Moved Blog!

This blog can now be found at www.ianaleksanderadams.com/blog/

Sorry for any confusion! I'll leave the old entries here.

The Ballad of Accounting

Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?

I've been sitting on this for a while, but it's too awesome to not point out. Basically, some days I just worry that I'm going to become a mirror of VVORK, just because the shit up there is so good. Anyway, you need to check out The Ballad of Accounting. Specifically, the project called "Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?" Hundreds of Buskers in london played the same song. How do you think that would make you feel, walking to your nine-to-five?

I found Thomas Mailaender through VVORK as well, though this series wasn't the one featured. I'm really intrigued by it - it's called Sponsoring - because I really can't tell if these are actual snapshots of him with corporate sponsors, or if he simply found people to pose with prints of giant checks. I'm also not sure which would be funnier. Oh, and here's a picture I took of a bathroom:

Polyvore/Fashion Haus

Polyvore.com?

Many of you know that I'm not too interested in the commercial aspects of style, but am extremely intruiged in the social aspects. Now this is interesting. I found this through google, it seems this site polyvore lets you create outfits and sets of items from any image online. A couple people have grabbed this picture of beth from theoneswelove.org. Looks like people dig her style! I'm willing to bet that the outfit put together through stores is about 400 times more expensive than the thrifted and found clothing that Beth always wears, but I have a feeling that is true for most fashion - influenced by people who give hardly a thought to what they wear and almost unfailably look original and beautiful, then mused on and reconfigured for the general public. Then those clothes go through time and several owners and end back up with the influential kids through thrift. Is that a logical theory? I just pulled it out of my ass, but it sounds right to me. It's probably obvious between this and stumbleupon that I google my name periodically to find out how people are using my images around the web. I often find really interesting stuff, from people's personal myspace designs, blog posts about my work, or - the best - odd things like this that I never expected. Some photographers are upset to lose creative control over their images, but I love it. It isn't as if people haven't been making collages out of magazine covers and ads forever. Speaking of fashion, guess what's finally up? SCAD Fashion Haus's new flickr! So if you want to see around a thousand photographs dating back to 2006 of the last three scad runway shows, that's the place to find them. It's tagged by photographer - though I only have my stuff up from the last couple years, So if anyone else who has shots wants to send them to me, I'll put them up. Here are a couple of my snapshots that I think I haven't put up here.

So go check it out for super comprehensive runway coverage, plus, if you're one of the designers, if you click on "all sizes" and view the original size, it should be big enough to make an alright quality print for your portfolio. And if you aren't a designer but want to steal my images for other personal uses (read: non-profit) feel free as well.

New House/Shows

Two pictures of deck chairs at my mother's house. I like them, and the pads, better deconstructed. Beth, Sarah, and I found a place today! The house we found was very affordable and literally a fucking mansion. I'm not even kidding, it's got huge white pillars out front and a back yard big enough hundreds of people. This is right in the middle of savannah, one block off the bike lane and 6 blocks from Kroger. It's got two bathrooms, three huge bedrooms, a living room, storage areas, kitchen, back and front porch, and my favorite feature: A giant hallway. The hallway is excessively wide, and has huge ceilings and wonderful white walls. I bet you know what I thought as soon as I saw it: Finally, we have a gallery. It's 100% perfect for house shows. It goes right from the front door - framed nicely by two pillars on the stone porch - to the kitchen, with space enough to hang quite a big show. Streamlined viewing and straight to the refreshments. It's perfect. So we're on the lookout for local people interested in doing house shows starting in May. I'll probably get people to play in the backyard eventually, though that will have to be earlier than desoto shows so as to be nice to then neighbors. I'll have pictures of the space asap, and I'm starting to look for people for a group show to start it off with a kick. It's not a swanky venue, but the viewing and light is perfect. It's the kind of place you go with some friends to have a beer and look at some art. These will be dirty do it yourself shows, no commission, no fees, just if you've got good work, we'd love to have it up and organize an opening. The kind of shows I miss from noho and new york, and I hear are getting super popular in chicago. Email me if you're interested.

Major Website Update

ianaleksanderadams.com

Big update. Hopefully, though, you can't even tell. What's changed? Well, the navigation bar is now encoded on every page. That's right, no frames. Why? Well, frames did make it really easy for me to update content, but after getting 34,000 (??!!) hits to my details series in one day from stumbleupon, I realized those people had absolutely no navigation available. So that had to change. Thanks to Monique and the people at the webdesign community at livejournal I was able to pick up or rework enough css to get the bar to stay put while scrolling. Sweet shit. I also made a few little tweaks, like the addition of a 404 page. Which means I can go http://www.ianaleksanderadams.com/yourfacesucksandyourmomisugly.html and it will work. Sort of. I also cleaned up the files hosted on there. Which means many images and links around the internet will now no longer work, dating back to 2003. Sorry. Things were just getting insane. I've got a much more logical system in place, and I'll be doing my best to fix things as I find them. I'm going to go through the livejournal tonight, the blogger version tomorrow, and myspace the day after that and fix or redesign everything. Then I'll fix other sites as people point them out or I notice them. Hope this doesn't screw up anyone who was using my image for decoration or layout. I really don't mind that, but it's probably a better idea not to hotlink. Let me know if you see anything funky. love love. Oh yeah, here's a picture of me running a fever of 104 degrees at my mom's house in massachusetts. Recognize it?

Abe, again. Oh man. There are serious dangers involved in going to gallery shows after forgetting to eat all day, or being so poor that you don't eat much. I only had a few free beers and got a lot more inebriated that I planned on. I forgot that my tolerance level would go way down since I've hardly been drinking at all this year. Luckily some kind people held on to my sweatshirt after I left it somewhere and helped me home on my bike. I love savannah people.

Grandpa

Here are a couple pictures of my grandpa. More tomorrow.

Art Art Art Fart Art Art

I'm almost done editing a series of three video installation pieces for my experimental film class. I got the idea while watching my roommate play monster rancher, of all things. It's nothing to do with this picture. I've also been steadily updating my list of blogs I read, so you should check in with that periodically. I can't believe I've forgotten to add Baby Sinead [nsfw] to that list for so long, for example. My friend Pear from my psych class sent me a link to this, an advertisement/interactive media creation by Nokia. It's a great example of well done advertising/corporate work pulling from the avant garde and underground subculture. It's directly linked to the stop motion that has become very popular on youtube and other video sharing types and anyone with a little connection to videogaming will recognize the classic Breakout and Snake designs.

Preview of New Works

god I love TEPR. I bounce to it while working all the time, though I really want to be doing this of course. The downside is that I can't stay serious while listening to it, I was working on something that was a sort of ironic statement about a variety of things, schadenfreude, myspace portraits, national pride.... and then ghetto bounce came on shuffle and it became this. Consider it a sneak peak, it won't stay in this format forever, if I even end up showing it again. I've been working on my computer for days straight, I just want to dance with my shirt off to muscles. (wow beth, andrew, I really didn't know muscles was this popular, no one here seems to know about him at all) .Some of you know my eclectic taste in music (I have hip hop months, sad guy with guitar months, and folktronica months), but this stuff tends to be feel good stay moving work work work music. If you can make it through all that, I applaud you.

On to more serious matters. I'm serious. Art art art art fart art art. This is a test of the online version of Permanent Stick-It-Out-Ed-Ness. It represents the Our Artist Trip side. I already posted one of the press releases from the SMC Global, Inc. side. You may be able to figure out that they represent a basic split in the artistic personality, the idea of making a living with your work (often thought of as selling out) and the idea of fully embracing your creative impulses (even if it results in you being judged negatively). I'll post a more detailed artist statement when it's all finished. I've just started relearning flash (I used to play with it when I was 13) and it's going slowly, but in a good direction. Ideally, you will be able to control the motion of the room, be able to go to other galleries to see the rest of the images in the show, and there will be a loading animation. Right now, if you wait a bit it should show up and start streaming. Feedback appreciated, as usual! Hope you guys are good. Daily content updates at whatisntart.net starting today. Hopefully I'll have some original content finished by the start of next week. Oh and totally off topic, Baby Sinead posted this in her blog, and it's fucking hilarious. You're probably not the only one that thinks kink porn can be totally ridiculous, apparently it cracks all the actors up as well. I should not have to warn you that these porn bloopers are extremely un-worksafe.

What Isn't Art?

whatisntart.net

I'm constantly discussing the nature of art in classrooms, at lectures, in galleries, coffee shops, the internet and so on. In my own blog, the topic comes up fairly often. I've posted my own perspective, but I feel the debate ends up being too one sided in a personal blog. I often link people to various sources around the net, refer them to books, artists, documentaries. What I realized was I couldn't find one place that collected the opinions and content in an easily searchable and clean manner. The domain name whatisntart.net was available, so I decided the easiest way of presenting the information was as a wordpress blog that people could discuss and submit content to, both original essays as well as found information, quotes and excerpts. As a starting point, I've supplied the blog with ten backdated posts from various sources, and a few people from varied backgrounds (from pornstar to art buyer) are working on original content to be posted soon. So this is an open invitation to participate, share words you've found challenging or inspiring, or submit your own thoughts for consideration. Submissions will be moderated through email (details on the front page of the site), but discussion in comments is unrestricted. Some original content will be in interview format, but these people will generally be contacted directly. Since this is a non-profit project, with no advertising, mainly intended for educational use and public debate, you will not be able to be paid for your words, but credit and a link (either to your website, or email, etc) will be supplied. The design of the blog is currently a work in progress (though it will remain minimalist) and feedback is whole-heartedly appreciated. Feel free to repost this information in whole or in part.