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DATELINE: June 22, 2008, Chicago Our very own Jack Siegel spoke at the annual CAPLAW conference in Denver, Colorado last week. His topic: Governance Policies. Jack's presentation focused on conflicts-of-interest, whistleblower, and document retention policies. He provided his audience with...

The comments so far on my post about the National Performing Arts Convention -- have been mostly very heartening. As is one private e-mai, which I hope to be able to share. The comments are well worth reading.

One point that emerges from the comments is how silly it is -- to put this in plain English -- to assemble a group of well-meaning amateurs and ask them to solve a serious problem that needs the attention of professionals. Of course I mean amateurs in politics, promotion, and the planning of strategic campaigns. The democratic impulse here is well-meaning, but -- in my view -- terribly misguided. If the arts aren't getting enough attention, locally and nationally, how can we fix that? Well, you might start by talking to people who deal with that kind of problem every day -- people, for instance, in politics, advertising, marketing. If you assemble a group of people without professional experience in those areas, most of the suggestions you get will very likely not be useful. Or, as some of the commenters pointed out, you'll get suggestions that have been made many times before. i'm not saying that amateurs might come up with something really workable that professionals would never think of, but if all we've got is amateurs making suggestions, we won't even know when that happens!

Case in point: the most popular answer (see the NPAC blog for full details) to the question, "What should we do about arts advocacy and communicating our value at the NATIONAL level?" (Caps in the original.). The most popular answer -- by far -- was:

Create a Department of Culture/Cabinet-level position which is responsible for implementing a national arts policy.

But this is just silly. Yes, I know that some European countries, maybe many, have ministers of culture in their governments. But what would it take to create one here? Some kind of national upsurge in support of the arts. No president is going to support this innovation just because a convention of happy enthusiasts in Denver proposed it. And no Congress is going to pass legislation creating the post, just because people at NPAC think they should.

Once you understand that, the proposal turns out to be self-contradictory. But that can't happen until the arts get the support they're not getting now! The proposed solution couldn't be implemented unless there wasn't any problem in the first place.

Please note! I'm not saying it might not be possible to build a political movement to support the arts. I think it's unlikely, but I could be wrong. The mistake, though, is to make the cabinet-level arts department a priority now, when you have to create the movement before any such thing would be possible.

var addthis_pub = \'moth50man\'; He was a workaday photographer who somehow managed to capture “lucid yet unremittingly banal images” of mid 20th century middle-American life, reports Ken Johnson in the New York Times (5/23/08). Bill Wood, who died in 1973, ran a photographic supply company while also hiring himself out as a photographer. “He [...]

She is a ceramist who likes to take “old ceramic dishes” and give them “new life with fresh patterns and glazing,” report Tim McKeough in the New York Times (6/19/08). Her venture is called Rehabilitated Dishware and her ideas “include such silhouettes as cuttlefish, flamingos, chains and even gallows.” She [...]

I wasn't at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver last week, but I've faithfully read the strategies for the future that the conference produced. (If you follow the link, keep scrolling down to read all the strategies that were proposed.)

And the whole thing, I have to say, makes me a little sad. Everyone -- and this includes friends of mine, people I respect and have known for years -- got so excited. Which is natural. You meet in a supportive environment, you've all got the same goals (boost the performing arts!), procedures are developed for constructive talk. So of course you come up with hopes and plans:

Organize a national media campaign with celebrity spokespersons, catchy slogans  (e.g. "Got Milk"), unified message, and compelling stories! 

Create a Department of Culture/Cabinet-level position which is responsible for implementing a national arts policy!

Forge partnerships with other sectors to identify how the arts can serve community needs!

Create multi-media marketing strategies (including YouTube, Facebook) to communicate and demonstrate value and relevance!

The exclamation points are mine, and of course there were many more ideas. But what was missing from all of this was any discussion of the world in which these initiatives will have to be launched. And without that discussion, how can anybody know which of the many ideas presented are likely to work? Just imagine a commercial company making plans to promote a product. Wouldn't they do market research? Wouldn't they want to know what people think of the product, and what things about the product might (or might not) be appealing?

And yet here we have the arts -- an endeavor that most people involved would think was far more important than a mere commercial marketing campaign -- and all we bring to it is (forgive me) unfocused amateur enthusiasm. Organize a media campaign! Well, what's it going to say? OK, fine, leave that to the professionals who'll eventually run it. But if you yourself have no idea, how will you know whether the professionals will make sensible plans? (And, by the way, who's going to pay for this campaign? It's going to be expensive.)

What's going on here, I think, is something I've pointed out before. (And also here.) People in the arts won't talk about what the outside world is really like. What they like to do is go running down a hall of mirrors, shouting out in great excitement. The arts are wonderful! If only people knew that! If only people were exposed to the arts, then they'd love us! And so plans are made for eager, not-quite-thought-about-enough exposure.

And meanwhile, out in the rest of the world, people have no problem in principle with the arts, but they're also deeply into popular culture, which has (long, long, long ago) evolved art of its own. They don't make distinctions, any more, between high and popular art. They don't think anything's missing from their lives because they don't spend time enough with everything that people in the arts promote. If you want them to go to opera more, or dance concerts, or theater, one job you'll have to do is to persuade them that they'll get something as smart and as deeply connected to their lives as The Sopranos or The Wire.

A lot of arts marketing and advocacy -- just look at classical music marketing, which might be effective for the core audience, but is absolutely feeble otherwise -- doesn't come near to doing this. But people in the arts don't seem to notice, because they've conveniently assumed that popular culture is shallow, weak...oh, you know the drill.

You can read people saying, for example (I won't name any names here) that our current culture leaves no room for thought or for reflection. This might be followed, in one example I can think of (again no names), with suggestions for ways that classical musicians can learn to think -- to deeply reflect -- on what they do. Meanwhile, newspapers and magazines and TV shows bring us interviews with movie actors, film directors, TV producers, and pop musicians, all of them thoughtful, all of them deeply pondering the issues in their work. But apparently some of us are blind to that.

Enough. There are some useful cautions about the convention from my fellow ArtsJournal blogger Andrew Taylor, who was there. (Scroll down to find the post called ""Changing the players, and the game." I'd go further than he does, and I want to be particularly clear in saying that my ideas are mine, and his may be quite different. But I'm glad he said the following:

Being unique, under appreciated, and in constant jeopardy seem to be part of our DNA now in the nonprofit performing arts, whether or not the evidence supports the assumptions. And our perception of commercial entertainment as the ''other'' and the ''enemy'' still block our larger understanding of our work.

And:

So much of the conversation in Denver was driven by frustration with the lack of perceived resonance, value, and importance of what the performing arts do for society. Government doesn't support us enough. Schools don't work hard enough to sustain and integrate arts education. Audiences don't spend enough on our tickets. We tended to blame the outsiders for this problem -- if they only understood us, they would value us -- but every now and then someone would ask the deeper question: Are we telling our story well? Are we building our story on the values and interests of our community? Are we being as compelling and clear in our organizational narratives as we are on our stages?

These are crucially important issues. We've got to break out of our hall of mirrors, and start living in the same world as the people we say we want to reach.

The Hub “Top 10 Report of Shopper Marketing Excellence,” including how each of the top brands and agencies ranked in all ten areas critical to success (with verbatim comments) and a mini-primer on Shopper Marketing, is now available here.

“In a sense, Ford has reinvented the station wagon,” writes James R. Healy in a USA Today review of the new Ford Flex (6/13/08). He says so because the design sits higher than “a pure station wagon” but “still has enough SUV persona.” Plus, its “long, straight roofline evokes Ford Country Squires of yore.” It [...]

“We wanted it to be a pure Challenger,” says Jeff Gale, the lead designer for exteriors at Chrysler, reports Jerry Garrett in the New York Times (6/15/08). Jeff actually is a son of Tom Gale, who used to be Chrysler’s design chief, and knew “that preserving the charisma of the original would [...]

We all know that summer in Minneapolis is like heaven on earth, and while this may have something to do with it's relativity to the soulless, nadir that is our 9 month winter, it has equally as much to do with the wealth of awesome outdoor film opportunities that pop up like the crocuses we should have seen in April. You've got your Summer Music and Movies, your Solera rooftop delights , and your Chambers' constant stream of courtyard video art. But, if you're itching to create a film of your own and see it on the silver screen, then you've got your Ten Second Film Festival.

The Soap Factory's Ten Second Film Festival, which takes place after the St. Anthony Main fireworks on the 4th of July, features not only music, beer, food, and even tiki torches, but it also shuns the often pretentious, mind-numbingly arty fare you might expect from a gallery. Pourquoi?

1) Because this film fest is the brain child of Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf and Haunted Basement artist extraordinaire, Chris Pennington.

2) Because all the films are shot by people like you, using alternate video technologies (like cell phones or cameras with a video function). The result is a film fest that assaults you with some of the funniest, weirdest, campiest, and even thought-provoking ten second-long films you've ever seen.

If this tickles your fancy, then you have until midnight on Monday, June 23 to submit up to six, ten second films of your own. Check out www.tensecondfilmfest.org for submission info and do your bit to shake up the Twin Cities summer film scene.

Engage, delight and convert shoppers through insightful product packages.  By Al Wittemen.  (more)

Just when the SUV seems to be going out of style, a California company is introducing the LSA, or Light Sport Aircraft, reports Andy Pasztor in the Wall Street Journal (6/12/08). We are talking about an airplane, the Icon A5, which weighs only about 1,400 pounds and is “able to operate on land as [...]

Buckminister Fuller’s Dymaxion was really neither car nor plane nor boat, but it was his personal brand and vision “of the glorious, eventual future,” reports Phil Patton in the New York Times (6/15/08). Bucky invented the name “Dymaxion,” as a combination of “dynamic, maximum and ion” and the Dymaxion car was [...]

Please check out my new blog on FastCompany.com: It’s called Shop Talk and it’s all about the future of retail as a driver of business growth. ~ Tim Manners, editor. (more)

The rise of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader may signal the rise, at long last, of the New Economy, suggests Paul Krugman in the New York Times (6/6/08). You remember the New Economy — the “digital revolution” that, back in the 90s, was going to “change everything” but still hasn’t. Well, Paul Krugman says Amazon’s Kindle, [...]

In addition to a copy of the 1543 best-seller by Nicolaus Copernicus and reprints of Albert Einstein’s scientific papers, Christie’s is auctioning a copy of the very first telephone book (link here), reports Dennis Oberbye in the New York Times (6/10/08). It was published in November 1878 — the year before Einstein’s [...]

a data visualisation tool which tries to analyze the debate sparked by the BBC White season of programs which aired on BBC2. the interface shows a number of particles floating around in space. each particle represents a sentence taken from the debate & is assigned a color corresponding to the type of emotion (i.e. anger, fear, hurt, confusion, happiness & caring) word found in the sentence.

particles also have a size which reflects the intensity of the emotion expressed & a brightness which indicates the average consensus (agreement/disagreement) on the comment. comments can be spatially clustered by their attributes & particles can be filtered to show exactly what the user would like to see at any given time.

[link: bbc.co.uk & dotmaze.com & bbc.co.uk|thnkx Andrea]

also see other projects originated at BBC:
. British history timeline
. most popular news stories
. mood news headlines
. tv schedule similarity

an interactive interface that displays VCM (Visualisation des Connaissances Medicales; visualization of medical knowledge) icons organized around an anatomical diagram of the human body with additional mental, etiological & physiological areas. the interface explicitly represents information implicit in the drug monograph, such as the absence of a given contraindication (i.e. the pictogram will be grayed out).

the interface includes 3 identical looking “Mister VCM” interfaces (placed beneath each other): one for absolute contraindications, one for the cautions for use & one for adverse effects. physicians made fewer errors with “Mister VCM” than with text (factor of 1.7) & responded to questions 2.2 times faster.

does it seem an information/infographic designer was involved?

[link: biomedcentral.com & zdnet.com|thnkx Saket]

UPDATE: Alexis points to an earlier post on Wired Science back in April, together with a downloadable version of the icons.

Because I've complained before that classical music organizations don't say or do do much about the environment (if they do anything at all), it's only fair to note something new from the New York Philharmonic. They're switching to e-mail-only press releases (except for "major items such as season announcements," to quote their e-mail). And at the bottom of every e-mail from anyone at the organization is this, in green type: "Please consider the environment before printing this email." And their annual parks concerts t-shirt is, they say, 100% organic.

These are small things, but I'm glad to see them. Bravo.

One curiosity. Or maybe two. There doesn't seem to be any way to find the Philharmonic's newsroom (where they present and archive press releases) from their main site. Not even with the search function; searches for "newsroom" or "press releases" came up empty. This isn't typical of orchestra sites. The Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony, just for instance, all have their press releases readily available. The Philharmonic might say that most people who go to the website don't want to read press releases, and that's probably right. But on the other hand, I can't imagine that any of their visitors would mind finding a press release (or newsroom, or media room) link, and the absence of it might be frustrating for a journalist in a hurry, who didn't bookmark the newsroom and rushes to the main site to find it. (Would all journalists who fit that description please raise their hands? Just about everybody, right?)

Second curiosity: that the environmental news -- the end of paper press releases and the t-shirt -- isn't itself a press release, and can't be found in the newsroom, even though it was sent in an e-mail to the Philharmonic's press list.

But these are footnotes. Bravo again for the Philharmonic for taking a step towards a greener life.

And before I forget! Anyone looking for good things about classical music (I've been compiling a list) should love a quote on the Philharmonic site from one of their bassoonists, Kim Laskowski: "The best thing about being a musician is carrying around works of art in your head all the time."

I finally have images from my exhibition at Franklin Art Works to post (there are more posted here). I didn't plan for this to be an exhibition for kids, but one day when I was working in my studio, my six-year-old came upstairs, said "wow!" and stood and stared.

The sculptures are on tall platforms, with right-side up landscapes on the top, and upside-down landscapes suspended from the bottoms of the platforms. The upside-down landscapes are difficult for adults to see - you have to be willing to stoop down and peer up - but the perfect height for kids.

I do really like that kids and adults have different experiences of this work - and that the kids' experience is more immediately rewarding than the adults. This makes me wonder - what other artworks have I seen that work for both kids and adults? Do any artists design expressly for both kid and adult audiences?

A better shopping experience means daring to be different.  By Michael Shinall. (more)