Salon 78 // January 4, 2024

Hello, everyone here we are in expressionism. Sloan, number 78. My name's Michael Pierre Price. I'm a text question and start us out of Phoenix, Arizona. And Today we're talking about text and art. And to me this is a really interesting subject that I'll talk about just a little bit, and we've got 2 main presenters today and several other artists who will be sharing work. But I wanted to mention an ongoing project that we just had our launch called Siberiana.

Michael Price

And it is a wonderful web. 3 space where, more than 40 artists, I think we're up to. At this point Internationally, are represented in Siberiana with very, very diverse. Our presentations! And if you can get there, I suggest that you check it out Siberiana dot studio. And it's a wonderful project that we have launched, and we'll be updating it over the next couple of months, and something kudos to olive Techspressionism Siberiana has also been incorporated into the wrong biennial.

Michael Price

And I think that's also a you know, a wonderful thing for us. So we've we've got a New year that we're starting here. And this idea of mixing text with art. And what does that mean? So it's such a fascinating topic, because, as human beings that are need to communicate we began with images, and then language, and then language evolved into written words and letters and different kinds of letters. Different languages have evolved letters combined together, make words, words, make sentences, sentences into paragraphs, into stories, into poetry.

Michael Price

So many rich ways in which we communicate as human beings with one another, and the idea, as artists looking to communicate our points of view. Being able to incorporate text into it in so many different ways, is also a wonderful concept to be able to incorporate. And so anyway. We have 2 presenters, main presenters today, and our first presenter, Karen LaFleur Karen, is a Techspressionist, artist, writer, and animator. Her work explores the interplay between interior and exterior worlds with a focus on adaptability. Text image relationships are central to her creative process.

Michael Price

Each artwork evolves from words written by the artist, whether used within the artwork or implied. She borrows freely across genres From art to the pitch picture book. Graphic novels, sudden fiction, film and improvisational dance, interesting and so purse. Her works have been displayed in many, many museums and venues. And so Karen, we're really happy to have you present today, and it's all up to you now, thank you.

Thank you. This is a subject I really love, and thank you for the Intro Michael, because this is a huge huge topic. They can go in a million different directions, all fascinating. And I'm just gonna speak to my corner. And the things that I say today are going to be just stepping stones that I've discovered along the way to push the envelope of this genre further. So what I say are not rules. They're discoveries. And I'm going to start my presentation. And I'll ask if you can see my screen. Yes.

Karen LaFleur

Great! We want to go to.

Karen LaFleur

Zoom is in the way.

Karen LaFleur

Here we go right out of the bat. Zoom is in the way, and I can't get to the play button. Huh? Play there we go. Finally. Okay, so I'm gonna start my presentation with an opening paragraphs to my thesis just to sort of set the stage for what I want to talk about today. So bear with me. This is gonna be a very fast and full presentation. The Oxford English Dictionary defines writing as the penning or forming of letters or words, the using of written characters for purpose of record and for transmission of ideas, etc.

Karen LaFleur

The literary critic, Roland Baths, states that any drawing or graphism or mode of motivated inscription, not bound to the tasks of visual speech or formal legible characters, such as in an alphabet, but instead is directed towards conveying the restless energy of the body via some normal hand held tool, such as painting and drawing, is also a former Communication. While Simon Morley, the author of the book writing on the wall combines these 2 approaches, and implies that within the context of these 2 definitions The distinction between drawing and writing often breaks down, and yet text and image still relate, even though each retains its separate characteristics.

Karen LaFleur

In other words, the act of writing and drawing is similar, and that we scan both methods for content or idea, and we also use both methods to create marks on a page to communicate. But here the similarities separate the process by which we extract meaning is totally different. We can't read and observe at the same time, because these tasks occur in different parts of our brain. The reading brain leans towards the rational, logical, and discursive to read, and the image deciphering brain leans towards the intuitive to interpret an image physically. We can't do both processes at once.

Karen LaFleur

Visually scanning a drawing, says morally, involves openness of interpretation and freedom of mental and sensual movement. While reading confines the reader to a predetermined route construction.

This is crazy.

We ask anyone who's not speaking to me yourselves, please.

Visually scanning a drawing, says morally, involves openness of interpretation and freedom of mental and sensual movement. While reading confines the reader to a predetermined construct from a row of letters to be deciphered in a direction left to right, right to left, top to bottom, or vice versa. And although we can process both skills alternately at a very rapid rate. And here's where I want to emphasize where I'm going to talk about today. The actual connection between word and image takes place in an associative space in an in-between world that pits the arbitrary visualization of an image against the defined letter formation of reading in its grammatical rules so hopefully that wasn't too much to read to you. But it does set up what I'm trying to talk about today. So let's get started.

Karen LaFleur

All my artwork, whether it's representational or its abstract, or has text in it or not stems from something that I've written, or I have a story concept for the genre that I work in is sudden fiction. It's a brief story less than 750 words. It takes place in a single setting. It's told in a brief time, span, and contains a limited number of characters. But most importantly, it speaks with immediacy, professes an uneasy familiarity, and teeters on the brink of revelation. And I think these last 3 bullet areas is a way that we can come into, at least for myself.

Karen LaFleur

From text to image. It's in this, in between zone where I almost get it. I can't quite say what it is, but I have to make relationships between 2 things, text and image. Simon Morley's book, the writing on the wall was an eye opener for me when I read this book. It's an older book, very hard to find right now. And there are many theories out there that writing and text and image together are 7 things. There are 9 things, but he breaks it down into 4, which I could actually get my head around as a launching pad to be able to do my artwork. Forget the titles on this guys. This is from a course that I taught on this subject. All you really need to figure out is that there's 4 different areas that you can use text and image in order to create your artwork and start to manipulate that associative space between the 2 to affect your audience.

Karen LaFleur

The first way is, you have an image of something, and then there's a description of something. So they're separate. But if you took one away you could read about the bird. If you had the image you'd be able to see and understand the bird they're relating, but they're totally separate The other way. You can use text and image in an artwork is where text and image share the same space. But they retain their own functions. So you see this in graphic novels and comics, where you have a bullet of text. So that the bubble is working its own technique. And the image is working its own technique. But they're in the same narrative space. They're not separate.

Karen LaFleur

The next way we're all understand as artists is mixed. Media, it's unfolding. It's scrambling things together so that you have one piece of artwork with your text and your image. And the last way Morley suggests is to work with the actual letter form itself. And that's not just making one decorative letter. You can literally have a second story happening visually in the letter form while you're actually reading the text, and you're setting up an associative space for the audience.

Karen LaFleur

So the artist needs to know what the associated elements resonate in the artwork that you either want to create or a text that you've read, and how these 2 are going to work together so like on the left, you might say, Oh, I want to have this as interconnection, so you might be unfolding. You might be using it more like a graphic novel where you're having elements in the same plane. But they retain their own separate narrative functions, or like on the right, if it's reflection, you may be using the hornbill technique where you have one and the other.

Karen LaFleur

So this gave me a way to sort of step into text and image and start to incorporate it in my artwork. I'm going to start with this one, which is from my first series, and I'm going to read the story because often. We don't get the story when we're showing in these visual presentations. That kid ain't worth a half-spit in a can. My father said the night Nathan asked me to marry him. I was 18, shiny and new, and Nathan drove a Detroit special cream over red with taillights that cometed through the dark.

Karen LaFleur

Moving, always moving. That's how I remember Nathan and I longed to go with him to see what lay beyond the stop signs of Dylan County. So we began behind a fence under a tree backlit by bedroom window light. Laughing on Fender Top, his hips against mine. And for a moment my world stopped waiting for some one to care. I asked my father's permission to marry out of respect for my mother. She wouldn't dare give her consent without his, and I wasn't about to make her life any harder.

Karen LaFleur

No, was all my father replied. Nathan stepped forward, but I pulled him away, and I left my home in a tire spin that peeled a final goodbye in a hail of pebble and stone. That night Nathan and I drove through every stop sign that came our way, creaning under a starlight sky Night driving all the way down to Coopersville, past the drive in theatre, on Route 93. We traveled fast on a beam of inconsistent light, up over hill and into the soft of everywhere. All at once lovers chasing down journey's end, only to pull up short on the back side of a waning moon.

Karen LaFleur

Nathan loved to drive, but he loved me more. So when our first child came he sold his car to a man over in Bakersfield, and then we settled down and held on to each other tight against the rotation of the world. That's something. My father never understood that. Sometimes you've got to give up what seems important. But the other part, you know, is right. So this is about 500 words. It's a sudden fiction the way the associative space is set up in this piece is the actual plot. Running, you know, is on the right.

Karen LaFleur

This is the reality. On the left. There's a reflection of the character on a car fender, and the words are sort of handwritten, half reflective on the fender, which is setting up sort of a reflection of the character self versus her reality, and the skid mark in the middle is the demarcation line between change. So that's how this is set up for the audience, and I'll go through these other ones real quickly, because many you've seen before. This is on the cadence of the overall story when the character is like, Wow, I don't really get this. I'm scared, whatever. Oh, I get it. The text goes back, up, it goes down so it's working literally with the cadence of the overall narrative.

Karen LaFleur

This one here is nothing but associative space. The main character in the center is looking backwards. Well, sort of, but he could also be looking at you. The hand almost touches the shoulder, but not quite The word. I in the upper left hand corner is almost invisible, and the first sentence says, I do not count the years since my disappearance, so I have no idea where this character is, because there's an ancient dress that he's in. But there's a modern pink watch, and in the text is all breaking up between and other text that break the text, and also in time. So everything about this is to push the associative space on the reader or viewer. This one here is set up like a train. The character is basically saying, I don't care if there aren't any acrobats or tigers around here. Someday I'm gonna join the circus, so it's set up like a circus train, except I've used the actual letter form itself Flipped on its side as couplings between the train cars. That's how the narrative engine is on this particular piece.

Karen LaFleur

This one here I ended up reversing what we normally have as a text, and we make imaginary pictures in our head. Instead, I gave you the story visually in one shot, and you need to bring the text to the image. This is Rapunzel, which most people know, and it was actually done for a lit conference. So they had a lot of fun trying to bring the text to the image again, setting up an associative space between both which kind of leads into narrative engines, which I'll get to in a few seconds. This piece here on first glance, looks like it is a graphic novel setup. But it's not. It's actually the narrative engine is a picture book, the graphic novel elements within this other bulleted text.

Karen LaFleur

But the actual narrative engine of the story is by the page, Flip, because each one of these genres I'll talk about has an engine to make the story go forward. It's set up on page spreads. So everything happens up to a point, and then there needs to be a page flip. Even though the graphic novel elements in it. So for the picture book. It's the page turn. Everything is focused for that for a graphic novel. It's a sequential imagery. That's what's driving the engine of the story. They may use a page flip here and there, but the overall story is being being driven by sequence, and the illustrated book has a picture which references back to the text, it enhances it from a large body of text.

Karen LaFleur

So just to show you a few quick examples, this is Josephine Poole's Snow white, beautiful book. By the way, this is a page spread picture book, obviously driving you to the right, because in English we read from left to right. So for us to go from left to right feels like the story is motivated to go ahead. If we reverse that, we feel hesitation depending on your language in your text that scenario's going to change. But in English it's left to right. So here's this character flying down the hill, careening down. She's got wild characters that recede way back into the imagery. You can't really see in this picture. You can in the book.

Karen LaFleur

And we know she's gonna be in trouble because we have these upright trees that anyone knows when you're out of control running down a hill. And there's a whole bunch of trees. You're probably gonna hit one or 2. So it's setting up the reader for trouble ahead. If you reverse that in English it sets up a sense of resistance it sets up a sense of wait a minute. Why am I going here? And these different associative spaces you can use with your text and image, whether it's abstract or representational, depending upon the feeling that you want to get across to the audience. Here we have sequential work in graphic novels. Everything about this panel is to do the slow shoulder turn the awareness is the character. In the bottom Panel we actually see what in a picture book we would see in a page turn. It's the character which is underneath the zoom. So I can't read it, but basically said, basically, Oh, it's you. So yes, there is a page turn in graphic novels, but the overall story is driven by sequence. An illustrated book enhances the body of text. On the left you have Trina Charmans, Peter Pan, and she is literally showing you what's going on in the text on the right. If I didn't caption this.

Karen LaFleur

You would not think, Frankenstein, but this is from Barry Moses. Beautiful edition of Frankenstein. It's quite a beautiful book, actually, if you get your hands on it. So he is setting up an associative space for the audience to say what is in this text relating to this image that's open and broad. It's not telling me much. So he's really forcing the envelope. Do these overlap absolutely. They overlap. This is Neil Gaimans and David Mckeon's the day I swapped my dad for 2 goldfish. This is a picture book. This is driven by the page turn, but it's using graphic elements within the text.

Karen LaFleur

And they are a great team. As everyone in this audience, I'm sure, knows. So they really know when to use elements and let one step forward and the other one step back in order to drive a story, to get an associative space with the audience, to the text, to the image. If you want to. Just look at, how does the image drive sequence. Look at Sean Tan's the arrival. This is a major award winner book for wordless, graphic, novel. Look at Hugo Cabre. This book is really interesting, because it's basically a novel.

Karen LaFleur

You would think it's an illustrated book because it has pictures. But he has 2015, 10 pages of these beautiful large graphic drawings in the book. So you need to flip the page. Hello! It's picture book in the middle of a novel. He takes different pictures within that book and breaks them up. And now he's playing with graphic novel. So he's got all elements in this book which brings it to my work, and unfortunately the zoom is over the part that I want to read. But you can read what the text is to this image.

Karen LaFleur

This is what I do. When I create these pieces. I have some kind of a text that's going to show up. Sometimes it's a full story, sometimes it's just a line like this. The bus ride from Tulsa was enough for me for a lifetime. Then she saw Angela. That's where this piece comes from. But the sun said to the moon. And I can't read the rest, but you can. Don't tell anyone but and that brings me to what I'm doing today. And what I'm doing today is taking text and image and putting it into The animated world film world where we're getting into almost a virtual world.

Karen LaFleur

And I'm bringing elements of page turn. I'm bringing elements of sequencing. When does something step forward? When does it go back in order to derive what's being said. So this piece here is a Beta version. And I'm going to show you 2 parts. One's going to be the beginning for a minute or so, and there's going to be a blank spot, and then there'll be another section from the story further down. The story. Parts of it aren't finished. Parts will have text in it right now. It's just visual. This is from a series of stories that I wrote about children that I met in the hospital when I was a child. And it's not stories about doom and gloom. It's stories about learning how to be human in a very, very mad Maxian world.

Karen LaFleur

Where you had no control over anything. We bonded together like gangs in the hospital. This story is called Speaking in Distal. This one is about a nurse came to me one day, and she said, Go to this room for a week every day and play with this child. She's alone. So I said, Okay, fine, I will. But when I got there. And in time they didn't even have this word. The child was severely ostrich, completely non-communicative, so I had to learn how to communicate with her. This is speaking in distal.

You're the nurse who always sang when she gave you an injection bent to my eye level and said. Can you do me a favor? I pressed on the cotton swab after she pulled the needle out of my arm, but I knew by the tone of her voice. She meant more because nurses in a hospital ward for critically ill children in the early sixties never asked for favors unless it was to assist in a medical procedure. Hold this, straighten your arm, take a deep breath. I wanted to run from her words out of the room, down the stairs onto the sidewalk to catch the first bus home, past my mom and dad and my cat, named Cindy, knocked the stairs and passed my brother playing on guitar behind his closed-room door, and into my bedroom with the yellow daisy wallpaper and a Teddy bear. I kept on my pillow, worn to patches From 10 years of too much love, and I wanted to hide under my bed with that Teddy bear tucked away from the pain of yet another medical invasion. But I know better than to run from the inevitable, because sometimes the distance between a dream and necessity is only a reflection apart. Sure, I said. For she looked through me as if glass, until I showed her the forest of green butterflies. That's when my fingers stopped and her eyes shifted to my page, not me just to my page. With my free hand I moved my fingers in abstract shapes in front of the butterflies, while Linda returned, her finger pattern, not matching mine, but speaking to mind in her own way, and that was the day I learned to speak in distal the art of speaking beyond Babel, over the gap between difference making a leap via the heart along the outer rim of connection, and for the first time recognizing the power of empathy to break the fear of isolation and misunderstanding.

Unattributed

All centers are beginnings, some branch inward, some branch outward, the center being the junction of both. Do I flee? Do I stand? Do I speak? Do I remain silent? Do I see, or do I ignore? There is a choice in my center? Chose Linda with a green butterfly, and she chose the power to fly on lime green wings.

Unattributed

Are you?

So? May you all find wonderful centers and associative spaces in your text image journeys. I hope that wasn't too much too fast, but it's a large subject. Thank you.

Wow. Thank you. That was gorgeous.

Magnificent.

That's brilliant, Karen. Thank you so very much.

Not only did you teach, but you taught in a way that I think really hits at the artist in all of us. So yeah, brilliantly done. Thank you so much. II I'm very honored to be able to get the text in the presentation to, because it's so hard to show this artwork sometimes because you do need time to do it. Thank you.

Sure.

And we're gonna leave the QA. To the end. So if anybody does have a question, and you don't want to forget it. Please feel free to add it to chat, and we can do the QA. After all, the presentations are done. Okay. Our other feature presenter today is Seth Indigo Carnes, also known as sick. Seth is a visual artist with a practice led by concept and process. His projects traverse physical and digital, media, material and immaterial states and the human experience. Within this flux.

Michael Price

His ongoing project, poetics is a visual poetry app in use across the world, and for his experiments in contemporary poetics his past collaborations include work with Paul Miller, Dj. Spooky, Shepard Ferry Terry Jeffrey, David Ellis and Simona Black. So we are very welcome to have Seth presenting today. And, Seth, I'm gonna leave it all to you now. Thanks.

Thanks, Michael. For the kind introduction, and thank you Karen, for your presentation before mine. I hope I can do justice following you up, following up your presentation. And I think it's interesting to see like you said all the all the takes we can have on text and art. It's interesting, especially because how just the word text itself most, you know, most of us think of text as the letter forms on a page. Okay, and you should go ahead and share my screen. By the way.

Seth C

I did put. I did put this link into the zoom chat. They're just it's just a link tree with some of the links that I'll go over and sorry before I jump into what I also want to say that I had the pleasure, as it were, of having Covid as my gift for Christmas. So I'm just getting over it my packs a little bit today. And so this presentation will probably be a little more informal than I might have imagined it. So basically, I'm gonna go through a few websites. And if anyone wants to interject or ask questions or speak I'm happy to sort of stop and go but back to the idea of text, II do think it's kind of interesting that we do have a sort of idea of text as a written form that represents ideas and concepts, and then comes together in sentences and paragraphs and storytelling that is structured in the West, for example, top, left, bottom, right? But also we come from become a place where a lot of this text was rooted in symbols and even pictographs, when you go to the Asiatic languages, and those pictograms do have a representative pictorial meaning.

Seth C

Still a good amount of them that actually are drawings in text. So when we look back on this sort of original form Of language, and how it was constructed. That's sort of an area that fascinates me, but also to bring it into sort of art making and sign and symbol and meeting making in this entry. So I think I think, probably will help to show a little bit of a few projects that led to this poetry. App. It's happens to be in the clause right now. On my landing page. But I wanna move this browser a little down, so I can access this site a little better and move this over here.

Seth C

So I actually came to poetry and sort of symbolic language from a project I started a long time ago. It was called I Heart and it's it actually was a sort of symbol. It started with a sort of exploration of symbolic meaning. And you can see here I started working with signs. In this case it was making use of some of the pop language and flipping the I love New York. Messaging that melting glacier created so fabulously back in the day for New York City, and started working with the with the idea of this love, the idea of love and these different symbol making. So the original work was, were just these different signs and playing with the sort of power and interpretation of their meeting.

Seth C

These are just paintings, for example, and then I eventually started moving into outdoor work. With the concept. So I'll show this. Just this one probably is a good one to show you can see it's the year 2,008. I had a studio to meet back in district, so in this case it was below my studio. I'm not a big lover of meat, but in this case it is a love of the symbolic sort of representation. What was going on. And that's in that social capital Economic, you know, crossover space. That was the sort of central sort of energy of that time is long gone, but you can see here that mural was sort of placed sort of in sort of a I don't know it. It's more of a social context work here. Where the idea was to place it and see what happens.

Seth C

There's a video and whatnot I won't jump into. So I wanna kind of move on because what I started looking into was the idea of this language. And if there's a way that I could start taking the symbolic language and turn it into a type of authorship that changes over time. So I did. I've done a project. That's guess one. I met a curator there who had a show and sweet energy Supported this idea of writing. The basic concept was, I want to write a poem that is structured and final in its form, but then can change in the hands of its participants and viewers.

Seth C

So in this case it was a fabrication to a large piece of steel the poetry broken down into the sort of format of the fridge magnets, but in a at a large scale. And it was in London, Sweden. And you can see here that II was basically doing research research within the artwork and the installations themselves. And in this case it was what happens when I when I author a poem. I wanna is the music playing? By the way.

I don't. I don't want it to. No, it's not

Okay. Good. So. Here we have the idea of like the authorship changing over time. And what happens to the symbolic meaning. Whether it's in collaboration or Interaction with some one person looking at looking at the next piece. And I did a bunch of work like this, and the idea was like, Where can this lead? W. What kind of what kind of artistic format can I use? And I also was researching kind of the twentieth century work in this area, like, there's the chance operations of data. Then the serial lists, and then later times, we saw Flexis.

Seth C

Working in this area with playful kind of collage works. William Burroughs and Brian geyson working with this idea of the cut up, and I think probably one of the quotes that really impacted me, which is like kind of captures all Burroughs and Dyson's work, which is that when you are able to cut into the present, you kinda allow the future to bleed through. I don't think I think that's paraphrasing the quote. But in a way, it's like releasing your authorship and the moment, and also your ego and your and your sort of intent to the operations either of your own hand or your gesture, or that of others.

Seth C

So eventually that led to I don't know what year was that I think it was like 2,000 The late 2,000 s. That the iPhone came out and I started to realize that the same kind of gestures that were going on with that work. In these physical manifestations of sort of poetic authorship I could. I could realize that with the iPhone because it had the touchscreen. So started putting under the idea of this app where the same kind of the Ca, same kind of concept could be executed in a digital form within that. In this case I started thinking of the thinking of the work more as like a kind of object oriented language. You know, in the sense that each were in symbol. In this case it was text and fonts, and also some emoji, because that was the sort of that was in embedded within the U, the sort of language usage of the iPhone could be placed and moved and lifted. And in this case II built the physics engine inside the phone and I think probably a good way to show how this goes is to just play the video because I don't wanna, I don't have the ability at this point. These are some of those projects that kind of led to this work.

Seth C

Oh, sorry it's on this. It's on the site for the actual app. So let's jump over to. Oh, edx. This is the polex app site. It's available on the app store. By the way, if anyone would like one, you just let me know. I can even give you a code. So this is showing the app in action. In this case it's actually playing off of let's see, let's get it to play.

Seth C

You're not gonna see my hands. But this my hands are actually is this, this is the screen capture of the of the app and use.

Seth C

And the collisions are a physics engine that allow one word to sort of nudge and push the other.

Seth C

And one thing is probably worth mentioning. Unlike a lot of sort of computer or coded poetry project these days. I didn't really ever want to do anything like machine learning or AI like the idea. Here is the human. And the body is still involved with these gestures. And it's really just using all the digital technology to sort of create a kind of fluid Authorship. Rather than depend on like suggestions from an AI, or, you know a lot of things where it's like, Oh, you know, just put in 5 words. And my day II write the phone for you. And II think that's interesting. But it's just not particularly interesting for me.

Seth C

So that sort of lead, you know. So the this project came out. The app was used, you know, kind of all over the place for all hundreds, even teachers downloaded. It's been used in schools. I've done project with, like the New York Department of Education. Around its usage there. But from the art world standpoint, and from a poetry standpoint. I'm I've I had to kind of move it towards another version of this concept. And so the latest one I want to try doing is the app has its own format. It has its own file format, and I have a I'm working with a collective it's called txt.

Seth C

So in this case it's txt from a semiotic standpoint like the actual text. It could be the image it could be. It could be a symbol, it could be text. It's sort of like, what is the sort of sign and symbol combination. So there are some visual artists. There's some sculptors in this group and we're putting together a virtual exhibition and working in the realm of nfts and the blockchain, also the metaverse in terms of the gallery presentation of the work. So you can see like this piece right? Here is one main in the app it's called this, is it? In this case it's you know, it's just a still image. And it's just the text on there, but the actual file format itself II call it the Doppel. It's like a dot. Jpeg.

Seth C

The artwork itself will be that flat image, but also the interactive file format, and it'll be wrapped as an nft. So the idea there is that you will be able. You will be the artwork itself is sort of infinitely editable. It be I, it has. It will have frames of work that I generate, which is like, for example, it will be. This is, it is this, it will, it will have a few different flows and frames. But essentially the artwork is in the hands of the person who receives it, and it will then open up in the app and that's how it will be possible to edit it.

Seth C

So I don't know if it's this we're still putting this exhibition together. I know that this your group has done nfts and some kind of virtual exhibitions, too. So I thought it would be worth sharing this project as something that we're working on and I think the way we're making a book. We're going to also release the book as an nft and the idea here is not just to jump on the Nfc. Bandwagon, but also to play play with the idea of the written word within a book, and that same artwork in the book represented in a gallery that's in the metaverse.

Seth C

But also to actually give it provenance, you know, like to give, to give it the sort of artist contract that if someone has it, they know who made it. How many are out there. And if there are any, if there, if it's if you pay for it, or if it's given for free. It's known. And it's locked in to code. And I think we're just really interested in that part of the innovation in nfts. And I just wanted to show you like. So you can see here, just III did throw it on the website that this artwork, you know, you will be able to buy it and display it on the screen. II haven't really worked out the physical aspect, and it's really important for me to sort of find that merger, but I found that I don't know if other artists group of found when I made the move from all the physical manifestations and iterations of this concept into the digital space.

Seth C

I find myself natively digital. Now, with this work, like I can make prints. You know, easily. I there could be prints on all different kinds of medium media. It could even be painted, you know, all kinds of physical representations can be made of this, but I don't have not found a way where it naturally moves back to the material World, and I don't even I don't know if it has a home there, this work, for example, this part. But I but I but I think it's interesting that we find ourselves in this in this moment where? And I and II know that the artists in this group are working in that area as well, which is the sort of that liminal space between.

Seth C

Digital physical analog virtual, you know, etc., etc. It's a it's a it's a nice place to be, and I think it is. It's the future, and it's surely evolving, but it's also sometimes a Of mental and physical contortion to deliver deliver your work in a in a way that lands true to this whole. So I think I think I can edit there. I mean there. There are plenty of other things to share. I think if you if anyone has questions or wants to talk I think the QA. Will probably a better place to speak further. And there's some other projects like I that I did on Governors Island. This project, called the House of Poetics, that actually was physical, and was an installation in a house sent it on text and poetry, but I think it's better to kind of leave it. Leave it at that. And maybe we can move on and speak further in the salon, if that works for everyone.

Sure. Thanks, Seth. Really, really interesting concepts here, II know we will have some discussions after the presentations are done with both you and Karen's work. So, yeah, this is this is really, really intriguing. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Michael. Michael. Can I just step in for one? Make sure we proceed. Thank you. Sick. That was that was brilliant. Because I'm sitting here for a week figuring out, which way do I go with this? Because I had the presentation on your side, too? This is a huge subject. This can go everywhere, and I am so glad that you brought up language as being sort of a primary symbolic form of communication rather than just text cause. To me language and text and image, and all forms of that kind of communication is improv. It's in a 3D. Space. It's in a world, it's in dance, it's in gesture everywhere. And when we take our text and we put it between 2 covers, somehow, we get separated from it. So thank you for putting that spin on it. And it was great.

Yeah, yeah, I agree, 100%. Sometimes you get we are. We're so locked down from the Western especially for the printing press revolution, though it's just sort of like you have to lock it down. You have to have it set, and then you have to put it on paper. And a that's the final form. Which is not always the case. Sometimes. Obviously, it's good to put your pen down.

Well, thank you to both main presenters today. So we have a couple of other presentations. That are that are following here, and next up is Sherry Karver.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll just give a brief introduction to myself, and then I'll get into showing you some images I am a non traditional photographer photography is the basis of all of my series. But it's not the end. Result? I take hundreds of photos, and then I do a lot of different things with them. So let me start by screen sharing.

Sherry Karver

And let me open this up bigger. Okay, can everybody see that? Yes, okay. I'll talk a little bit about how this work started while this one is up on the screen, and then I'll go to the other. Pictures a little bit more quickly. I photograph in public places. Grand Central station in New York is one of my favorites, Metropolitan Museum City Streets, in New York, Paris, Chicago, wherever I happen to be, and I take hundreds of photos. This one is made up of maybe 5 to 10 different images that I collage together on the computer using Photoshop

And I'm really interested in

These crowd scenes. And how do we, as an individual, stand out from the crowd because we all have a story to tell? And often in our fast paced world. We end up with issues, individual and societal issues like alienation and loneliness. And like, I said, how do we stand out? How do we perceive other people? How do we judge other people? And so, about 20 some years ago, I decided to start to add text to some of my work as a way to give people a voice. Since we each have a story, and I really appreciate text as pattern or texture. But for me I felt that the text really needed to say something. It had to have some kind of meaning and correlation to my figures.

Sherry Karver

So I started to write little fictional biographies. You might call them on several people in my images, and here I have 4 different characters, and I'll read you just one of them. Let's go to the next one and I would. Just so. This is the girl that was on the lower left hand corner, and I'll just read you. So you don't have to put on your glasses. Sometimes I write in first person, sometimes in third person. I give each character their own font that I feel represents them the most.

Sherry Karver

And I try to say something about them. Maybe that is a little humorous. Maybe they wouldn't want people to know about them again. It's totally made up based on how people look to me, how they stand, maybe how they walk, because I'm a people watcher. Maybe some of you are, too, and if I'm on a train, if I'm in a cafe, if I'm walking down the street and I see somebody I start to wonder, well, who are they, and what do they do? And where are they from?

Sherry Karver

And what are they into? And so I decided to just make up these little stories rather than interviewing anybody, because I really don't want this to be a documentary project, but rather a fine art project. So here this woman is speaking to the guy, and this one is in first person, and she says we're so opposite. I don't see how this will ever work out between us. We're from different countries. We have different religions, we have opposing political views. I want one child. You want 4. I have a Master's degree, and you dropped out of high school.

Sherry Karver

You love watching sports, and I prefer reading poetry. So what do you say? We get married at City Hall today. So I always try to save something, you know, a little bit humorous, and maybe you know that they wouldn't want other people to know. So let me go on to the next one. Okay, and the piece I just showed you that's called edge of civility and contradiction. And it was 33 inches by 43 inches. Okay, this one is called, let's see, let me show my page here At River of Continuity 40 inches by 24 inches. And I also wanna mention that the areas towards the back, you know, I don't know if you can see my pointer the back area at the top, and some of them is sort of grayed out, and that represents for me the element of time

People who have been in the same place, maybe a minute before I was there, maybe 10 years before I got there. Maybe they will be there 5 years in the future that we're all moving on this time. Continuum.

So that's what those gray out areas represent. So I'm not gonna read you the text on every single person, and I pick out certain people. Sometimes they just jump out to me like, Oh, I have to put text on this person and give them, you know voice, and other times I really have to work at it to figure out, you know, who gets the words and who doesn't. So let me continue. Sometimes they also incorporate vintage black and white images that you can see here on the left with my contemporary photos. This also represents the passage of time, and how the past influences The current and the future, and how we relate back to things that happened in our past. This was called background of our future. It's 30 inches by 40 inches, and I will read you the text on this little figure here, the man on the left hand side.

Sherry Karver

So just to let you know how I make these. So once I get the composition to the way I want it with the figures I want, and I choose the ones who are going to get text. II write the text all on the computer in Photoshop, and then I print it all out in black and white, and I adhere to wood, panels and all of the color I hand paint with oil glazes, and the final coating is a resin coat. Sometimes I'll paint over the resin, and then I'll do another resin pore on top of that, so it ends up with a glossy surface, and these images are embedded into that surface.

Sherry Karver

Okay, so I'll read you this. This gentleman here on the left, from a vintage photo Vacuum cleaner salesman has been traveling for 3 days to come to his younger sister's wedding in the big city has never been outside of Tuscaloosa wonders if they have the same kind of food. He's used to Misses his dog sitting on the front porch and playing his fiddle, and just realized he brought the suitcase with vacuum cleaner hoses instead of his toothbrush and fresh pair of underwear hopes nobody gets close enough to notice.

Sherry Karver

So I always try to save something, you know, as I mentioned, embarrassing or a little bit funny. I think we need to have a little more humor in our work. At least I do. There's not enough humor in the world. As I always try to say something Little bit, a little bit funnier. Okay, let me move on. Okay, this is the guy. This is what I just read to you. Sometimes I'll photograph in a cafe. This is a scene in Paris, and again I put text on the woman here on the left, the guy in the back, and The woman here on the right side. And again, I'm not going to read all of it. I bet that they're all made up. It's all made up text.

Sherry Karver

Here's the woman and the right.

Sherry Karver

This is called at the bend in the road. It's 36 inches by 42 inches, and it's a street scene in Paris. Again, text is on 3 of the figures. I usually do 3, occasionally 4, but normally 3. You have to give people a voice. Okay, this one is called the world is Movement grand Central Station. Again. This tall man here in the middle has text girl in the back. This one here on the right.

Sherry Karver

This is called Road Map of Life. It's 25 inches by 30 inches. And I'll read you the text. And this guy here in the middle. Here we see I have a picture of him here, and this guy 26 year old, manager of a health food restaurant, sneaks, fries, and candy in his pocket, adds a little whiskey to his coffee worries. He'll lose his job if anyone finds out, especially his mother, who always said he wouldn't amount to much. Would really like to be a jazz musician play the blues in Chicago clubs, hobnob with cool people, wear a fedora, smoke a pipe, and have a girlfriend who wears spiked heels and accepts him the way he is. Move on and another one of my favorite places in New York is the Metropolitan Museum, and I happen to come upon the Sculpture Court. There, purely by accident, I was actually upstairs on the second floor, about to go into a photo exhibit when I saw this little window on the second floor, and when I look down through that window it was onto the sculpture court below, and I became really interested in the juxtaposition of contemporary figures with these ancient statues. So I decided to also put words on the sculptures as well as on some of the people. In order to give them some anthropomorphic qualities, and I had to do quite a bit of research because I really didn't know much about Greek mythology at all. And so I did it on many of the figures. But I'm gonna show you this figure way in the back here.

On the right side, which

Is the sculpture called Venus. And this is my last image that I'll show you. And Venus is saying. I really don't like being naked in front of all these people, even if they think I'm beautiful, though I'm not even the original Venus, and it's quite nippy in here, and I wish I had a nice long toga like Sappho, but she doesn't have the great body that I do. So. I always try to say something funny, and I have felt that by adding text to my work. It really engages the viewer, and it pulls the viewer in to spend at least a few more seconds with my work and become part of my process by reading.

Sherry Karver

And that's it. So thank you so much for listening. And I was really honored to be included with Karen and Seth. Whose work I love both of them. So thank you. I'm going to stop sharing. Thank you. Thanks, Sherry Karver much.

Very cool. I love the stories. We all think things like that at times. So it's good to kind of see that right in front. So that's really neat.

Thank you, Michael.

Okay. Next up. Banana.

Thank you. Thank you, Michael. And it's been a really interesting set. 3 sessions. I was just looking at Sherry Karver work that she does make making puzzles.

Renata Janiszewska

There's a fascination for typography with me, and, like some of the other artists who spoke. I treat often, type or text has a decorative quality. And this goes back to my interest in medieval art, and specifically the illuminated manuscripts that were produced. But usually by monks, and this particular one is in the Metropolitan Museum's collection. It's not on public display, but it's a translation into Spanish of the City of God. By Saint Augustine, and the artist's name was Kano de Oranda.

Renata Janiszewska

And what I really liked about The manuscripts was. Some of you will likely know what kerning is. They're perfectly current. Even though they're not typeset. And the more I look at the way they wrote and the way this artist used the space. The more admiration I had for him. And they spent a long time creating the books. This is a close up of the illuminated letter O, with an illustration. And I'm going to show you some of my letter forms. Now that I've created over the past 2 years, I think. There was a time when there was an app on the app store way back in 20, 1020, 11 that you could draw with lettering.

Renata Janiszewska

And it was really a favorite of mine, because for me, letters, type, and text tell. Us more than just a story. They tell us A feeling or a mood, and they can be elements in a drama. So this is the letter r, coupled with a shape. And this is kind of my response to the medieval page that has text and image, where here the lines and the shit, the background shapes. Which are a custom brush that I make these brushes, using either drawings, paintings, or photographs.

Renata Janiszewska

And it's kind of got a quality of writing to it, even though there are no letters in the peace. This one is about looking forward and looking back. The letter R is in the bottom, right? But it's really discrete. It doesn't jump out at you. This is a fairly recent series. And I'm co-curating the Siberiana Exhibition. So I took part of the text from our press release, and I superimposed it onto this painting. What I learned a long time ago is that you can't put text over image as a graphic designer. It's practically impossible to have your text be legible. And most most of the time II don't want to do that, but in this case the what you don't have to read it, you just have to. It's this is a fairly simple smell. Around hand. Is the name of the font.

Renata Janiszewska

You don't have to read it in order to enjoy the play between the shapes Of the letter forms and the background painting. Here I was really trying to make it legible, and I just took a phrase from a novel. And it's the novelist Gormanghast, which is a work that is like a world unto itself. And I often look through it for inspiration, because sometimes language can trigger a flight of images. And I'm combining work. These works are combining things that I'm making with mid journey. So the faces are made with mid journey, and then the rest are the custom brushes and some of the elements that I create.

Renata Janiszewska

This one has the letter B in the bottom right hand corner. And behind the bee you'll see a gorilla. And I refer to these as my Tantan brushes. They're actual quotations from the graphic novels of the graphic novelist, Er Jay, the Belgian who created the beloved Tantown books. And in this case there's even language in it, the gorillas jumping up and down. And he's saying, Whoa! This is made up gibberish. The blue letter forms are not words, but again I'm putting them into the overall picture to kind of create a sense of something old and something new. This was a work that I turned into a New Year's card. I've only sent it to 3 people, though so kind of miss missed timing on that. But again, it's trying. I'm trying really hard to make the text as legible as possible, while being somehow in harmony with the other elements that are in the work and color wise for it to also see, it seems, should seem seamless.

Renata Janiszewska

And finally, Seth, II would like to show you a few works I made with your app yesterday. And I did put an emoji in this one, because I'm really fascinated with emojis. If you blow an emoji up really large. Some of them are incredibly beautiful. This one had a rose on it. But when I was looking at it later, I thought, no, the font, the text is enough. You don't need to put another different element in there. So when I go back to your app today, I'm gonna try working just with emojis.

Renata Janiszewska

So there are but 7 fonts to choose from on the app and this one is Baskerville, I believe. And it I'm trying to reference the French A slogan about liberty, equality, and freedom. And finally, my last image is just that. And I want to say, thank you to everybody for listening.

Renata Janiszewska

Wow! Thanks, Renata.

This, this is such A deep and wonderful subject. I think we're gonna need to do an another slant on the road on this topic, because I think we've just scratch the surface. And it's really it's really, really fascinating. So I wanna give enough time for some discussion. And QA. So I'm I hope. I hope I don't offend anybody by stopping any more presentations, because I'd like to have some discussion on the topic. So if anybody has a question for any of the presenters. You want to raise your hand, and I'll call on folks or just chime in

It's Roz. Hi! Everybody here in Shelter Island, the booming metropolis. I just wanted to say I don't know if it's a question so much. But I really liked the Karen Karen's sound use in her piece. This is this child like artificial thing. And I kind of I thought that was effective. And I wondered if you might talk a little about that, because it seemed otherworldly, in a way, like, you know, we was bringing the real and the artificial together in a in a strange.

Roz Dimon

I just felt like the voice kind of worked, you know, and this is like an it wasn't even annoying, but that like kind of really, you know, weird. Just tell us about that.

Well, kind of like what sic was saying. Language to me is the whole thing. It's the gesture, it's the sound, I mean. Originally we weren't writing things down, and when we communicated we communicated and indicated in a 3D. Space. And so when I come, bring The text into a film situation, it can become as virtual as I want it to be, which brings the elements back together in terms of communicating sound text, word, etc. And so I started to think about. If you think of a memory as a child.

Karen LaFleur

You're kind of memorized thinking of that memory in your adult voice. But it's so easy to go back in memory to the child you were. And so that's why I wanted a childlike sound to my voice. This otherworldly thing just was great to run into, because I worked a lot with the different tones and speeds to get that sound. It. It made the sense of going back to that memory, and we all know our memories aren't exact. So it is going to be otherworldly when we go there. So yes, it was intentional.

Thanks. So.

Cheryl, you have a question your hands raised.

Yes. The question is, The apps that were mentioned. I didn't. I didn't get a chance to write them down. That people use all, all of you, I think, have different little little apps that you've discovered that make your work so interesting. And I was wondering if you could give that information. We'll just write it down in the chat.

Okay, yeah, that's a great great suggestion. Great request.

Thanks.

Cynthia DiDonato.

Hello, everyone. I'm zooming in from North Providence, Rhode Island. I have to say I enjoyed every presentation today thoroughly. It's incredible to see the breath and width Of text and image. And I thank you all for your presentations. I have a comment I wanted to make to. Seth. I love that you're involved with this participatory artistic venture. That has an educational aspect. I'm a retired English teacher. I have a tremendous love of language, and when I heard that you're using your you use your app with an educational E educational institution. So I thought.

Cynthia DiDonato

That's bravo. In a in a time when young people are relying on emojis and abbreviations when they converse with one another on their phones. Here's a way to have text work with image and really hold up the importance of language in its symbolic form, and also at its meaning. So II thank you for doing that.

Oh, thank you, Cynthia, I appreciate it, and it's something I love as well. It's also came to somewhat of a surprise. Only because the app is a public work on the app store. And when it came out, as it turned out all a lot of teachers started downloading it and using it in schools. And then eventually I got I got wind of it one way or the other in the in New York City first, and then from other teachers around the country. So Yeah, it's been. It's been great. But then also, I wanted doing the participation with the Department of Education, and I also did a kind of a one week project with the Middle School in the East Village. And kind of just went in there as a teacher teaching artists with the teachers and working on a curriculum. And that was really.

Seth C

That was really nice to see. Especially middle schoolers, who have a pretty good graph of language, especially New York kids. Take the app and do exactly what you're talking about. Like, start. They really actually play with the words, play with the actual physical device. They spin it around. There's a lot of playful. Playful use of language at that age, and I think all children but I don't know about you or in everyone else. But when I learned poetry about poetry I went to a public school before I went to a private college, and it was the sort of cliche, you know. Let's analyze Emily Dickinson today, and we're going to read the poem. And now we're going to analyze and Co. You know, compare and contrast this fan to one another, and it was not very pleasant.

Seth C

It's very nice to see something in the schools that kids actually like around around Texas poetry. And if they can be my hat for anything else that's great.

II loved middle school students as well because they were so willing to try and be adventurous, whereas high school students would learn to keep quiet and not really venture. So I think that age group really benefits from working with your app. So thank you.

Quick question, Seth. It's Ross again. Does your app have different languages like Spanish and other languages. Or is it English, or did I miss something about that?

Yeah, I didn't mention it. It does. It's called localize. When you're talking to me. Apple. Speak so the language is localized of all things to polish and Japanese so far, that's because, I work with a Polish programmer and his partner is Japanese, and both of them help me localize the app into those languages. I do wanna expand to other languages, especially the top used ones like Spanish and German and Mandarin. But that actually is only for the words that are in the app, like the instructions or the name things like that, like the info screen, the actual. If you localize your app into a language, it will localize the keyboard and whatnot. So the actual use of the app is totally international in terms of like a Spanish speaker. As long as long as the speaker can speak English to read some of about the app. They can, they can, and they do download like, for example, Saudi Arabia. I don't know why it's really popular there.

Seth C

It's not like it's huge, but some countries you would never guess why and how, and II don't really know what's going on there but more people download it there. And I have II had one artist in Iran who used it and has liked it, and you know she shared with you works that were in the native language so, and what I don't know, for example, if those I do have like a curated set of fonts. Like basketball, for example. And I did specifically pick those and write a whole story. Those fonts. What I don't know is, I don't know if those actually localize, you know. I think you kind of just. I don't think you can use Baskerville and Mannering, for example.

Seth C

Unless they unless it's native that Baskville has been on, how you would stylize basket. Ask your bill on a pictogram, but it could be could be cool.

Well, there's this, II love poetry, and I'm kind of the old fogey type of love of poetry. And I must say, though but studying poetry with others. The different languages, you know, when things are translated differently, and this is a little bit more of the old school. It's amazing how you'll read something that's been totally kind of bastardized in one translation. Then you really hear it in its native tongue. And then translated well as hard. I just thought it opens up a whole nother thing of sound. And you know. The interpretation of real poetry across an international spectrum of hieroglyphics that we're in right now.

Yeah, I have. II see. I see Karen at the end of it just real quick, because I actually have been working with some free jazz artists, and we did a performance in Kyoto together where they're improvising, and I improvise with the app on a screen, and we kinda we kind of go back and forth in the performance. I mean, there need mostly New Yorkers, but we happen to just do it in Japan. But part of it is, I tried to learn. Learn. Learn while I was there, some Japanese characters and put them up there, and I. And I'm trying to get in a little bit of a tap to like almost like a sampler where I can tap the language, and I have it working. It sort of robotically says the words. But I want to get into it with these guys where I'm doing something like.

Seth C

You know, tapping a language on a beat, but also in different languages. That will be. That's like in development.

Great.

Thank you. I you know it's same conversation. I have a friend who translates into mandarin, and you know, from English books, and sometimes it's like, you know, one language has to have so many characters in order to get a point across versus another. So there has to be some kind of translating free form to get the concept across so is interested. How you are handling mandarin because of this shift, in how many words it takes to get a concept across

Karen, is your question. If I switch the app to mandarin, for example? Or well. That's why I haven't done it yet. I think it's a little bit bit of a bigger grab than the Latin languages. But I don't have. I try to limit the amount of actual text in the app in terms of like the screens. And what needs to be told to people? II try to make it as much like a full screen you just dropped in. It's a blank slate. Have fun with it. But there's only so far you can go with that because people get confused, and sometimes I get strange reviews on the app store, you know, like, well, I don't know like they just like the going for tech support on a review. It's kind of funny, but I think.

Seth C

I think, my mandarin, I really just need to figure out the translation of, you know, into the characters with someone a native speaker, for example, of course, and then and then it'll just be testing, you know. Like to test with them a few man native manners, because ideally they'd be poets. And luckily, actually, I know in that collective I mentioned that Tx collective. There are native mandarin speakers. I can talk about actually, that you're reminding I should do that. Some of the phones are actually being translated between mandarin and English and that group. So that's a good good reminder. She's going through what she has to do to translate English into mandarin, and you know, sometimes it just doesn't fit on the page. I was curious how you were handling it. Thank you for the answer.

I would think it would be. There'd be enormous commercial application for this, and that isn't a bad word to use. I mean, I don't think it's fine to make money, but I wonder is that is that? Is it? Is it an app that you do sell.

I do. And I'm II agree it probably could have a lot of commercial potential like I had. For example, when it came out, it's been out for a good while. By the way, like the Creative Arts and Artists Agency, which is massive Talent agency, contacted me from La. And they said, oh, you know what we really wanna give this to Demi Lovato and a bunch of pop stars. And I actually went and talked to them. But I just thought like I looked at the rock, and I said, Well, you know what. Just personally, I don't like Debbie Lotto. It's just sorry, you know, like I know it'll probably be a big cash cow to like. Have a pop star.

Seth C

You know. Put it on Instagram, and we do some. I don't know. They were talking at. In the beginning I was head to head with the person, but then that's usually the lower down the ladder. And these agencies. They're nice, good people, and then they got me to the Mba level. You know the people that are like, Okay, now let's talk. Let's talk business, and they just want. They don't really want or know or understand art. So I think, in a way, I purposely shoot myself on the foot, sometimes with the commercial potential around the app. And it's kind of difficult like with the schools. For example, there was a point where I started working with a professor at Columbia and a professor at Nyu, and we were actually looking for some funding to for research. As they call it's called multi-modal usage and education like if we could, multimodal means. There's multiple modes of the of the language itself. But also there's things like gesture and touching. And then there's there're different modes of usage that they that they study, and we had a whole grant together.

Seth C

And it went up to the Department of Education for a big grant, but also it took so much time, and they turned it down. Because we you know, we were too weird, basically is, they didn't say that in direct words. But pretty much was that, was the answer. So what I found is. Yes, it does sell, and it could be sold a lot more. But the and the weird thing is when you come from art, and you're making an art work and an art project or an art app you. I could I know I could turn, I could commercialize it, but then it would start pulling away from all the other work, because it's just takes it's just time and hours, you know.

Right? And I hear you, I really respect that answer a lot.

Yeah, yeah. I just thought I'd give you the transparency answer. So. So, Seth, you made a really interesting statement about going from physical to the web 3 space or digital and kind of living there. Almost some of the really fascinating things that you showed before is how people will take what you were displaying, and then being able to mix the words around, and not only change the meanings, but also they created kind of word clouds, and just an artistic approach to that in a web. 3 space you could take that to the next level I in regards to what you can do digitally that you can't necessarily do in a physical space. I don't know if you've been thinking creative thoughts on that, you know, kind of going in that direction at all.

Yeah, I totally. I put some proposals together before, for example, out in, I think it was lack my because they had a video contract or support. So I put together proposals. I think if you want to go, if you want to stay native to digital, but still bring back the tactile group collaborative artworks. It's like it can't be a projection screen. That's sensing people, one because it'll have too much delay like the latency won't work like you have to have a massive screen. Just an example in a place that is touch, sensitive. It's program. Well, that's the physical space. And then, like you're saying in the metaverse it's probably the place to do it, because, like in the metaverse, you could program everything, and it could be set up in the space. And then all the users can be there as avatars and basically start moving and changing. But even that does would require X amount of programming. Like to kind of get it to get the get the situation, and set up to work in a way that feels kind of Settled in a in a soulful way, I guess is probably for lack of better words, because when you do things I found when you do things in the physical world. Yes, you're limited, but you're using everything are you using? It's physical matter.

Seth C

You're S, you, you can scope the physical experience in a way that feels right because we'll obviously it feels right, because it's exactly the thing you that you're feel you're looking at and touching. But I feel like when you're dealing with the sort of you're dealing with the metaverse or even digital media. And even these screens. You're starting to remove parts of that soulful. Grounded experience. And for me, it's really important. Like II feel like that. That cold, disconnected Lack of feeling. Experience is sort of proliferated across not just the commercial venues like Instagram, but also in that digital art space. So yeah, I'd like to do it. I think it's great. I wanna I'm starting with this early experiment. For example with these nfts that will, you could have the interactive file. And then that would be basically that would just be the buyer that gets it.

Seth C

And that's nice. But that's more like an art collectors perspective. It's a limited, it's a it's sort of false scarcity which I'm torn about myself. So I do think the sort of mass public aspect is worthwhile and really interesting, and I'd like to figure it out for lack of a better answer.

Cool. We've got a couple more minutes, I think, before we're hitting our hour and a half mark. So anybody have any questions, comments. Feedback.

I just wanted to say one thing. You know, I initially was introduced to Seth. By Paul Miller, and you know it made me think that probably a lot of us have. You know, friends or colleagues, or other artists, that we know, that might not be really participating in. You know these salons or involvement expressionism in any kind of direct way, and I think it's, you know, an opportunity to bring these people in, and, you know, introduce them to the community, but also to bring in people who have, you know, a wide, diverse array of work and experience.

Colin Goldberg

And a lot of times. You know, it's the people that are sort of the regulars here showing, and I think it's interesting, you know, to have some people come in and sort of circulate and you know, I just wanted to put that out there, because I'm sure each one of us have, you know, friends and other people that we know other artists that are working, you know, in a in some way that's tangential to technology, or maybe even Deeply involved in technology. And that's, you know a way to keep the this project, you know, growing, circulating with new people, because early on, that's all it was, you know, and it's kind of like distilled into sort of a group in, you know Helen Harrison. It said. In the beginning, you know.

Colin Goldberg

Maybe organize the show and see who sticks around, and that will kind of shake out. You know, who's really gonna stay involved in the project. And it's kind of you know it. It's kind of come to fruition in the sense that's you know, there's a core group of people that are usually here. But yeah, I just wanted to put that out there because you know, it's always really interesting. You know, and hopefully set, you know, you come back and join us for future things. Or if you know any other people that might be interested definitely, you know, send them our way. And we do. You know, it's the first Thursday of every month. So it's pretty easy to remember Number at noon. And you know, we're all doing new things, and other people in the group are doing all these interesting initiatives like Siberiana, which I think is really exciting. So yeah, just wanted to put my 2 cents in

Cool, great, great point, Colin.

Cynthia Beth Rubin. Yeah. So I'm sorry I can't get my hand to raise, so I don't know why. I just wanted to mention 2 things. One is that we now have enabled simultaneous translation and captions. In the text, zoom. So if you're thinking about inviting people who are not English speakers. Go ahead, invite them. It's of course it's not perfect. It's like any other automatic translation, but it opens up the community. And the other thing is to put in a plug again to remind people that some of us are meeting every Tuesday for virtual Co working.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So which is just kind of you come in for. And you say what work you're gonna do, and then you go mute for an hour, and you do the work that you're committed to doing, and then you come back and you share it with people. So it's a totally different way of working together. But some of us have got to know each other really well through that. So Okay, and thank you. This was a fabulous session. I mean the conceptually very, very stimulating. And it's wonderful. Yeah.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

The conceptually Conceptual, stimulating, conceptual stimulation. Okay? Right?

I echo exactly what you just said. It's really awesome topic wonderful.

The translation is that something that's done? At the user end. Like, you know, I'm not 100 clear, even though I sort of enable the option of how that actually works like, does the host need to enable close captioning? And then the user selects a language or no. In fact, thanks to you, Colin, you enabled it for the Techspressionist account.

So I think it works whenever people are using that account, and you just down in the bottom where those different options, one of them is closed captioning. And then you can select your language so you can keep it to English if someone sound isn't that good? Or if they're speaking with an accent that's a little difficult for you to understand it actually. Or if you have any hearing problems, it actually works even English to English, and then it also does. It's not very good translation, but good enough for people to follow along. And what we found is that there are people who are comfortable speaking about their own work sometimes in English, but they don't have to be. Anyone can do it.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

But it. It helps them follow along when we're moving really fast. If English is the second language, and you know you have to hesitate and think about what somebody's saying so. Encourage your friends all over the world to join in. Is the bottom line

Awesome? Thanks so much. And your it just made me think also about the fact that, you know, we early on had been doing this sort of artist interview artists piece of the project which was sort of inspired by interview magazine world kind of idea of like artists, you know, interviewing other artists versus a journalist interviewing an artist, and we haven't really done any in a long time, or there hasn't been very much that you know happening in terms of it being published on the site. But I'm happy to post, you know, interviews. If any of you guys want to interview each other, just do a zoom recording, you know. The reason it popped into my head is that now, you know, with close captioning, I realize The entire transcript can also be exported as a text document which makes you know that whole process have another Facet in terms of you know the ability to have a written transcript, but certainly it'd be cool to pick up on that I don't think we've done any since the South and show. I think the last one might have been Frank Gillette.

I interviewed Nina Sobell. I think it was October of.

Okay, that's right. That was the most recent one. Right? That's live. Now, right up on the site. Yeah, that's on the site. So, yeah, but definitely, you know, if any you guys you know, want to pair up and do an interview, certainly I would encourage that because that's always good material to publish both on the YouTube Channel on this site.

Oh. Well. Think we should wrap wrap things up and do the after party afterward.

Sure! That sounds good to me. So I just like to thank you, Michael, for you know, moderating. And all the artists. For presenting, and really a great topic. You know, I think that like you, said Michael. It's definitely something that could be revisited. In the future. There's definitely, you know, a bunch of other artists that I thought about that. You know, their work definitely speaks to this topic. So yeah, it was. It's a great salon. I think that you know. Going to this once a month. Timeline? Works well and Yeah, without further ado I will close the recording. But if you guys wanna stick around for the after party slash advisory board meeting, which is kind of our tongue in cheek, but that's usually where that the action happens, as far as new initiatives or people kind of like just schmoozing, or whatever. But it looks like that. We have a new topic for the next salon, which is photography. Which is really cool, and Renata's volunteered to moderate. So that takes one item off the table. So yeah, you're all welcome to hang out, and I'll keep the recording going. So I will stop recording in 3, 2, one, and.