Art love on the Internet for November 20th:

• Typies: 15 tips to choose a good text type - I want to take time to analyze how to choose correct text typography design in different cases. It is very important to understand that these tips are not final word, but they can be good help at the moment of choosing a text type. In any case, it depends
• Photography in the Ultraviolet spectrum - For years I’ve wanted to mess around with UV photography. Unfortunately, all the websites on DIY UV seem to assume an infinite amount of money and access to specialized equipment on my part. There are two things that I don’t like, when someone tells me I
• Eric Grohe Murals and Design -
• China. Erotic Art. Eastern Gallery - Venus Erotic Art Museum -
• ColorJack: Color Generator -
• Victor Daniel : Online Art Portfolio : Art Face Off - Victor Daniel was born in a small town in South Carolina in 1979. Several years later his family moved to Montana, where he has resided ever since. He graduated from the University of Montana, Missoula in 2002 with a BFA in painting and drawing. Daniel cu
• Alex Kanevsky paintings -

Sunday, I wrote about an interesting email I received asking me to be a part of a book project. As I expected, spam. To be included in the book, there is of course a fee. If I had heard of the book, or if I had solicited them, sure, I might consider it. Thanks, but no thanks, guys.

Like Dad always said, “Nothing’s free”. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

If you’re interested in reading the terms, you can check out the application form here [link].

At first I thought it was spam, but upon further investigation, it looks legit. I’ll keep you posted as to what transpires with this.

————-

Dear Visual Artist

Marc Moss

Found out its work quality, we considered your incorporation in the book “AESTHETICS AND CONTEMPORARY ART” produced by ATcultura.

Biographies and images of artists ; commentaries by prominents reviewers, messages and essays of Contemporary Art, will be present in this highquality book, big format, it will be distribuited on first universities and museums of the world.

Book will be edited in illustration paper, with photocrom illustrations and in a fancy box, covered by a luxe cloth binding, bilingual ( Spanish and English).

Artists invited to take part of edition, will invite by a selection criteria of quality.

Atcultura is sponsored only formally by the Government and enterprises but solicit not subsidies from they, wherefore ATcultura prefer avoid any possible conditionament, this colaborative project solicit to artists one minimum monetary contribution.

Previous books of ATcultura include artists like Caio Fonseca, Natasha de Wet, Perez Celis, Carole Feuerman, Regina José Galindo, etc. You can see in www.atculturalibro.blogspot.com or in our webpage www.atcultura.com

If would be interesting participation in this book for you, we require you as soon possible reply to: atcultura@argentina.com with a brief biography for be larged to future, adress and phone number, to be considered one of selectioned artist for receive own proposal.

You can see first confirmated artists of the book “AESTHETICS AND CONTEMPORARY ART” in www.atculturalibro2.blogspot.com

Best regards.

Lic. María Miriam Farías Iriarte

Vicedirectora Atcultura

I’m in the process of culling my art-related deli.icio.us bookmarks to create an art-centered repository for myself and for you. You can subscribe to the feed here.

I’ve been exploring different online purchasing opportunities for those who wish to own some of my artwork at a reasonable price. More details on this process to follow. For now, check out the stuff I have available at ImageKind.

THE ALBUM WILL COME AS A 48.4MB ZIP FILE CONTAINING 10 X 160KBPS DRM FREE MP3s.

All you have to do is perform a Google News search for “Radiohead”, and you’ll see that much is already being written about their decision to make their new album “In Rainbows” available for download at a cost of, well, whatever you’re willing to pay as a consumer. Yes, this is revolutionary, but let’s take a closer look, and then let’s draw some parallels before deciding what, if anything other artists can learn from Radiohead’s bold move.

Free art has been available for a long time. I have degraded images of some of my art available for your viewing. How am I to stop you from “stealing” it by downloading it to your local machine, or even making prints of it yourself? I can’t stop that. (If you DO decide that is the route you’re going to take, please consider making a donation of whatever amount you’re comfortable with). I’ve also given away my artwork for free before. Sometimes, I don’t know who the recipient of the free art is. Other times, I have the pleasure of meeting the cheapskate art lover. Either way, I look at it as a way to spread the joy of art, as well as getting my name out there. If I made enough money to hire an accountant, I’d have him write off the free art at whatever value I assign to it and claim it on my taxes as a marketing expense.
Street musicians and performers have been using the “give what you’re comfortable giving” business model for years. Sometimes, they even make enough to get by. Even restaurants sometimes give away free food to entice you into coming into the restaurant and experiencing the art of their chefs, for example.

In the case of the restaurants, they are hoping that you’ll come into their establishment and buy more food. Similarly, Radiohead is offering their music for free, if you want it. But, as they say in the email which they send to folks who have signed up to download the album tomorrow, the songs will only be ripped at 160KBPS. I like my digital music at 192 or better, and I’ll bet that audiophile fans of Radiohead are willing to pony up some cash for an actual CD of the music, as there are rumors floating around that Radiohead will sign with a label to distribute the album in 2008. Think you can avoid the lines getting the digital version? Nope, there’s even a digital queue:

But can visual artists, for example, afford to give away their best work for free? Maybe degraded digital copies of it, sure, but originals? No, I don’t think they can. And I’ll go one step further and ask all artists who are just getting started not to underprice their artwork. Doing so de-values artwork by other artists of the same caliber and makes the art-buying public thank that paying full value for art is not necessary. I was in a gallery over the weekend at which the featured artist was selling small 5″x7″ framed original watercolors for less than $100. An original is worth more than that, my friend.

For more about how to price artwork, have a look at this article.

Donate and Support the Artist

If you found this article useful, please consider making a small donation. I accept donations in any amount, none are too small or too large. All donations and gifts will be used to further my artwork. Donations are easy to give online, via Paypal or if you would like to work out any other method of supporting your local arts, please contact me directly via email.

Feeling uninspired? Think your work is shit? Want someone to tell you how great you are? Fear not, young artist. Let a Hot Intern (or any number of other folks) stroke your ego for a few minutes between brilliant projects.

Adsturbation.com

Animoto is a new service that allows users to create music videos from their photo slideshows. There are full length vids available at a cost, and there are free 30 second vids available as well. I decided to give it a whirl and let you know how my experience was. The service seems like it could be useful for folks wishing to quickly display a sampling of their artwork or photos in an entertaining fashion at a low cost utilizing an easy-to-use user interface.

The sign-up process was relatively painless. They included humor in the process as well, which is always good, incorporating positive words into the annoying anti-bot detection requirement, as well as making the button read “I’M A HUMAN”.

For the actual uploading of images, Animoto supports uploading from your local machine, or accessing some of the popular photo sharing sites online including Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Photobucket and Picassa. I chose to grab some images from my Flickr site. After giving Animoto permission to access my Flickr account, I chose an album. This process from within Animoto was less than perfect because, for a 30 second clip, one is limited to around 15 photos. Animoto does not display photo counts for the albums in Flickr, at least. I had to login to Flickr to check album sizes. A minor annoyance.

The next step is to choose music. You have an opportunity to upload music from your machine (with a warning that it had better be legit), or choose from selections offered on Animoto. I tried to upload from my machine, but the Animoto service did not seem to have this feature completely bug-free yet, so I had to go with their selections, which included three genres: Indy, electronic or hip-hop. It seemed all of the selections in each category were lame, so I went with what looked to be the least lame. There was no way for me to tell, as the “play” button intended to preview the music before selection did not work.

Okay, so I have the photos loaded, the music selected. Lastly, I need to tell it to create the video. I do this and wait a short amount of time before I receive an email letting me know that the vid is ready for online viewing.

It seems to be a fun little tool, but not very useful in the end because of the lack of control the end user has as to which images are displayed in which way. I think the display order is based upon the way the photos are ordered in the album, but I think it’s more of a throwaway “Oh, neat” thing than anything. We’ll see how it goes, as with all 2.0 startups.

View the video below.

Update: The embedding feature seems to spit out bad code, so you’ll have to follow the link to view the vid they made for me. View the vid for reals.

Cool. The folks over at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival got ahold of me earlier this summer to ask if it was cool if they used a photo I took (left) for their 2008 promo materials. I just noticed that they’re using it on their site, too. I get no cash for it, but I love that they’re using it. Go have a look at the original, uncropped photo.

Seems like some of my other photos are getting some notice as well. The folks over at Schmap sent me a message saying that two of my photos have been shortlisted for inclusion in the Minneapolis shmapplet. From the Schmap site: Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides is also used by clients, partners and bloggers to power schmapplets – a range of fully customizable map mashups and map widgets. Founded in 2004, Schmap is privately owned and based in Carrboro, North Carolina. Interesting concept, eh? The two photos are below.

Gluek opened in 1934 and is the oldest bar in Minneapolis.