I’ve joined a creativity group with Jan Allsopp who I’ve known online for a long time. My commitment is for a month (at least). Committed to 15 min a day for the month of January – I’m working on a book. I’ll post more about the book as time goes on. Today is day six and I’ve produced a lot each day. I find it helpful to have such a strong focus. A simple idea, choose a route – i.e. the tools. Mine are the Google files (Doc and Slides) I’m using to write the book. In addition we create ‘cruise control’ – a voluntary frame in which to work. Some voluntary restrictions I’m using are:
No new sketches.
Work on the book proposal only, not the whole book.
Also good to see other peoples art – so far so good. It will get harder as the month intensifies.
I would love it – for one thing: Drawing. iPads have never really done that well. But maybe this one, with its Pencil, beats the Wacom tablets.
BUT
Its not a computer. It drives me crazy on the iPad to add items to a calendar – to edit anything, it is such a pain to try to get the curser to go to the right place! I can’t see it replacing a Mac where the input options include a trackpad and a mouse. Touch screens that flop around laptop-style are so wrong – as Steve Jobs said “ergonomically terrible”!
But a Mac is no good for drawing.
I had a Toshiba M200 that was ok, it converted quite well – back in 2002! (Images) It went from vertical to horizontal.
Steve Jobs would not have succumbed to the vertical iPad. There has to be a better solution. An OSX device that incorporates touch, something like the new Surface Book (Images) is one possibility. I can’t bear the thought of going back to Windows & Microsoft, Surface Book reviews mention the crashes, the lack of attention to detail in the hardware design. Will convergence that allows conversion in hardware and software functions come to Apple?
In the meantime – and for a long time I imagine – in the Apple world we are stuck with the need for two devices, a Macbook and an iPad Pro. Probably three devices, I’d still want my iPad Mini for curling up with, the iPad Pro seems too big for that.
I hate seeing the iPad Pro used like a laptop, copying the ergonomically terrible Microsoft devices. As a horizontal drawing tool they look great.
Best advice for Apple: Create a touch/non-touch convertable OSX beta for the iPad pro. Maybe they are working on this?
First time in months I’ve put pen to screen! Playing.
The last one called “Making Time” Mostly using ArtRage on the Toshiba M200.
I love the process. I am so familiar with the tools – the software and the M200.
I have my eye on an iPad. It will not have the pressure sensitivity. What it will have is mobility. It is so sad that MS did not have the ability to develop the Tablet. The Toshiba M200 is small enough, but impossible (for me at least) to master when folded into its slate form. And the battery life is measured in minutes even with my new battery. There is still IMO a place in the market for MS to make a Windows 7 convertible. I am over my initial iPad disdain. I am appreciating Apple’s solid building and pragmatics combine with the revolutionary. They took over the music industry even though they came in late to the mp3 market, not a mean feat brilliant strategies!
Tools evolve, and the best use of any given tool is of value. I have done a lot of sketching on my Palm PDAs – tool I’ll never use again – but therein lies something of value. The lead pencil has no colour. But look what has been done over the centuries with the humble pencil, and it lives. The current – no pressure iPad will die and be gone, but I look forward to making use of it, while it is in its first iteration. What can the finger do on that thing?
I have just set up a new art blog. In this Moment. That means this psyberspace space can return to its slow reflection & exploration of the psyche in cyberspace in all its forms, not just the visual.
This is another that could belong to the Thousand Sketches series, except that that project is complete. The work with these crosses is not. I am working on a Gallery for my work right now, and there will be an exhibit of Earth Crosses, mostly from Thousand Sketches, some new ones as well.
They have, by their sheer number and ease of replication, become less magical and less shocking—a situation unknown until fairly recently in human history. Until the development of mass reproduction, images carried more power and evoked more fear. The second of the Ten Commandments listed in Exodus 20 warns against idolizing, or even making, graven images: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
The essay is has a snippet from most commentators on the image, it is a resource. It is a full on part of the anti image culture for all that, and it is interesting how this philosophy comes part and parcel with conservative and Christian politics.
The net has fairly recently become more image centric. Youtube & flickr are evidence of the ubiquity of digital image making hardware and of the broadband to make use of it. But there is another wave that is possible. Built into Vista and no doubt every OS in the future is the ability to use a touch screen. Strangely photography took longer to develop than simple drawing & painting, on the net it looks as if sketching will come later than text and photos. It will come. The slate was an early educational tool (my parents used slates at school, paper was too expensive) the digital slate is a natural as kids learn to read & write online in a digital world. They will draw!
Ubiquity of the hand hewn digitally born image is a possibility, that it lags is possibly due to the fear of the image and dominance of the word.
Mcluhan probably had all this in mind, that in the electronic era, there would be a demise of the word. However we know now that nothing is ever replaced or lost, rather it transforms. Her final point that because we have more images we will have less meaning & not be able to transmit culture is just nonsense.
I am (still) reading Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction I enjoy the quote that opens it by Paul Valerey. Sounds like Mcluhan, but he is talking (Benjamin too) about shifts due to mechanical development – reproduction, now this needs updating with an essay about art in the age of electronic production.
More Paul Valery quotes follow, including the bit I have paraphrased above from the Benjamin essay.
