An Evolver Open Source Floating Gallery

For now, everyone in the group is an admin. I suppose that means we could all ban each other too if we wanted. I'd personally like to see what happens if our official policy is that everyone is an admin.

Joanne is right. If this thing is built so that one person does all the work, then it will never work. All that my job is here is to convince everyone that it is a good idea. However, it will take a dedicated community to make it work.. but it doesn't have to be a full time job for anyone unless they want it to be.

Joanne, I never meant to say that any non-digital work wouldn't be allowed, all I said is that we are making prints. So necessarily, they are digital prints. I'm a 'medium is the message' guy, so I believe that the instant you take a picture of a painting, that digital image is digital art. That's just my personal opinion. So, if you make art, it should at least be something that pictures well, that's all. I will repeat again: the only rules we can make is that the size is 4x4, we should have some kind of rule or policy on the frame, and it needs to be a digital file. Technically, everything is permitted as far as what's allowed in the prints except for maybe, extremely porngraphic or offensive material. But I imagine people will create political art, photography, and all kinds of stuff and hopefully no one kind of art will dominate.

Now, you very well couldn't make 1,000 paintings and send them everywhere, but you could very well share a digital print in a thousand places or more and reach even more people. So that's why I favor it personally... and other reasons besides.

But Joanne, nothing is stopping you from using this as a teaser for your own art.. or selling your own 4x4 prints that are signed and special from you. For example: you could open an Etsy store, you could spend an hour or two making an elaborate folded frame to your print, or you could embellish it in some other way and sign it to create original art. That is what I intend to do. But I would recommend that your print be something that can also stand on it's own, of course.

In fact, I now that I think its a good idea to at least put a link/name on the back of each print. Considering what we are dealing with it seems rational and not too much extra work. It would have to be on the back but we could figure out a way to make some easy instructions for attaching it or something.

I would also like to suggest something else, pretty shortly I will start to 'fluff' up this group with a shitload of public domain art and shared creative commons work, that's nicely cropped and fit to be printed, and properly attributed if necessary. It's not just us who are collaborating. We need to think bigger and realize we are already collaborating with hell of a lot of people who want their art to be shared- including the past. If you look in any store that sells prints or boutique items, I guarantee that a lot of the content in the design will be public domain. If you go to a bookstore, you will notice all the 'classics' by different publishers. So we can do the same thing... and this is what this is about... creating a public resource at the same time that we are doing something for each one of us individually.

Cheers

On the one hand, everything that we do here is just a recommendation (that we are collaborating on), and anybody can do everything they want. The person who shells out the cash and makes the prints holds all the power... except for the power to say it is their own art legally. But they can coordinate with everyone else more or less. The evolver website allows us to cooperate in this way and that's how we're using it.

But I am thinking more of how we can create standards so that at least if people want to, they can easily set something up and it will be tried and tested. People will experiment of course... just like there's different 'distros' in Linux.

So if we have a standard size frame, then you can design your print to work well with it, and you will know that if anyone in the world prints it, it will appear reasonably similar to the way we want it.

There's also a design issue, because you might design your print for a certain kind of frame and if someone who prints it up changes it, that might interfere with what you wanted. Like if someone puts colored frames on all the prints it will interfere with some prints that have certain colors in them and change them. If you make one kind of frame one month then it won't display well with the prints left over from last month. So I really think it's best to at least establish a standard for ourselves on what kind of frame we use. It's a technical issue but an important one. And if every print came with it's own set of instructions it would be a massive headache for whoever puts it together.

I think the issue of the frame will affect what kind of prints get made of course, and it should probably be the most minimalist thing we can figure out so it doesn't interfere too much. I think it needs to be black. But it probably has to have some dimension to it, I am thinking matboard. It's probably not as sustainable as we can get with the printing at this moment, and it might be the costliest thing, but it will at least do the job.

The reason I came up with this idea (or part of it) is that I was thinking of the best ways to limit the weight in all of my possessions and creations. So I thought if all my prints were just paper, they would weigh a lot less than glass/wood frames and nobody wants to use plastic. I like the reflective properties and the protection of glass, but I can work with paper. Especially if its hemp paper or something. But I've only started doing that and working only with paper.

I've been thinking of ways to boil down this concept, especially with the standardization, and one way of putting it is this: It's like a contrast between the sameness of everything and the infinite complexity and novelty contained in that sameness. So it's also a metaphor for the universe and I like how River tied that to the square symbolically. So I think the concept is to focus on how similar we can make all the prints in terms of the technical reality of their production, and concentrate on making all the novelty contained within the information. That way it won't be lost in translation from one continent to another, or from one time to another. And that's probably why why want the prints to contrast with one another as much as possible, and why it's good to include not only artists in it. How many Evolvers have a bunch of digital photos, and maybe one came out really good and it could be used as a print? Maybe they were just in the right place or time and took a picture of it? Even if they are not an artist, they could still join and post it up and maybe someone else who is an artist can do a better job of cropping and curating it and perhaps tweaking it a little so it works well as a print.

And then we can use that as a base, like I said before, when we express ourselves as individuals... for example in your own expression of your individuality you can work with the frame and your own prints and create something handmade and unique. I intend to. But at the same time I can be doing this with everyone else and creating value for people other than just myself.

So for now I'm working on figuring out frames and experimenting, and refining my ideas and advocacy of them, making it clearer for people in more blogs, and reaching out to more folks.

Thanks everybody!