Got the new Crown Zenith set and was really happy about my pulls!

or: "On Trusting Crowds With Creative Decisions"

or: "Learning, the Hard Way"

this is the last post i'm gonna make about this project for a while. want to catch up? knock yourself out: search the tag "#bigredcedarbowl2" if you want to read all posts that pertain.

before we start, i should say that i'm pretty small-time and very much a student of my craft.

i should also preface by saying that i am an american, and with regard to politics i believe in voting. i believe this so deeply that i'm bummed that anyone would ever feel the need to clarify their position on that. the vital importance of equal political enfranchisement among citizens in any political system is axiomatic. i vote in all elections in which i am legally allowed, and i always feel a little proud every time i drop my ballot off. i am a good citizen, and i am a nice man, even when it doesn't go my way.

But:

i learned recently that, with regard to my creative work, it turns out i am a strongman totalitarian. I am saddam in the studio. no fucking around: groupthink and crowd-sourcing and "collaboration with the audience" will have zero place in my process going forward.

to extend this (perhaps unwisely chosen) metaphor: when i'm experiencing art then i'm also volitionally performing serfdom in another creative person's divine-right monarchy. if i'm a viewer of your work then i really don't want you to seek my consent to do your thing, or take my temperature on your work's conception or production. that isn't my fucking job! to me, as a fellow artist, that would read as weakness and desperation. sorry!

this post is about the misimplantation of voting into my creative process, the bitterness of its fruits, possible locations of its twisted roots, and how best to weave my fingers through them, make a fist and pull.

Lets back up a little

a few weeks ago i granted my instagram followers the power to make a consequential choice; one that would determine a lot about the piece i was to make. i framed the choice as being between Order and Chaos. what that means is illustrated here.

to be fair: craft-wise, i didn't know the "right" answer at the time. but i hoped they'd choose "Chaos" because it would be more of a challenge: making a flat, secure spot for the faceplate on the natural surface is more difficult that screwing it into an already flat surface. it would also yield something weird and funky-looking. i was hoping they'd choose Chaos because that's the bowl that i wanted to make. if i'd left them out of the decision, then that's the bowl i would have made.

But, alas:

in one sense i'm glad that i included them on such a big, labor-intensive piece. if it had been some minor, throwaway bowl i might not have learned my lesson quite as thoroughly.

in every other sense, i am ashamed of myself.

but, hey: the lots had been cast and i felt the need to keep my solemn, democratic oath. so i groped my way down the path of Order and finally turned out a bowl. but it was only after re-making the plan, wasting material and frowning - deeply and often. why?

herein lies the rub:

and these are its ramifications:

here's a photo of those cracks:

and the resultant, tragic reduction in size can be seen comparing these images:

compared to my (already compromised) vision for the bowl's potential, the result was diminutive. puny. falling well short of what i'd hoped on every dimensional and aesthetic axis. the bowl i was left with at the end could stack inside the one i'd expected.

i avoid playing "coulda-been" as a rule. it's usually counterproductive. but since i'm indulging, let me enumerate a few art lessons i took out of this disappointment:

1. if you can, keep the number of people from whom you'll take work-related direction, advice or critique in the single digits.
2. while there may be some overlap, the people for whom you produce work are not: your friends, your collaborators or your peers. they are spectators.
3. creativity, morality and politics are not the same and should not be approached the same way or governed by the same rules. consistency across all arenas of life isn't necessarily a virtue. it can just as easily become a prison or a source of confusion and paralysis.

i also took on a few new suspicions, which could germinate into beliefs if nourished on a little more confirming evidence/experience:

1. savvy social media creators give their audience the illusion of being a part of the work without really ceding any substantive control to them.
2. a docile and consumptive audience is generally preferred to an "empowered" one with delusions of creativity
3. collaboration is overvalued and often suggested by people with parasitic or rent-seeking intent. artists don't need collaborators, they need spectators.
4. art-making is fundamentally not a majoritarian act. it's one person following one decision with another.
5. you ultimately allow yourself to be trained, whether it's by an algorithm or an audience or by critics. you, the artist, bear ultimate responsibility for your own integrity. if you are wise then no behavioral modification can be done to you without your complicity.
6. when you fuck up, you should seek to understand why, how, and how you can avoid fucking up similarly in the future.
7. in the same way that the idea that all art is to be called "content" now was dreamed up to benefit platforms and rob artists, the idea that all aesthetic work is an expression of the political was dreamed up to empower critics and handcuff artists.

Is It Just Me?

No. It isn't.

a related (i promise) digression

disclaimer: i'm not a film industry insider

i recently saw a tweet to the effect of "ask your audience what they want and they'll demonstrate how limited their imaginations are" and it was accompanied by all these superhero movie press junket photos of hugh jackman and ryan reynolds. the implication was that moviegoing audiences liked seeing hugh jackman play wolverine, and they want him to do it again, even though we all saw him die in the only interesting, semi-adult movie featuring an x-man ever made.

is x-men or deadpool 3 artistically significant? no. but the way they're conceived as projects shows that the people who make big movies are so terrified of/beholden to their audience that they'll go back on their word ("this actor's tenure as this character has ended") so they can re-feed that audience the same slop at the audience's direct request. the producers aren't scrying or anticipating a need, they're polling. measuring pressure.

the producers responded to that pressure early in the pre-production of the next deadpool-film-featuring-hugh-jackman-as-wolverine. they did this because it's cheaper to respond to that pressure early than, say, after the first trailer comes out. it's better business to obey a potential audience during the film's conception than scramble to redo it later.

remember how they basically re-did like all the VFX for that stupid sonic the hedgehog movie because the "audience" [i keep using that word, but remember: nobody had seen the film at this point] didn't like how the trailer looked? i'm not saying that sonic the hedgehog the movie is art, but: a whole sled-dog team of artists was required to make it. and, presumably, to remake it.

this dynamic is typical of the middle stages of a "Mouse/Cookie" scenario, with the "mouse" being the aggregated voice of potential consumers of art/entertainment on social platforms. the implication is that the audience now expects to control artists, and will expect to do so increasingly the more it is rewarded with power. the audience has been taught that the pressure they exert will elicit a response on the part of artists/their employers which cedes creative control.

was the sonic the hedgehog movie worse than it might have been if they'd left the animation alone? i don't know. i didn't watch it; i am thirty five years old and childless. even if i was willing to sit through that movie once (read: i am not), let alone twice for a side-by-side comparison, the old cut of the film may not even exist. that's not the point.

the point is this: can you imagine making a suggestion on surgical technique to your neurologist before your operation? how bout a suggestion about legal argumentation to your defense attorney before your trial? This is the type of arrogance that's required of any spectator who'd deign to tell an artist what art to make or how to make it.

to me, a stubborn person who makes things, this is the Natural Order to Things: artists make art, audiences experience that art while critics guide audiences toward or away from the art. instead, that Natural Order has been perverted: artists ask of their audience what they'd like to see, then they make that, to order. audiences style themselves as some mix of patrons, critics and creative consultants.

does such an audience get some feeling of power or ownership? should an audience want to feel that way about the art they consume?

is it any of my business what occurs behind the curtain on projects like children's films? not directly, but the Capital-A-Audience - the one that's been trained to expect to have its hand in the fruits of creative labor (labor that it can not, did not and will not perform) - is a problem for artists everywhere, at any scale. the Audience suffers from a new form of widespread, late-stage, neurodegenerative The-Customer-Is-Always-Right Syndrome. there is rampant community transmission and no vaccine is being developed.

were i inclined then i would write you a whole fuckin term paper here about how musicians were/are at the behest of their audiences. the audience would yell out when they wanted to hear a certain section of a song again and the performers were expected to play it and riff off it right then and there; from chamber music in the 17th century to jazz in the 20th and today. audience feedback in creative performance isn't some New Threat, or even a necessarily bad thing. while it's a kind of related phenomenon, that's not what i'm talking about.

what i'm taking about would be like letting the audience pick the setlist. no, it would be like letting the audience to pick what key you performed in.

wait, no: it would be like letting the audience decide what sorts of things your wrote songs about. what instrumentation you could or couldn't employ. in what language your lyrics are written.

was this dreamed up in some boardroom in hollywood? no. i first saw it coming from the (formerly) indiest little engine that could: now-wholly-owned-subsidiary-of-microsoft doublefine Productions bay in 2012, well before the acquisition. that kickstarter campaign launched a thousand imitators luring in backers with the chance of having their ideas end up in the final product; to give the audience control over the work. doublefine's current status as microsoft's corporate vassal may help to illustrate crowdsourcing's medium/long term business viability for people or companies who trade on their plucky, independent creativity. but, anyway:

In Closing

i'm sure i come off as angry in the above paragraphs but, as is so often the case, what i actually am is sad. my shameful disclosure in all this is that i deliberately chose, as an artist, to betray my work and be trained; trained not just by my (very small) instagram audience, but by the algorithm itself.

instagram has "achievements" for posting reels, one of which is awarded when you use a poll sticker. i wanted, as a friend of mine put it, to "platinum instagram" because i thought it would please the algo and boost my views. i put the poll on the reel because i thought zuck would like it if i did that. i have to reckon with that. like, in the mirror. at night.

i don't feel a whole lot better after admitting it. still a little sick. i know now what that cost this project. and, now, so do you if you read this far. if you did, you're fucking crazy and i appreciate that about you.

is there a concise, diamond-hard little kernel of wisdom to take out of this story? yes:

make the work you want to make.

that's it. -AW

I would simply wish it had more fingers

Just read a beautifully written Japanese soy sauce recommendation post from someone with the username “butthole pleasures”