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With Fond Sediments

By Daedalus Howell | March 12th, 2010

As one of Sonoma’s resident soothsayers, I’m always on the hunt for a means of prognosticating the future that is both germane to the local experience and vague enough to be projected upon in anyway one desires – something between a Rorschach inkblot and poorly drawn tarot card. I found it. My divining tool of choice comes through a wine glass, darkly. Make that an empty wine glass in which sediments have been left behind. Those crystalline chunks of violet tartrates are secret messages from the future that can be read like tea leaves, the lines of the palm or the furrows in brows of one’s readers. Of course, interpreting order in chaos or its cousin randomness or its pretty girlfriend chance, has its hazards. This is why I’ve put together these handy guidelines below:

If you discover you have sediments in your glass, do not reel in terror that you’ve been drinking purple dirt. You’ve just been invited to peer into the future. Raise your glass to the light and turn it such that you’re looking from the bottom up (tea leaf readers do the opposite and consequently are always “looking down” on the future, which it hates). Regard how the sediment is distributed in relation to the stem of your wine glass. If you’re not drinking your wine from a wine glass, you may position a pencil at the bottom of your mayonnaise jar or whatever you’re using to achieve the same effect. Now, notice how the sediment is concentrated – whether it’s atop the stem or circling it like a ring (if its in a ring, skip to the bottom). If it’s clumped above the stem, consider which of the following shapes it most closely resembles.

Anchor – If the sediment suggests an anchor, you’re going to very likely have an unfortunate run-in with your ex. This doesn’t mean it will be unfortunate for you specifically, but it might rile your current sweetie. Of course, this happens in small town Sonoma more than most care to admit, seeing as the dating pool seems to consist of only eight people at any given moment. Note, if the sediment you’re analyzing was revealed while drinking wine with your ex, you’ve got more doubts about the future than sediment can reveal. Put the glass down, call Vern’s Taxi and tell your partner you were with me (unless I’m your ex, in which case, call my wife, the Contessa, and have her pick me up).

Sun – If the sediment is distributed with spire-like points radiating from center, this means you will soon be asked for your advice. If this is your first glass of wine, share your insights freely. However, sediment seldom appears in the first glass, which suggests you will be asked for said advice upon finishing your last glass of wine. In this case, you should also give the requested advice, except you should do it with no regard for the person’s feelings or any real consideration of the facts at hand. This is not your problem – they asked a drunk person advice and you gave it to them damn it. Use phrases like “I’m just sayin’” and “I’m just being honest” and “Is there more wine?” I predict that embracing the moment in this manner will in the very least be entertaining until the tears come.

Ring – If the sediment in your glass appears in a ring around the stem it means that you’re you’re out of wine. What else? You will soon be drinking more wine. How can you be sure, you ask? You’re in Sonoma, which means you’re either at the beginning of a wonderful adventure – or the end.

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Oscar’s All a’Twitter

By Daedalus Howell | March 7th, 2010

Come February of every year, scads of entertainment journalists engage in a ritual peculiar to their beat. They apply for press credentials to cover the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Academy Awards.

An awards ceremony for motion pictures presented on television epitomizes traditional media. If the gold statuette was wrapped in newspaper like a fish, perhaps the event could be even more quaintly 20th century. Despite its antiquarian trappings, this year Oscar is poised at the nexus of traditional and social media.

In addition to the usual questions used to vet journos’ credibility in the online credential application, a new query appears: “Tell us about how we can find you online—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, other social media platforms.”

Social media like Twitter have been a boon for journalists, and not merely for those upgrading their bylines to brand names. (The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism cited the “personal branding” of journalists online as a major trend in its State of the News Media Report for 2009.) Social media tools have also enabled journalists laboring under repressive regimes to bypass censors and transmit reportage to the world, if only at 140 characters at a time.

For some media critics, freedom of the press coupled with free blogging services have resulted in either a free-for-all or a free fall. Consider the so-called citizen journalists, whose training consists of little more than glossing the “Terms of Service” agreement on a video-sharing site and who routinely break stories via social media. In an era when an anonymously posted YouTube video depicting the death of 26-year-old Iranian activist can put those who produced it in the company of New York Times and New Yorker reporters when winning journalism’s prestigious George Polk Award, the redefining of what a journalist is must be under way.

In its own way, the Academy Communications Department, which dispenses Oscar credentials, has contributed to this process. In short, professional journalists are now expected to have a social media presence—just like the amateurs.

ABC, which  broadcast the Oscars this Sunday, has yet to reveal an official policy regarding tweeting at the Oscars, whether that be by journalists, attendees or even nominees (Up in the Air director Jason Reitman seems to be the only nominee with an active Twitter account). Rival network NBC, however, has had to contend with the social media factor head-on as some of its current XXI Olympic Winter Games broadcasts are released on taped delay; it is hopeless to prevent medal results from being tweeted to the world. There is, as yet, no such thing as a tweet-delay, though the Iranians are surely working on one.

The International Olympic Committee speaks to this, in part, with its “IOC Blogging Guidelines for Persons Accredited at the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver 2010,” a four-page document intended to police the social media habits of accredited attendees.

“It is required that, when Accredited Persons at the Games post any Olympic Content, it be confined solely to their own personal Olympic-related experience,” it states, suggesting that no news is good news, but writing of one’s aspiration to appear on a box of Wheaties is acceptable.

Moreover, “the IOC considers blogging, in accordance with these guidelines, as a legitimate form of personal expression and not as a form of journalism.” Micro-blogging, fittingly, was addressed via tweet on the Olympics’ official Twitter account where athletes were encouraged to share the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat: “Athletes go ahead and tweet, as long as it’s about your personal experience at the games.”

As a live event, the Oscars have little fear of its winners being revealed prior to some celebrity saying, “The envelope, please.” At worst, entertainment journalists will offer a deluge of online snark, which they will later recapitulate online, in print and wherever else news goes to die. If Oscar winners tweeted their acceptance speech à la “You like me, you really like me. #Oscar,” that might warrant a re-tweet or two. But, alas, no.

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Sonoma’s Oscar Awards

By Daedalus Howell | March 5th, 2010

Roll out the red carpet, get on your designer duds and pause, pivot and pose for the paparazzi – Oscar is back.

As in years past, preceding the big to-do on Sunday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences separately celebrated scientific and technical achievements in the film industry with its so-called Sci-Tech awards. This, of course, was conducted in another (cheaper) ceremony a few weeks ago and honored the part of the biz most likely to have sprung from the AV Club. Yeah, missed that one too but glad to know the high school social caste system persists.

For those not attending the actual Oscars, our local Sonoma International Film Festival annually hosts an Oscar party sure to be every bit as glamorous as its inspiration (this year it will be hosted at Estate, visit SonomaFilmFest.org for details), which, given the surprisingly high number of Oscars gracing local mantels is tantamount to the real deal and you don’t have to play cruise director on someone’s ego-trip for an invite. However, there’s no local shindig for achievements that fall outside the purview of the Hollywood popularity contest. Nor are there Oscar categories reflective of the Sonoma experience itself – not the “wine, cheese and retirees” scene often identified with the area, but the daily grind of Sonoma living that gets the terroir under one’s nails.

Consider these local achievements not coming to a theater near you:

The award for “Best Set Direction Evoking a General Sense of Dilapidation and Corporate Absenteeism” goes to (drum roll) McDonald’s on Sonoma Highway. Local lore suggests that an arch meant to span the highway as a “gateway” to the Springs was kyboshed by the state highway system, though pedestrians can pass through a smaller, “consolation arch” on the highway’s eastbound side. It’s ironic that a sign with a pair of Golden Arches and a gaping hole kicked through them currently greet travelers to the west side. Congrats, Mickey D’s! Be sure to reference how you ruin both “waistlines and sightlines” in your acceptance speech (there, I just spared you a c-note to Bruce Vilanch).

The nominees in the category of “Best Obligatory Right Turn” included, – facing south – “First Street West to Napa Street” and – facing north – “First Street West to Napa Street.”

This was the first time that a single street has enjoyed two nominations for right turns traveling in opposite directions. Another nominee, “Verano to Fifth Street West” was disqualified when it was discovered that it was actually a left turn from Fifth West to Verano and technically a bend rather than a turn. The statue went to “First Street West to West Spain,” which accepted the honor with the pithy “Two wrongs don’t make a left, but three rights do.”

The award for “Best Special Effect on a Manhole Cover” went to Sonoma Court Shops, which is studded with several such bronze-hued medallions, each of which are generically branded save for one that mysteriously reads “Santa Rosa Transit.” Surely, no one would venture to a transit mall 20 miles away and man-handle a manhole cover from its native habitat and transplant it to sparsely traveled Sonoma walkway where it would go unnoticed for years. This is clearly the work of a special effects wizard who effectively retouched the once-bland manhole cover to appear as if it were displaced from some far off land. Bravo! The magic of movies lives not only in our hearts, but under our feet.

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Don’t Work For Free

By Daedalus Howell | February 26th, 2010

There’s a problem many of my colleagues have faced of late. With alarming frequency, local entrepreneurs, freelancers and others who make their livings proffering talents that have taken lifetimes to develop are asked to work for free.

Such requests, of course, are seldom as forthrightly phrased as “work for free,” camouflaged as they are in chummy badinage peppered with terms like “spec,” “barter” and “trade.” Though all three of these concepts have their rightful place in our recovering economy, the bank tends to frown upon massage gift certificates and cheese plates sent to pay the mortgage. After witnessing a friend routinely exploited by his own generosity and apparent inability to invoice anyone with whom he’s traded nothing more than smiles (I’m now handling all billing and booking for J.M. Berry – you want his estimable talents, you come to me), I was inspired to write my own credo as an act of clarification for would-be clients as well as myself.

As I’ve gleaned from others who work independently, the money conversation is often more difficult than discussing the birds and bees with one’s kid. In fact, I myself have sometimes opted to discuss the birds and bees with prospective clients rather than money since I was getting screwed anyway. This no longer happens to me, which I attribute to the verbiage below. I posted a version of this brief screed on my own Web site this week to great effect. I offer it here to whomever needs it under a creative commons “share and share alike” license, meaning you can retrofit and use it for your personal business needs as necessary so long as you let others do the same with your improvements. Here goes:

I do not work for free.

OK, admittedly, this seldom does the trick. So, here’s more:

I also don’t work on spec seeing as I have enough of my own speculative contributions to our culture in the works. If you have stock options to offer in a real company with secured funding and a future so bright that a welding mask is more than a mere fashion statement, we can talk. Otherwise, some arbitrary “percentage” of your personal pipedream, even at 50 percent, is either a pipe or a dream. I don’t smoke and the stuff my dreams are made of is clearly different than yours (insert your favorite “Maltese Falcon” quote here).

On rare occasions, clients have bartered their wares and services for the license to an existing work. This can be negotiated on a per case basis (and when I say case, I don’t mean a bottle of wine – I mean a case).

To that end – a beer, coffee or even lunch does not constitute payment for my time. If you want an actual consultation on your project (wherein, I’m not merely flattering you for picking up the tab) let’s do business. Otherwise, we’re just dating.

Under penalty of public humiliation, never ever ask me for a creative contribution based on the prospect of “great exposure.” The fact that you believe this to be attractive to a working professional means I’m overexposed as is. And apparently to the wrong people – the kind of people who lack respect for the fact that I’ve got to buy food for my infant son to wear.

If you represent a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that boasts an ethos in alignment with my admittedly recherché values, you may send a written proposal. Please don’t send a questionnaire regarding my recherché values. If you cannot assess what they are from my work, then you likely aren’t sufficiently familiar with my work (especially a couple of films that will keep me permanently out of politics) and likely won’t want me at your event, in your anthology or speaking at your commencement anyway. If, by some strange alignment of the stars we share a mutual ethos and the same gaping hole in our schedules – wonderful – I’ll see you at the prison ribbon cutting.

Also, I will not read your script, epic poetry cycle, inspiring personal saga of overcoming graphophobia, etc. However, I will consult with you at my regular fee. When I’m not reading for pleasure, it’s work. Unless you’re author Jonathan Lethem, you’re not pleasuring me (um, that came out wrong).

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From Kindling to Kindle: Will the future of reading affect the future of writing?

By Daedalus Howell | February 22nd, 2010

James Joyce, it is said, became so disgruntled while drafting his first novel that he threw it on the fire. His girlfriend rescued the work-in-progress from the flames, and the subsequent rewrite became A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Such acts of literary self-immolation and redemption could only occur in our once-analog world, when the permanence of erasure moved only as fast as fire. These days, the irreversible deletion of one’s work is a mere keystroke away.

That said, it seems would-be authors are more apt to hit the “publish” key on their blogs than the “delete” key on their magnum opus. Future literary historians will decide whether this has been a positive trend for the world of letters. Of the 100 million–plus blogs in existence, it’s unclear how many purport to be literature, let alone how many actually are. Nevertheless, entire industries have arisen to support the notion one’s blog could be a book, turning aspirants into authors with a click and credit card—at least for now.

Print-on-demand services like San Francisco–based Blurb will print the next Joyce a “Blog Book” for a percentage of that book’s sale to the author or his readers, in as many or as few copies as desired. Blurb has even automated the process with a program that “slurps” a blog’s content from its online habitué and excretes it in the shape of a book when ordered online. Likewise, online retail juggernaut Amazon provides a similar service, CreateSpace, an on-demand clearinghouse for everything DIY, from books to DVDs. It is a micro-mogul’s mecca for the manufacture of media.

Now print-on-demand might prove to be a transitional technology the same way DVDs are giving way to digital downloads. Amazon claims 35 percent of its book sales are downloads for its Kindle “wireless reading device.” In March, cult brand Apple will overshoot the electronic book fray with the iPad, which aggregates print, video and music enjoyment into a single, sexy device.

Be assured, publishers and independent authors alike are readying their wares for Apple’s latest game-changer, which is an overgrown iPhone sans telephony. But who wants to take a call while in the thrall of a warm, glowing piece of technology anyway? It’s like a vibrator for the mind, and a throng of independent content producers hopes to get you off.

In the olden days of digital reading, circa 2000, premium content was scarce. Beyond being deskbound, the only texts available seemed to be classics poached from the public domain, Joyce included. Occasional experiments in electronic-book marketing came and went, with business ebooks and white papers seeming most prevalent. The transformation of print-to-pixel was a trickle with publishers wary or unsure of the medium, though pixel-to-print releases were garnering wider appeal and stoking dreams of digital discovery for thousands of would-be authors (blog-borne Julie/Julia is a popular example). Publisher HarperCollins even created Authonomy, an online authors community from which it occasionally cherry-picks and publishes material vetted by the crowd.

Now, however, it seems a new type of author is poised to emerge, one tailored to the new medium literally at hand, whose work will bypass traditional publishers and appear in the iTunes store, forsaking the bookshelf entirely. Pictures in printed books must have once been a novelty—moving pictures embedded in the text of your iPad is an inevitability, not to mention audio, three-dimensional maps, animated sidebars and other electronic illuminations. How will this amplify or diminish storytelling as we know it? A fear is that mutant transmedia hybrids might obviate established forms or at least leave them marginalized in the market in which a bestseller and killer app are one and the same.

What seems most uncertain is whether how we read will affect how we write. This will have to be determined in the field, for not even a visionary such as Joyce could have anticipated someone cuddling up with his words “In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk into a tawny glow” from the glow of a tawny Kindle.

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Beware of Fauxnoma

By Daedalus Howell | February 19th, 2010

Defining the “Sonoma lifestyle” can be an elusive proposition, especially since its interpretation is often left to marketers and PR flaks who draw from warmed-over notions of Napa from under a setting Tuscan sun.

This is something I’m called upon to do, both professionally and socially, with some regularity. The former I can usually accomplish with some plug-n-play boilerplate (see above – I keep reams of this crap at the ready). However, I find that people tend to bristle when my eyes glaze like I’d just been shown the queen of hearts in the original “Manchurian Candidate” and recite “Sonoma is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful town I’ve ever known in my life.” Anyway, the fact is, I believe in our fair hamlet, our bucolic burg is the gem of Sonoma County. I also believe that we’re not properly managing the hard-earned equity we’ve built over generations into our brand, which is being siphoned from us not just by the sundry products I have occasion to lambaste in this space (heinous example: Boston-based Crabtree and Evelyn, Ltd. owns the trademark “Sonoma Valley”), but by our neighbors throughout the county that bears our name – what I like to call “Fauxnoma.”

But you say, “Daedalus, you L.A. burnout, you’re always bandying marketing terms around. This is where I live, not a media conspiracy – why should I care?” Listen, I care because Sonoma County is where I was born and raised and where I’ve witnessed systematic erosion of its natural charm in quarters such as my hometown of Petaluma, which a single developer has transformed into a riverfront strip mall. You should care because your homes, businesses and lifestyle experience will see diminished value as the creep of unchecked exploitation of the Sonoma premise continues. More importantly, we love it here. Don’t we? This week, the results of a study conducted by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index determined that Sonoma County ranks first in the state of California and fifth in the nation for “well-being.” Perhaps this will help add a zero or two back onto the perceived value of our homes. Or perhaps this will incentivize the powers that be that the town of Sonoma should join the rest of the county in contributing to the Sonoma County Business Improvement Area (BIA) Assessment, lest Rohnert Park, Windsor and Petaluma’s sprawling east side seize upon the mantle of “The Happiest Place in California” – the headline cresting the Press Democrat’s story about the study.

Participation in the BIA would add an additional 2 percent hotel tax, passed on to visitors of our local hotels and would allow the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau to assert its estimable marketing efforts on our behalf. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, permit me to remind you that I am Sonoma County’s Lifestyle Ambassador and produce and host an ongoing video series for the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau.

In this capacity, what I find particularly galling is that I’m not permitted to showcase the wonder of our local attractions to the world because the Isle of Sonoma doesn’t contribute. The irony is stinging, particularly when I live and work in a town of such tremendous beauty and have to trundle my crew to the next towns over to celebrate their wines, hotels, spas, restaurants, etc. Be assured, I’m not merely complaining about my commute, I’m worried that the opportunity cost will eventually bite us in the ass.

And note, this is not to deny or allay the efforts of our local visitors bureau – this should be a complement, a wheels within wheels strategy that functions as a perpetual awareness machine. Please note, currently, the towns of Sonoma and Healdsburg are the only holdouts from the countywide program. This is the same Healdsburg, mind you, that was featured in the Wine Spectator a couple of years back with the headline, “The New Sonoma.” With headlines like that who needs frenemies?

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Redrum!

By Daedalus Howell | February 17th, 2010

Finally, someone found a justification for film school. What seems to be an attempt at Valentine’s Day marketing in Petaluma, CA, reads surprisingly like an entreaty to homicide. “Redrum” occupies a special place in our culture thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s take on “The Shining” and the crooked index finger of a child actor Danny Lloyd. Had the sign letterer known the provenance of the term, vis-à-vis “History of American Cinema 101,” I bet they would have found “Come play with us forever” more apt for eternal love.

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Office Space Race

By Daedalus Howell | February 12th, 2010

Inside the landmark El Dorado Hotel is the El Dorado Kitchen and adjacent to that is the coffee house “Kitchenette.” Somehow, the metonym for these three enterprises has become the affectionate abbreviation “EDK,” a location that has blossomed over the past year into the de facto office for a dozens of Sonoma entrepreneurs.

This genus of “knowledge workers” with speciation as media mavens, social media marketers and consultants of every stripe, use the comfortable couches and free wireless to run their empires, meet clients and otherwise dominate the world. Or at least Sonoma, or specifically the immediate three feet of Sonoma they occupy in any moment. I applaud EDK, its owners and management, for enduring this daily siege upon their real estate, for this is one place where our local economy is quite evidently rebuilding itself, click by click, refill by refill. EDK’s initials should stand for “Entrepreneurs Doing Krap,” an accurate if indelicate (and misspelled) description of a particular Sonoma experience of which I’m proudly a participant.

EDK’s general manager Jens Hoj has actively fostered this community, each member of which is an almanac of Sonoma Valley tourism notions and available as a resource to the hotel’s out-of-town guests, who sometimes mix and mingle and as often network and jive with the hive, make deals, prolong their stay. I’ve personally up-sold a few visitors into lunching at the restaurant and have successfully invited myself to several such impromptu dining excursions. In these instances, I waive my consulting fee, of course. Finding suitable workspace has been something of a career-long issue for me. When I first went pro at the Petaluma Argus-Courier over a dozen years ago, I bristled at the notion of regularly turning up to the “lifestyle desk” having honed my chops in the sturm und drang of pre-Starbucks-era cafes. I was eventually inspired to negotiate a work-at-home situation when my chum Aristotle Smith showed up at my apartment one morning with a bottle of Veuve Clicqout and kindly explained how I was not going to the office that day.

Since then, I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with offices. And Veuve Clicqout. When I was a stringer for the San Francisco Chronicle, not only had I never visited the newsroom, I never met my editor – our business was conducted entirely through email. Ditto the Bohemian, for whom I briefly wrote a column about local news while living in Los Angeles (gotta love the Internet). And there, amid the smog and tears, my first movie biz deals landed my partner and me desk-space in the copy room of a studio subsidiary. An appreciable up-tick in traffic followed as people came by to watch the monkeys type.

Eventually, he and I went AWOL and began squatting uninhabited cubbies on the lot. This became the inspiration for a project about two wannabes who sneak off a tourist tram and live in the sets of a major Hollywood studio while trying to score a deal – the very deal we briefly had until a three-month development freeze found me on an extended wine country sojourn. Apparently, the deal is still frozen seeing as, four-and- half-years later, I’m still happily here waiting for the thaw.

For a few years, I manned a desk I poached from a colleague’s departure at a local media gig but was canned with a baby on the way, which necessitated starting my own micro-mogul venture in a matter of weeks (I’ll remain forever-grateful to the I-T for bringing this column in from the cold). The first thing I did? I sublet some office space.

Now, I ask myself “Why would I do such a dimwitted thing?” I never go there. Nor do my officemates. This week, there was a moment when we all realized that none of us were at the office but were rather huddled around laptops or chatting with our respective clients in various corners of EDK. We decided to move permanently to the lobby. Jens approved. So, now I’m back working in cafes. Home, sweet home. I’ll toast the move with some Veuve.

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Web 3.0, the Pedantic Web

By Daedalus Howell | February 5th, 2010

No sooner has popular culture digested the term “Web 2.0” than the ante is upped by the next generation of the World Wide Web. Behold, “Web 3.0.”

Um, yeah. This unfortunate protologism, doomed to eternal comparison to its pithy predecessor, proves the adage that “Good technologists borrow, great technologists steal and then add 1.”

Also known as the “semantic web,” Web 3.0 presently has several working definitions, the most salient of which seems to be web godfather Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s suggestion that a semantic web will enable “the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives” and “machines talking to machines.” Meaning, data presented on the web and necessarily meant to be interpreted by humans, but inscrutable to machines, will soon become scrutable.

Though the notion of machines talking to each other about one’s web queries, sundry database entries and general arcane of our digital lives, might lead to a more expeditious online experience, it may also foment a paranoia of the sort described in a Philip K. Dick novel. Especially if the machines are chatty and gossip-prone.

Interestingly, the semantic web’s etymological ancestor, Web 2.0, was coined by Sonoma County’s own Tim O’Reilly, the open-source maven, publisher and founder of O’Reilly Media based in Sebastopol. O’Reilly chose the term to describe the emergence of post-crash web-based businesses and the commonalities they share (social, collaborative, no Fusbol game in the foyer) as the raison d’etre for a conference.

“Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as ‘Web 2.0’ might make sense?” O’Reilly wrote in 2005 post entitled What is Web 2.0 archived on OReilly.com. “We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.” So too was born an infectious meme that has seen the “2.0” appliqué on everything from healthcare reform to sex (incidentally, the Sex 2.0 conference, explores the “intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality” returns to Seattle this May).

In the half-decade since O’Reilly’s coinage, culture has undergone something of a digital renaissance (think Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter) and his Web 2.0 Conference is now the annual Web 2.0 Summit. So, how is it then that New York-based Mediabistro, a trade group that bills itself as “the premier content, career, and community resource for media professionals” came to host the so-called Web 3.0 Conference last week? Clearly, something has gotten out of sequence. That is, unless Web 3.0 involves time travel and paid us a visit here in the present to show us the future with a stack of PowerPoint slides. Gimmicky, sure, but revealing nevertheless – about half of the seminars and presentations were presented by marketers about leveraging the semantic web, which some hope will emulate a kind of artificial intelligence, to target consumers. “Ka-ching 3.0” might have been a more apt title for the conference (better lock that in – the KaChing Button, an iPhone app that makes a cash register sound for the currency of your choice, is already up to version 1.0.3).

Given the Sonoma provenance of Web 2.0, it was somehow apropos that its unrelated pseudo-sequel was held at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, where the conference rooms are dubbed “Sonoma,” “Napa” and “Mendocino.” Adorning the walls are tilt-shift prints, photo-collages and other digitally-produced eye-candy designed to evoke a Silicon Valley aesthetic, despite its wine country pretensions. And wherefore Wine 2.0? That conference happened in New York last November.

In the coming years perhaps we will experience Web 4.0, which will find its comeuppance when Webs 2.0 and 3.0 join forces and become Web 5.0. Web 4.0 will respond by rehabbing Web 1.0 out of its post-bust stupor (so-named the way the Great War became World War I) and attempt to beat Web 5.0 at it’s own game. An accord will ensue and all parties will reform together as simply The Web – at which point it will become sentient and enslave us all. You know, if it hasn’t already.

Originally published in the North Bay Bohemian.

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Sonoma’s Underground Public Art Movement

By Daedalus Howell | January 29th, 2010

david_sensoredThough Sonoma boasts a statue here, a mural there, the Valley’s relative dearth of public art may account for an increasingly apparent faction of rogue artists who have come to fill the void.

Aesthetic renegades, Sonoma is their canvas, though the DNA of their work is a complex, if often controversial, double helix of graffiti and artistry. “Street art” is an oft-used term, though the work seldom appears on the streets as much as it does sprayed, stenciled or wheat-pasted onto walls. That said, “wall art” suggests the generic prints hawked by Ikea for college dorms. If Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen had a franc for every “Chat Noir” print sold in the past decade, he could have hired a publicist so as to not forever be mistaken for Toulouse Lautrec. The artists I’ve noticed effervescing around the fringe of the local scene won’t have this problem. They don’t sign their work, seeing as much of it has been installed illegally.

venus_sensoredConsider the stenciled pseudo-mural applied to the rear wall of a building on the west side of the 500 block of Broadway. It’s a fairly faithful rendering of both Michelangelo’s David and the Venus De Milo, applied in bold strokes of black spray paint in striking 2-D. In lieu of the fig leaves that sometimes accompany more modest depictions of these sculptures, bold censorial banners obscure certain parts of David and Venus’ otherwise nude anatomy. Written on the banners is the word “Sensored,” which I believe is a misspelling of the word “Censored.” While in the throes of creativity, the artist apparently neglected the difference between a sensor and one who censors (one senses the other is nonsense). Further confounding interpretation of the tableaux is the illustration of a surveillance camera focused upon the figures. I suspect the artist was groping toward an Orwellian-hued commentary a la Big Brother or at least Big Step-Brother: “I’m watching you – except for your naughty bits.” Perhaps the artist intentionally misspelled “censored” to suggest what techies call a “sensor deviation” which can result in a “sensitivity error” when measuring for various data. Unless Michelangelo’s inspiration was not like the other boys, he probably endured a sensitivity error at some time or other, so perhaps here the artist made his point – or not, as the case may be.

With both a nod to post-Beatle era John Lennon and Fluxus, the intermedia art movement, an interesting specimen of conceptual art recently appeared on the bulletin board at Starbucks.

imagine_flier_artNestled within the clutter of visual white-noise advertising all manner of live music, yoga classes and personal services, is a simple epigram in plain black and white: “Imagine – Imagine wonderful things, imagine a better tomorrow.” The artist completed the instruction with a vamp on ye olde guerilla marketing technique of fringing a flier with pull-tab takeaways. Instead of the usual phone number, however, there is a reiteration of the “Imagine” message.

Cynics like your dismal columnist might find the enterprise trite, admonishing or even vague. However, when I envision the artist – and I’m not being glib with the term here – strolling into the hurly-burly of a busy coffee franchise and sticking the product of their inspiration to the wall with little more agenda than to inspire a healthy moment of reflective Zen, I cannot help but forgo my snark and applaud the effort. In this regard, the piece is a success. How do I know? I sensored myself.

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