I'm travelling on an impromptu visit up to Stoke-on-Trent. I'm back on the train again and thinking about nothing much at all. I've got the talk ready, to be honest I didn't realise it was a formal talk until I received and email flyer from Airspace mentioning my name. Anyway it should be ok and I'm rather proud I've managed to set Powerpoint to move rather seamlessly between my presentation and its accompanying dvd. I was playing with my twitter and Facebook accounts on the first train down to London and wondering about what Coline said when I met her. I might be misquoting, but I believe she asked me if I thought I was truly an artist of the internet age (saying that she didn't) after opening and closing my mouth a few times umming and ahhing, blushing and bluffing I made some sort of very vague reply which I can't remember. I have a feeling most of the interview may have gone that way. I probably agreed with her at the time because, as she said (I think), I was very low-tech in my approach. Now I'm not so sure maybe an artist of the internet age is someone who isn't necessarily very techy (my spell checker wants me to say tetchy, it detects my mood)) but uses it easily, without worry. And indeed is able to splurge unfettered pretentious rubbish at will and disseminate it to a huge and largely unwilling audience. I'm still trying to be detached and cynical about Twitter but I did get hugely excited when I saw Monster Truck was following my tweets.
Andrew has sent me another email asking how the AN blog has affected my career, clearly he hasn't read my last post or maybe it was too vague.
Here's a list of direct things:
Ian Brown read it and asked me to write something for the publication for Trying to Cope with Things that aren't Human
There is increased traffic to my website.
Certain people in the Arts Council seem slightly nervous of me (though I think they are joking)
Occasionally someone says something nice which cheers me up
I have had some things published online and in magazines which have raised my profile above the parapet.
Reviewers and curators have used it for information.
The Foundling blog helped me decide on how the project should evolve and encouraged me to write more (this contradicts what I said in the last blog)
