Two decades of largely living digitally. Two points in time where we all take a reality check. Thinking back to my twenty year ago self, I would never have guessed that I would be half way around the world and marking the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 by getting my second dose of vaccine to help protect against a virus causing a global pandemic. The fact that America was attacked by terrorists and that a global pandemic has happened are not surprising to me, I saw the warning signs for both well before they happened. Still no less shocking when these terrible things ultimately manifest. Things are not going to get much better I’m afraid. The cycle of violence in the world is set to continue. It may have been hundred years since the last major pandemic, but then next one might not stay in abeyance that long. What can you do. We can try to use less electricity. Burn less oil. I don’t think we are going to do a very good job of it. One thing I set out to do after the 9/11 attacks was to not own a car. I’ve only been partially successful in doing that. I share a car with my wife. I don’t drive to work, but she does. I still consume a great deal of electricity. My work is on the Internet and this is powered by electricity, with out the Internet well, I guess I would get by, but my life as I know it would be very different. I couldn’t make this digital collage for instance:
I wouldn’t be making “generative art” which twenty years ago I was just beginning to comprehend. I didn’t quite understand it as an art-form at that point but I was thinking about it. Now I have a daily art practice. I create at least 400 digital collages a day. Most of them going unseen, but when I get chance I try to review them and pick out my favourites. I’ve devised a scale for picking out the ones I think work well. Some people worry about taking copyrighted images off the Internet, but do traditional collage artists worry about where they get their material? If you are cutting up magazines to create collages do you worry about violating copyright? Maybe you are not scanning those collages and putting them online and trying to sell them. As electricity consuming NFTs no less. Let’s just say I will claim fair dealing if anyone asks. And go from there.
My goal is to begin working on floydwilde.gallery, inspired a great deal by this website:
I believe we need more sites like these that are just fun and promote the digital arts. There is blank piece of digital paper in front of me. More than that an empty digital space that I want to fill. The only problem is that I need to consume electricity to fill it. It’s purely a selfish need. I need art in my life and I want to curate it on my own terms. I’m doing research on green web hosting and advocating for it where I can. But I need power. Let’s just try to use less of it. One idea for a art project is to have a site that is not always on… A website that is only available for 8 hours a day for instance, and then shuts itself down. It’s a art site, not a commerce site, where you need to buy buy buy at all times. Make money while you are sleeping, is that your dream? Ha, see what I did there. Ok that’s enough writing for today.
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