I'm working at the Governor's School for the Arts for a few weeks teaching students about various digital media. We're making some interesting work and I'll post some of it here soon.

Photo by student Nathan Ward.

I just completed teaching an introductory class to 3D animation using the free and open source application, Blender. The students were intimidated by the interface, but once they got the concept of its architecture, they ran away with it.
Marshall University student 3D animation from delano on Vimeo.

Since Photoshop does video compositing now, I thought I'd have my beginning media students create some motion pieces. The above video shows some of what they're creating. (Quicktime 34MB)

I sometimes ask my students why they chose to study art. In a world of such turmoil and risk, why would you choose to spend your educational career learning what could be considered a useless hobby? When compared to the potential world-saving disciplines as engineering, political science and medicine, art and design seems like a long way from making any difference for the greater good, or even wanting to make a difference. Indeed, I find that many people involved in art and design are really navel-gazing nonconformists too intimidated by the world to thrust themselves into a reality in which they might not have a purpose or an importance. The response I usually get from these statements are blank stares.

I have found myself confronted with these thoughts often in my career. I come from a blue-collar background where one works for a paycheck. The work is a necessary means to an end—money. As a teenager I observed this as unnatural to human endeavoring. It seemed that my father loathed his work. When he came home he filled his meager spare time with hobbies or dampened his creative urges with countless hours of television consumption. What became apparent to me was that intrinsic happiness could be found in the work itself. One should look forward to the work and it’s outcome, not the impending paycheck.

When I worked full time as a media designer I found that most people were not concerned with the content of our work nor were they concerned with the social consequences of the media through which we sent the content. Marshall McLuhan wrote about this at length fifty years ago, but we seem to have forgotten his work. The firms and clients I worked for would pump into society whatever the client wanted. This is irresponsible and resulted in my resentment of the work, and feeling rather shameful that I had partaken in its creation. Having children made this more apparent to me. What kind of word was I helping to create? In small but persistent doses the media and all it’s forms shapes the paradigms of our society. It tells them what is important and what is not, what they should worry about, laugh at, get angry over, and simply, what to do. In our time the media is omnipresent whilst eliciting desire, hate, love, fear, anger, lust, jealousy and every other human emotion or foible whose invocation has been carefully researched and perfected.

My point here is that as we stand in between two eras—the naive past and the fast approaching re-conciliating future—responsible artists and designers must assert themselves as agents of change. It is our responsibility as we bear some guilt for the errors of the past and we have the ability to help the future.

I suggest the creation of a new art movement (whose manifesto is forthcoming) which endeavors to foster active critical thinking in all classes and education levels. We need art that permeates, infiltrates and undermines the profit-driven top-down media systems (television, all forms of advertising, radio, and motion pictures). We need rational, inclusive art that challenges conventions and habits of thought, and reveals and enables truth. We want people to recognize and remember that they stand at the crest of 30,000 years of human development, and that it is currently their turn to add to the history of humanity. They need to be reminded that never before in the history of the world has so many people had access to so much information and potentiality at one time. They need to be aware that never before has so much been at stake. We will have accomplished our goals when people are no longer swayed to vote for a politician by way of a thirty-second television message, bumper sticker, yard sign or fear, when individuals remember they are not rulers of tiny individual kingdoms, but citizens of a community, and when the wealthy have the capacity to say, “I have enough.”

As artists, we should be making art as though we were trying to save the world, because for far too long we have been neglecting it.

Click to the image above to play (20MB). Just playing with Blender. I'll be teaching an experimental 3D course using this system this summer.

I just uploaded a new website for Byron Clercx, a friend and colleague who usually uses books for sculptures and various other art endeavors.

Oliver Laric is perhaps most known for 787 Cliparts, but I thought this was a very interesting idea as well.

I was thinking of starting a new video podcast called "Sad and Boggy Places Podcast, Bringing Depressing Scenery Straight to Your Desktop or Portable Device."