sea nerd blog
summer twenty fourteen

blues

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There’s a blues festival on tonight in town. When I say in town, I mean eleven stages surrounding our flat. No early night for us.

Two things make me respond to music: skill and originality. Well, it’s the blues, so forget the originality: that’s not what it’s about.

I wandered round the stages. Some of the stuff I heard made me wonder why I bothered to get out of bed. It was dismal: pedestrian, as in glued to the pavement. Fortunately, there’s some skill on show, and, even more fortunately for us, the stage closest to our flat is hosting some of the finest musicians.

First guys up were Dynamite Daze, a bunch of old geezers who seem to be playing purely for the hell of it. Old geezers? Erm ... perhaps a couple of them are younger than me. Anyway, they were about as together as a bunch of drunks at a bar, but when the drummer showed off, wow! Jesus, that guy is good. I guess the other guys had something going for them, too, but I only caught the end of their set, unfortunately. Daze is a very appropriate name.

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The second band on the stage are not as exciting, nor as drunk, as the first. It seems to be a band for the guitarist singer to show off, but he’s very very good, so fair enough. Furthermore, they were tight. Between them, they took the audience on a great blues journey. The band is Laurence Jones, and, if you’re into the blues, go hear them. They’re about as original as a bag of chips, but we’re talking Michelin starred chips.

19.7.14


GPS

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I’ve never used a GPS. I was taught to read maps at school. I have a working memory. I’m not scared of exploring, wandering, getting lost: that’s how I learn a new place. I have no need of a GPS.

My partner recently got herself a car. She’s a talent for getting lost: when she comes to a place she’s visited before, from a direction she doesn’t expect, she often doesn’t realise where she is. She’s not so good at reading maps; she wasn’t taught how as a child. She wanted a GPS, and, having seen her travel talents at play, I got her one.

It’s the Mappy 501ND. It was on discount. We tried it yesterday.

It’s appalling.

It shows a map with directions on how to get somewhere. It speaks directions on how to go there. Roughly one in three times, these directions contradict.

For example, within a couple of minutes of being turned on, the map said go straight on at a crossroads, and the voice said turn left. Soon afterwards, the map said go straight on at a roundabout, and the voice said take the next exit, to turn right. Later, when directing us to a motorway, the map got it right, whereas the voice tried to send us into a cinema car park. This device comes straight out of the comedy book of GPS mistakes.

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It doesn’t understand speed. For example, it warned us to slow down when about to enter a speed limit. Fair enough, you might think, except that we obeying a slower speed limit at the time, where it had directed us.

We soon learnt to ignore the voice. When it conflicted with the map, the map was usually right. But, quite often, they both got things plain wrong.

For example, we were going down a long straight road to our destination, which happened to be at the end of the road. The map (and voice) told us to get off the road and wander around a housing estate. Er, no.

It’s ‘up–to–date’ data is out of date. We’d updated the device’s data as per the instructions that came with the device. Yet it assured us our address does not exist; never mind that we’ve been living there for years. The block was built more than ten years ago.

In summary, after a morning’s use, we found this device contradicts itself, doesn’t understand speed, gets directions wrong, and the supposedly up–to–date version is at least ten years out of date. This is more than appalling, it’s comedy material.

The roads are confusing enough as it is. The Mappy 501ND is a device that’s supposed to reduce the confusion. It significantly increases it. Do not buy.

13.7.14


konscht am gronn the third

Not much to report this time.

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It rained. My rain damage prevention system worked, but not nearly well enough. It hid everything from the few people who braved the rain to browse.

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I’m going to have to get a gazebo.

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At least the tree we were sheltering under had ripe fruit.

12.7.14


literally

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I’ve never worked out why people put out articles saying how other people get English wrong. It’s pretty well impossible for such articles to be anything but ignorant.

For example, a common way people show themselves up at the moment is to complain about using literally to mean figuratively. Many get it especially wrong by claiming this usage is new. If the complainers bothered to make even a simple check, they’d discover that not only is the usage not new, but it’s been used by writers such as Coleridge, Austin, & Dickins. For example, from Nicholas Nickleby, “his looks were very haggard, and his limbs and body literally worn to the bone …”.

This list of writers is pretty solid proof the usage is long established and correct. That verification took me one google search. The first hit was this dictionary.com blog entry. It linked to this upenn article, which gave the Dickins’ examples.

Not doing such checks is laziness, pure and simple. Writing articles showing off the laziness is foolish.

These self–appointed ‘experts’ forget language changes. A list of how other people get English wrong is usually an unintentional declaration that the author’s English usage is backward.

12.7.14


glen livet

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More than 25 years ago, I bought myself a bottle of 18 year old Glen Livet. Every now and then, when times demand, I drink a drop. It’s a beautiful whiskey, smooth and unassuming, making no rawkish demand on the throat. It’s something gentle to be enjoyed, almost like the family cat coming to say hello, purring, relaxing, & falling asleep on your lap.

Two old friends have, quite independently of each other, fallen critically ill. One might survive, one certainly won’t.

20.6.14


tattoo

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When he was a child soldier, my grandfather got himself tattooed. His older self very much regretted it. He’s why I’ve always associated tattoos with old men, an old man in string vest and gardening trousers, asleep in an armchair. He gave me his opinion and reinforced it: I detest tattoos.

People who get themselves tattooed, and invite my reaction, particularly previously pretty ladies, don’t get quite what they might expect.

A tattoo is skin graffiti. There are many tattoo salons. There is only one Banksy. I’ve never seen a tattoo by a tattoo Banksy.

The craft needs a strong, fresh approach, a new school to overthrow the crappy tradition. It needs something to carry the craft to the time, in a decade or two, when technology allows tattoos to be animated.

19.6.14


video bombs

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I detest video bombs in software: random animation shown because some egotistical software producer decides his opinion is more important that your task, so the sodding software insists on showing you the video instead of allowing you to get what you need to do done. It’s a common Microsoft annoyance.

If the video’s message is important, the software could say “Please watch this video when you can” and highlight the command to do so.

It doesn’t help that I’ve never found a video director who seems to understands how to cater for people living different lives at different paces, and designing content appropriately. Good God, even children’s stories offer multi–layer content. Instead, these videos try to retard you to common–demoninator dim. In other words, they’re adverts, a medium that works best when the victims are made too stupid to question the advertisers’ lies.

It is plausible, of course, that video just isn’t up to multi–layer pacing. I don’t think that’s the case; it’d never have the reputation of artistic capability otherwise. No, instead, I suspect that commercial video inserts are simply, consistently, crap.

But I can’t judge. I detest video. I’m not neutral. Furthermore, there’s no way I’m doing a survey to verify my opinion.

15.6.14


annexe

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A series of blog posts, career and quality observations, chucked in annexe.

15.6.14


skype

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I’ve had to take Skype off my phone.

I’m awful at responding to Skype when it’s running on my phone, so I deliberately keep myself logged out. I don’t want people to be fooled by a status. Yet it had me logged in.

So I went to the app to log myself out. Instead of allowing me to correct the problem, the app started playing some sodding video that simply wouldn’t fuck off.

That made two clear examples of the app getting it wrong. God knows what else the designers have screwed up. That’s why it had to be deleted.

Anyway, apologies to those who tried to contact me through Skype recently whom I ignored. I now understand that happened.

I’ll keep it on my computer, as usual, unless the same stupidity repeats itself there.

PS A third problem, which is probably a phone error, not a skype error. I deleted the app on the 13th. It reappeared on the 15th. I’ve deleted again, of course.

13.6.14


end of privacy

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Before now, I was undecided about what direction to take regarding privacy.

I started walking in the direction of the end of privacy when I realised I’d lived as a child in a place with no privacy, a village. Marshall McLuhan predicted the global village with the networked society, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at the end of privacy. But I hadn’t gone as far as thinking it should be the basis of policy.

I’ve got a long way to go before I can make sensible comments on what kind of policy changes. And I’m walking far far behind the lead thinkers on the matter, whom I know are there, but I can’t even see.

I do see what needs to be protected will have to be protected by law (until now it’s been protected by difficulty), and that will require policing, effort and constant alertness, so it’ll have to have value to be worth the hassle. I don't know what kind of things will be seen to be worth that hassle beyond the obvious, the things already protected, identity documentation such as passports and ID cards.

Perhaps existing law will be good enough to identify what should be protected, but the changes in privacy will require changes in the techniques of protection. That’s not good enough. I need to consider this.

Another thing I learnt from living in a village is the dangers on concentration of power in a small group of self–interested people, the ‘rich family’. I once lived in a village where that local rich family had got themselves the power to force people to conform to their bad taste. I’ve written music about that!

This behaviour writ large on the global village would be extremely dangerous. We will need to guard against it, but I’ve no idea how.

12.6.14


post–snowden

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I don’t think it’s possible to back out from the NSA’s spying infrastructure. Even if they could be persuaded to stop, the UK, Russia, China, France, and others, would continue.

Furthermore, companies like google and faceboot are collecting our private information, digesting it, and selling it to the dark side (such as advertisers). In effect, they give us trinkets for our gold, sell the gold, and make billions. The buying conmen and liars use it to try and rip us off (if a product was as good as advertisers claimed, it would sell itself, so it wouldn’t need advertising—thus the claims are false, & advertisers are liars).

The value for corporates comes from being the middle man: not everyone can get our private details. Would advertisers buy information from faceboot if it were freely available?

All the same, those trinkets the corporates give us are better than no trinkets. If justice were poetic, we’d get the real value of our personal information, and google and faceboot and the like would, with clever accounting and solid management, just about balance their books.

At least the corporates are obeying the laws, which, given the way the US system works, they probably wrote themselves. Another group of people who want your private information are the criminals. They make money stealing the things needed for identity impersonation, they steal your reputation.

The state is getting everyone’s private details. Corporates are getting almost everyone’s private details. Criminals are getting many peoples’ private details. We law–abiding citizens, we get no–one’s private details. We are the losers, yet it’s our private information that’s being stolen.

So if the Chinese, and the Americans, and the British, and the advertisers, and google, and faceboot, and the crackers, have all got my private details and your private details and everyone’s private details, then what’s left for privacy? There’s nothing left.

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The bag is open, the cat has gone. The question now is who should have this information? Just the state bastards who stole it? Just the rich bastards who fob us off with trinkets? The criminals? Or everyone?

Why reward only the unscrupulous? We should reward everyone. We have to democratise our data so everyone has access, if they could be arsed.

That way, just as the NSA would spot exactly what you had been up to over the weekend, so you could do the same for the boss of the NSA. Just as faceboot could spot exactly what you had been up to, so you could do the same for the faceboot boss. Similarly for the digirati mafiosa. The loss of privacy would become a little quid pro quo. We normal people would get a little of our stolen power back.

We have to democratise our data.

Of course, there will have to be changes. Identity verification will not be able to depend simply on supposédly confidential information, since that will be freely available for everyone, not just criminals, corporates and spies.

But that’s just a technical problem. The old solutions still work: even now, I have to carry my identity documents around. We can use electronic signatures online. Identity verification that doesn’t depend on faux—confidential knowledge is a technical problem with existing technical solutions. They might need to tidy up those solutions to make them easier to use and more reliable, but they exist and they can work.

So we can democratise our data.

All this is why, on balance, I think Snowden had a very good point. I’m not convinced his solution of leaking the NSA’s soiled underware was correct approach, but he’s right that we need to address the problem.

We have to democratise our data.

11.6.14


explanation

A poem should say all it needs to say. If it needs an explanation, it’s wrong. I never explain my poems—although I do like to tease the audience. My one fan is a deaf old lady who thinks I do gorilla impressions.

Seriously, I don’t write for the lazy.

11.6.14


fracking

I’m watching the UK debate on fracking. The green lobby does seem to be making a pig’s ear of its position. They seem to be saying ‘Oooh Fracking You Should Be Scared of That It Might Make Your Water Explode’ (I hope that’s an exaggeration) rather than saying ‘climate change is bad we should find a better energy supply’.

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So how do we address the predicted energy needs without fracking? What alternative has the hard numbers to show it would work? What alternatives work when the wind is down? The only technology I can see that might do that is nuclear.

I don’t know why doesn’t the green lobby accept that the current situation is bad and put its support behind the least worst solution, nuclear. They seem to be doing a heads in the sand all–solutions–are–nasty–so–lets–pretend–there’s–not–a–problem approach. Or did I miss something (perfectly possible)? If nuclear is wrong, where and how have the green scientists who support it, such as James Lovelock, got it wrong? I’m sorry to say I find the green campaigning against fracking to be pretty useless. It comes across as all fear and no thought, all scare and no answer.

Incidentally, here’s an informed debate on the facts of fracking (Nature magazine); the facts, note, not the scary nonsense. Conclusion, as I read it: fracking’s ok environmentally so long as it’s carefully regulated, but the economic arguments are questionable.

9.6.14


bishop berkeley

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I listened to In Our Time on the philosopher Bishop Berkeley today. The discussion made me realise that, in some ways, I’m a dualist.

I fully accept the mind is dependent on the body, a product of the brain. But I don’t think it’s part of the matter of the brain, rather, it’s a consequence of the way the matter is organised.

Of course, I accept that if you chop bits out of the brain, then that will damage the mind. I’m not a magic–thinking dualist. If you remove parts of the brain, then you change the way it’s organised, so the mind depenedent on that organisation will change too.

But I dispute that the mind has to be entirely dependent on the brain. I suggest that if you created another object that had a similar organisation as the original but with different components, and, so long as those new components danced the same dance as the original, then you’ll have a copy of the same mind (although once that new mind has different experiences to the original, which will happen as soon as it’s awake, it will be different, so this is a pretty loose concept of copy). The copy may contain the same types of components as the original, but it could also contain a different mix that happened to have the same relative properties. So long as the components used in the copy danced the same dance as the original, then it would be the same mind, copied.

The different components could maybe offer additional features deemed desirable by medical engineers. Perhaps they might use an engineered biology that’s more resilient to infection. Perhaps they might use alternative biological forms that are more resilient against physical properties, such as force, temperature, pressure. Perhaps they could react more quickly, or more slowly, maybe affecting the experience of time. Perhaps they would be derived from a different form of matter. Perhaps an information substrate could replace the matter. I don’t know what components could be chosen, but I do believe that so long as the new components can dance the same way as the originals, then you could transform the mind.

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You might be wondering what all this has to do with Bishiop Berkeley. He was a philosopher who argued that matter didn’t really exist, what we receive with our eyes, for example, is just patterns of light (presuming I understood In Our Time correctly).

Is an apple a collection of atoms assembled together? Of course. Is it a property of those atoms? Well, those atoms could be organised in quite a different way. They’re in that apple because the apple grew that way. The parent apple tree created the apple. That tree’s parent created another apple, which was probably eaten and discarded, the seeds inside sprouted, and the tree grew. What of the atoms in the apple decided that? None of them. How do the atoms determine that they’s in an apple. They don’t. The apple is a consequence of the way the atoms are assembled, not the atoms themselves. It’s that atom organisation that is the apple, not the atoms in the apple. The apple is not the physical atoms, it’s the organisation of the atoms. It is the form of the atoms assembled. The form is not a property of the atoms, thus the apple does not exist, except as a rather fruitful idea.

It struck me that the contemporary analogy to his perspective is the difference between matter and information. Admittedly, this doesn’t have much to do with the Bishop’s perspective, except that it set me thinking.

I believe the mind is information, expressed in the way matter is organised. I believe that if an alternative component was used in the same way as matter, then, so long as it could dance the same dance as the matter, you’d get the same mind. So that’s how, although I accept the evidence for the existence of matter, I’ve become a dualist, of a type.

8.6.14


dear colleague

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Been called a psycho–bitch? Revel in your new psycho–bitch status. Write yourself a to–do list and leave it lying around.

  1. Liquidise a kitty;
  2. Send your CV to Ming the Merciless to prove he’s not the nastiest;
  3. Write an open letter to the Tea Party pointing out they’re a bunch of middle–of–the–road ninnies;
  4. Liquidise another kitty;
  5. Ask the local dentist if you can record his operations for your ‘collection’;
  6. Be polite to a member of the UKIP;
  7. Liquidise more kitties;
  8. Create an asteroid version of a rain dance, then dance your asteroid dance on those you know to be your enemies, namely everyone;
  9. Write a letter to the birds, apologising for getting the timing of your asteroid dance wrong, saying you’d be sorry about their cousins had they not got too big for their boots, so actually you’re not sorry at all, and the birds had better watch out;

5.6.14


luxembourg euro–elections

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I made a mistake with my vote in the Luxembourg euro–elections. Being a lifelong liberal, I voted all Demokratesch. I should have given one of my six votes to the leading CSV candidate, Viviane Redding. She’s the European Commissionar who’s standing up to companies such as Google and Facebook, forcing them to respect just a little bit of privacy, trying to control their profiteering theft of ordinary people’s property, their private information.

These companies give people pretty trinkets in exchange for their valuables, sell those valuables, and make billions of dollars. And what are those pretty trinkets? Faceboot is a BBS writ large. A BBS is something that was usually free. Faceboot added marketing, sparkles and polish, that’s glitter and lies.

And we have no choice. They have created a monopoly market on social interaction. Now, they have created something, and deserve a reward for it, that I do not dispute. But they have created a monopoly, and use that monopoly for theft: that is wrong. If they are going to sell my information, then they can damn well pay me for it. Yes, they can have a cut, they created the market, they deserve something. But giving away pretty trinkets and keeping billions of dollars? No, no, no. That is plain & simple monopolist abuse.

The only people trying to keep these abusers of power in check are powerful states. Viviane Redding is one of the people who could do something, and did do something. That’s why I regret not voting for her.

5.6.14


faceboot

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Dear faceboot,

I can’t give one of my pages its correct title. I have to use “0. arts & ego”. When I attempt to specify “arts & ego”, your system rejects it, stating it should be “Arts & ego”. The ‘correction’ is incorrect.

Arts with a capital A is a proper noun, and my art isn’t proper (nor is it improper). It does not conform to proper, as in property (even though I enjoy proper tea). Arts with a capital A doesn’t acknowledge the arts with a capital ej thrib (or ee cummings, for that matter).

I’d understand why you might wish to enforce title case in the case of page titles, but in that case you’d enforce “Arts and Ego” (which is also wrong).

Can I suggest you come to terms with the existence of non–conformity?

Thanks.

5.6.14


szirtes and poetry

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I’ve just read George Szirtes response to Jeremy Paxman on poetry.

The headline puts it thus: “poetry is felt, not fathomed”. Szirtes gets it. He speaks for me.

3.6.14


paxman and poetry

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First of all, I want to congratulate the poets nominated for this year’s Forward Prize. Seriously, it’s a great honour. Those poets wouldn’t have been nominated without good reason. Seriously, congratulations! I will grab some of the books.

But now I want to have a go at Jeremy Paxman, one of the judges, for something he apparently said. I’m not actually sure he gets poetry. Well, actually, I am sure he’s creating controversy to draw attention to the prize. But the way he does so does make me wonder whether he really gets poetry.

The Grauniad quote him as saying that he wants poets to “explain why they chose to write about the particular subject they wrote about, and why they chose the particular form and language, idiom, the rest of it, because it would be a really illuminating experience for everybody”. If poetry were a puzzle to pull apart, like a mathematical formula, then that would make some sense. It does work for some types of poetry, the clever—clever and that’s why I changed the H to a J in UGANDA kind of stuff. But, with this approach, you’re never going to appreciate poems that aren’t puzzles.

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A good poem is like a good hot bath, you soak in it and it delivers warmth to your bones. The point is that poetry has music, and music simply doesn’t work by explanation. I want poetry to work my gut, I don’t want programming puzzles. A bath doesn’t work because you analyze the movements of water molecules, nor does a poem. Now, admittedly, if you want to understand how some poems work, the analysis can be bloody useful, but that’s after they’ve done their thing, not instead of it, and it’s not for the poet to give; what do they know?! They only write the dratted poem. Worse, I find explanations about a poem usually ruin the damned thing. If something needs saying, it should be said in the poem. The same goes for Paxman’s points. Get in the bath, Jeremy, and just let the poetry slowly soak into your bones. That’s how I discovered my love for modernism in general and Stockhausen in particular, that’s how I discovered Prynne.

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It didn’t help his case that he contradicted himself in making it, because he also said “aim to engage with ordinary people much more”. Er, not wishing to be rude, but I do believe most people listen to any art form for the pleasure alone, not for the explanation. Most people listen to poetry only when it’s explicitly part of music. Having a guitarist explain why she changed the chord to G at that point in the song to reflect sunniness of the lyrics is not what sells the record. Or does he think that DJs regularly give detailed explanation of the songs between tracks? Of course not, they’re creating an atmosphere to allow people to engage with the music and get on with their task to hand. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve not listened to radio shows for a very long time, apart from “The State of Trance” occasionally as a podcast, so I could be talking bollocks here. But I will stand by my point that if you want to engage with ‘ordinary people’, you let them enjoy the art and don’t give them a damned exam to test their appreciation.

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The people who change the art are those who are remembered. They are the ones who create new technique, new standards, they are the ones who influence the next generations, they are the ones taught and revered in the histories of the art. The populist copy–cats may have their five minutes of fame, but they’re forgotten. There’s enough artists to mention as it is, why discuss someone who made no difference? So if you’re really ambitious, and want to have a permanant impact, then you don’t aim for your five minutes of fame, you aim to change the world. Of course, the greatest do both.

I guess it depends on whether someone has ambitions to own a piece of land or to own a piece of eternity.

Perhaps the real reason he said what he said was to get attention for the prize. That’s a good thing, really.

3.6.14


konscht am gronn the second

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My second konscht am gronn took place yesterday. I’m happy I resolved the problems I identified with my first. People now come to look at my photos. I can improve this by getting more stands. I still need to find a way to display and package my A3 photos.

I have another problem, though. People might look at my photos, but they don’t buy.

This will be for many reasons. I could find out why with a market survey, perhaps, but I’ve not done one, and doing one at konscht am gronn might be delicate. Having said that, people come to my stand (now), so if I can persuade some of them to fill out a (short) survey, it could help me no end. In the meantime, there are other ways to work out why people do and don’t buy artwork, though: more on that below.

I have to consider that perhaps my photos simply aren’t good enough. If that’s the case, though, then I’m badly misjudging things. I don’t think it is: I get many positive comments, not just from friends and colleagues, and I have rather a lot of self–belief. I do make sales, just not enough of them. So I’m excluding this possibility.

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Another possibility is Luxembourg. This city is expensive. Flats are small. Perhaps most people do not have the spare money to buy artwork, and, if they do, they’ve nowhere to hang it. So they don’t buy. The people who have a lot of space will have a lot of money, so if they buy artwork, they’re (probably) going to buy artwork for a lot of money. There are myriad galleries targetting them. Why should they come to an outdoor arts market? Perhaps they might: I need to work it out.

It might be worth my while distinguishing my photography to appeal to these people. I can’t and won’t go against the basic fact of photography, it’s always going to be the common man’s visual art. I can make things obviously exclusive, though, by limiting the prints, numbering and signing them, and making the price so the purchase is something special. After all, buying art is something special. It’s not like buying a loaf of bread. I should respect that. I’ll have to think on this, too.

I do just so happen to have an OID, which I got to support digital signing of artworks: perhaps I should use it. It would give me something unique.

An artwork is not a thing to buy, use once, and throw away. If it’s bought, it’s bought to be seen, to occupy a space for a long time. So buying an artwork will be a relatively rare event. And there’s a lot of competition; a great number of people sell artwork. So sales are difficult.

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Anyway, the internet, being the internet, has many sites that purport to analyse why people buy art. I’ve no reason to argue with them.

Clearly, I have a lot to consider. I need to spend some time to come up with a tactic or two to get results. One thing: I’m not undoing my photography to suite a market, I need to find the right market for my photography.

There is the commercial market, but I’m ignoring that for now. Similarly for the galleries. One thing at a time.

I have another tactic ready. I’ve got some portraits of poets. I’ve not shown them yet, but I have the poets’ permission to do so. If I do so, the goal is to promote taking portraits. This will have to be limited; I take my portraits whilst I’m in conversation with the subject. It’s not a matter of putting someone in front of a sheet, saying cheese, and taking a snap. It’s catching people playing, it’s putting them somewhere important, or with something important, and catching their reaction. This takes time and effort. It’s about catching an instant to represent a life, whereas portrait painting is about compressing a life into an instant.

Konscht am gronn isn’t just about selling things. It’s also about building contacts. And, yesterday, I did get a couple of potentially good contacts. The day wasn’t wasted.

2.6.14


linked off

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I’ve been invited to rejoin linked–off.

Let me make this very clear. I am not going back. I find their deliberate and repeated promotion of scammers to be pretty disgusting.

It’s one thing to have scammers as members. I don’t expect linked–off to police the ethics of their subscribers. It’s quite another to deliberately promote charlatans such as Deepak Chopra. Linked off should not be encouraging their users to become victims.

We see with the return of measles just what kind of harm scammers can cause. We see suffering and deaths of those who were not innoculated because their parents believed the scammers and their promoters.

So linked–off are promoting scammers. At best, their promotion is a failure to pay attention to the scammers’ activities; at worst, it’s a knowing attempt to profit from the scams.

Presuming the best case, does their failure to pay attention extend to their engineering, where they hold private details of their subscribers? Does their failure to pay attention extend to their financial management?

I can see nothing positive for me that comes out of their promotion of scammers. That’s why I’ve left.

1.6.14