It is always interesting when you get a little surprised by how the world has changed. To me it is not always in the large sense of revolutions but in the smallness of how things people like get passed around. How shared interest explodes in our digital age.
Case in point.
An artist based in the south, whose work I saw on some art blog and then posted here. One of her mediums is old cassette tape. She whirls the tape into magic artwork, generally around the subject of musicians, she calls the set Ghost In The Machine.
So I sent her an email, and asked her to do one for me, based on my favorite of all bands, The Clash.
She produced this:
London Calling. Which I love. And it appears, so do many others.
She posted it on her flickr page about a week ago. To date she has close to 140,000 views on the image along. Well not only am I happy that so many people saw it, and that the general sentiment is very strong for her and her work. But I also think of it in context of being an artist.
Imagine 20 years ago, being an artist trying to get your work out. You show at a few coffee shops, maybe in some group shows, etc. But unless you really break out big on to the scene you are lucky if your work is seen by 1000 people much less hundreds of thousands of them. But these days interest and discovery take us down very different paths. Does Pop culture x innovative idea x retro medium x blog/digg/facebook/twitter = attention? Hard to say for sure, but as for getting the name and interest in the talent of iri5 out there, it really seems to work.
The find, clip, share, discuss, comment world is upon us and the more we pay attention, the better we will be poised to do so on behalf of ourselves, our clients and our interests.
