I’ve been working on the cover of a book the last few days and yesterday it was almost finished. Except for the text I had everything painted and colored. I hit the magic “save now” command keys for one last time but then it happened. Painter stopped responding, showing me the dreaded “spinning beach ball of death”. I had to force quit the application facing the loss of several hours of work… Fortunately I have an automatized back-up routine running every morning at 5am and so I didn’t loose the complete file which would have been disastrous.

Why am I telling you this? Well, as I see it there are almost no so called “happy accidents” anymore in digital art. Everything is planned and everything has to be planned. There is not much entropy anymore and digital paint does not yet splatter about like it does in MeatSpace™. I did not think about this yesterday and also did not expect the “happy accident” that I was about to see when I reopened the file to continue my work in painter! Look at it. Isn’t it a beautiful picture? Something which I could have hardly achieved if my tools (the application and the powerbook) wouldn’t have stopped responding for a while… I love it.

The first image is the file as it looks if it where to fit on my screen…

The second image shows an enlargement at 100% actual pixel size…

The last image is a detail shot at about 500% enlargement.

Teh Postcards are here. The postcards have been printed and the result is quite beautiful indeed. If you live in or near Kassel, you can get them yourself at rotopol or during the “Rundgang”, our annual art fair here at the school of art and design. If you do not live anywhere near there is still the option of getting all three of them in one set for merely 5 euros (worldwide shipping included). I’ll even personalize these for you with a signature and doodle if you want (just leave a note in the paypal order). Go get ‘em HERE.

I must admit that I read about this before and that I did not take immediately. Something had to happen first before I was affected enough to take action myself. Just yesterday I wanted to view a set of photographs by famous low brow artist COOP only to realize that my access to this particular set had been censored. So, I want to urge everyone who uses flickr, to upload the “think flickr, think!” to their account and copy the quoted text.

Flickr, my ass.

flickr sperrt uns aus! Und auch dich!
Seit gestern werden für deutsche Nutzer keine Bilder mehr angezeigt, die als ‘moderate’ oder ‘restricted’ markiert sind! Es gibt keine Moeglichkeit das umzustellen – das ist eine grobe Unverschämtheit und Frechheit von flickr!

English:

If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.
In other words that means, that German users can not access photos on flickr that are not flagged “safe” … only flowers and landscapes for the germans …
We will not let this happen! Copy and upload this picture to your account – show flickr who we are!

Francais:

Si votre compte Yahoo! est basé à Singapour, à Hong Kong, en Corée ou en Allemagne, vous ne pourrez voir que les photos qui n’ont pas été marquées comme ayant un contenu qui peut choquer. Toutes les autres ne vous seront pas accessibles. Vous serez donc condamnés à ne voir que des paysages et des fleurs. Il ne faut pas laisser faire ça. Envoyez cette photo sur votre compte pour montrer à Flickr que nous savons nous mobiliser contre la censure !

Español:

Si tu Yahoo! ID está basada en Singapor, Alemania, Hong Kong o Corea sólamente verás contenido llamado seguro basándose en nuestros términos de servicio locales y no podrás deshabilitar el modo de búsqueda segura..
En otras palabras esto significa, que usuarios alemanes p.ej. ya no podrán acceder a fotos en flickr que hayan sido “flagged”, es decir marcadas como no seguras y para todo público… solamente flores y paisajes para los alemanes …
No permitiremos que ésto suceda! Copia y carga esta foto a tu cuenta de yahoo por favor para mostrar a flickr quienes somos!

Lade dieses Bild runter und poste es in deinem Account! Lass uns das Bild überall auf flickr verteilen und es in ‘Interestingness’ heben!! So geht es nicht!

SEE THE ORIGINAL POST

Ein Bild zum Weiterverteilen gibt es hier: farm2.static.flickr.com/1299/543864623_7aadef1e69_o.jpg
Runterladen, auf den eigenen Account hochladen, fertig

please use the tag: “thinkflickrthink” and join this group www.flickr.com/groups/againstcensorship/

Weitere Infos:
- www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/91085
- www.flickr.com/groups/404938@N23/discuss/72157600347681500/
- www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/42597/

I have been slacking a bit the last few days, trying to complete my visa request for Japan and other things that had to wait. Today I sat down, sketching a bit in Painter and this is what I came up with: a silly monkey-esque creature with a bit too much skin.

In other news I have joined a blog created by my good friend Alexander Draude. R0108 is shorthand for the studio where we work here at my university. It is our outlet for all kinds of silly things, thoughts and everything else concerning our odd life here. LINK

Yesterday I posted about the artwork I made for the Delicious Generation Party at Aftermodern Gallery in San Francisco during the Apple WWDC. It is cool to see photos pop up on the net here and there with my artwork in the background. Wouldn’t have thought though to be featured as prominently as in this particular picture by flickr.com user cjmartin.

More pictures can be seen here, here and maybe some other places as well.

Update: For another little recap of the party read Phill Ryu’s entry on his blog. Oh, and it seems the curator of Aftermodern Gallery wanted to keep the prints for a while longer. If you haven’t seen them yet, hurry up.