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Precipitous drop in Youtube views? Here is one reason

March 25th, 2012



Over the past week the number of views I've been getting on my Youtube videos has been dropping precipitously!

Whereas I was getting from 1000-2000 views per day, this seems to have dropped suddenly to a few hundred.

I have looked around at Youtube forums and have come up with the following news: Apparently, Youtube has changed its algorithm for calculating which videos get "suggested" when someone is watching another video. Now there is going to be much more weight given to viewer engagement. So, I guess this is something we're going to have to deal with... the trouble is, we don't necessarily know whether it's our videos that aren't engaging the viewers well, or is it the videos that we were previously getting referred by that have dropped off the face of the earth?

I must admit - by the time you get through 3/4 of one of my videos, you probably aren't dying to find out what is going to happen! LOL

Countdown to missing BWELA

October 26th, 2011

Only a week remaining before I start missing #BWELA, otherwise known as BlogWorld & New Media Expo in L.A. Nov. 3 – 5, 2011. Not that blogging isn't of interest... Nor should it ever be overlooked by artists as a valuable tool. In fact, between my partner, Offroad Artist, and myself, we have been blogging for years, literally since you had to explain people what a blog was. But, even though we have had something like 30 different blogs all told, I will say that we have never taken it to the next level. Basically have just taken the approach of "write it and they will come". And, even at that, we have had a few blogs that were non-starters, a few that got dropped for various reasons and a couple that got nuked for no obvious reasons and, tragically, several that went down the drain with a blog service (Modblog) that went belly up after building up a great community.

Anyway, since joining FAA, or beginning maybe a few months earlier, I have been getting more interested again. As much as we were quick off the mark with blogging, we were Johnny-come-latelies to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Now that I'm getting out there in all these media, - surprise, surprise! - it is becoming vividly clear that blogs can be the glue that you put your whole social media strategy together with.

So, you know what? #BWELA and dozens of other media conferences may come and go without me. And I may never attend. But I do keep one eye open on them and would love to go sometime. Blogging is an artform, a means of expression, a way of communicating your art with a greater audience and a serious shelf in any artist's toolbox.



A Painters Holiday poignant words about art

October 10th, 2011

The following poem is by Bliss Carman, one of Canada's leading 19th and early 20th century poets. Not many have heard of him now but I find his work inspiring, vivid and "visual".

"A Painter's Holiday"

We painters sometimes strangely keep
These holidays. When life runs deep
And broad and strong, it comes to make
Its own bright-colored almanack.
Impulse and incident divine
Must find their way through tone and line;
The throb of color and the dream
Of beauty, giving art its theme
From dear life's daily miracle,
Illume the artist's life as well.
A bird-note, or a turning leaf,
The first white fall of snow, a brief
Wild song from the Anthology,
A smile, or a girl's kindling eye,—
And there is worth enough for him
To make the page of history dim.
Who knows upon what day may come
The touch of that delirium
Which lifts plain life to the divine,
And teaches hand the magic line
No cunning rule could ever reach,
Where Soul's necessities find speech?
None knows how rapture may arrive
To be our helper, and survive
Through our essay to help in turn
All starving eager souls who yearn
Lightward discouraged and distraught.
Ah, once art's gleam of glory caught
And treasured in the heart, how then
We walk enchanted among men,
And with the elder gods confer!
So art is hope's interpreter,
And with devotion must conspire
To fan the eternal altar fire.
Wherefore you find me here to-day,
Not idling the good hours away,
But picturing a magic hour
With its replenishment of power.

Conceive a bleak December day,
The streets all mire, the sky all gray,
And a poor painter trudging home
Disconsolate, when what should come
Across his vision, but a line
On a bold-lettered play-house sign,
A Persian Sun Dance.

In he turns.
A step, and there the desert burns
Purple and splendid; molten gold
The streamers of the dawn unfold,
Amber and amethyst uphurled
Above the far rim of the world;
The long-held sound of temple bells
Over the hot sand steals and swells;
A lazy tom-tom throbs and drones
In barbarous maddening monotones;
While sandal incense blue and keen
Hangs in the air. And then the scene
Wakes, and out steps, by rhythm released,
The sorcery of all the East,
In rose and saffron gossamer,—
A young light-hearted worshipper
Who dances up the sun. She moves
Like waking woodland flower that loves
To greet the day. Her lithe, brown curve
Is like a sapling's sway and swerve
Before the spring wind. Her dark hair
Framing a face vivid and rare,
Curled to her throat and then flew wild,
Like shadows round a radiant child.
The sunlight from her cymbals played
About her dancing knees, and made
A world of rose-lit ecstasy,
Prophetic of the day to be.

Such mystic beauty might have shone
In Sardis or in Babylon,
To bring a Satrap to his doom
Or touch some lad with glory's bloom.
And now it wrought for me, with sheer
Enchantment of the dying year,
Its irresistible reprieve
From joylessness on New Year's Eve.

Wow Artprize Helps Small City Prove Art is an Economic Force

October 9th, 2011

The third Artprize just wrapped up in Grand Rapids MI a couple of days ago.


ArtPrize 2010 Retrospective from Paul Moore on Vimeo.


Artprize is the unique visual art competition that takes over the entire city of Grand Rapids MI and awards a $250,000 prize for the winner. The winner is selected American Idol style by the general public from amongst 1,500+ artists.

This year's winner was Mia Tavonatti, who entered a monumental 9'x13' stained glass mosaic entitled Crucifixion.

Here's a vivid example of the economic impact, one restaurant alone was conservatively targeting to increase its sales by more than $300,000 over the course of the two weeks of Artprize. Phenomenal! One single restaurant brings in enough revenue to pay the cost of the grand prize.

For the 2010 Artprize, economic impact estimates were in the $7 million ballpark. This year a more in-depth study will be done.

All this only grazing the potential benefit of converting this mixed economy city, known for furniture manufacturing, Amway and religious publishing and a few other industries, into a high quality, profile cultural center to be reckoned with.

Back in the 1980s, Chemainus, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, demonstrated that a small town could leverage art and creativity to literally turn its dying fortunes around with its innovative mural program. That success spawned dozens, if not hundreds, of copycats. Most likely the same will hold true for the Grand Rapids Artprize.

Before long, there could be an "Artprize" type event in every state, province and country. Hey, I've got no probs with that!

This contest has been a novel experiment in many ways. Not only a wake-up call for the many naysayers who fail to see art and culture as an economic engine - people who would rather spend money building jails - it has also been a lesson in humility for the art establishment, many of whom see themselves marginalized in all the hoopla, as they are left on the sideline to whimper about what they refer to as "poor quality" of the work in general, or of the 10 finalists, etc.

 

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