[dorkbotpdx-blabber] But is it ahht. (was ...)

[Hans Lindauer]

It might be fun to have a science fair type of thing, especially if it 
could be spun to attract artists, like as part of a First Thursday kind 
of thing maybe.  I have a feeling that if artists knew what was possible 
and who they could collaborate with / learn from, some interesting 
things could result.

As far as the art vs. technology divide goes, I kind of look at it like 
this, by way of analogy:  I used to work for a guitar manufacturer, and 
I made tools to make guitars.  Other people made the guitars.  I did 
what I could to make their jobs as easy as possible and to enable them 
to produce the highest quality of instrument that was possible.  Still 
other people used the guitars to make music.  My art was in the 
toolmaking, I didn't necessarily feel like I had to make the music (or 
the guitars).  There are people who get paid to do that and are very 
good at it, and hearing them play the guitars gave me great satisfaction.

I guess part of what I'm saying is that collaboration is a good thing, 
as it allows people to focus upon their strengths and to synergize 
(that's a new word) things which they might not have been able to 
produce alone.  I'm really glad that there are people around who are 
interested in geeking out on the low-level stuff, because it makes it so 
that the rest of us don't have to worry about it so much, and spend less 
time having to decipher the specialized languages of the software and 
hardware worlds.  If those people wish they had better tools for 
expression, then I'm all for helping them to develop those, but I'm 
certainly not going to put a relative value on an end product versus a 
useful tool or technique.

-Hans


Thomas Lockney wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Brad <upchurch.brad at gmail.com 
> <mailto:upchurch.brad at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I believe with DBpdx,  if we just reached out in some little way by
>     figuring out how we can port our ideas, and just inter-connected some
>     seemingly minor things (serial/OSC/midi/TCP/www/facebook/???) through
>     whatever medium our best gizmos happen to be in, a powerful message
>     would emerge, and we would say something that would start
>     conversations that would spread like fire and have people from all
>     over coming to see with their own eyes what makes Dorkbots around the
>     world so special. <not making this an art rant, at all, but yes, I
>     would like Dorkbot to be a household name, maybe not a name for your
>     children, but perhaps useful in mad libs minimally>.
>
>
> Well, even on a smaller level, I love the idea that this might bring 
> in some people from the art community that so far don't quite know who 
> we are, don't understand what we do, or are just too 
> intimidated/uncertain/whatever. I've thought many times about how to 
> reach out to that crowd and get more of them involved, but the answer 
> is clearly buried in this thread -- we need to make out art apparent 
> to them so they will seek us out. At least, that's my take on it.
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