gl.

site feed by atom

Thursday, July 03, 2003

 
11:26 PM: [#] [0]

well, i've done my part for the comic world today! first i dived head-first into scott mccloud's experimental micropayment serial, "the right number." slashdot, unsurprisingly, is feeling cynical about it, but i contributed for the same reason i bought a prius: if nobody buys in, they'll stop doing it. i really still believe that if you make the price point low enough and the entry barrier low enough, most people want to pay, especially if they get to keep the thing they've bought (good for you, scott, encouraging us to download!). i think one of the things that's come of the whole napster collapse is a more conscious awareness of where your money goes after it leaves your hands, and how little actually goes to the artist (whether the art is music, writing, comics, etc.). i agree it would be nice to have a subscription option in addition to the micropayment option, though i probably wouldn't use it myself.

then alex & i went to two comic-based art shows in portland's pearl district during its first thursday openings: pushdot's "the art of storytelling: comics in the digital age" and erik palmer's "BANG COMICS!" alex had to come tonight because pushdot is only open during business hours, which means people with jobs can't go unless they go on first thursday. :P

some quick notes only because after several edits it's now 2:30 and i'm getting a little sleepy:

pushdot:
* inkjet on archival=mostly affordable
* linda medley (castle waiting, which i still can't see without thinking of rob)
* comic bloggers: erika moen; jenn manley lee
* sheldon the pig: no-words style alex & i both liked
* sketchboard

bang comics:
meh. less than a dozen tightly cropped large-scale nude photographs. most interesting was the one which took up a whole wall composed of several overlapping prints, like pixels.

elsewhere:
* hot & packed inside the galleries.
* outside: lots of art, vendors & cobblestones. lots of peoplewatching opportunities between galleries. alex says he didn't realize there were so many "fake people" in portland.
* if bill viola did static stuff, it would be at the gallery with the water images suspended from a hoop, the one which expects you to walk into it and be submerged.
* pepper (?) art: 10 minutes, 10 dollars
* juggling fire!
* alex met someone selling gelato who used to work with him at intel.
* it turns out that 12th & pettigrove is like being in a whole other city, almost like being in pueblo: overgrown fields and crumbling buildings. there was a lovely brewpub with a thick wooden door in a brick building slowly coated in ivy, and with a skeleton bridge also entangled with ivy high overhead.

then when i got home to start to write about all this, alex had left the browser pointing to small stories, so, feeling benevolent (and having not purchased anything from any of the galleries), i contributed some $ via paypal, which michael & i have been recently obsessed with as a way to trade money with each other for bills & such. of course, alex had also been looking at diesel sweeties, penny arcade, ornery boy and nothing nice to say. so why did i pick small stories? i dunno. it's the one i've read the most of, i guess. but it's one of those things that makes me feel bad about donating to one person when there are so many other worthy ones: how do you pick who gets your money?

michael & i scavenged a weird set of shelves from outside the 3rd-floor door: i don't know if we'll keep them, but it's nice, for the moment, to have the phone off the floor and a place to put bills. and the fireworks have already begun! we turned off the lights to watch them: there was a slew to the right of the fremont bridge and further north, perhaps vancouver. i love fireworks. :)