May 2014 – Monocultured

This week in review: many small things embusying one.

Originally, I set out to create one small project each week in order to get stuff going but I find that my mind is constantly wearing onto side streets and cul-de-sacs which take days just to navigate out of, let alone emerge with any solid gains. So too have the past two weeks passed by, and I have a bunch of notes and ongoing stuff happening, but have to once again remind myself that that wasn’t the point of the exercise. It was to publish one finished project once a week, not amassing five grand projects to publish “soon”.

So just to get something out there, I’ve uploaded the images from the “Virtual photography” series I did while still doing my BA in photography. The images are currently on the front page of monocultured.com and it’s a series of 8 pictures.

Printed copies have been on display in Sweden, Denmark and Canada, and I still get questions about them occasionally. One of my favourite comments from gallery visitors was “Hey, I know that place, I’ve been there”, in respons to seeing one of the photos. It seemed to prove a point at the time. Today, they look quite dated, so feel more like documentation of old computer games rather than the cutting edge of virtual photography, but there you go.

The hipbone connects to the wristwatch.

This weeks thing is a practical example of how distraction works: I get home early in order to sit down with an animation I’ve been mulling over for a couple of weeks. Before starting up Photoshop and getting to it, I check my emails. Huh looks like I ought to send some work invoices out, so let’s just get that out of the way first.

— Oh, hang on, the formatting of the invoicing hasn’t been updated with my latest info, I better just go into the template and fix that. Well, I be danged, the template function of Billings is utter complete shit, so if I’m going to wade through the documentation just to do the update I might as well just redesign the whole thing — how hard could that be?

— Let’s see, where did I put that logo I made a while back, that could go on there… A little bit to the right… Maybe left? Now to select typeface. Oh, and the logo has a burned umbra colour, wouldn’t that look dandy on the invoice headers? Hang on, my email is too long compared to the rest of my address; I know, why not register a new domain! Ooh, nice, my surname is still available, I’ll just go ahead and register that and set it up. (Might as well ask my brother if he wants to be setup with a forwarding address as well)

— Ok, now we’re rolling, but how the hell does Billings handle calculating the numbers and fixing the tables and totals and such? “Randomly and like a idiot leper, shitting itself” you say? Where was that documentation? There’s none except a few flaky videos, only visible if you search the Marketplace support page source code? Well that’s rather off-putting! Ok, but perhaps I can just copy-paste from a working template? No? Ok, I feel a headache coming on, let me get something for that.

I’ve just spent six hours trying to create a new template for my invoice software — a software which I use very sparingly now that I’m employed – and failing miserably. I’m now looking to spend more on another software which isn’t such a hideous bloated corpse of a thing, just so that I’ll be able to have my own design. This is not effective use of time, and this Sunday has been wasted, and no project will be posted today. Goddammit!

On poverty, grants, value of juice

In 2010 I received a grant from Konstnärsnämnden. It was more money than I’d imagined ever having access to, and one of the habits I developed was buying the Brämhults brand juice which epitomizes middle class luxury. Before finally tossing the empty bottles, I documented them as proof of an attribute I had at least temporarily acquired thanks to the grant. The images are now edited and up on the main homepage: Tack Konstnärsnämnden! The images will also be published as a soft-cover booklet shortly, hopefully as next weeks project.

Related, as far as “poverty as identity” can be related to juice, is this old post from John Scalzi: being poor.

And I know I let two weeks pass without publishing something new. Bad artist, bad! Won’t happen again, promise. Pinky swear.