Douglas Witmer

Friday, June 17, 2005

good housekeeping

As you can see from Mr. Chico Weaver's pose earlier in the week, it has been a hot one, but also a productive one. And now it's cool. I've been waking early, ruminating a lot, chatting with some of you, walking with my daughter in the evening, drinking the coldest beers I can find, missing hearing my Phils games on AM (they're on the West Coast and the games start late).

I've been fiddling around in the background of this blog the last few days. There are a few things I'd like to note for you.

Bad news: RadioBlog is gone. I've given up trying to make this work for now. After spending (wasting) way too much time researching ways to figure out a Mac-friendly solution to getting it functional, I used the PC at my job. Then it seemed to work, kinda, but only on Windows machines (definitely not on my Mac.) I'm in the market for something else I can use to stream audio here. Please let me know if you have solutions.

Music news: my ambient electronica project The Consolidated Hand Mouth & Ear Institute will hopefully have its first album Condensery mastered by the end of the month. That's just one of the things I would like to stream. Stay tuned on this. There WILL be some way you can preview it on the web.

Comments news: The comments feature has been off for a few days, but is now back on. I needed some time to think about what I intend for this space to be and how the comments feature plays into that. The issue is on the table because of commenting by "Anonymous." I don't have problems with what Anonymous said, I just don't like that it's anonymous. I want conversation and I welcome myriad viewpoints. I go to the effort of putting myself out here, and anyone can get in touch with me. It's about trying to form relationships. But the potential relationship cannot be reciprocal due to the fact that I cannot contact Anonymous directly if I so choose. It goes against my sensibilities about what conversation is.

There are several options I have as the owner/administrator of this blog. I can let anyone comment, I can let only registered "Blogger" users comment, I can set it up so that people have to become "members" of the blog (and likely register with Blogger) in order to post, or comments can go only to me. Having the comments feature on gives a nice sense of spontanaeity. But I'm not wild about making anyone to do any kind of third-party registration in order to participate.

So here's what I kindly ask of you if you want to post a comment. It's simple. Please don't be anonymous. Either register a Blogger ID with an e-mail address, or provide a URL to your site with a way for us to contact you. From now on I will delete anonymous posts or posts with IDs that go to URLs with no contact info.

Fair enough, friends?

(by the way, that image above shows A LOT of blue tape...that ain't paint)

1 Comments:

Douglas - in honor of your having re-installed "comments," I thought I'd begin a discussion on a question we approached gingerly on our way up to New York a few weeks ago: what is our work for? As my studio time has been proving fruitful and more steady, I've also kept coming back to this question. Not necessarily WHY are we working...we all could come up with several answers for that...but WHAT is my work for? Once we've taken a piece - whatever that may be (for me it's more tangible than not) - through concept into corporality, what is it for at that point? I'm not a proponent of a Wildean "art for art's sake;" I think there is for every piece a larger context to which it is important and at times responsible. But besides resigning something like my iconic-relationship paintings to esoterica (which I don't), where do they go once they're finished being created; where do they begin their new role? One of the reasons we brought this up in the first place was because of the ubiquitous frustration with the whole commercial and otherwise "gallery" scene. So, maybe I'll stave off further rambling with list of possibilities:
1. Piece-specific purpose, such as worship, devotion, installation, shrine or other yet unnamed, undiscovered purpose;
2. General edification for all, being displayed in public locations (impromptu/ad hoc);
3. Gift, for personal/relational edification and fostering;
4. ????

By GIERSCHICK, at 6/17/2005

Douglas Witmer

Friday, June 17, 2005

good housekeeping

1 Comments:

Text and images © Douglas Witmer, unless otherwise noted.

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