Artsmonkey Blog

National poetry day looms on Thursday October 9^th I’ve been browsing sites in search of inspiration and have enjoyed stumbling upon the Altered Books project and had fun with ‘Written in the city‘ especially the Brighton pages although Brighton in 2002 was a different universe. Did you know that ‘newspaper+sharpie=poems’? Well Michael Palmer seems to think so and creates and collects great “blackout” poems in this fashion from around the world, check him out on Facebook or visit www.michaelpalmer.net to see examples or enter your own. I came across ‘the invitation’ by Oriah Mountain dreamer from the book ‘invitation’ and really enjoyed some inner wisdom from the mountains…

“…It doesn’t interest me to know where you live,or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children…It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away”

 But then I got sidetracked by Digg & Twitter and went from Doug McFarlane’s you tube recommendation on the credit crunch (filmed in a car park I dimly recognise) to this: check them out on My Space Antan Debt performs with his band ‘The Overdrafts’ not to be confused with Adam and Joe’s “Credit Crunch Musical” song, as touted by Charlie Booker or Old Man Pies credit card song posted in 2006 (and a prophetic cartoon animation) which are both equally witty commentaries. Then, somehow and I’m really not sure how, I ended up watching the ‘Shelbinator’ show me how to turn a nokia N95 into a video cam with external mic. If you are a techgeek who has accidentally clicked on the wrong blog site - you can watch it too @ http://shelbinator.com/2008/05/04/n95-external-microphone/ which tells me I must end here or who knows where I’ll end up before tea-time so take it away e.e. cummings (as found @ www.kerismith.com/wishJarTales/ ) “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it’s best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

@ the Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion last week for own-it and Stellar Networks seminar starring the very patient and extremely well-phrased lawyer Harry Karaolou from LG Legal. The event, ‘The Writer/Producer/Director Triangle - a guide to good practice of collaboration in Theatre’ didn’t disappoint. A rare event indeed when the panel has as many questions as the audience but ever since, my head has been full of ‘creative commons, trademarks, originators, copyright, performers’ rights’, and phrases such as, “asserting your moral rights”.

What can I pass on in a creative universe where more and more people are creating bodies of work through collaboration and shared experience? That it’s important to know your intellectual property from your development or design rights? You don’t want to make the same mistakes that members of the audience have done in the past, so at the get-go agree who does what and what is whose. Get an agreement, get i-p savvy.

I am seriously fascinated by social media, the accessibility, the randomness, the fun and yes, even the geekiness of it - learning about IT issues and concepts and software ( I always thought a widget was the clinky thing at the bottom of a can of Guinness) such as Digg, del.icio.us, stumble(upon)it, trackback, technorati - all new words of wonder to me.

Today I started on Twitter, skipped to frogblog and tripped over a ‘blogroll’ of intreaguing titles such as “CULTUREMAKING” and “Herd - the hidden truth about who we are” and on to “The Buzz Bin/Transparent Bundles/Logic+emotion/Edge Perspectives, stopping at Digital Influence Mapping Project” It’s a roller coaster of interesting reads, mind expanding concepts and the totally unfamiliar but exciting unknown territory - all just a click away.

I got sidetracked by an article on ‘How stuff spreads (4) The bottle-glass trick’ http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO3TQfXz5A  and the quote “ Things are - or seem to be- constant motion…whenever you lift the cover, the thing you expect is not there. Bottle or glass?” but eventually i found my way back to Tim Leberechts frogblog site and his article ‘The Future of Business is Social’. Well here in the Arts world we’ve always thought that, so maybe our time is coming round again…

I’m coaxing thoughts into being about an online youth arts event, with podcasts and live web conversations so audiences can watch from the comfort of their youth club/school/home etc., but ask questions and help shape the event through their ‘real-time’ feedback or watch it later via podcast or as a ‘you -tube’ post - I’m picturing lap-tops and web camera’s wirelessly transmitting away, twitter feeds and twitter clouds floating in the internet ether and then, humbly, I realise that this is neither new or exciting to the social media literate and what a way I have yet to go as a social media ‘beginner’ - Bronze level but aiming for Gold.