Web 3.0 weavings

     I have always loved information archives of all types – starting with Sears catalogs as a young child, followed by our Reader’s Digest Condensed book set, then on to specially arranged privileges at the Olivia Raney Library in the basement of the Revenue Building downtown.  Now the universe is at our fingertips, and I find that a whole neural body of outward connections awaits, and I have begun willy-nilly to construct this digital doppelganger – myself fully online – with little knowledge or perspective about the shape of the world to come – or the silhouette I will cast, based on my skills and choices.  It won’t come naturally – I’m a bibliophilic boomer geezer, but I’m so fascinated by the gargantuan pile of possibilities being generated by our technology that I’m game, willing, and more or less already engaged.

     But the levels of engagement are many and changing at a rapid rate.  And my original quest for information has become entwined into an arena I still don’t fully grasp – social networking, which near as I can see, is pretty quickly turning into this whole partly global Thing – a Social Network that has unwritten rules and value systems different (and yet not) from the world of Reader’s Digest, or graduate school for that matter.  I really like blogging as a way to publish writing and develop projects, and I don’t mind making friends online – though I’m always wanting to meet them in person ASAP.  In many ways I am not a blogger, and certainly not a full-fledged member of the blogosphere.  Again, I know I am indeed part of the blogosphere – just the literary/magazine, non-revenue, slow-blogging corner of it.  I don’t twitter, fark, digg, instant message, facebook or mypage. For all I know, I never will.  So what shape will my elderly online self be, as I watch the world go Web 3.0?

     Web 2.0 denotes the movement of resources from your computer to the Internet.  We don’t download software for blogging – we use the software on distant servers.  Many people use these resources for everything from desktop publishing to large company operations.  Web 3.0 signals the movement of all this to the mobile devices which are proliferating and competing, and to future non-existing IT services in general.  The News and Observer tells me we will all be living and working on our phones in 2020.  The TV ads proclaim it every day – the mobile revolution.  This is a problem for me.  Hell, I will hardly use my cell phone and I’ve had it for years.  I hate the phone!  I guess I will have to fall in love with some future web/Kindle device – if it projects perfectly from my eyeglasses, there’s not much room for complaint, is there?

Getting back to the messages of these media, open access and web publishing are by far the wildest things to happen in intellectual culture for a long time.  Ideas can be connected and developed in truly new ways.  You can follow connections instantly and sometimes rather deeply.  It’s all certainly very stimulating.  Below are my picks for some local trends that rock this new world.

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     Netweed, the host of my Paper Plant website, is operated by Clyde Smith, who has worked hard and longer on web enterprises than anyone I know.  He was my blogging mentor and helped me build Raleigh Nature.  Clyde mainly works online professionally at Prohiphop, and scans news reports, reviews and offers business analysis on anything and everything hip hop.  Recently, he launched a news release service for hip hop labels.  Netweed, his online headquarters, is a rich mix of cultural and social resources.  Clyde is able to use Netweed as a unifying platform for his professional hip hop work, his research writings, his dance work, and his social views.  If anyone can swim in the new web waters, it’s him.

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     Ibiblio is proclaimed on my favorites website (featured below) as simply “the best website of which I know.”  Paul Jones has been an incredible guru for all this since Al Gore invented it, and he found a way to share with the world.  Ibiblio.org is simply the state’s digital library, with some truly fascinating twists, but the monthly theme and features constitute a marvelous magazine as well.

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     Taintradio continues to offer a unique platform and format in the rapidly changing world of radio and music generally.  There are reasons for the website looking, as a local pundit put it to me at party, “like it was put together with tinker toys.”  Taintradio just ain’t having any friggin’ formats, and that goes for website software as well, gosh darn it!  Hey, we all love what Bob is doing, and it will evolve a bit, I’m sure.  This grand web experiment, with all volunteer world-class DJs, and one little donation jar for infrastructure, is enormously worthy of our support.

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     The personal web project of which I am most proud is the current incarnation of FARCE.  FARCE has a been a correspondence art series, The Paper Plant bookstore’s newsletter, and now is a website reference for my own and others’ use.  I use it for research, teaching, and providing curious readers sets of websites related to my blogging, such as local artists, book arts, museums and nanotechnology.  I’d consider it an honor if you made my links page one of your favorites.

And have a great new year as we approach our new era!  Best, John

 

First Friday recap – downtown Raleigh teems with good art.

Don't Squeal McNeil by Keith Norval

     Up to date news is not the style of this blog – I am, as Clyde reminds me, part of the Slow Blogging movement.  No matter for this post - EVERY Friday is First Friday this December til Christmas, and you may easily recreate my journey with most of the galleries discussed.

     Starting at Artspace as usual, I stopped by the front gallery to see Keith Norval’s opening of  The Corporate Art Show.  Keith has outdone himself in the wake of his new parenthood, along with the talented Ann Podris.   Keith’s quirky rendering of goofy cartoon images with surprisingly subtle oil color and brushwork may or may not be your favorite style, but you can’t miss these hilarious concoctions of  Angry Squirrel Customer Service, Rhino Dollar Bills, and Pig Salt.

This new series of oil paintings by Keith Norval explores the theme of business and animals. With the current state of things (environmental destruction, factory farming, extinctions) it seems animals would be better off if they had some kind of representation. …this show aims to give them their own voices.  Artspace website

     The blessed couple was upstairs in their gallery, dancing and swaying their little bundle into First Friday submission.  Good luck, guys, and sleep when she does – you’ll need it!

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     Down the street at Lump, more caricature and mayhem.  Cannonball Press has a jam packed display, indeed “an irrefutable deluge of relief prints.”  You could walk in here with a hundred bucks and get a lot of gift shopping done, if you have friends who like inyourface graphics.

 

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     Up on Fayetteville Street, in what used to be my Dad’s barber’s basement shop, The Fish Market was showcasing an always widely varied and intriguing selection of work by College of Design students.  Marie Formaro had some wonderful spires of canvas framed with metal, as well as a beautiful screen on canvas called “Ritual of Gesture.”

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     Right down Hargett and upstairs is a truly fine gallery in a decidedly unflattering space.  Adam Cave Fine Art stands up well to its claim as a home for national level talent.  The current offerings that reach that level are mostly prints, from the precise yet softly diffused light studies by Donald Furst to the highly textured assemblages of interacting shapes in the woodcuts of Merrill Shatzman.  My favorites prints were the alphabet and symbol studies by John Gall; intaglios with a hint of Bosch and a good dash of Rube Goldberg. 

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     While Adam Cave looks and  feels like the former shopkeepers’ living space it is, the funky semi-amateur galleries at the top of Glenwood  are intricate mazes of hopeful artists, all offering wine and cookies and hoping to share their wares.  The Carter Building at 20 Glenwood and Point of View at 22 have a rich mix of artists, most of whom appear to have day jobs.  Make no mistake – there are magnificent high spots in these cramped halls – and lows as well.  I was thrilled to find Ellen Gamble and her abstract oils again after several years.  Peter Filene’s double exposures (no photoshopping at Point of View!) present well composed and strongly evocative images.  And I’m always happy to have my horizons broadened by strong work in a realm I wouldn’t usually investigate – such as the fashion line drawings of Stephanie Freese, whose retro blackline compositions evoke a blend of the roaring twenties and film noire – and she turns out to be a fascinating comic artist whose online publishing work, pictured below, is revered by writers.

Dada Detective

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     I make a late pass back east, heading for home but hoping to catch a couple of more spots. I have amazing luck.  I finally catch up with Nancy Baker, whose Tire Shop Gallery started on McDowell, migrated to Glenwood, and has found a permanent home in the snazzy new building on Morgan across from the Flying Saucer.  Her work, always at such a high technical level, captures scenes from Medici Florence to outer space with equal ease and insight.

     They were ready to close shop at the Longview Center Gallery, which is curated by Rory Parnell from the Collecters Gallery.  I asked the artist, Jesse Green, if I could see his light sculptures with the house lights out, and we had a neat experience looking at them in the dark.  Then they scooted me out of this basement space where, believe it or not, my friends and I built a church coffeehouse in the late sixties.

     I was the last customer at Carrie Knowles’ Free Range Studio, which held it’s last First Friday event.  Carrie will concentrate on studio work and continue to have several events each year.  Heading home, I realized I had missed DesignBox.  You really can’t do it all.

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     I took a break from finishing up this post to visit the Boylan Artswalk, where dozens of talented folks exhibit the first December Sunday each year.  It was a chance to check on Rebus Works and their fine display of work from Penland, and to see a museum quality piece of cabinet work just completed by Billy Peacock down in the basement.  BLAM! was exhibiting over at Lee Moore’s house, with previews of the Bain Water Project work.  I will be posting much about the Bain Project soon. The Boylan neighborhood sported pet portraits by Emily Weinstein, linocuts and CDs from Gerry Dawson, pottery from Nancy Redman, coptic journals from Bryant Holsenbeck, and much, much more.  Friday or Sunday, there’s a lot of creativity around this town!