Salon 60 // Media Platforms

Colin Goldberg, CFO Alphabet and Google Hello and welcome to the Techspressionist Salon Number 60. Today's topic is media platforms, and it is Wednesday, January 4, 2023. My name is Colin Goldberg sitting in for Davo who's our usual moderator. And so I wasn't aware I'd be moderating until a few minutes ago, which is fine. And so today's topic is media platforms and the I guess conversation idea came about. Usually we do a little sort of after party session after the salon recording is ended at 7 and come up with the topic for the next salon. Whoever sort of is hanging out at the end. Gets to weigh in on what the topic for the next salon is, and this salon's topic was inspired in part by the emergence of platforms like Mastodon and other alternatives to Twitter that kind of have become more visible in the wake of you know, Elon Musk taking control of Twitter, basically purchasing Twitter and some of the different changes that have happened.

Unattributed

So that's kind of the general conversation on that platform. People reacting, you know the public reacting in various ways. Notably, the emergence of Mastodon, which was I hadn't heard of prior to fairly recently, which looks to be sort of like a distributed you know version of a Twitter like platform.

Unattributed

So you know that's the general topic of conversation I'd like to hear from you guys. And you know. Welcome to any of the newcomers. We're going to have a great number of people for this video. So we're going to have a great number of people for this video. So we're going to have a great number of people for this video. So it's an interesting bit in the cap to us. So it's a good first talk. So that's the first thing to or I think of I think of in the last question. So I'm going to just start with the first point. So I'm going to just start with the first point. So I'm going to just start with the first point.

Unattributed

So I'm going to just start with the first point. So I'm going to just start with the first point. So I'm going to just start with the first point. So I'm going to just start with the first point. What you guys use what you think is useful anything in particular interesting about any specific social media platforms I mean I could sort of kick it off with a brief share about how social media has really helped expressionism develop you know when we first met on in our first salon it was myself Patrick Lichty Steve Miller Oz Van Rosen and helen harrison and you know one of the things we discussed was what is the goal of this sort of idea of formulating an artist group and sort of a primary goal was to sort of solidify a definition of text and to be able to use that as a way to express the idea of expressionism which we decided upon on that session as an artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience and then the sort of goal of the endeavor would be to help you know find artists who identify with this idea and to work together to bring the term into common usage so one thing that I you know had been doing from the sort of get-go was using Instagram and then other afforestation this was in the coolings years that was like you know as the'd have your own sort of fun things and don't have to do it with me for that like that so we had to work with this that's what we did and we did that for the insurkey not this was the first time that we had this under again this was the first time that we had this I think it was in the school years that we had this I think it was in the fact that we had we had to work with this from a quite different perspective in an interesting way and it was all about people's personal attention and not just like not just like your own home or your own place of life that's what we did and it was this was the first time that we had to work with this the way that the Artist Index originally got established and still continues to grow is through primarily Instagram and the hashtag, which now is somewhere around 55,000 posts on Instagram.

Know, and interact with one another. Yeah. I'm sharing already. Can you? Can everybody see? Yeah. These are 15 seconds of depicting our dystopian city where we live. Because I experience this every day. This. I have the note that it was rejected. I do not have it anymore. For some reason, they delete it. But in this case, I have just very few few lights. But this is the kind of work that I normally normally produce. And these are pretty much.

Jaime Bautista

Available to everybody. If you can. I don't know if you can ask my, my, my, my number of viewers. Yeah. And then, of course. When you say it was deleted. I mean, I've been watching on Instagram and like you sometimes. Did it just disappear off your feed? They disappeared. They removed. But they are reposted.

Jaime Bautista

Okay. Well, it sounds like you might've been shadow banned. What they call shadow ban. Hi, me. It's an area that not a lot of people know much about. It's just that sometimes. Instagram appears to ignore. Certain accounts. Or the algorithm doesn't favor. Sharing content from certain accounts. But one way you can counteract shadow banning. Is to.

Jaime Bautista

Hold off posting for about three days or so. And then resume. Posting. And then you can. And that might reverse some of the negative. Viewership or negative exposure. That you've been getting. Yeah. Well, this has been going on for a couple of months already. I would say almost like a year ago. That they started just to. To reduce the number of.

Jaime Bautista

Followers as well. Right. Well. Yeah. Try posting every 72 hours and see what happens. Do that for a week or so. Yeah. See if that improves your situation. Yeah. This is another one. These are videos. This is nothing. Nothing wrong with that. It was just my, my point of view. And then I like to express to the best that I can. And by the way. These images are produced. By me. By myself. I use a blender. I use Photoshop. I use a rabbit. I use different, different platforms to create the art. And then. For the video I use. Da Vinci. Yeah.

Jaime Bautista

That's. That's exactly what. This is. Yeah. This is the one that also they, they did not like it, but I requested like a few days ago. This they don't like it. This is related to the. Immigration immigration thing. Who is this? I work in a federal building. And we have like a. Like a thousand. 2000.

Jaime Bautista

People. And. You know, we're trying to get a better life in here. And. Registering with the immigration. But then. At the same time, it's just a pretty, pretty stressful for the. For the people that are surrounded and you know what the effects of that what's going on. I don't have to explain much of it. But.

Jaime Bautista

This is for the asylum seekers. You know that there's a lot of mistreatment. But I'm sure that they're not going to be the same. You know, they're going to be the same. This is just me playing music. But I really don't play. But this is. The most popular one. And this is. From the. Price that they won in Copenhagen. A few weeks ago. Last year.

Jaime Bautista

Yeah. And. But anyway, thank you for, for. For your suggestions. And. Just. We like to. Keep emphasizing. How we can get more popular and how we can attract more attention. How we can bring more. More artists to the, to the group. I hope. Eventually we'll be successful. Thank you very much for listening.

Jaime Bautista

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So it looks like the next artist up is Roz. You know, and since this is Roz, are you there? I think you're next. Hi everybody. I found some of that kind of interesting. I like that holiday greeting on top of these immigrants trying to get, I don't know, kind of a dark image. I liked that.

Jaime Bautista

Thanks for sharing. You know what? I'm actually responding to Renata just a little bit. I, you know, I realize this session isn't so scripted, but when she was talking about emojis, I think that was Renata at the beginning. And I just wanted to share a few thoughts about how at least talk about a specific show I did where media online affected the, you know, physical space I was working on, how new media can affect us out here in this real earth space. I did a show and I posted, I had emojis.

Jaime Bautista

It was at a library and it was a kind of little retrospective and it had a bunch of my work from different arenas. And I wanted to engage children. So I hung some of the pieces low and some high, but I also put these little emojis, stick them next to all the pieces when you entered. And I invited everybody to, to rate the pieces.

Jaime Bautista

So, you know, that would never have happened, you know, 10 years ago. And I'm just sharing that it made a really kind of fun response. And the kids would take off the stickers and under each piece would be a whole set of stickers, you know, from, you know, sad to, you know, your tongue out. Oh, I love you. I love it. And, oh, it's great. And it was just so much fun to go back and look at. And I had a little place where they could stick it on the card and put what their, how they felt about each painting. So I'm just kind of sharing how new media affects us out here in the real world. That was a fun way to use it.

Jaime Bautista

Thank you, Roz. And yeah, you know, this is definitely a pretty open session. As far as the 4D. Format goes. So, you know, I mean, if anyone has comments about what one of the other artists is sharing or whatever else, you know, feel free to just sort of jump in into the conversation. So, but the next hand that I see up is Lucy.

Jaime Bautista

Hi, everybody. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I thought I'd share a little bit about social VR platforms, as in social virtual reality. And I think that's one of the mediums that I create in and with and for. And in 2021, I participated in a year long challenge of creating a new piece each week with a group called VR Art Live. So all of us were creating in or with virtual reality. And one of the things that we did was we'd get together in virtual reality spaces and.

Jaime Bautista

Hang out, hang out or visit each other's artwork on various social media platforms and social VR platforms. The main one that we use was called VR chat. Also, we use sometimes old space or Mozilla hubs. Those are the main ones in particular VR chat. So I'm going to share my share my screen. So, I

Was looking at the last guy's Instagram. Sorry, I don't remember your name. Okay. All right. Yes, hi, me. Okay, so what do we look like in virtual reality? Well, first of all, we're all wearing our headsets in our own living rooms and bedrooms and whatever. But then we get together in these spaces and this was just a space, one place that we... And these are my two friends, Willow Moon and Chroma Snare. Those are their VR names and these are the avatars that they had chosen or created.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And here Willow Moon has a sparkler in one hand, she's giving a thumbs up in the other hand. Just to say that there's a certain amount of expressiveness in when we're interacting, we can actually do thumbs up and speak to each other. And when we get together, we may get together in a group to visit somebody's world that they just created on this social reality social VR platform.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And we're in all different time zones and we have different accents. And there's a guy in England and a woman in Paris and I have a friend in New Zealand and another one in South Korea and several in the United States. And the gal in South Korea had to wake up at three in the morning to hang out with us. But we're all talking and we're visiting each other's spaces. And I'm like, you know, this is like technical art chit chat, talking and expressing and it's like, hey, I love how you did this. What software did you use for that? I had a problem. How did you get around this problem? You know, this kind of chat, but we're in virtual reality with our avatars.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And this is the trophy line for anyone we're at. This is me. This is my avatar. Isn't that cute? I didn't create it. I wish I looked more like that, actually, but sadly, I don't. And this is me taking a selfie with a mirror behind me so you can see what I look like behind. So, I mean, and all this to say, like, what do these social VR platforms give you? Because actually, I find them very limited in creating, but they supply me all the infrastructure, to visit different worlds, to connect with friends, to invite a friend to join you, to request to be able to join, to speak, to hear, to change the volume, to turn down the background music volumes so you can hear the voice volume better. All this infrastructure is huge, including to move around and jump and navigate. And so I have frustrations in creating for this platform.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But I value all that it provides, all the basic navigation and stuff. So I'm going to just... One more thing I'm going to show you is a piece that I made for VRChat. And this is just a video I created of this world. So I just created this sort of world of sort of stalactites and stalagmites, and it's called Bioluminescent Pink. And I just wanted to create this space where it's fun to explore and you're moving through all these sort of vertical structures and you can hide. I wanted to, you know, explore that sensation of being in tight spaces, being able to hide and move through this stuff. And I wanted to be drawn to an area that's a different color. So. Also you'll see these horizontal platforms. And using the horizontal platforms you can jump up onto them and navigate all around the space at a higher level.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

So you can either be on the ground level or at this higher level. So you get this variation of height and viewpoints when you are traveling around and exploring. And you can also get outside this cave and jump up onto these horizontal platforms. And if you go far enough you might discover this thing, this orb at the top.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

So just to say, you know, these are spaces that anybody can visit. And that's kind of a fun thing to be able to just hang out with people. Like a whole bunch of my VR friends, you know, we got together in that place and I got to like, you know, show them around and, hey come check out this part. And friends were like, oh I love this plant over here or whatever. And it's like, it's a way of sharing your art where you're inside the art. But this platform, I mean, it's not as subtle.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I can't explore as much subtlety on the platform. They're really quite limited. I can't explore a lot of the effects that I do in my other work that's not in a social VR platform. It may be VR, but I can't explore the subtlety of interaction on this platform. But it's, I very much appreciate not having to get all the other stuff like, you know, microphones and navigation, what have you, working. And it's just, it's, that was a really new thing to hang out with people in VR. And the first time I was there, I was just like, oh my God, somebody spoke to me. What do I do? And I was like, felt really weird.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But anyway, it was just kind of a different way of being that you get used to interacting with in these spaces. So anyway, that's what I have to share about media platforms. Are those, Lucy, that was really amazing. And are those apps that, you know, the social VR apps, are they on the Quest headset, you know, or are they specific to a particular type of hardware?

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

They are usually, you can get into at least a bit VR chat and old space and probably Mozilla hubs as well. You can, you can get into Mozilla hubs as well. You can access them either from Steam or the Oculus marketplace platform. And those are two other examples of media platforms. And as far as being hardware specific, many when you're creating a world, at least in VR chat, you make it either for Quest or for Rift or make it work for both that particular place.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

That I showed you right now is only available for an Oculus Rift. And it's on my list to make it quest ready. Gotcha, well, you seem to be sort of at least one of the sort of authority figures in the group on VR. I know Patrick is fairly involved with VR stuff too, and Greg Little, but I think it would be really interesting to organize like a little meetup or field trip, you know, for those who have a headset. I mean, I have a quest that, you know, I've sort of just really played around with a little bit. I mean, the first thing that I did was I got a sticker to put on it that says, Ono Sendai, which is if any of you read Neuromancer, that was Case's hardware.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I kind of feel like we're bridging a gap now into what was fiction, you know? And, you know, I think that's kind of what I'm trying to do is I've played a little bit with some of the social VR platforms, but never, you know, actually met up with people that I know. I know Darcy Gerbarg also early on in the salons, you know, had tried to sort of organize people to meet up in alt space, I believe, but I think that would be pretty cool, you know? So if you have any interest, definitely, that would be something I'd be interested in participating in, you know, we could try to organize that. But for now, you know, we've been trying to organize people through any of the other platforms or here on the salons or whatever to set a time and probably if there were some basic instructions for people who are newbies even like myself.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I haven't really used many of those social apps, but it would be a good excuse and a reason to try that out. And, you know, I do feel like it's, you know, a very interesting and strange experience. The one I forget which one I actually went on, but it was sort of like in the beginning of the movie. Sort of like almost like you're entering a dorm and you were going in and trying different things and then you know I saw actual other people come in their avatars and they were trying to like mess with me or have conversations and it was it was very strange you know it was somewhere between like an aol chat room and a video game and some other weird thing that I don't know what to call it but I guess that's what vr is like but yeah definitely appreciate you sharing and if you have any interest in trying to get a bunch of us from the community together in one of those platforms definitely give me a shout and I'll try to work with you on organizing time and meet up place or something sure that'd be fun I'm curious how many people have a headset of some sort just raise your hand I'm curious they're like three four five six cool and there's probably more you know like if we put that put it out there on the facebook there's a facebook group with the chat associated with it that has about 200 artists on there that's probably the biggest sort of group messaging type situation I think that there is but you know we could always put you know I think because like to me the salons are kind of like and I was speaking with verneta about this you know there's a lot of people who are like I don't know if I'm doing this right but I think it's really interesting and I think it's really interesting to see how people formulate content for a journal and it and to me the salons are a very core component of the community you know it's like where synergy happens because humans are all getting together in real time and interesting stuff can happen that might not be able to happen in like asynchronous media you know so having any other types of ways that we can look at that I think would add to you know the sort of social sculpture aspect of the project in a sense you know like I would really love for artist members to view what we do together in that in that way because I think it's very it opens the door to interesting outcomes you know I have a question for lucy and paul you both mentioned interactions can be awkward in the vr space so how do you handle the psychological demands of your personal space while in virtual reality I mean is there a way to limit the physical distance like set a parameter where in other characters cannot come within five feet of you or so or they can't touch you or can they touch you at will and how do you cope with that you know yeah the different platforms have different sort of security slash safety features and I don't remember the details of vr vr chat and I didn't even know that there was a I didn't know the other platforms well enough but yeah there's certain there's quite a complex array of limits that you can set up yourself and things like distance or who you can speak to and who can speak to you and you can you can sort of tag people as being problematic and people can get kicked off the platform so yeah there's quite a lot of features in place for that and for myself as far as sort of getting getting used to it I mean it was a bit of a journey I mean I'm an introvert and the first time I was in there I was just like a stranger came and talked to me and I was just like can I just take my headset off and like you know unplug I just like but that's graceful you know you don't go running from the room somebody talks to you but and the first time that somebody showed me around a vr space I had to choose from like very limited number of avatars and this was not vr chat and I ended up kind of I don't know selecting selecting this avatar that was totally like a spacey woman with great big boots and big shoulders and a half in metal and I meet this guy who and I hadn't even met in real life he was just like an acquaintance he was showing me this vr place and he was he was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt and I was just like oh my god I am so dressed wrong I was just like completely dressed wrong for this interaction and felt like such an idiot because I was so dressed wrong I was dressed up like a straight out of star trek and he is wearing jeans in a black t-shirt and these are just our avatars and it was like the weirdest sensation of like you know you're in vr but you're trying to like you know have conversations in a in a normal way you know a lot of our normal you know social ways of being you know and then suddenly you're in vr and everybody's dressed dressed weird or that first time I was dressed weird and anyway it's a little bit of an adjustment to say I think one of the other things though too is that on some pla I think on most of the platforms you can either choose like first person or third person and if you choose third person bernetta it's almost more like watching a video game and there's like this distance that sets up between your character and the world versus you personally that it's a really different experience if you look at it third person versus first person I don't know lucy in your experience one way or the other if you found that true as well yeah it's yeah for sure that the difference between first and second person and third person I mean you know that there is this that the whole thing you know if you're in first person then you know you know we bump into each other because you know most of us were not very good at navigating and we end up bumping into each other and you know one kind of gets used to most of us not being very good at it so you know that's part of the thing yeah I that there's always getting getting used to the navigation it does take a bit of practice and then tutorials and it's a good idea to have a little practice run on your own cool thank you thank you so I see cynthia has her hand up cynthia you like to share I'm just going to speak I'm not going to share on the screen first of all I'd like to say happy new year to everyone and also to thank lucy for telling us about this vr social platform I think it's fascinating and thank you for sharing that I personally use facebook Instagram and twitter my favorite is Instagram and I have worked with cynthia for a number of years and I've been able to share her work with other artists to help them market their work so I've been able to share and I will share some of the things that I've done and told others to do that helps with marketing and also it can be done most of it on twitter as well with any kind of social media you have to water it so to speak and I'm sure many here probably know many of these things already but I'll go through them because there may be people that don't know don't know them or have something they can offer you need to post often enough certainly but I find that the way I get people to follow me has to do with providing a little story with my artwork for example I know colin has used haiku so that gets someone a little interested in oh how does this tie in with this artwork or I've used the carousel in Instagram when you post post several things and ask people to select one piece that they think they like better than another I've asked And I've engaged with other people, not just by liking, but making sincere, and it has to be sincere, comments about their work.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And sometimes they would then follow you and perhaps make comments about your work. And of course, in the end, I can't say I've sold anything, but I've gotten a lot of feedback about my work by engaging with others. And that to me is very valuable and it's also inspirational for me personally. Your profile is a rich place to put information so that you can market your work. For example, on your bio, you only have 150 characters that you can use in your bio. So instead of putting my website in my bio, I go to Linktree and you can get a free account. And Linktree, and I'm sure there are many of you that already do this, you can then put everything from your NFT websites, as well as your own website, as well as if you're running workshops or what have you. So that is, I think, a really powerful tool to get people out to, you know, where you are on Twitter, where you are on Facebook, etc.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

The other thing that's important is our hashtags. And hashtags can be important for two reasons. One, you can get seen by using a hashtag of a gallery. If there's a gallery you're interested in, you can get seen by using a hashtag of a gallery. So that's a really important tool. In there seeing your work.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Also, the hashtag enables you to be part of Techspressionism. And just for the record, sometimes the Techspressionism does not show up in my newsfeed for a lot of reasons. Number one, the newsfeeds are loaded with lots of ads, and sometimes you have to go down and scroll quite a bit to maybe see Techspressionism. So that might be a reason to and of course, you should follow the Techspressionism hashtag in the first place.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But that's sometimes the reason why you might not see it. Also, in the upper left corner of Instagram, it says following. And if you tap on that, it will only show you those people you follow. So if you're not seeing people you regularly follow, and you'd like to hit following, and it will allow you to see just the people and hashtags that you're following. So I find that is helpful. The other thing about hashtags that's really helpful is you can organize your own work. So if you create a hashtag, like I say, hashtag C.D.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Donato, and then put a category or a series that you're working on, you can actually organize your work. So that if you, if you want to see some of your work on Instagram, or get people to follow that hashtag of you, that's another another thing that you can do. Stories and reels are important. As Renata mentioned, stories only run for 24 hours, reels, and they're short. Whereas reels are longer, they're videos that are longer. And I found because I've compared, if I put my artwork on Instagram, and I put my work on Instagram, and I put my work on Instagram, and I put my artwork on a reel, versus on a post, I get more attention.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And of course, why is that happening? Because the algorithm has changed, because Meta is interested in competing with TikTok, because TikTok is all about video. So using videos is very helpful, a great draw, even if you're just putting a still of your artwork. So that's something certainly I can share. The other thing is that what I like about Twitter and Instagram is the community, the connection I have to the community. The reason I'm here today is because I'm on Instagram, and I'm on Twitter.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And so that has been wonderful. There are also calls for art that are out there. I'm presently involved with a global call for art called Unconnected Yet. And I've been very fortunate to be accepted for a show in Kolkata, India, and they're also going to have it in Boston. And I wouldn't have known about that had I not been on Instagram. So that's another connection, a global connection that I really appreciate.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And I think, that pretty much winds up much of what I wanted to share about my experience and my working with other artists to try to improve their following and attention and maybe even sales. Thank you for letting me share. Thank you, Cynthia. Definitely appreciate all your insight. And yeah, I've been very fortunate to be able to share with you today. And I think, I've noticed that, you know, there are certain little tricks on the various platforms that seem to be not necessarily well-documented.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I probably spend the most time on Instagram. And one thing that I've noticed is, if I want to, say, drive traffic to the next salon sign up or something like that, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll take the graphic, whatever it is, and we'll see what's going to come out. Is the promotional image and then share it as a story or create a reel around it you know with some audio or something like that and then share it as a story and use the link sticker to create an external link to that page and then tag in a little text block in the story other accounts of people that are going to be maybe at the salon or you know different other platforms like the folks over at neftorian you know just anyone that I think might want to share the story and that list of people it doesn't necessarily even have to be visible that is like you can sort of hack it by making it black if the background's black or putting the image in front of the of people that you're tagging and then what that does is it shows up in people's sort of activity log or activity feed so and so tag you in their story share to story and like a user just has to tap share to story and then they're sharing it to their story you know with the link and everything and I've noticed renat has been doing that and I appreciate you know those efforts on her part as well to help promote the salons but that you know can be used to drive traffic to and to share the story and to create a story and to create a story and to share with other people but I've noticed like tagging some of the galleries that I'm interested in you know has actually resulted in them liking the posts or commenting or following my account where if I emailed them they it would it would probably just get deleted you know what I mean so I think that there is you know there are some best use cases for using social media and ways that in which you know each platform is intrinsically got the things that works on it I think like what might you know what might work well as an Instagram post might get no visibility or views or anything or traction on twitter and vice versa you know so I think that's something to consider as well versus just taking the same content and sharing the same thing on every single platform that's one thing I've become aware of you know yeah I think I'm gonna try what you mentioned I haven't done that and I think that's great the other thing I found too that's really wonderful is when people share your work to their story so for and we can do it ourselves if we see someone's work that little airplane underneath the post allows you to share their work in your story and a couple of people had done that to me in the past and it just felt great you know as it does feel when renata chooses some of some of our work and puts it up there so I think you know that's another way we can help one another is to share each other's work I think also if we go to the artist index most of us have an Instagram account or a twitter account and if we follow one another that certainly is another way to create community for us and to see each other's work and to you know foster you know inspirational comments or just you know I like your work absolutely you know and I think that the way that the index is organized you know in terms of geographic organization definitely lends itself to you know artists who might all be you know say they're all the artists in new york want to get a couple people together or have access to a space or you know there's a pop-up space and pull a couple people together and do a physical show you know giovanna did that with the brooklyn show and that happened really quickly you know and I think that would you know that's again another facet of what the possibilities are with a community like this that hasn't been completely exploited yet but I think certainly makes sense you know you know I would definitely feel like physical shows and getting people to see work in person you know it's a very different it's a very different experience I feel like the southampton exhibit allowed a lot of things to be accomplished that couldn't have been done with a strictly virtual exhibition you know and definitely that personal aspect of you know meeting the other artists in person was very special you know so yeah any anyone else have any thoughts on media platforms you know this could extend through to things like nft platforms I guess even though that's a whole other ball of wax.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I'd be interested in hearing something about Mastodon and the NFT platforms, if anyone knows anything. Well, I have not actually used Mastodon. Has anyone that's in the Zoom room here? Tommy? Yeah, I've been poking around on Mastodon. I signed up just on a general interest server. Toot.social is where I signed up. And I'm able to view posts from all different servers. A very popular one among artists is generative.art, I think, is a very popular one. Popular instance is what they're called. So Mastodon is intriguing and it feels right to me, as opposed to contributing more to companies that I feel less and less comfortable with.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And it seems to be gaining popularity. And yeah, as far as NFTs go, I mean, it seems like, of course, Twitter is where everybody posts. But it's also where people post their work and tells you where to find it and how much it's going to cost and whatever cryptocurrency they want. But that's showing up a little bit in Mastodon.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Less of a shill atmosphere, which I enjoy. There's a lot more deep sort of responses to people's work that I enjoy. And one of the really interesting things is the community there. Vault text and images is really encouraging. So when you're posting pictures, by default, you're asked to sort of enter for people who can't see, you know, to have a text interpretation of your image. Culturally, it's different. And I find it to be a very welcoming, calm community.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

So I encourage you to check it out. It's a good app. Everything seems to work. It's a little slower. And the sort of instances. Can you explain that a little bit? Like, it's sort of like a distributed model, right? Where, like, instead of there being sort of like a central moderation or censorship or something like that, each server is run by sort of a sysop or, you know, individual operator. Like, how does that work? Yeah, I'm really no expert, but I think you're right. That's exactly how it works. So people can set up their own servers or instances, I think they call them. And it doesn't matter which one you're on. You can see what people are posting on all of them. If you follow somebody on all of, you know, on whichever server, there's a little bit of limitation on sort of what you see by default based on what server you're on.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But that's really it. It's sort of like, you know, your newsfeed or whatever. But I'm not interested in the newsfeed anyway. I'm interested in seeing what particular people are posting. And Mastodon has been very good at providing that. Gotcha. So, I mean, conceptually, it's a little bit different. I mean, conceptually, though, it's a little bit more along the lines of, say, what the blockchain is about or what other kinds of decentralized ideas are, I guess, right? In terms of being something where no one has this sort of ultimate governing authority.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Right. They have some term for it, like, Betanet or something like that, that they call the network of Mastodon. Mm-hmm. Interesting. I read that each server can set up their own rules. Yeah. Of behavior. Or each instance can have their own rules. Yeah. I haven't seen abusive instances showing up. I mean, I think it's pretty well, you know, managed by the community at this point.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

You have to promise that you won't use hate speech or inappropriate language. Right. When you sign up. I had signed up at dot world. Mastodon dot world. And I liked that. They automatically say, listen, this is the way it is. So I think that's a real plus. And it'd be nice. I signed up because I was concerned about what was happening on Twitter. And of course, I'm on Twitter because of my NFTs.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But you know, it'd be nice if you know Mastodon takes off. Has anyone ever considered or know anything about possibly using discord? I've never seen discord used for that, but I don't for this, but I don't see why it couldn't either. I mean, it seems like discord definitely has its following. You know, Davo was. Was the person. That initially proposed creating a Discord for Techspressionism, which I think still is somewhat active. I'm very rarely on there, but it seems like, you know, people are on there. I mean, you know, I think that the origin of Discord was sort of aligned with the gaming community originally, right? And then, you know, kind of bled into the NFT space or, you know, early on with the NFT communities, it seemed like that was just sort of like, you know, a must have for any NFT project or communities.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

You have to have a Discord and, you know, it seems like there is a variety of different things that can be done on Discord that don't really exist on other platforms in terms of the way that applications can be run on there. I mean, in terms of like some of the AI image generating platforms, you know, just basically running within Discord, you know, I haven't found it to be particularly user friendly for a communications app, but that's just me personally. I think it's very clunky, particularly when you want to reply to someone.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

It's hard. Or if you want to see how many people hearted something or who they were. And then sometimes, you know, the... The thing you're responding to is like four conversations ahead and then it shows up later. So I just find it very clunky for communication. It's invaluable for gaming. And then there's something called Project Owl that's out there that gets into like...

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I'm sort of on it. I get it. I get it. And there's like stuff that comes out of the Ukraine war and there's interesting things. Things on there. So it might be another... It's invaluable for gaming. But I think it might have other uses as well. And given all the problems with Twitter, just I think people are looking for other avenues where they can interact.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Well, even though I've said it's clunky, I do agree that it has things that I want to be involved with because of being a member of... Niftorian, I follow that all the time. Art on the Internet has a Discord that I follow because they have masterclasses and they have a time for critique of work that goes along with a prompt, not necessarily AI work, but it just could be your own digital work or expressionistic work.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

So, yeah, I think there's certainly a place for it. But I do find that communicating on it is not user-friendly. To me, personally. Yeah, I mean, I've found, you know, with the community here, like, you know, I'm definitely open to having as many different platforms accessible and available to people as there are people that want to take a lead role in being the sort of point person on the platform. You know what I mean? I feel like that's the key is that there's somebody kind of running the platform. And I think that's the key is that there's somebody kind of running it and making sure the account is going well because, you know, we have a fairly active chat on Facebook, but there's some people that just don't want to be on Facebook, you know? And so I don't want those people to be excluded from conversation just because they don't like the platform, you know?

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And there definitely are downsides to being on major social media platforms like we're sort of inherently giving our permission for all of our intellectual property to be consumed by... By AI, you know, training, for instance, you know, which apparently is the case. I did post a page recently on Techspressionism.com with some links. One link is to the GoFundMe to sort of help protect artists from AI technologies that was discussed last time. Another link is to Artist Rights Society. Which if you don't know about it, you should definitely check it out.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I actually just joined it yesterday and it's free for all artists to join. They actively, you know, work on artists behalf to protect intellectual property rights. And, you know, the list of artists who are represented by the Artist Rights Society is very extensive. And, you know, pretty much you name a notable artist and they're on there. Many of the ones that are no longer on this earth. And, you know, I was very surprised to find out that there are no dues or fees for membership.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And it's something that truly seems to be for the benefit of artists where there's many things that appear to be that way, but they're really just sort of, you know, revenue generators for some non-artists. So it's worth a look. And if any of you guys have any suggestions, Vernetta gave me a couple links that seemed really interesting.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Americans for the Arts, which I didn't realize is responsible for, I believe, the formulation of the NEA. It's been around for quite a while. And this Future of Life Institute, which seems like a really interesting organization as well as on there. So. You know, but if any of you guys have any resources that you think would be useful or align well, definitely, you know, shoot me a message. I'm going to post a link to that page in the chat. If any of you guys are interested.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Also on the website, I updated the reading list page relatively recently. I'm adding that to the chat as well to include books by artists listed in the index. So a bunch of Spooky's books that weren't on there. I added recently Paul Miller, also Steve Miller most recent book I added and a bunch of other publications. And if any, you know, artists either in the room or if you know of other artists who have published books, you know, definitely let me know because that's also, I think, part of.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Is Victor's new book on there? It is. Yeah. Okay. All right. Speaking of Victor's new book, I wanted to let Vernada know that a friend of mine who's an art historian and critic and I wrote a review of Victor's book. So we'd be really happy to give that to the journal for publication. Victor has, by the way, he's gone through it and approved it.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

It's yeah, it's an incredible piece of work that book. I mean, very, very impressive. It's dead. It's the way. It's that question. What publishers are you using to publish your Techspressionism? Because it looks pretty sharp and it looks pretty good. Is there any publisher that you have? Well, the catalog for the show was just put together in blurb. That was sort of just basically out of the fact that it was a bootstrap endeavor, and I know in design. So you know, and you're able to make the work available as print on demand through Amazon, which is nice. Although you know the cost per book. I think is relatively high because it is blurb and sort of print on demand.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But you know, I think you know who knows down the road. Maybe we can look at you know other options that's correct, because I was gonna suggest you that one, because I use blurb for to publish my books as well. I have published about 17. Seems like a day. They're pretty good, but you really have to market yourself and that's the hardest part. But yeah, they have a pretty good layout.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

You can take an advantage of that. Yeah, I think that you know I mean you know when the when the show the South Hampton exhibition was happening, you know it. It's sort of dawned on me that there's a number of artists in the exhibition. Who are published authors, and it just seemed to make sense to try to tap those people to contribute an essay.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Really like when Helen agreed to write the forward. It was when I thought, Well, then this really should happen, and I think you know her piece of writing is it's really powerful. And just kind of thought provoking. You know. So I'm pretty excited about a new project I'm gonna be collaborating with her on and with the Pollock-Krasner House. Yeah, I done some web work for them and created a micro site on an exhibition that she curated called Picasso and Pollock all about their collaboration, or not their direct collaboration. But Picasso's influence on Pollock's work. And there's a new exhibition that Helen is curating and organizing all around the some of the artists included in the exhibition are people that are in Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's address books. So it's sort of people within their circle and I'm gonna be helping her, you know, put together a small website around that exhibition, which is going to open up this summer, I believe, and should be really interesting.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Yeah. So I'm going to get it as I'm going to have the pretty big art moment. So I'm going to your best interest I'm going to have the big art moment. That you mentioned that you think that the membership might find interesting or useful. And you know, Colin could then add them to the resources page of a website.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Okay, sure. That's a great idea. Yeah. Thank you. Colin, I wanted to just I think Roz froze. Roz is frozen. Wow. Are you back, Roz? I don't know. Am I being heard? I don't know. You were frozen for a second there, but now you're back. My internet connection has been kind of weird tonight. I just wanted to say that I could send you a copy of the Dan's paper. I got two of them if you'd like me to. That just talks about the, you know, how we were one of the top five tech specialism, digital and beyond was one of the top five events of the year as cited by Dan's paper. You may have already talked about that.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Yeah, I appreciate that. Actually, Helen beat you to it. She's mailing me a copy. Okay. But I appreciate that. And that was a really nice surprise, you know, that. Yeah. To be included in that. List. So. It is the first thing in the magazine when it talks about the top five, the tech specialism show is the first thing that they talk about. So. Nice. Hey. And they used your Kalashnikov image, right? In the. No, not in the magazine itself. It's not in at all. No, it's actually a bigger shot with the Michael Rees.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Am I saying his name correctly? You know, the sculptural. Right, right. Okay. Yeah. There's no, but. Yeah. But somehow the piece that you showed me something about the online does show the Kalashnikov. It's nice. Yeah. The online version of the article has that in the graphic as one of the one of the pieces. That's the representative one of the show. So John Seaman is here with us who was in the exhibition as well. Haven't seen you in a minute. John. Nice to see you. Yeah.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But that was a shout out. You know, you do shows and you think they go away, but they stay in people's minds. And I certainly thought it was the most provocative show I'd seen. I think it's the most provocative show I've seen out here in a long time. So, you know, kudos. Keep going. Thank you, Roz. And yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, definitely there's going to be more physical exhibitions in the future. I don't know that the whole show. Can really travel very easily. I mean, I guess it could potentially.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

You know, some of the work is sold already. But, you know, I think that there definitely are. Pitches to be made. You know, and, and I would say also, you know, an important. Facet of. I feel like the development of, of the, of the project is for there to be a variety of curatorial voices. Out there, you know, like, I feel like it's important for artists involved in the project to feel that they're.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Owners. Of the idea as much as any other artist. Myself included, you know, so. If there's a curatorial. You know, concept around Techspressionism ism that people want to. Execute. I know that there was an artist. His name is escaping me right now, but who recently did a show in New York. You know, we're Techspressionism ism was.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

You know, in the title of the exhibition. His last name is Harris. Yes. Right. Howard Harris. Right. Right? Was that it? Something like that. Yeah. You know, so I feel like it's, you know, my mentality is sort of anti-proprietary, you know. I also want to mention one other thing, since this whole thing's been about media platforms and people started talking about Twitter and Mastodon, which I started to sign up for Mastodon and then I just haven't gotten back to it. I liked what But Tommy was saying, I mean, I definitely have some problems with Twitter, the situation, but I'm still on it. And that was just an idea that, yes, no, I'm not ready to own yet. To us that I think, again, it was Tommy who said, I'm not interested in the whole newsfeed thing, but what really gets traction on Twitter, as opposed to the other platforms, my husband, husband being very involved in the whole political side of conversations is, I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there as an idea, like, not that we do a salon on Twitter, but if we all decided to get on Twitter at a certain time and bring up a topic that would really generate some, you know, back and forth, not just, oh, congratulations.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I mean, the glad slapping and I do it too. I love it, but the whole congratulations. Thank you. It gets like, you know, she froze again. I mean, I definitely, feel like, you know, you froze for a minute there, Roz, but I've often thought, you know, it would be fantastic if somebody wanted to organize and run a Twitter space, you know, around, you know, for Techspressionism.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I certainly would, would do my best to show up. You know, I think it's a, it's an important platform. I feel like I'm sort of at, at a point of saturation. As far as what I can do on an individual level. But I think it is, you know, I think it is somewhere that we should be. There's like Twitter spaces happening around the clock, you know, around the NFT, phenomenon, even in this sort of, of the bear market that we're in right now.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But isn't Twitter space a more insular situation? I mean, I'm thinking of something that's almost like a place where we say, let's all go on Twitter at three o'clock tomorrow, Wednesday, Eastern Standard Time in the United States, and talk about this topic and link it to other things, get some kind of conversation.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Is that different? I mean, Twitter, I mean, Twitter spaces is, you know, an audio, platform, you know, kind of like, it's pretty much a clone of, of Clubhouse. They, they kind of took what Clubhouse was doing and put a Twitter logo on it. And then everyone left Clubhouse and went on Twitter. That's sort of seems to be, have been what happened, you know, and sort of Clubhouse was where a lot of the action was initially with, within the NFT community, it seems like. And now, you know, like if I go on, I mean, maybe it's just because of what accounts I'm following, but when I go on Twitter, it seems like there's always at least one, you know, Twitter space happening. And it's generally people like shilling their NFTs, you know, and like, I've tried to like get involved and tried to be interested, but it's hard to do.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Susan, do you have a... I, I have actually been, regularly going on Twitter spaces, and, and a variety of different ones to see what it's like. And they are really varied. And, some of them, ones that I've gone on recently are silent spaces where you just, share, share work. Nobody talks. There's also spaces that are crazy wild that, I don't stay on very long. And there are a number of spaces that are set up specifically the ones that I've been on specifically to show your work. And there are people there that are collectors that are in that space. And there's some buying going on, not big buying, but in terms, big meaning a lot of, a lot of ether, a lot of, Tezos, but mostly I've been going on Tezos, spaces where people are doing Tezos cause, cause I'm on object on the object platform.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

So I think, a Twitter space might be good, but I also like Ross's idea. And, so just letting people know that I'm doing Twitter spaces like a few times a week, cause I'm curious and I'm trying to build a following on Twitter for my, NFTs. And, it takes a lot of time. I'll just tell you that it takes a lot of time, but it's, I've also made some very nice connections in those spaces. Some very sane, calm people that are, had great conversations. And sometimes there's just conversation spaces where people go on, just talk about, a particular topic. I was on a meditate, space that people just talked about meditation. So it's pretty wide. Anyone can start a space.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Is there a sort of like a way to search spaces, you know, like say you wanted to find a meditation space, you know, cause I often thought like, all right, so the spaces just sort of show up at the top of the space. I can search them on my feed when they're happening, but like, I always sort of wondered, you know, like, so say I want to find space, you know, I haven't figured out a way to actually do that. I did it by hashtag and just circumstance and looking for people that have those words in their, in, in the top of their profile, you can press on, the space like icon, and it'll give you a whole feed of spaces.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

But what I think is what I think, I don't know, somebody else could tell me, I think what's showing up at the top of my phone are the Twitter spaces that are related, that have the people that I'm following in them. I think that's what's going on because when I go into the feed with just all the Twitter spaces, it's a lot of things that I'm not interested at all finances and, and insurance and football, things like that. But the, but what I see at the top of mine, I'm, are people that I'm following and, and I'm sort of by, I'm sort of curating my own Twitter feed by following people that I really like. And so I'm getting them at the top and it will tell me it's really tiny. I wish it was, would happen on iPad, but it's, it will tell me who's speaking. If you kind of go through them, if you've noticed before, it'll say who's speaking.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And I'll sort of look through those and look for people that I like, that I like their work. And I want to be in a space with, and I'll try those for a while. If I don't like it, then I'll go to another one. So it does seem like there are, I mean, you know, a lot of interesting thinkers and people on there. I know that, you know, people curators like Tina Rivers, Ryan, or John Ippolito, Christiane Paul, people that, you know, directly cross over with what we're doing here are on Twitter spaces regularly, you know? So it might be something that, you know, if, if you have any interest, Susan, at some point in trying to, you know, organize something that's, that would be something that would be very, very, you know, I think it would be an effective, channel for the community, you know, even if it was like, you know, once a week for half an hour or something like that.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

I think the important thing is that it's at a regularly scheduled time, you know, every, every week or whatever it is, you know, I mean, again, like it's, it's a commitment, obviously. So that's something to consider, but I feel like, you know, there's probably enough people around the community that would show up, especially if it was timed somewhat differently than the way the salons are. So people in Europe could participate for instance, or people in Asia, you know what I mean? I think that's sort of like a thing that makes the salons difficult. Time zones and other stuff like that. And people have often said, you know, it makes it difficult for there to be a true international representation because of the whole time zone consideration, you know, so it's just food for thought. There are people.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Yes, I was honest, you know, in the space this morning with people from Russia and Iran and, middle East countries, and I sometimes have insomnia and I have gone on Twitter spaces in the middle of the night, and there's a lot of them that are going and the, I mean, I, I feel like the, the majority of things that have happened for me within the NFT space in terms of finding collectors, it's all been through Twitter. And like, if you're on a space and then you get on stage on a space you know you're going to get follows you're going to get people checking out your links and what you're doing yeah probably more so for nfts than any other platform I would say you know I agree that's how it's worked for me like I've expanded my followers by hundreds by doing that by doing that activity yeah I mean a lot of them are real shill fest or a lot of sort of you know sort of like crypto bros you know talking about the market and everything like that you know what I mean but you know there is also some pretty interesting you know conversation that happens you know and there are some people that are artists and are specifically collectors that are running spaces that are having a lot of fun and I think that's a good way to put it I think it's a good way to put it run them for three or four hours sometimes and you can go on and ask to get on the stage and then you can talk about your work and a little bit and share it and I've had a little bit of sales in that way but and I've collected a lot of followers it's just some it's something that I thought I would try for promotion and marketing for my work it and it's taken me a while to sort of understand how actually how to actually do it but well it's interesting because I feel like on twitter and some of the other social platforms like I've directly connected with people that I wanted to communicate with you know because there is that opportunity you know especially if you're actually you know engaging with other people's content I think that's really the important thing like cynthia was bringing up you know to think about is that you know it's not just sort of like a place to publish air ads for your work you know like if you're actually talking with people commenting and there's conversation happening then it's sort of the same thing as something like this you know I mean it reminds me a little bit of those aol chat rooms that people used to go in or bbss or something like that you know one of the things that happens can happen there and it has happened in my experience is there's crossover but among like the nephronian accelerator people this salon and then I'm in some other I'm in another mentoring kind of international group and a few people from there are in twitter so sometimes those cross connections happen.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

And so you end up. Being able to connect with people in a way and know them through other organizations and I also use a little bit I use the I'm doing a collab project right now with nfts and I use direct messaging a little bit well I you know I message cynthia sometimes and renata sometimes to have conversations or ask questions so I use twitter in that way to communicate with people more than I do with Instagram actually yeah ask I ask questions because I sometimes don't understand I think I just asked somebody the other day I didn't understand how the silent spaces worked how does it what do you do when you get on there how do you make it how do you get their attention and so I do I for me it works it's the easy way I know that people are going to see it and I like it more for messaging than actually something that happened on there was I was in a feature there was somebody that runs a YouTube channel that talks about nfts it wasn't a really big deal but it was a little something where he asks for people that their opinions of the platforms they're on and I responded and so I'm in a I'm in a kind of long feature but I am featured among other artists about my opinion about object and things I think issues should go better so stuff can happen there and he was very nice and I enjoyed it so my experience for that I think thank you that the space is search there is a search when you hit spaces at the very top it says search but anything I've searched from I only get the chicken you know that chicken image they send when there's nothing to show that's a twitter I guess hey there's nothing here so you know I've searched nft will bring up anything from and there are so many nft categories and hashtags that's not helpful I went searching for wallets to find out information about wallets thinking maybe there was a twitter space about it and I get the chicken again so yeah I think that needs serious improvement it's hard to find I even put someone's name in so I guess if that if that someone is going to be a part of that I think that's a good thing to do but I think it's important to keep that in mind because I think that's the key is that if it isn't speaking in an upcoming scheduled space or presently you're not gonna you're not gonna find it so I think the best way is as susan says is to scroll through the news feed and see if there's anything there that interests you or at the top the news feed that moves right to left sometimes they tell you the title of the twitter spaces other times it's just who's in there so yeah I think it's a function of it that needs to change but I think it's important to keep that in mind and I think that's the key to keeping that in mind and I think that's the key to keeping that in mind I think also they're talking about putting it twitter spaces on iPad oh I would love that I would love that you can use twitter spaces on your desktop or laptop but you can't talk it took me I don't know maybe about a month to figure that one out you can listen I do actually I listen on my iPhone and I use my desktop so I have both of them going so I can see the you know for the nft monday so I can see the art big or in the twitter spaces I want to see the art big on my phone it's like so I have the audio going on my phone and then if I'm super interested I'll go to my desktop and open it in my browser and I can see everything I turn the sound off because it doesn't sync you know the sounds like one's ahead of the other but I do that in nft team that monday so I can see everybody's art I want to see it big and be able to concentrate why is it like that it's stupid why is what like what why do you have to use your phone I just I don't know I don't like it I would like and I hate I didn't even know that till I was invited to do a talk in twitter spaces and I had no idea I had to use my phone it's like oh this is ridiculous I agree it's ridiculous I agree with that I don't like how tiny it is it's no I hate using my phone because the damn screen is too small it's it is small so that's why I do I don't know it's just bizarre I don't know how it came about and I don't know why they limit it to your phone so elon if you're watching this take note and with that I probably should close out our recording because you know maybe it'll well YouTube will leave it on because he doesn't own it yet but I will stop the recording in three two one and