Inspiration

Things that other do or did and made an impact. (see also http://novadeviator.tumblr.com for another stream of inspirations)

30 Patreon secrets to success

“Do it consistently. Mean it every time. Love it, and never force it.” –Flight Chops

“Stop waiting to make the perfect thing — what you can release this week will always beat what you dream of releasing next year”. –Mike McHargue (Science Mike)

“Be consistent in releasing your creations. Content is king. Do it because you love what you do, not because you think it’ll make you a million dollars.  Happiness = Reality – Expectations” –Stuart Yoshida (Ooktown)

“Think long term. Things might not happen overnight for most of us, but if you’re in it for long term, things will probably go exponential.” –Cuckoo

“Be dedicated. Life as a creator can be really tough to be honest, so many people give up and leave their dreams behind. I’ve been holding onto my dream as a media creator for over 12 years and if I ever gave up, I wouldn’t never have had the opportunity to say ‘I made that,’ nor would I have met other cool creators. One of the greatest feelings is seeing your imagination come to life and it opens so many windows to an amazing future! Always keep your old work too, no matter how bad you think it is, it shows how you’ve improved and tells the story of where you began and what made you, you today.” –Mindstorm Productions

“Channel your creativity into something you’re passionate about — don’t just create something to please others or to gain views. That won’t get you anywhere you want to go, and isn’t nearly as rewarding. There are a million creators out there, but only one you… so create what only you can.” –Amanda Lee (LeeAndLie)

“Try to convey the pure sense of joy you get from creating. Let people know there’s always room on your team. Encourage interaction, suggestions, and feedback.”-Tim (Table To Paudio)

“Create, create, create! Don’t wait for things to be perfect. Improvement will come through iteration, practice, and persistence.” –Dr. Kiki Sanford (This Week In Science)

“Do the work, build the community, then ask for money. Don’t get the order wrong.” –Patrick Beja (RDVTech)

“Create. Create all the time and keep releasing stuff, even the stuff you aren’t proudest of. Keep that flow of information and creativity going and you will find yourself constantly needing to create. The constant flow also attracts more attention. People show up to experience your creations and the act of creating.” –Dyson Logos

“Don’t expect money to roll in until you’ve established a loyal fan base (by creating consistent quality content).” –Gregor Czaykowski (Loading Artist)

“Despite what it might look like from the outside, being serious about content creation is much more about staying true to the content and much less about trying to please your audience. If you are under the impression that being ‘serious’ means tweaking so that everyone’s happy, then you’re missing the point.” -Anon

“Just do it — keep creating and sharing.” –Cassy Fry

“I’ve met people who have stressed out for days, weeks, months or years over how to make their first video absolutely perfect. Well let me tell you a little secret. It never will be! The only way to get better at something is to do it over and over, again and again. So just accept that your first video won’t be the best. Your second will be better, and your third even better. It’s all upwards from there! So if you’re serious about creating… Get creating!” –John Atkins (Uke Teacher)

“Know your audience.” –Max Vaehling

“Do it often because you love it and there is little else that brings you more joy. Listen to feedback and make adjustments as you see fit, but always understand that it’s your work and you have final say. Trust your instincts.”  –Daniel Anderson

“Make the content you would want to watch!” -Anon

“Bank plenty of material! I find it’s important to release material regularly to keep patrons engaged, so I have a backlog of recordings & videos I can draw on when I’m too busy to make something new.” –Carsie Blanton

“Be patient, be disciplined, be productive, and don’t be shy about promoting yourself.” –Anna Landin

“Make time to work and just do it. Keep working and trying to improve instead of worrying that your work isn’t good enough.” -Tait

“Only create what you enjoy creating, you need to have fun and love what you doing or it won’t work out. Keep consistent, don’t let dislikes or haters get to you. Pay attention to the ones who love what you do.” -ParamoreMike

“Invest, be patient, reach out to other creators for help. Share the love and build a community.” -Laura Brouwers (Cyarin)

“More than anything, don’t give up. I know that sounds super generic and wishy-washy but it’s true. Content creation is hard work, and sometimes in the dank hours of 2 AM it feels like nobody but you cares about what you do. But guess what? There are people out there who love what you do but probably haven’t heard of you yet! Get out there and let them know about your passion for making orchestral soundtracks using a spatula, xylophone and several kinds of mason jars, or whatever it is you do!” –Jessica Vandyk

“Be the #1 fan of your own work!” –Junk

“Engage with your community as best you can, but don’t beat yourself up when your community grows too large for you to engage with everyone.” -Anon

“Stop giving your stuff away for free. Let people in on your process.” –Ian Durias

“Produce work, share it, and don’t get down if it seems you’re throwing it into the void at times. Do what you enjoy in a way that doesn’t make you cease to enjoy it any longer.”  –Tallulah Cunningham

“Start creating what you love, and release, release, release. Properly tag your work and be sure to tag related artists, songs, etc. Casting a wide net will bring in people who may love your work that otherwise would not have discovered it.” –Luke McQuillan

“Stay true to your heart, create with love and passion. The rest happens through that.” –Nate Maingard

Millenials are searching for meaning

What happens now when the same people discover an independent artist they like? 

The thing with our generation is that we search for meaning. If we feel an artist doesn’t need our help or is disconnected from our reality most of us won’t mind downloading. That is because they think buying an album or not will not make any difference to the artist. On the other hand when it does make a clear difference, when the same people feel they can help someone take it to the next level, they will give them their full support.

These people will go see that artist live, buy their entry ticket, maybe invite a friend, buy the CD after the show (- even though their IMac doesn’t have a CD slot, and they probably have never owned a CD player since they left their parent’s home). They may even buy merchandise. I have witnessed it many time with people who have never paid for music through the traditional channel.

We may be used to having free music everywhere, radio, TV, parking lots, and so on. But this is free music we didn’t particularly ask for. We might like it, but there isn’t much more to it. We know that should we pay for it or not, it will always be there. On the contrary if we feel an artist needs us to exist, is trustworthy and if that artist has managed to build a certain level of intimacy with his audience, we will go all the way. He deserves our financial support and we will supply it without any hesitation. That relationship plays a major role in our involvement. Millenials need to feel part of something bigger. It has to make sense to them and to the person who receives it. 

Millennial’s Relationship To Music Consumption, By A Millenial.
http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/millennials-relationship-to-music-consumption-by-a-millenial.html

A huge chunk of a tardigrade’s genome comes from foreign DNA

Tardigrades not only can repair their own damaged DNA as the cell rehydrates but also stitch in the foreign DNA in the process, creating a mosaic of genes that come from different species. “We think of the tree of life, with genetic material passing vertically from mom and dad,” said Boothby. “But with becoming more widely accepted and more well known, at least in certain organisms, it is beginning to change the way we think about evolution and inheritance of genetic material and the stability of genomes. So instead of thinking of the tree of life, we can think about the web of life and genetic material crossing from branch to branch.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-huge-chunk-tardigrade-genome-foreign.html#jCp

 

Source: A huge chunk of a tardigrade’s genome comes from foreign DNA

Facebook Should Pay All of Us

Jaron Lanier, the author of “Who Owns the Future,” sees our personal data not unlike labor—you don’t lose by giving it away, but if you don’t get anything back you’re not receiving what you deserve. Information, he points out, is inherently valuable. When billions of people hand data over to just a few companies, the effect is a giant wealth transfer from the many to the few.

Source: Facebook Should Pay All of Us – The New Yorker

image

Within the visual realm, repetition encourages our eyes to dance. Controlling repetition is a way to choreographed human eye movement.

— Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams: FORM+CODE

The Interface = relation

The interface, Hookway tells us, has always exhibited a ‘a tendency toward a seeming transparency and disappearance’ and this ‘illusory disappearance is an essential aspect of the operation of a user interface, in as much as an operator internalizes the user interface in the course of working through it.’

‘Control upon the interface involves a double moment,’ we are told, ‘where power at once confines and enables.’ We are at once augmented and reduced by our interactions, promised limitless powers but only if we may shrink ourselves to fit a machine-readable vision of the human.

‘[T]he surface refers back to a thing,’ Hookway explains, ‘and expresses the properties of that thing, while the interface refers back to a relation between things and expresses an action.’

— Branden Hookway, Interface (MIT Press, 184pp, £17.95, ISBN 9780262525503), via review31.co.uk

Modell 5 – Granular Synthesis

Kurt Hentschlaeger und Ulf Langheinrich have been working together as Granular-Synthesis since 1991

“from a few expressions on the face of the performer Akemi Takeya to a frenzied exploration of the alter ego, any known context of meaning ends in the dissolved movements, is stalled in denaturalized redundancy, in machine pain. The semantic void is too loud to be amenable to meditative reception. The frontal images, the rhythmic structures generate contradictory emotions and great strain. Entertainment is offered and almost violently denied. At the highest level of energy, enjoyment reaches the limit.” Sample session performed by Akemi Takeya. Edited on various AVID Suites in England and Austria between 1994-96.
Produced by: Mike Stubbs, at HTBA (Hull Time Based Arts) in Hull England.
Co-produced by PYRAMEDIA Vienna.

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATWljMbvVTg

see also http://www.granularsynthesis.info

Curtis Roads, video interview

Philip K. Dick: We Live in “A Computer-Programmed Reality”

In the interview, Dick roams over so many of his personal theories about what these “unexpected things” signify that it’s difficult to keep track. However, at that same conference, he delivered a talk titled “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others” (in edited form above), that settles on one particular theory—that the universe is a highly-advanced computer simulation. (The talk has circulated on the internet as “Did Philip K. Dick disclose the real Matrix in 1977?”).

The subject of this speech is a topic which has been discovered recently, and which may not exist all. I may be talking about something that does not exist. Therefore I’m free to say everything and nothing. I in my stories and novels sometimes write about counterfeit worlds. Semi-real worlds as well as deranged private worlds, inhabited often by just one person…. At no time did I have a theoretical or conscious explanation for my preoccupation with these pluriform pseudo-worlds, but now I think I understand. What I was sensing was the manifold of partially actualized realities lying tangent to what evidently is the most actualized one—the one that the majority of us, by consensus gentium, agree on.

Dick goes on to describe the visionary, mystical experiences he had in 1974 after dental surgery, which he chronicled in his extensive journal entries (published in abridged form as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick) and in works like VALIS and The Divine Invasion. As a result of his visions, Dick came to believe that “some of my fictional works were in a literal sense true,” citing in particular The Man in the High Castle and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a 1974 novel about the U.S. as a police state—both novels written, he says, “based on fragmentary, residual memories of such a horrid slave state world.” He claims to remember not past lives but a “different, very different, present life.”

Finally, Dick makes his Matrix point, and makes it very clearly: “we are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs.” These alterations feel just like déjà vu, says Dick, a sensation that proves that “a variable has been changed” and “an alternative world branched off.”

Did-Philip-K.-Dick-disclose-the-real-Matrix-in-1977.mp4 (via Open Culture)