not using “the latest greatest” tools. Why? Because they have bought into certain pipelines: You have lots and lots of people coordinated on a project.. For special effects.. there can be zillions of elements that need to be put together.. and to manage the coordination.. well that’s in large measure the job of the pipeline. New tools, it turns out, often break the pipes. Indeed even new tools that are simply upgrades of the old tools!

All of this adds to the advantages a guerrilla artist can have over big media… but what about when the guerrilla wants to in someway join big media? Well as clearly as I’ve been able to understand these things…. we basically have 3 industries in question: Video Games, Film, and Broadcast TV. Film and Video Games.. it would seem.. have Maya as the dominant app in there pipelines.. where as in Broadcast TV we see Cinema 4D.

Lightwave.. I seems to not be at the center of many of these pipelines..  Still, it should be said, many film makers take the view that it’s best to have artists working with the tools they know.. and try to make the pipeline accommodate this. 

What will Matt do?

I don’t know that I’m quite finished reading reviews or trying to get through my evaluation process.. But I have to tell you.. at least for the moment, it’s looking like Lightwave.

You ever have an arrogant moment? Maybe arrogant is the wrong word.. maybe its more of an ego thing? Or maybe it’s.. a recognition of your strengths. Perhaps its just my fighting with my own internal scripts: that which is programed into us in early youth. In any event.. I feel like I have something to say about social media.. a take on it, that’s a little more sophisticated, and perhaps a little more optimistic, then the conventional understanding of the subject.

My rational for the reason runs something like this: people have areas of interest which they are cultivating.. if you’re in social media as a result of profession.. the interests of the profession are defining your understanding. You are seeing it from the vantage point of those interests. The result, on a collective level, seems to be that conventional wisdom and understanding of social media is largely driven by those professions that are most engaged in social media. A further problem is.. it’s “a fish bowl.” This is to say that its really only a small part of the total population that is currently in the social media space.. which has an effect of lessoning diversity and increasing group think. I could go on, but lets leave it at this.

One of the first things to excite me about social media is: the forces that define how information propagates through social media space, is different from how information propagates through mass media space. Information in this sense could mean anything from beliefs, ideas, data, information in the usual sense, or association complexes. Perhaps it could mean other things to.

For this I’m given to thinking about psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis there is the question of the channels thoughts have to travel before they dawn on the conscious mind. These channels have a lot to do, to put it mildly, with what thoughts are in your head (as well as there shape and form). These channels shape consciousness. The question of how information propagates through mass media versus social media.. has huge ramifications on our consciousness.. on how we think.. on our very concept of reality.

This could then lead into a very deep conversation…. about how this will change the world on a systemic level. But what I want to get to first is.. the level on which what the disruption asks of us, is different then what the world we grew up in asks of us. That to best take advantage of this emerging new world.. we need a new mode of being.

It starts, I believe, with the notion of push and pull media. Push media is what is pushed on you, pull media is what you pull towards you. In social media the world is much broader then the world of mass media.. there is of course the question of “how do we find the good stuff.”

Perhaps a good metaphor is if you go to Barns and Noble, or a really big library. There’s so many books there.. what do you want to read? In an unfragmented market place in the mass media world.. lets say old school TV with 3 main networks and UHF, there wasn’t much choice.. this is the world we were all brought up on. What we were all exposed to was content that needed to have “a mass appeal” in order to be commercially viable.. which had the effect of homogenizing the content. (we are talking about the roll of “market morality” in how information propagates) 

Well the point I want to get to is that we are used to a world were we are all spoon fed information. In school, what we study is what our teachers tell us is important to study, what music we listen to is what the radio stations play.. etc, etc, etc..  Which is not say we are satisfied, which is not say we don’t go off the reservation to some sort of strange content.. or that we don’t have personal taste in this.. The point is it’s a very different landscape from one where you go “I’m interested in X, let me go find out about X.” My point being that what is motivating you is more external then internal.

This can lead us to another problem: the extroversion of western society. I suppose you think it’s ok to be an extrovert? Ok, I’m not going to argue with that, but I do want to take you into a 101 of psychology types.. and how this plays into our subject.

We each spend half our lives getting to know the world outside of our selves, and the other half getting to know the world within. Each of us, to one extent or another, tends to be more orientated to one or the other areas.. Someone more orientated to the inner world.. that’s an introvert..  more orientated to the outer world.. that’s an extrovert.

From a Jungian perspective.. the psychology of the extrovert can be understood via Freud’s psychoanalysis, the psychology of an introvert can be understood by Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology.

Basically, what this resolves down to is the the underlying drama of introverted psychology has to do with power dynamics, where as the underlying drama of extroverted psychology has to do with the dynamics of the pleasure principle.

Ok.. so again we are in some very deep waters. We can’t fully explore these waters here.. but I should advise you against prejudice: We are speaking about technical terminology that often has specific meanings that are different from how the terms sounds on the surface.. Ok, I’ll leave it at that.

So there’s specific psychological ramifications to your orientations with regards to external and internal worlds. Western society, being more orientated to the out world, to the material world..  

Ok, lets lighten things up a bit, how about a music video that exemplifies this notion:

Yeah.. I didn’t like this song or video too much back in the day.. so how about an introvert’s counterpoint?

Now, (not to overly put down extroversion) do you note the superiority of what the introvert is saying, with respect to social media? We are rebelling a bit from “what we are supposed to be doing” and being driven more via our own internal needs, so to speak.

This will have to be explored more in future blog entries.. But.. the material world of business.. is driven by metrics.. Metrics, or “the numbers,” have everything to do with how business operates. The trouble with numbers is.. the question of what is difficult to quantize…. what is difficult to understand in terms of numbers: This then effects the channels by which information comes to the consciousness of business.. (seems like we have a repeating theme on our hands).

The point here is.. there are certain problems with the consciousness of business. Business’s consciousness has certain prejudices… which have now evolved so far as to be a modern “thou shalts.” You could say it is our highest idea of God, getting in the way of an actual experience of God. As Jung would say “religion is a defense against religious experience.” These prejudices have, in no small measure, become our prejudices. And my brothers and sisters, all this lays in the foundation of our concept of reality.

This prejudice, this reality concept, this consciousness, effects how we react to our own internal being. It defines what we think of as good and bad. It defines what kind of human beings we evolve into, and it defines much of how we raise our children. 

Ok.. boy could I say a lot of things here!

There’s so many tangental themes swarming around our main driving thrust.. that is this blog entries narrative… that I just want to take a moment to speak of it: The swarming themes have there own narrative.. which is evolving in what you could call a subliminal way: I am speaking to you on multiple levels.. the other narratives being something like “self evolving.” Ok, enough said.

So… the matrix is about going beyond our inherited notions of reality.. we are speaking about our discontents..  we are speaking about the entropy in our metrics.. the problem of the channels.. we are speaking about something that is difficult to put a name to.. to articulate..  something beneath realities surface. It is something that modernity devalues.. and yet it still exerts an influence over us.

It’s important to understand this influence.. I hate going into this because its such a long story, but basically: those areas which we do not cultivate.. behave like children.. have an immaturity to them.. that is produced as a result of our reality concept.. There immaturity, as we pear inward at our selves, and judge them from the stand point of our reality concept, reinforces our reality concept: Hey, this part of me.. that doesn’t want to go to work today… it’s an immature childish response to the demands of life…. and if I were to stay home, what would it then do to my career? 

Ahh… but what would really happen? Sure, your world will probably fall apart, but what happens after that? What would happen if that part of you that wanted to stay home grew up and matured into an adult form? What would happen if you lived your life “the way you wanted to live your life” as a posed to how you were supposed to?

Well.. you would surely escape from the Matrix, that much is certain. What would drive your forward evolution would be your own internal will.. You would cultivate, not just certain parts of your beings potential, but the whole of it.. perhaps not as finely as you could a specialized part.. but you would, indeed, have a very different conception of reality.

Well this isn’t really the point I want to drive to, more to say something about the mystery beyond where we are standing today, and to point out some of the forces at work in us. That this force is present.. that it exerts a roll… must be thought of.

I suppose it’s worth saying.. that if what is needed, as a result of the force of the disruption, is different then the world we came from.. that there is need to cultivate some of this other stuff. That there is this need, will.. like supply and demand in the market place, cause this cultivation to happen. So what I’m saying is the disruption cause this kind of transformation.

I’m not sure how well I’ve made the case.. but at least its food for thought… and good enough for one blog entry.

So this seems a common thread to this blog; a part of my evolving story. My hope is that this blog will eventually be of value to it’s readers, but for now my mind seems stuck in the “what the hell am I gonna do mode,” and so here we are:

When my mom passed away I was instructed to write “deceased” on any credit card bills there were in only her name, and send them back. What would happen after that was a mystery. None of the folks providing council seemed to know too much about this. I guess the deal is, I’m not responsible for that, the estate is. Um, what estate? If there was nothing left, I wouldn’t be responsible, but it would seem I’m managing the money for myself and my father.. money that was a part of my mom’s assets, and indeed we are still living in this house! So today I found out about this new responsibility, and from there added up the credit card debt.

The the total household credit card debt comes to around $ 25.7K and counting. Interest is still accruing, which has me questioning the wisdom of sending bills back with “deceased” on them.

It doesn’t seem too terribly wise to put out my financial situation on a blog, so I’ll simply speak in generalities from here on in.

From the CD to be cashed, my feeling is that I should take out the amount for the credit debt, plus about 35K to live on, and putting all that into the checking. Whatever I think is going to be my tool budget, put that into a 6 month CD, or something like that, and whatever is left after that, put in for a year.

All this said, we still don’t know how much it costs to live.. or how long I’ll be able to do my thing, without needing employment to stay afloat. If I’m able to get work here and there, which looks likely, that’ll certainly help a good deal.

On the happy side (sort of), we are paying a substantial amount of taxes to our local town. What’s happy about that? Well it’s based off a 2007 estimate of the value of the house and land. Of course real estate values aren’t what they were in 2007, but it still suggests there’s more equity in this house that could be drawn from, should it come to that.  

So this is the gamble I’m making with my projects. Will they work, or will I just piss away money?

I suppose the plan works something like this: Stay in this house for as long as I can continue to take care of my father.  Along with this, do whatever it takes so assets are safe from.. well nursing homes, and what not. What I’d possibly like to do is move some place thats closer to the city..  Get a place with an eye to “this is your live in studio.” The idea of a live in studio being in a trailer park some place, if it allowed me to continue to focus on my work, doesn’t really sound so bad.. such is the depths of my art habit / commitment to seeing my insanity through.

If in the future I want to raise a family, then questions like “what is the quality of the education system in the area I’m living in” is probably something I’d be concerned with, where as at present it’s not something I care so much about. Further, if I was to raise a family, I’d surely need a bigger place then at current. To take this even further, I would at least hope that to one extent or another, my gambles will eventually pay off.. meaning that in the future I would have more means then I have now. At the moment, the real goal is probably to create a situation where in the economic necessities of life, lets say including the cost of tools, where such that I would still be able to give the maximum amount of time and energy to my obsessions.

So what could be smart to do is to sell the house and invest the money. Could that investment be enough to pay both my basic living expenses, and tool upgrade expenses? I think, even if I did take the trailer park route, unless it was a trailer park in India, the answer is probably no.

So, should I consider moving to India? (don’t they have better broad band then us?): It’s an interesting question. I mean, why not think globally? If we were to think globally, what would be the criteria?

1. Though the developing world is probably cheaper to live in, there is the problem that a countries GDP is related to, not only the cost of living, but also the dangers of war. If that were not enough, there’s various laws surrounding the export of technology. 
2. I speak English. 
3. I’m attached to the Boston social media scene. Where ever I would move to, they need to have something going on in this department.
4. If music is an important part of my media mix, the music scene is important.
5. The art mix is important.
6. The intellectual climate is important.

So wait a minute, you probably think I’m insane for contemplating this stuff! Allow me to respond. #1 It’s never bad to contemplate whatever, it helps to enlarge your view, wether or not you’re crazy enough to go and do “the whatever” you’re contemplating. #2 If what I’m focused on is internet based, if the main of how I would go about business is via the internet.. wether we are talking about marketing, communications, distribution, or whatever.. it really doesn’t matter where I live… or where I live has no baring on my ability to compete in the global arena. 

So lets look at reasons why going off this deep end might not be necessary, even if we do feel the need to go to extremes for our obsessions: For starters, there’s always the chance that I could actually make money from my projects! The principle of maximizing the minimizing of the economic impact on my ability to continue to focus on this stuff is a good principle. It seems like the more I’m able to focus, and the longer I’m able to focus, the better my chances for success. 

There’s also this intangible feeling I have inside: I feel like things are going to work out for me. However humble my current position in the world might be, I feel as if the brightness of my future could be nuclear. If not nuclear, then at least good enough to live off of! 

While I want to make these projects my central focus, the pursuit of these projects would help my value in the job market. 

So I don’t know, what do you think? I’m crazy, right? 

I suppose this blog entry is just me trying to work out where I should go from here: Career and Business.  Don’t know if you’ll get much from it, but it surely is a part of my unfolding story.

I think, basically, where I want to go career wise is as follows:  In marketing you have this range where marketers often fall: on the one side you have graphic designers and on the other you have analytic marketing folks, though this might be overstating the matter, this is at least an understanding I have.

Given the disruptive force of social media, and the nature of the space, I see an evolution coming:  My skill sets are such that I can do design as well as media arts.. everything form interactive, music, video, animation, and whatever.  This plus being obsessed with social media, I would imagine, might position me well for our little disruption’s out come.  So everything I ought to do ought to be focused around this kind of direction.

As I see it, there are probably multiple paths through this wilderness:  One path is to work on my social media presence and actually make it good.  Adjacent to this effort is an effort to use this social media presence as a means of getting the word out / promoting my art and music.  I have that plan, its just a matter of executing.  

Another path through the wilderness is to help other people in the social media space with similar activities.  Can I help bloggers and podcaster’s think about there strategy?  Perhaps I could help them with a little design work, or little of this that or the other thing:  The advantage of this path is that it involves networking and developing good relationships with other people in this space.  Networking with people who have a social media presence, and helping them to be successful, is probably a bitch’n way to help me get where I need to go…  

Another things is, if you have a promotional campaign you’re working on.. having these kinds of relationships are going to help..  If an employer is looking for someone to fill the sort of job I’m targeting, a part of that job will be influencer outreach, which involves developing relationships with influencers in this space.. and having gone on the project of helping people in the space, I will both already have some of those relationships, and I’ll be better prepared for the influencer out reach.  The final advantage of such a course is it’s just good karma.

The next big question is, given my financial situation, how much time do I have before I NEED to have a job?  This isn’t entirely clear to me at this point.. but depending on how much or little I invest in my studio, I ought to have a good deal of time before disaster strikes…  And with any luck I ought to be able to get some work prior to such disaster..  so as to extend the runway a little bit.

So… what might I look to put in my studio moving forward? Where might I like to go?

My preference is to, in all things, develop strategies that work on the cheap.  It’s all about getting the most bang for your buck..  Plus I’m very interested in a guerrilla approach to all this.  And after all, this would be an approach most applicable to other people trying to use social media for there strategy.. which is to say independent artists / content creators of all stripes, and general social media folks.

All that said, I do want to be a step apart..  I’m all for embracing a Do It Your Self aesthetic, but I also want to be a pro in all these areas.  So it’s a question of specializing in how to get pro results on the cheap.

I’m still a little skittish about spending a lot of money, but lets look at a possible budget.  This will be a rough drafted version, a kind of brain storming effort where the results are a lot more then you’d like to spend, so I imagine I should pull back from this a bit but.

I’m thinking lighting rig for video, along with microphones, something for chroma key.. including some software.. and a camera thats good for that.  Maybe a DSLR to.

Latter that night:

I think the best thing to do is just play with these ideas and let them roll over in my head.  The budget stuff that is.  Other then the computer, and to get some sound stuff going on it, there’s not really that much that’s real pressing to get on top of at this point.

A Project Already In the Making: 

Several years ago I bought a Mini DV camcorder.  It was one of the first to cost less then $700.   I’m not totally sure when this was exactly, but at the time I had a computer to do a little video work on.  Trouble was that I never really had enough disk space to really work, and never the money for the drives, not to mention that hard drives were a lot more expensive in those days.

The plan was to take the camera around with me and shoot stuff.. shoot my life.  Shoot whatever…  and then eventually turn it into something.  I now have a library of video shot over several years.  The project is.. to turn that into something.

Beyond the new computer, what I need to do is invest in some drives.

Here’s the basic plan for the project:  Go through tapes and digitize stuff.  I even have tapes going all the way back to college.. raw footage shot for who knows what end or purpose.  The plan would be to go through this old tape and start editing stuff into stuff.  Mainly just little sequences.

These sequences get exported and scored.  Or.. brought into the DAW and played with.

What I want is a process that allows me to play with stuff over time.  A process where you’re basically mining the old footage.  Trying to create strong sequences.  But the work it’s self… it could be about sound, it could be about what’s going on in the video, it could be about anything. 

Next day sometime:

As I let my ideas roll around my head I start to think my way through to possible ways to get what I want for less.

One idea I have is called “the punk rock approach.”  By punk rock I mean you’re not really doing things “the right way.”  My gut instinct, on a certain level, is instead of buying an expensive lighting rig, expensive camera, chorma screen system.. is to just go ahead and get an uber cheap camera.  The trouble, of course, is you can’t do good keying on the uber cheap camera.  This having something to do with technical issues surround how camcorders work.  All this said, After Effects, which is probably going into my tool kit anyway, has animated masking tools that might allow me to compensate for not being able to do proper keys.  

How good is this compensation?  This is a question to be explored, but there’s no reason why I can’t take the time to explore prior to making a larger investment.

The trick to getting good results with bad cameras is generally “good lighting.”  Indeed, lighting is a huge part of how you go about getting good production values, and how you develop an aesthetic.  In the biz we call it “painting with light.”

There is arguably a hell of a lot that goes into a “cinematic conception:”  Where you put your camera, how you light the scene, all this sorta thing.  This is an area I should jump into, as far as I can, on as low a budget as is possible.

A feeling I have is.. you create a home studio / portable rig system.. In my case on the cheap..  Something that’s enough to get you starting to explore this stuff.  In the social media context you don’t really need a convention idea of production values in the same way you do for TV and Film.  As a general rule of thumb, one can get away with doing this stuff on the cheap.  Then, if you get a client, and that client has a budget, you can rent the more expensive gear for as long as it takes to do the shooting.  At this point you are in a better position to take advantage of what that sort of route has to offer, plus you’re saving money.

Ok, this is probable enough for now.

This seems sorta narcissistic, but it seems worth talking about.  So as you no doubt know, I’ve recently started a blog.  Ages and ages ago I had a blog.  This was what I like to call “a real blog” which is like.. well I’m not sure.. but one hosted on a server I was paying for.  And that blog got crazy traffic.  I don’t know why it got crazy human traffic, I think a lot of it was spam or something.. but it eventually got to something like 30,000 visits a day.. at about that time the host pulled the script behind the blog, and so then I had no blog.

So now I’m starting a new blog.. which is supposed to be mostly a podcast, but i seem to be doing a lot of blogging.  You’re supposed to try and blog daily if you want to get to some place of influence.. and I’m sorta finding that groove..  Though I should tell you that I blog a lot that I don’t post, or at least haven’t posted yet.  The result being that I’m writing constantly.  The good news is that this makes me better at writing..  And I surely need to get better at it if I’m going to make a blog worth your time to read!

So lets talk stats a little:  Stats for blogs are different then stats for other types of sites.. or at least you want to read them with a different eye.  The reason being that people’s “behavior” is different around them.  Hmm, that’s a somewhat complex topic.  See traditionally web strategy involves metrics.. well all business strategy really.  Metrics allow you to measure  your success.. and a lot of business, if you study business, is about trying to quantify things.  But what about that which is not easily quantifiable?  Indeed there’s a certain metaphysics to stats, you might say, which is to say “that which you measure you get more of..”  just cause you’re measuring it.. and using it as the measure of success..  There for, before you start measuring.. you ought to have some sense of what your values are, what your goals are, what’s your big picture objectives. 

Anyway… behavior is a generally difficult thing analyze, or its a new thing.. but lets not get into that.. 

My objectives and strategy is both complex and always in flux.  Right now my life is one of.. well I have a heavy weight over my head in the form of financial problems.. and I need to find a way out of it.  I figure blogging / podcasting / social media.. might help along this path, but I’m not really sure how.

Did you catch that last part?  ”I’m not really sure how.”  This is one of the things I LOVE about social media and technology.  We are somehow closer to mystery then in other fields.  There’s an important question that I think business should be looking at which is “how do you manage mystery.”  This is perhaps a way of saying how do you measure the unquantifiable..  which is like..  well a strange question to ask.  What sort of answer are you looking for anyway?  But my point is…  sometimes all this obsession with ROI (return on investment) and all this, seems a little crazy to me. Crazy because what you get back from this stuff is not all in the form of monetization.

Now when you hear me tell you that you might think I’m some new breed of technocratic hippie..  but.. if you really think about it “what’s your measure of success.”  I’m not against money, but what do you want your money for?  If you’re getting back from what you give.. there’s lots of things that could contribute towards ideas of success that are other then monetary.  Can you dig that?  You’re not going to accuse me of being a communist are ya?

Ok.. so my status. One interesting stat is that 27.7 percent of my visitors have added me to there favorites.  This is sorta mind blowing to me as I tend to assume that reading what I have to say is something you do in order to learn that it’s best to stay away from this strange fellow who calls himself a “mystic prophet philosopher artist.”  But apparently 27.7% of my visitors are in fact masochists.  Who would have thunk it?

A less encouraging stat is that 79.8% of my visitors leave in under 30 seconds.  This would be what we call in the bizz “the bounce rate.”  Generally blogs have higher bounce rates then regular websites as you just stop by to read a little something, or look at a little something..  not navigate a site.  But when we are talking under 30 seconds, considering how long my entries often are, I kinda figure those are people who figured this wasn’t what they were looking for.

Some more interesting stats: The average visitor visits 2.84 times, so far this month anyway.  My take on this is the number is probably higher if you consider that includes bounces…  That is the number of the people who bother to read what I’m saying..  you must come back a number of times, so I’m digging that!

The average visitor visits 3.52 pages per visit.  Again this includes the bouncers..  but on a blog.. man you can just scroll down..  wonder why they’re going to all those pages!?

The status you probably really want is the number of visitors I have?  Well frankly I feel a little shy about telling you because the numbers are pretty small, and I wouldn’t want to ruin the illusion that I’m “really happening.”  Not that anyone reading this would ever be under such an illusion, but I can dream, right?

Well I will tell you that I think I have some upward momentum going for me, which I’m  a little excited about.  It’s hard to get a real clear idea of it, but it does look this way.  

You know its not just false modesty when I say…. well things like I don’t think my writing is so read hot, or that I’m surprised that there are a lot of people visiting, and apparently spending time here.. or that this site has various issues.  The real truth of the matter is I feel like I’m in a very early stage of trying to find my voice here.  I feel like… I could turn this blog into something great, but I’m just very unsure of myself at the moment.  So long story short I’m very thankful for your visits.

One example is that I tend to like to write long blog entries.  I think most people would rather read something sorta short.  I don’t know if long works for blogging.. but here I am with all these long posts.  Another thing is that there’s a lot of strategy that can go into blogging.  This is strategy that I’m not currently following too closely.  I know of a good deal of it,  but I’m not really bothering with too much of it.  The reason being that I’m trying focus on finding my voice before I try and find an audience..  for the simple reason that I don’t want to turn people off if my stuff sucks.

Man, I can’t even tell you how much I agonize over feeling like this stuff sucks.  I say this though I’m starting to feel like..  like maybe I’m onto something.

What’s the something?  Well my feeling is that I have a highly original voice, even if I haven’t entirely found it yet.  What I have found is..  Well that I’ve studied all this stuff in great depth and gone about the process of synthesizing a lot of stuff and thus am able to make connections that others wouldn’t be able to make.

I also think I’m sorta strong.  I mean a lot of people sorta parrot what others are saying.. or its just common knowledge stuff or..  what have you.  I mean there are these blogging / podcasting / what have you.. rock stars out there that get a lot of attention.  It’s sorta natural to look up to these folks and… in one way or another play to that.  

To travel a little deeper down this path.. I’m someone who’s had the freedom to think deeply about a lot of stuff, and read widely..  a lot of people have jobs that force them to be focused rather narrowly.. the result being that we become like children… when we wonder onto a subject…  where we don’t really know all that much, but we kinda sorta think we do?  I don’t mean to judge people for that, it’s a very human thing but…

Well..   lets talk education levels, I guess.  Education gives us tools for understanding stuff.  What happens if you don’t have those tools?  Where you’re education is, there you have your tools.  Most people navigate life in a somewhat conventional sorta way.  If I were to say “I’m a web designer” whenever someone asked me what I did for a living… not that I do web design as a living at this moment.. but I mean if that was my principle occupation.. I would probably be inclined to hang out with a lot of other web designers..  as a part of my “career furthermost program” other wise known as “networking” or “professional development.”  What I would find in that world is a whole lot of norms.. and as I build my identity, it would be in large part measured against that norm.  

So inside the web design industry you will find a lot of norms surrounding what people are like.  Who knows what these norms are..  I mean I’m not just talking about stuff that directly relates to there jobs.. I’m talking more about the whole human being.  In these norms you’d see where there education is… maybe relative to a broad selection of topics.  If your identity is built, at least in part, in relationship to these norms.. then if all web designer’s are X you can be X without standing out.. so X could be positive or negative..  

So.. of the totality of our potential as human beings.. if you imagined that as a circle.. you could then draw some lines in that circle to indicate what is the norm for web designers in relationship to the cultivation of that potential, as you could with the people from any other sorta career path.  

So to get back to what I was originally trying to say is: the reason I feel strong is because what I’m looking to cultivate is the whole, and it more or less doesn’t matter where you turn, your going to find that people are not really cultivating the whole, they are cultivating parts.  So what does that mean for your discourse on X, Y, or Z subject?  Thus, I hope at least, the idiosyncratic nature of my path through life might yield strategic advantages in the social media space.  Or that’s what I sorta believe anyway.

 Well I’m tired, and though I do have some misgivings about this entry, think I’ll post it anyway. 

As an artist I was attracted to social media before there was social media.  A good 10 or 15 years ago I was moving in a direction that had to do with my belief of where things were going.  This seems hyper mysterious to me today:  It means that there’s a broad set of issues related to art in social media today, that I’ve been exploring for the last 10 or 15, or maybe even more, years.  Someday I’ll really take you on the journey into all that, but for now….

Let me share with you parts of the plan I’ve been working on since I was in high school.. early 90s, late 80s:  

#1 Do everything:

The idea was that there were all these pieces to the puzzle, and your job is to learn about all the pieces.  What this means is you don’t limit your self so much..  It means you say “why yes, I could be a carpenter” and “why yes, I could be an astrophysicist.”  What defines your skill sets should now be internal rather then external:  They should be your passions!  Your passions organically link your potential with where you are going and how you are evolving.

This idea is very much in keeping with the DIY (do it your self) zeitgeist of social media.  The difference, maybe, is that if you spend 19 years going in this kind of a direction you’re not so much the amateur / folk artist, you’re really in a much more pro space.

The suggestion that you should “do everything” is not always 100% advised.  It is perhaps best to team up with someone who’s good at the stuff you’re not as good at, but then social media is a world of relationships, thus the “social” in “social media,” which if nothing else, means we ought to be playing well together.  The other issue is that the amount of time it takes to “get good at everything” is a good deal more then what it takes to get good at “one thing.”  So somewhere in here there must be a balancing act made.

But maybe the point here is that the lines that articulate your area of specialization ought to be organically linked to your potential, not to what the market place is talking about.  It also means that the puzzle has to do with all that it takes to be successful in this space,  and if you’re able to have all those pieces worked out in one brain you’re able to think about all of this stuff in very holistic ways.

#2 Business strategy and the art should not be compartmentalized as different areas:

This is maybe a radical idea but the point is that within the art it’s self are market issues.  These market issues, like the extent to which media aesthetics are a crystallization of market forces, are often dealt with by artists in an intuitive and not always 100% conscious way.

Further, if you look at the history of the relationship between art an commerce, the business of culture creation has mostly always been a mass media idea of business, which then defines what has “commercial potential.”  It is common for cultural critics to talk about this problem as “the expression of market morality on culture.”  What I propose to you is, and especially in the social media context, that it is often the wrong question to ask “does this have commercial potential,”  the right question is probably, “what is the business approach that is right for this.”

When you contemplate this, it then makes sense for “a part of the art” to be what it’s relationship to the market place ought to be.  This is in part a cultural critique, and thus it seems that this should be explored.

When you look at social media you will find that there are a whole lot of “best practices” that are a part of good social media strategy.  A question you might then ask is “what are the cultural, or other, implications of these best practices.”  If, for you, art is more important then the commerce side of the equation then: you’re work, your pr and marketing efforts, and everything else, should reflect this understanding.

So that’s probably enough for now.  At this point I should plug The Asymmetric Biz Cult Podcast: A New Philosophy of Art Mind and Business,  which is a place where I really explore these kinds of ideas.