Ian Aleksander Adams

Anyway, you need to check out The Ballad of Accounting. Specifically, the project called “Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?”

Hundreds of Buskers in london played the same song. How do you think that would make you feel, walking to your nine-to-five?

Oh, and here’s a picture I took of a bathroom:

I’m willing to bet that the outfit put together through stores is about 400 times more expensive than the thrifted and found clothing that Beth always wears, but I have a feeling that is true for most fashion – influenced by people who give hardly a thought to what they wear and almost unfailably look original and beautiful, then mused on and reconfigured for the general public. Then those clothes go through time and several owners and end back up with the influential kids through thrift. Is that a logical theory? I just pulled it out of my ass, but it sounds right to me.

It’s probably obvious between this and stumbleupon that I google my name periodically to find out how people are using my images around the web. I often find really interesting stuff, from people’s personal myspace designs, blog posts about my work, or – the best – odd things like this that I never expected. Some photographers are upset to lose creative control over their images, but I love it. It isn’t as if people haven’t been making collages out of magazine covers and ads forever.

Speaking of fashion, guess what’s finally up? SCAD Fashion Haus’s new flickr! So if you want to see around a thousand photographs dating back to 2006 of the last three scad runway shows, that’s the place to find them. It’s tagged by photographer – though I only have my stuff up from the last couple years, So if anyone else who has shots wants to send them to me, I’ll put them up.

Here are a couple of my snapshots that I think I haven’t put up here.

Beth, Sarah, and I found a place today! The house we found was very affordable and literally a fucking mansion. I’m not even kidding, it’s got huge white pillars out front and a back yard big enough hundreds of people. This is right in the middle of savannah, one block off the bike lane and 6 blocks from Kroger.

It’s got two bathrooms, three huge bedrooms, a living room, storage areas, kitchen, back and front porch, and my favorite feature: A giant hallway. The hallway is excessively wide, and has huge ceilings and wonderful white walls. I bet you know what I thought as soon as I saw it:

Finally, we have a gallery.

It’s 100% perfect for house shows. It goes right from the front door – framed nicely by two pillars on the stone porch – to the kitchen, with space enough to hang quite a big show. Streamlined viewing and straight to the refreshments. It’s perfect. So we’re on the lookout for local people interested in doing house shows starting in May.

I’ll probably get people to play in the backyard eventually, though that will have to be earlier than desoto shows so as to be nice to then neighbors. I’ll have pictures of the space asap, and I’m starting to look for people for a group show to start it off with a kick. It’s not a swanky venue, but the viewing and light is perfect. It’s the kind of place you go with some friends to have a beer and look at some art. These will be dirty do it yourself shows, no commission, no fees, just if you’ve got good work, we’d love to have it up and organize an opening. The kind of shows I miss from noho and new york, and I hear are getting super popular in chicago.

Email me if you’re interested.

What’s changed? Well, the navigation bar is now encoded on every page. That’s right, no frames.

Why? Well, frames did make it really easy for me to update content, but after getting 34,000 (??!!) hits to my details series in one day from stumbleupon, I realized those people had absolutely no navigation available. So that had to change.

Thanks to Monique and the people at the webdesign community at livejournal I was able to pick up or rework enough css to get the bar to stay put while scrolling. Sweet shit.

I also made a few little tweaks, like the addition of a 404 page. Which means I can go http://www.ianaleksanderadams.com/yourfacesucksandyourmomisugly.html and it will work. Sort of.

I also cleaned up the files hosted on there. Which means many images and links around the internet will now no longer work, dating back to 2003. Sorry. Things were just getting insane. I’ve got a much more logical system in place, and I’ll be doing my best to fix things as I find them.

I’m going to go through the livejournal tonight, the blogger version tomorrow, and myspace the day after that and fix or redesign everything. Then I’ll fix other sites as people point them out or I notice them. Hope this doesn’t screw up anyone who was using my image for decoration or layout. I really don’t mind that, but it’s probably a better idea not to hotlink.

Let me know if you see anything funky. love love.

Oh yeah, here’s a picture of me running a fever of 104 degrees at my mom’s house in massachusetts. Recognize it?

Oh man. There are serious dangers involved in going to gallery shows after forgetting to eat all day, or being so poor that you don’t eat much. I only had a few free beers and got a lot more inebriated that I planned on. I forgot that my tolerance level would go way down since I’ve hardly been drinking at all this year. Luckily some kind people held on to my sweatshirt after I left it somewhere and helped me home on my bike. I love savannah people.

I’ve also been steadily updating my list of blogs I read, so you should check in with that periodically. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten to add Baby Sinead [nsfw] to that list for so long, for example.

My friend Pear from my psych class sent me a link to this, an advertisement/interactive media creation by Nokia. It’s a great example of well done advertising/corporate work pulling from the avant garde and underground subculture. It’s directly linked to the stop motion that has become very popular on youtube and other video sharing types and anyone with a little connection to videogaming will recognize the classic Breakout and Snake designs.

If you can make it through all that, I applaud you.

This is a test of the online version of Permanent Stick-It-Out-Ed-Ness. It represents the Our Artist Trip side. I already posted one of the press releases from the SMC Global, Inc. side. You may be able to figure out that they represent a basic split in the artistic personality, the idea of making a living with your work (often thought of as selling out) and the idea of fully embracing your creative impulses (even if it results in you being judged negatively). I’ll post a more detailed artist statement when it’s all finished.

I’ve just started relearning flash (I used to play with it when I was 13) and it’s going slowly, but in a good direction. Ideally, you will be able to control the motion of the room, be able to go to other galleries to see the rest of the images in the show, and there will be a loading animation. Right now, if you wait a bit it should show up and start streaming.

Feedback appreciated, as usual! Hope you guys are good. Daily content updates at whatisntart.net starting today. Hopefully I’ll have some original content finished by the start of next week.

Oh and totally off topic, Baby Sinead posted this in her blog, and it’s fucking hilarious. You’re probably not the only one that thinks kink porn can be totally ridiculous, apparently it cracks all the actors up as well. I should not have to warn you that these porn bloopers are extremely un-worksafe.

The domain name whatisntart.net was available, so I decided the easiest way of presenting the information was as a wordpress blog that people could discuss and submit content to, both original essays as well as found information, quotes and excerpts. As a starting point, I’ve supplied the blog with ten backdated posts from various sources, and a few people from varied backgrounds are working on original content to be posted soon.

So this is an open invitation to participate, share words you’ve found challenging or inspiring, or submit your own thoughts for consideration. Submissions will be moderated through email (details on the front page of the site), but discussion in comments is unrestricted. Some original content will be in interview format, but these people will generally be contacted directly. You can write an academic essay or you can write something personal, something funny. There are no specific guidelines.

Since this is a non-profit project, with no advertising, mainly intended for educational use and public debate, you will not be able to be paid for your words, but credit and a link (either to your website, or email, etc) will be supplied.

The design of the blog is currently a work in progress (though it will remain minimalist) and feedback is whole-heartedly appreciated. Feel free to repost this information in whole or in part.

I think if I met a chemist and I didn’t understand what he was talking about, yet he was receiving awards and tons of peer recognition, I would assume he was quite intelligent and I would try hard to understand his work.

However, if an artist is in the same position, doing some radical contemporary work and receiving a lot of praise from other artists, and the public doesn’t understand, the first thing people say is “That’s not art” or various other derogatory statements: Circle-Jerk, fucking no-talent can’t paint artists, etc.

What made them such experts? Why are they so judgmental about things they aren’t willing to examine? And why do people still cling to certain aesthetic assumptions about what art should be?

Sure some art is made for the public, some art is made to drive a clear message, but some art is the equivalent of research science, it’s made because it needs to be made for us to move forward. In can be complex and/or it can be subtle. It’s made for serious thought and consideration, it’s made for people who are willing to approach a great work of art like they’d approach any other great social work… You don’t glance at the cover of The Brothers Karamazov and call it a shitty book because you don’t like guys with big beards.