I've been working with computers since it took an entire building to house one. My first computer course was mostly about how to use a key-punch machine (it also brought out the artist in me because I spent a good deal of the year doodling - sorry Mr Riley). For you youngsters, back in the Pleistocene we used key-punch machines to punch holes in cardboard cards that were carefully stacked in a box, carried to the computer building, and loaded into a card reader (which nine times out of ten bent one card necessitating starting the process again). Then we waited anxiously for at least three hours before hiking back to the computer building to check out the printout to see if the program actually ran.
Maybe my hesitation is a "can't teach an old dog new tricks" thing but I don't think so. It's not that I mind learning new tricks, its just that I don't like learning to do the same trick in the guise of a new trick, or learning a new trick while knowing that it is going to become old news real soon, or spending so much time learning tricks to make you efficient that you don't have time to get your work done. Unfortunately all of these problems are realities of technological development - annoying, but the way it goes.
Social networking does seem to be a really new and different trick - one that I don't fully understand and is a bit edgy for me. The really scary stuff is ... who is driving the bus - does anybody really know where all of this is taking us and is it in the right direction? Okay ... maybe I'm ranting. And, you might ask, what has this got to do with art which is supposed to be the focus of this blog. Good question - not much - but it does illustrate my tangential brain which features prominently in how I approach art.
Last spring I decided to leave my day job so that I could focus on art and travelling for a while (most of my time at work was spent in front of a computer which, honestly, I loved at least on most days). Since then, aside from working in my studio and taking some great trips, I've been trying to learn more in my areas of artistic interest and to figure out how to get my art work "out there" more. This has led me back in front of a computer - it's a perverse world. But ... after talking to lots of folks, looking at web-sites, reading blogs, I am seeing the benefits and (frighteningly) I am now convinced that I need to jump in and give it a try in the simplest form possible - a hosted blog site. We'll see where it goes from there.
Now that I've become convinced to try it, there are still disturbing questions.
Is this just another sad form of talking to myself and, if not, who the heck am I talking to? Will I fall prey to the seduction of looking at just one more art site at 1 pm? Will I avoid being sucked into the black whole of internet addiction!!?? Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment