Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Two Crows, by Gary Franceschini

On Wednesday January 4th at 7:00 pm I’m reading a piece of Flash Fiction — i.e. a short short story, less than a thousand words — at Blackbird Wine Shop (4323 NE Fremont).

The full lineup of readers is Joanna Rose, Sherri Hoffman, Jackie Shannon Hollis, Julia Stoops, Kitty Evers, Jean Hart, Scott Sparling, Steve Taylor, Sonya Zalubowski, Mary Milstead, David Pickar, Yuvi Zalkow, and Stevan Allred. Many of my favorite writing friends. My story is Morning Commute and it imagines a world in which the skies have become so crowded that birds have to wait their turn, by species, to fly.

Looking for an image to illustrate this post, I came across this one from Gary Franceschini’s sketching blog. It’s perfect for the story! This is exactly how I imagined my crows, full of personality.

Now it’s time to present a personal project! Parts Per Million is a novel about a group of Portland environmental and media activists. I’ve been working on it for a decade, finished it this year, and am in the process of seeking agent representation. Check out the site for photo galleries, excerpts, illustrations by Ryan Alexander-Tanner, and more.

The Obama presidential campaign is sponsoring “Art Works: A Poster Contest to Support American Jobs.”

A poster contest. Where designers create designs for free (“spec work”) and submit them, hoping theirs will be picked. This from an organization that expects to raise a billion dollars in donations.

This kind of “volunteer your creativity!” attitude towards design undermines the entire design industry and the value of designers’ work. It’s a common attitude, the idea that designers somehow shouldn’t expect to be paid for their skills (unlike, say, plumbers, nurses, landscapers, programmers, urban planners, film makers, or any other skilled profession), and it drives me crazy. The attitude often goes hand in hand with another patronizing attitude, that designers are so desperate for “exposure” that they will give away their expertise in exchange for a mere chance of being noticed.

Can you imagine, say, plumbers being asked to donate their plumbing skills to a new wing of the White House, in exchange for a chance that their plumbing design will be chosen among all the others to transport water to and from that wing? Of course not. A plumber would be chosen via a traditional bid system, and they would be compensated for their work.

AIGA  (American Institute of Graphic Arts) executive director Richard Grefé wrote an excellent letter demanding the Obama campaign cancel the contest and consider other ways to bring the power of design into the reelection campaign. The text of the letter follows. Emphases mine.

October 21, 2011

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America
130 E. Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60601

Dear Mr. Messina:

AIGA, the most established and largest professional association for communication design in the world, urges the Obama campaign to immediately:

• Cancel the Art Works poster contest that trivializes the value of design by failing to compensate for it and assuming ownership of intellectual property rights, against standard professional principles, and
• Consider the role of design in creating social and economic capital as well as innovation and growth, treating it as an economic driver instead of a creative indulgence, and involve the design community in integrating design into an economic strategy for strengthening U.S. competitiveness.

The recent “Art Works: A Poster Contest to Support American Jobs” demonstrates a lack of respect for the design profession, violates global principles and standards for professional design practice, contradicts the intent of creating jobs for American workers and asks designers to give up intellectual and creative property rights.

As executive director of the oldest and largest professional association for communication designers in the country, I speak on behalf of a profession that is central to innovation and creative value in the U.S. economy. We urge you to cancel the poster contest and consider alternative, appropriate approaches to achieving your need for great design that communicates effectively. No creative community in the world is as talented as American designers and as eager to be engaged on challenging assignments to enhance understanding of complex issues. For instance, over the past decade, AIGA and its members have been active participants in enhancing the citizen experience and clarity in the election process through the Design for Democracy initiative.

The Art Works poster contest asks designers to work speculatively, creating designs without compensation for an activity that has value to a potential client, against established global principles in communication design. We are quite certain that public relations consultants, political consultants, networks, telecommunication providers and advertising media are not asked to donate their services and turn their ideas, research and work over to a campaign that is poised to raise $1 billion without compensation. This demonstrated lack of respect for the value of creative endeavors is exacerbated by the stipulation that ownership of all the creative property submitted, whether or not selected, is transferred to the campaign. And it is particularly contemptuous to ask the creative community to donate their services in support of a jobs program for other American workers.

There are ways in which you can seek proposals from designers that do not violate the integrity of the profession (and the client) and we would be willing to work with you in developing a process to solicit ideas leading to retaining a designer to develop an effective design and program to advocate your messages.

The Obama for America campaign would also be well served to shift to a strategic perspective in involving the design profession by exploring with us the means to develop policy proposals to enhance the support of design as a key driver of innovation and economic growth in the U.S. economy. The government, in aggregate, is undoubtedly the largest single client for design services in the economy. Design provides a highly leveraged, relatively low cost means of enhancing the competitiveness of the nation’s products and services as well as a critical element in enhancing effective and efficient citizen-based government services. Recognizing this would follow the example of countries like Korea, China, Singapore and the UK in advancing productivity relevant to the 21st century.

If you choose to proceed with this contest, we will feel compelled to single it out as a reflection of your lack of respect for designers and your perception that design has little value, even while you are encouraging creating work for other workers and professions. Incidentally, it is also undoubtedly injudicious to seem to politicize the current NEA initiative entitled Art Works that is a well-conceived effort to demonstrate the value of art to communities.

Yours truly,

Richard Grefé
AIGA executive director

cc: David Axelrod

Bravo, Mr. Grefé. Thank your for standing up on behalf of all of us designers. Little do some non-designers realize how ugly and non-functional the world would be without us. Our work is not just decorative afterthoughts. It is essential to high quality communication.

Last night Portland author Scott Sparling read from his debut novel Wire to Wire (Tin House, 2011). His story of how the book came to be was funny, poignant, and inspiring. Twenty years in the making, and now it’s a beautiful edition, lovingly produced by one of indie publishing’s top houses. I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of being associated with Scott’s work in two ways. Firstly, for several years I shared a space at the Pinewood Table with Scott. Pinewood Table is a critique group facilitated by Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, and it’s where many Portland writers learn, in a challenging but supportive environment, the craft of fiction writing. Each week writers bring a handful of pages to share around the table and read aloud. Then the writers get verbal and written critique of their pages. During my time at that table I read most of Wire to Wire in small weekly chunks, and Scott’s amazing prose worked its way in under my skin. But I read the story out of order: I’d come in in the middle, and the controlled chaos of the character’s lives never quite gelled for me until Scott started again at the beginning. Then things fell into place, and I could appreciate the work anew.

Later, after the news that Wire to Wire was being published by Tin House, Scott approached me to make him a website. He needed a look-and-feel as cool and edgy as the book, as well as an easy way to keep it updated as the reviews rolled in and the events calendar grew. So far Wire to Wire has received glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Playboy, and the Oregonian, and Scott is in the middle of his book tour.

Scott Sparling signs a copy of Wire to Wire for Portland artist Brenda Mallory

Here are photos from his presentation on June 30th at Powell’s Books (Burnside location). Scott told the story of the book’s creation, read three excerpts, then signed copies, while the art show on the wall behind him happened to create some great visual juxtapositions!

Scott Sparling signs a copy of Wire to Wire for Portland writer Yuvi Zalkow

Geometry’s answer to the atom: shapes that can’t be broken down into smaller shapes. These “edgeless” shapes are described rather as “flow”, and a unique flow pattern makes a shape an atom.

“Mathematicians are creating their own version of the periodic table that will provide a vast directory of all the possible shapes in the universe across three, four and five dimensions, linking shapes together in the same way as the periodic table links groups of chemical elements.

The researchers, from Imperial College London and institutions in Australia, Japan and Russia, are aiming to identify all the shapes across three, four and five dimensions that cannot be divided into other shapes.”

Calabi Yau

“The scientists will be analyzing shapes that involve dimensions that cannot be ‘seen’ in a conventional sense in the physical world. For example, the space-time described by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has four dimensions – the three spatial dimensions, plus time.

String theorists believe that the universe is made up of many additional hidden dimensions that cannot be seen. They have already figured out how to turn flowing, higher dimensional shapes into differential equations. The Calabi-Yau manifold represents the 10 dimensions of string theory. A similar mathematical method is being used to search for unique shape “atoms”. There are hundreds of millions of potential shapes to examine, but researchers expect to find a few thousand atoms amongst them.”

They’re quite beautiful, but the static images are only part of the story. There are a few animations on the web of these shapes in motion. For shapes that are defined as “flow” the motion seems important. Yet no matter how we view these shapes, for our eyes they’re always going to be merely the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane. We aren’t going to experience them in five dimensions.*

* Bucket list:

1. Experience the Calabi Yau in all ten dimensions.

Click for high-rez version to see the ripple texture in the dunes.

From the HiRISE site.

NOTE: Blue Mouse Monkey did not make this website! In case you were wondering, since this is how I format images of our sites when I showcase them on this blog.

It looks like a real online scientific journal, with the bland, conservative layout, the excessive line length, the pre-digital font (probably Didot), and that blue bar down the side! Hilarious! (Both the straight-from-the-tube color and the pathetic attempt at adding a decorative element). Not that I don’t like Didot or pure deep blues, but the combination works uncomfortably well in this parody.

Then there’s the journal’s policy: “The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected.” There’s an editorial board of over 20 academics from institutions around the world to do that heavy lifting.

According to the Instructions to Authors, “The JofUR solicits any and all types of manuscript: poetry, prose, visual art, and research articles. You name it, we take it, and reject it. Your manuscript may be formatted however you wish. Frankly, we don’t care.”

You can subscribe to the JofUR for £120 per year. I’m guessing it’s pounds and not dollars because pounds look more exotic and academic and fancy.

The quarterly online archive goes back a couple of years, and each volume is labeled (empty). Except December 2010 (Vol 2, No 4), which is labeled (lost when server crashed – presumed empty).

But really, the best part is the Reprobatia Certa blog. JofUR  likes to share rejection letters. The reasons for rejection are numerous and unpredictable, and often quite funny, especially when the submitter replies:

Editor’s note: We received a submission from Noam Shabtai, The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.

Dear Noam,

We are rejecting your submission on the following grounds: (A) you are not Noam Chomsky, and (B) you live in Beer Sheva, but did not include any beer in your submission. I hope you can see how thorough and agonizing our decision process was.

Best regards,
Caleb

–
Caleb Emmons, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Universal Rejection

Dear Caleb,
I would like to thank you for the thorough review process, and for teaching me how to differ between right and wrong.
After revising the paper, it was submitted and accepted to the journal of universal acception (it is also known as the broadcast news on TV, in case you were wondering).

Best Regards,
Noam.

I think I’ll send them some drawings. They probably don’t get much visual art. It might be refreshing for them to reject it.

Data-visualization virtuosos Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg create a hybrid “artform” (for lack of a more inclusive term) out of data sets. Straddling the realms of science, design, art, and exploration, these graphics reveal interesting patterns in data.

“Data visualization has historically been accessible only to the elite in academia, business, and government. But in recent years web-based visualizations–ranging from political art projects to news stories–have reached audiences of millions. Unfortunately, while lay users can view many sophisticated visualizations, they have few ways to create them.

To “democratize” visualization, and experiment with new collaborative techniques, we built Many Eyes, a web site where people may upload their own data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on conversations. The goal is to foster a social style of data analysis in which visualizations serve not only as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a means to spur discussion and collaboration.”

Carbon footprint of a Big Mac, by Tim Fiddaman

Visualizing data that isn’t normally visualized, or is presented in a new way, tells us different stories about the world. From a kid counting all the socks in his household, to trends in editing wikipedia, to a “social network” of the characters in the bible, Many Eyes shows us new patterns that hadn’t been noticed before.

Wattenberg and Viegas now work with Google on a project called the Big Picture Visualization Group in Cambridge, MA, with the goal of making visualizations available to regular  people via Google.