Shopping Carts

Here's what happens in the summer when you're working on a ridiculously extensive* basement remodel: you struggle to find time to make work.

In the face of a stagnant summer in the studio (mostly because it's full of furniture and tchotchkes belonging to the portion of the basement under remodel), I discovered that I could come up with ideas and make work in the strangest of places and at the strangest of times.

Enter the shopping cart project.

Earlier this year, our local Safeway put number stickers on all of its shopping carts. Why? Perhaps it's a way of tracking their carts in case they are stolen by pesky college students. ("Dude, let's ride this thing!") Or perhaps it's how they identify carts that wind up in the Safeway cart repair garage. ("Cart 85 needs a lube job on its front passenger wheel.")

Whatever the reason, each time I went to Safeway, I pulled out my phone and photographed the labels of the carts I was using.

There's no rhyme or reason to the motivation for this "project." For the moment it means very little. But I happened to stockpile a couple dozen images from which to draw from or find inspiration. Or maybe I'll craft the project into something larger once the basement is complete.

Either way, the challenge of creating images within a busy schedule—not to mention creating interesting images from nearly the same compositional perspective in every shot—was a welcome, if temporary, replacement to the challenges encountered when rewiring, hanging drywall, or installing an egress window.

* By "ridiculously extensive," I mean it's a lot of work because you're going the cheap route and doing it all yourself. For the pros, this the whole thing would've been a six-day job.

Revamp

I started out 2013 with the goal of completing a piece of work every week. Life quickly took over, and I was teaching online, chairing a department, serving on a search committee, and dealing with my school's budget issues.

But I've had some artistic success this year despite the busy life. In April, I was lucky enough to show in curator TJ Norris' Off the Plain exhibition in Portland. Following that was a solo installation in the Portland Building downtownin August. And in September I received word that my work will be featured in an exhibition in Estonia next summer.

I'm in the process of updating my website, putting process images up on my new artist page on Facebook, and polishing up a new—in-progress—body of work for exhibition opportunities.

Stay tuned.

Is Verizon Making Us Meme Machines?

Every two years or so, I get an email from Verizon—my mobile phone service provider—saying it's time to upgrade my device. Normally, like when I had my first Nokia phone ten years ago, I jump at the chance, drop into the store, and pick up a new phone.

Two years ago when that deadline appeared, however, I upgraded to an iPhone, so when the time came to upgrade again, I declined. The phone works great, helps me stay connected to my job, keeps me entertained, that sort of thing. I didn't have any reason to change.

My wife is on the cell phone plan too, and this time she wanted an upgrade (on her phone, not her husband). So, after much harangue from the Verizon clerk to get this or that with this screen protector and that case and this charger and this belt strap carrier and the like, she went with her first choice: a free iPhone 4 with no case, no carrier, no screen protectors, nothing.

Then things got interesting, but not in a telecommunications-type way. It turns out that we had been on a grandfathered calling plan, capping our calls at 700 minutes a month and allowing us only (only!) 250 texts each. Verizon doesn't have those plans any more, and we were forced to switch due to the upgrade.

In the end, the change saves us money. But upon further investigation of what we signed up for, some interesting details appeared.

Gone are the days of choosing a cell phone plan with a certain number of available talking minutes. We're no longer limited to 700 minutes, or 450 minutes, or 10,000 minutes; we can now talk to whoever we want for however long we like. And we're not limited in our texting either. Sure, iPhone to iPhone texts don't count for anything, but our new plan allows us to text anyone as much as we like, and our charges stay the same.

Now, though, our data is capped. This, on the surface, isn't a problem for either of us. We regularly use less than .5 gigabytes with both of our phones combined. But capped data—and the rest of Verizon's new plans—reveal something very interesting about how we communicate.

They are encouraging us to spread our ideas.

If you subscribe to the philosophical beliefs of someone like Susan Blackmore, we've evolved to be carriers for cultural genetics. We have evolved as a species to pass along cultural information in the form of memes. Not only that, but memes have FORCED our hand to evolve into better meme-spreaders. So, years and years ago, we developed language, not to be able to tell each other what to do, but to be better able to transmit memes to one another.

The modern digital age, according to memeticists like Blackmore, exists for that reason. Cell phones, the Internet, television, and radio, all exist so that we can pass information along to one another. Memes rule us and our technologies. Ideas, dance moves, songs, jokes, fashion trends, all have their root in our lives as  memes, existing only to be spread from person to person. (Do we really need "Gangnam Style" to exist as a species? How about iPods? Color-coordinated sneakers?)

Verizon's new Share Everything plans blow that "secret"—that modern technology exists not to benefit us, but to benefit the transmission of memes—wide open. Verizon is banking on increasingly fast transmission times, larger phone screens, and the ability to talk or text anyone, anywhere, wherever and tying those capabilities into our natural tendencies—and the driving forces of the memes that surround us—to want to gab to each other about new things, new ideas, new memes. Sometimes we gab about existing memes that get a second wind because of vehicles like the Internet (would Rick Astley still be a cultural phenomenon if it weren't for the Internet in 2005?).

The cap isn't on a specific mode of communication. Now it's all lumped together into the catchall category of "DATA." It's all bits of information, not words or letters or emails or video. It's all just information, and we can send and receive as much as we like, provided we don't go over our cap. And if we do? We just pay a little bit more.

Even the handle of "Share Everything" indicates what is behind Verizon's plan structure changes. If you've got something to say, sing, post, write, or draw, you should do it. They have the bandwidth to let you do it.

The memes have forced our hands, and the large telecommunications firms have obliged them. This isn't necessarily a detrimental thing as far as our society at large is concerned; it's just that it's terribly revealing to see evidence of humanity's memeplex in your run-of-the-mill cell phone bill.

Deadline Extended: "Sick and Tired"

In 2007 or 2008, I became a teacher. I had accumulated enough experience through graduate school for them to trust me with a class of my own. I don't remember if I did a decent job or not with that Beginning Photography class, but I do know one thing about teaching that class:

If I set a deadline for students to meet with particular assignments, I stuck to it.

I had been through undergrad and had experienced professors who would extend deadlines for assignments all of the time. In the world of college, I was always under the impression that I was being prepped for "the real world," a world with deadlines, stress, and consequences. When a teacher took liberties with changing the deadlines for assignments (sometimes on the days when assignments were due), it left the students who had completed things on time with a strange taste in their mouth. There was a collective air of "dude, what gives?" in the classroom.

Because of that, I work through complications with students and never change deadlines the day assignments are due.

I bring all of this up because the same thing is happening in "the real world" now. If I were an accountant or lawyer, this would probably be different. But in the world of art and art exhibitions, it seems that extended deadlines are now par for the course.

The most recent deadline change I've experienced is that for Critical Mass 2012. Photolucida's annual juried competition is one of the biggest networking opportunities for exhibiting photographers.

And this year, I feel like I finally have the chops—and the courage—to enter. The past week was a flurry of Photoshop and scanning, of the spot healing brush and image resizing. I finished up my portfolio of ten images (now visible for the first time on my website. Don't be fooled; these are new versions of familiar photographs) and submitted. The deadline for the competition was noon today.

Twenty minutes after I submitted my work, I saw on Facebook that the deadline for Critical Mass had been extended.

It got me thinking. After a quick search of my photo email inbox, I found that since December of last year, I still had emails about extended deadlines from fourteen different competitions. Many of them are repeats from the same organizations. There are probably many others that I never hear about because I am not on particular mailing lists. The exhibitions and competitions with extended deadlines are listed at the end of this blog.

An extended deadline for an exhibition tells me two things:

1. "We haven't received enough entries for this exhibition, so please tell your friends to submit."
2. "Your work was received prior to the original deadline, and it's not good enough to be shown in our gallery."

While #2 is a big stretch in both logic and imagination, and is obviously not true, item #1 is almost a logistical slam dunk 100% of the time. Most arts organizations struggle to make ends meet, and they charge entry fees in order to recoup their costs. (Critical Mass actually has a section on their FAQ page that outlines where the entry fees go towards their overhead and other expenses.)

Submitting work to shows and being rejected shouldn't be taken personally. I'm getting more and more used to it every week. (A rejection letter came to my house today, actually.) Deadline extensions, however, feel like more of a slap in the face because it makes you call the work you put into submitting work on time into question. When you're given more time, you second guess yourself. At least I do.

It doesn't matter to me if a deadline to a show is extended and I'm rejected from the show. It's happened before. Or even if I get in. That's happened to me too, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that, like the professor who changes deadlines in the middle of a semester, making people work on something for a specific date only to extend it at the last minute is an insult to artists everywhere.

Pick a date and stick to it. If it doesn't work out this time, then set your new (extended) deadline accordingly when the call for entries goes up next year.

And to the artists who aren't submitting their work to these shows on time: get a move on. Or get a planner or something. This isn't undergrad.

*************

Onward Compe 2012 - December 2011
Midwest Center for Photography Juried Exhibition - December 2011
SPE Member Show at RayKo Gallery - December 2011
LACDA International Juried Competition - March 2012
Manifest Gallery INPHA 1 - April 2012
PDN Great Outdoors Contest - April 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Grow" exhibition - April 2012
PDN Faces Contest - May 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Vacate" exhibition - June 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Midwest Photo Emerge" - June 2012
LACDA Juried Competition - June 2012
PDN "The Look" competition - June 2012
Manifest Gallery Recent Paintings - July 2012
Critical Mass 2012 - July 2012

One Week In (And a Day Late)

With the new year, I've decided to add some regulation to my ever-increasing daily life.

After one week of cavalier behavior, and with the end of vacation, I've devised the following schedule that I hope to stick with as much as possible. The new schedule should increase my productivity as both an educator and artist as much of the regulation involves making stuff or getting stuff in order. Below is the schedule I've concocted, no doubt subject to change.

Saturdays - Blog posting. So consider this yesterday's blog post.*
Sundays - Art making. That basement studio gets lonely most of the time. (This also parallels with my book-a-day project from a few years ago.)
Mondays - Music. Haven't opened the guitar case in ages. (Halloween, to be exact.)
Tuesdays - School. All day. Prep work, meetings, paperwork, you name it.
Wednesdays - Catch-up day; whatever I've missed or let slip the previous days gets made up here.
Thursdays - A free day to relax
Fridays - Cleaning. Studio, house, office, classrooms, cars, laundry, self, etc.

I've also been using Twitter much more. And I'm always hoping more people I know will join the conversation. It's a great way to catch artist calls that pass by CAA, Facebook, and the other usual outlets. Twitter name is meisenhower.

* What a stupid blog post to start the year. Seriously. Please email your complaints to me instead of posting public comments here. 

New Year's Eve Memories (Then and Now)

Two years ago tonight I was in Michigan, celebrating the holidays with family and friends. I had flow back to Michigan after three months at my new job in Oregon to reunite with those I had left. I spent the three days after Christmas in Grand Rapids with good friends, an alternative to driving through the thick snow to the Upper Peninsula; family illnesses (my grandmother was in hospice and my friend's uncle was in the hospital) made us think twice about the long trip. Instead of white outs, frozen lake races, whiskey, cribbage, and chili, my friends and I settled for the three latter festivities.

My flight back to Oregon was supposed to be on December 30th. I was to be routed from Grand Rapids to Chicago to Boise. There was a problem: weather. Planes were getting in late to Chicago, which meant I would be delayed to Boise. Rather than spend the night in the airport in Grand Rapids, I elected to go back with my friends for a final, impromptu night.

This meant that I arrived in Boise not on the 30th, with time to travel home (Oregon) for New Year's festivities, but on the 31st. After a brief bomb scare  in the Boise Airport, I paid close to attention to Trip Check  and airport monitors that showed the weather. I-84, my main route to get home, was open, but was in poor conditions. Rather than risk injury, crashing my car into the side of a mountain on New Year's Eve, I formulated a plan.

The Fairfield Suites courtesy van picked me up around 10pm to take me to my car and the hotel. The shuttle driver was a younger guy, so I asked him what he recommended a stranger in Boise do to ring in the new year.

"Tell you what," the guy said to me after I explained my situation. "Book your room for tonight and tell the front desk I said I'd take you downtown. They'll page me and I'll come pick you up."

I trusted this Cory Feldman-type character was as good a person to trust as any in Boise, Idaho's largest city, so I obliged. He picked me up in the shuttle around 10:45pm and we headed towards downtown.

Cory explained to me my options: there was a strip of bars on the main drag, and for a cover fee of something like $25, you could get into all of them if you wanted. I told him I wanted free. He told me my best option was a place called Mulligans, on Main between 9th and 10th street.

Having just left Grand Rapids, Michigan, which happens to have a doppelgänger business called Mulligan's, I figured I couldn't go wrong.

I showed up to find a packed bar, your typical college town bar, with televisions showing Rihanna singing her latest single. After a few minutes, I made my way through the crowd and grabbed a drink at the bar.

Standing in line at Mulligans, a bar 170 miles from where I lived, I figured I had two options. The first was to finish my beer just after midnight, let out a small yelp as the ball dropped, and grab a cab a few minutes later to sleep before my three-hour trip home the next day, New Year's Day.

The second option, and the more unlikely and unappealing one, was to lower my inhibitions and make some new friends. Sort of like cold calling for jobs in the phone book, I figured now was as good a time as any to meet some new people in a "faraway" town.

While grabbing beer, I noticed a particularly cheerful-looking group of people at a table near the bar. Some of them reminded me of the people I had left behind in Michigan. What was the worst that could happen? Was New Year's Eve, with Carson Daly on TV, the night I was most likely to be accosted or murdered by some strangers in downtown Boise?

Of course not.

So, after grabbing my pint of Moose Drool, I moseyed over to this table of twentysomethings and sort of stood there like some lame-o until the conversation dwindled to a din.

And this is what I said (really).

"Hi. My name is Mike. I'm from Oregon and I'm stuck in Boise tonight for New Year's Eve because my planes were delayed and I-84 is in crappy condition. Can I be your friend for tonight?"

As pathetic and ridiculous as that sounds, and as it sounded then, since I fully expected them to laugh at me simply because of how stupid and out of place I looked, there was a resounding "SURE!" from the table.

It was so silly it felt like I was in the middle of some Richard Curtis movie. I had the most absurdly fun New Year's of my life, simply because I had no idea who any of the people I was with were.

There was something really special about spending such a celebratory evening with complete strangers.

I sit here now, with this party about to start, and every New Year's Eve I think about the people whose names I can't remember who might be at Mulligans tonight, or any night for that matter. I don't care what they're up to; I only hope they're doing well.

So much of my life recently has been about strangers. This past summer's photo project  was entirely dependent upon strangers. How that project mirrored my evening with strangers in Boise in 2009 isn't lost on me as I write this. If people who are strangers weren't, at their cores, nice people, then the photo project and my night in Boise would have been complete letdowns.

And every day I interact with people that I've never met. And those that I've met, whether it's through where I live, what I do, or the work I've made, I barely know. Even moving to a new neighborhood has brought new people into my life.

That's what I reflect upon as we all enter 2012. New Year's Eve can be a great time whether you're with strangers or those closest to you. And I hope to have a bit of both tonight as 2011 draws to a close.

The Intro to the Project

Everyone has a story about how they came to the boards. I was in college, when Napster was booming and changing what most people thought about music, when I discovered the boards. In the time since, the boards have changed what I think about community and communication. Admittedly, I stumbled upon the boards because of being a fan of Dave Matthews Band(1), and perusing the boards allowed the opportunity to trade compact discs of live concerts. These days, Napster is gone, trading live shows through the mail is gone, and the board’s love of Dave Matthews Band is gone as well. 

The message board was a place for discussing specific and random topics, from current movies and television shows to what to grow in a backyard garden(2). There was a social element to the boards as well, with the casual participant picking up on circles of friends, people that knew each other from college or high school days(3).

My personal perception of what an Internet message board is changed in 2004. I was a college graduate and had to ride my bicycle to the local library for Internet access. I would casually participate on the boards, chiming in mostly in threads that dealt with the Detroit Tigers or philosophical arguments. I regularly visited two boards at that time: the flowery and hippie-ish amidreaming.org (aka AMI) and the harsher, cynical, harder-edged anyoneseenthebridge.com(4). I was posting regularly on the former and only reading on the latter. 

One day “The Bridge,” as it was called, disappeared. The site stopped working, and there was a small exodus of Bridge users to AMI. The story about the Bridge’s shutdown appeared in a thread on AMI.  The story involved two people who were romantically linked to each other and technologically linked to The Bridge. Once the two of them split up, petty arguments and the spread of incriminating digital photos led to The Bridge’s demise. It was a strange case of cross-pollination that shifted what I thought about that in which I was participating; the people involved became real. There was no longer that veil of anonymity that I assumed existed with any Internet website. The community abruptly closed for a short time(5).

Then The Bridge reopened under a new domain name. New people were put in charge, and in mid-2004, registration for new users at UFCK.org became public. I signed up in March of 2005. 

Now I approach UFCK (née The Bridge) from a different standpoint. My participation has increased from the days when I was only reading the thoughts of other people. I have developed my own online personality and have become “a voice” in the small community that loses members every month(6). My 10,000 posts over the course of the last six years(7) have covered everything from Tigers trades to this photography project. 

The project sprang from my interest in my board “colleagues” as well as growing notions that constructed personalities exist all over the Internet. Certainly, I know that I use different language and a different demeanor when I email my parents versus when I email an old college buddy. The same goes for in-person interactions. But there is something intriguing about the electronic barrier that is in place on a website like UFCK.org that permits people to speak as freely as they like about anything they like. 

In reality the interactions between boarders online and boarders offline is quite different. I have firsthand experience of that from the portrait sessions that have happened since. Cordial is not a nice enough word I use to express my gratitude towards the subjects in this project. I personally would have a hard time granting intimate access to someone I have never met just so they could take my picture(8).

Ultimately, what I am hoping to accomplish with this project is not to shed light on the physical appearances of people who possibly have remained secret on the Internet for a half decade or more(9). Instead, I hope the captured images will shed light instead on what it means to exist as a constructed personality both online and on film. Instead of illuminating viewers and exposing these UFCK subjects to the world, the photographs really perpetuate some of the mysteries behind the people with whom we interact with electronically everyday(10).

^{1. I will still admit to liking the DMB to this day. So don’t even start with the ridicule.}

^{2. There are also plenty of threads that exist solely to bash someone within the community. Sometimes, it’s deserved, and the forum will gang up on a member that has been nothing but mean to other people. Other times, it’s to poke fun of someone because they posted a photo of themselves wearing archaic church gowns on Facebook.}

^{3. See endnote number 2. It’s easier to get people together to make poke fun or harass another user when the person making the thread has several other friends that post regularly.}

^{4. Both silly website names are derived from lyrics of Dave Matthews Band songs.}

^{5. I was recently reminded by one of my photo subjects that there was a “crossover” board called Omeletteville. I had completely forgotten about that place, most likely because it required an invitation to register, and I didn't get one.}

^{6. As of my writing this, there are a few users championing a sort of “End of Days” for the board, which may take place at the end of this calendar year.} 

^{7. An average of 4.45 posts per day.}

^{8. This is a terrible position for a photographer to take or, even more so, admit. To try to alleviate this aversion to my own photograph and make some sort of peace with my other subjects, I shot a self-portrait for the project and it will appear as anonymously in context with the others as I can personally make it.} 

^{9. The web predecessor of both UFCK and The Bridge, DMBml, dates back to prior to 2001.} 

^{10. Pick me up, love.}

I Love LA

I think it was last year that I entered a piece of mine into a show at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. It was something like a mail-in show or the like, where an artist sends a file and the gallery prints the work and hangs it all up on the wall, salon style.

LACDA's upcoming show, "Top 40," an international juried show, will feature forty pieces by artists using digital methods for creating their work. A recent piece of mine, Metal Bird (Bummer), will be among those included.

The show opens June 9th and runs through July 2nd. You can see the works of everyone selected for the show here.

Julekalender - 19 Dec.

A few things about the Julekalender project:

1. I'm leaving town tomorrow.

2. I won't have access to a scanner for a while.

3. Because of items 1 and 2, there will be a slight disruption of the frequency of posting these images.

The drawings will still get made, they just might not show up every day. They might come in batches. They might be shoddy digital photos and not nice scans.

But you'll see the drawings in the end. And there have been rumblings around the home office here that drawings might continue beyond Christmas day. So stay tuned, I guess.

BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK!

After self-publishing (one copy) of Sketches in May of last year, I decided to throw the files online and publish it again, this time with Blurb. Blurb worked wonders for my John Hubbard thesis book and helped me snag a spot in a show in New York.

Now, both Sketches and Sketches II are available through my Blurb bookstore. They're tiny little things, and aren't too expensive. I just got the test pressings in the mail and they look pretty good.

And, with a collective finger-crossing propelling my destiny, the two Sketches books and the Hubbard book will make their way to New York in the hopes they'll be selected for a photobook exhibition. Wish me luck.

All three books are available for purchase and preview at my Blurb bookstore site.

PS. Copyright apologies to the creators of The Critic, and to John Shaw, who is the only person I know that will get the joke.

Philadelphia (And Other Updates)

On Thursday, I'll leave Oregon for the first time since January for sunny Philadelphia and the Society for Photographic Education's National Conference. Hopeful highlights: food, friends, and presentations that had better be good.

The end of March will see some of my work in two shows in New York's Climate Gallery. Book pieces. Small ones.

An overhaul of my website will take place once the conference and this hectic term are at an end.