The final stretch

The new indiegogo.com funding page. Ready for action!!

Into the last few days before we launch, and I'm happy to say things are on schedule. The main page for indiegogo.com is written! A few things to tidy up on the website and then we're into writing newsletters and press releases ready to send out on Friday. Oooh, it's all so exciting!

Regardless of what happens next, there will be celebrations on Friday evening, I can tell you that!

A new way to read wowlookwhatigot.com!

wowlookwhatigot - summary page on Google Currents

Reading a wowlookwhatigot blog entry on Android tablet
using Google Currents.

Just accidentally found a new way to read the wowlookwhatigot.com blog (and by extension any blog, but it's this one that counts, of course). If you use Google Currents on an Android phone or tablet, you can add an arbitrary blog feed to your reading list as follows:

• Select "+Add Subscriptions" at the top of the left hand menu. 
• Tap the magnifying glass icon at the top right off the screen to open the search dialogue. 
• Type in 'wowlookwhatigot'
• Currents will report "No results funds for Wowlookwhatigot" - but wait!
• After a few seconds (hopefully) it will come up with listings under the heading 'Feeds'.
• Tap "Add free of charge"next to "wowlookwhatigot.com !" and the news feed will be added to the 'Feeds' section in Currents.

You can now get your wowlookwhatigot.com fix any time! (See photos).

I assume this, or a similar procedure, will work in any news aggregator app which handles rss feeds. Have fun!

It's all coming together !

"The Unfolding Tale" : Oils and egg-tempera on canvas : Copyright © 2006 by Martin Herbert

One week before launching wowlookwhatigot.com and amazingly things are pretty much on schedule. Yesterday I did most of the editing to set up the indiegogo.com campaign page - there's just the main text to write - and that's today's main job. Now I have to pull together all the bits and pieces we've thought about over the last few weeks- made notes about, probably in a dozen different places, and all the ideas we've had about how to engage people's attention, and make them into one thought-provoking, entertaining and imagination-stimulating text a few paragraphs long. It needs to make people laugh, be interested, be entertained, and above all, put their hands in their pockets to support us. No pressure there, then.

We're indebted to Rachel Stelmach of Disability Arts Cymru for pointing us in the direction of Amara for adding subtitles for the hearing-impaired to our campaign video. Thanks to this useful site I was able to add subtitles in half a day or so - something I'd been wanting to do but thought I would never have time to do before the launch. She's also made some very useful observations on the useability of the site for other groups, and we've made her the 'useability consultant' on our team - something every campaign should have!

Still plenty to complete before next Friday, but it's looking good so far. I was somewhat cheered by the process of writing up the various 'perks' we're offering our investors, since it reinforces the belief that our goal is achievable - we don't need that many people to believe in the concept and contribute a few pounds/dollars for us to have a viable business within a couple of weeks, so, to all those people who get to read this once everything goes public - we need your support! Like Vivi-Mari says in the video "even if it's only a dollar..." - and please, most of all, tell your friends!

Progress - the video is finished!!

Time to take a look where we're at - well, the most important development this week is that having had a good look at what's left to do, I've now set a launch date for wowlookwhatigot.com of 1st March 2013! A historic day indeed, it will be, or maybe not.

The finished indiegogo.com promo video - click to watch it right here!

The promo video has had its last few tweaks and is finally complete, it's been added to the website and to the indiegogo.com site, and I've done a bit more work setting up this blog ready for the Big Day. Left to complete we mainly have setting up the indiegogo.com page in full, then preparing newsletters, press releases and the like. Hopefully I've given myself plenty of time.

In other news this week - no word from the place where I applied for a job, which I assume means no interview. What happened to the days when people were polite and at least took the trouble to inform you regretfully that you had "been unsuccessful on this occasion" and that they sincerely wished you "every success with your future endeavours". Ah how I miss those older, more courteous days...

Art in Focus - 2: "Design for a Machine to Escape the Bank Manager"

"Design for a Flying Machine to Escape the Bank Manager" : Drawing in ink, pencil and gouache with transfer print on handmade paper : 28" x 20" (70 x 50 cm) : Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert 

Another look at some art - one of my pieces this time. "Design for a Machine to Escape the Bank Manager " was, I guess, born from the desire to do a piece emulating one of my all-time heroes, Leonardo da Vinci.

Last year I worked on a 6 month project I called "Synthesis". The basic idea was to use some of the very old traditional drawing techniques I'd been investigating to render images derived from various 'new media'. Specifically I was concentrating on two sources of imagery - the first was illustrations of copyright-expired texts sourced from open source libraries like the Gutenberg Project, of which, no doubt, more later. In this case, however, the picture was based on an image I made with 3D modelling software on the computer. I was experimenting with a package called 'Groboto' which 'grows' machine-like structures. I combined 2 of these, one for the body of the flying machine and one for the wing ribs, and rendered the resulting structure 3 times, in plan view, elevation, and in perspective view.

I wanted something like da Vinci 's flying machine designs from his notebooks, but taken to a more elaborate conclusion, the point being to render the image using the same kind of materials and techniques which he would have used. The paper is a very heavyweight handmade cotton tag from India called 'Khadi'. I'm using this for all my drawing work at the moment - I love the surface texture, along with the fact that it's made of 100% recycled cotton tag. The makers use offcuts from the T-shirt industry, so the paper is available in a number of different self-coloured variants as well as the bleached off-white which I use. The drawing outline was transferred to the paper by scaling up using a grid, which can still be seen in the background - I wanted traces of the methods to be visible. The drawing itself is done using a combination of Derwent drawing pencils in natural clay pigments, and Koh-i-Noor pigment sticks held in a fat lead-holder. I use 3 basic colours - terracotta, sepia, and white. The shadows and outlines are picked out using sepia colored Pitt artist pens. (I did try a dip pen with sepia ink but that didn't work so well on the absorbent surface). Finally the highlights are done using white gouache.

The last stage of the drawing is to add text. I find more and more these days I'm using text to add an extra dimension to drawings. In this one it's designed to give the piece more of a notebook-like feel to it - the text takes the form of the kind of technical notes an engineer might make on a drawing, done in an antique-looking handwritten font. Along with the photo of the 'bank-manager' (sourced from a collection of old photos on-line , the 'notes' are printed in mirror-image on heat-transfer paper (the kind used for T-shirts) and ironed onto the surface using a technique developed with a lot of trial and error!

As often happens, the 'meaning' of the piece only became apparent when it was more or less complete. Having got more and more frustrated with the difficulty of selling any art in the present economic situation, the overdraft was getting larger and larger. We fantasized, as well one might in this situation, of selling one large piece which would solve our financial crisis at a stroke, which suggested the idea of a new principle for pricing work. Instead of working out a price based on time and materials costs, I came up with the idea of pricing "to each according to their needs". The price of the piece would be related to the subject rather than the effort. Thus "Design for a Flying Machine to Escape the Bank Manager" was priced at the level of our overdraft at the time of its completion, so the buyer would have the satisfaction of knowing that they had indeed helped us to escape the Bank Manager. Sadly, at the time of writing I have to report that the overdraft remains un-cleared, and the drawing is still for sale on etsy.com. Anyone want to help out here? ... or you could contribute to our crowd/funding effort at indiegogo.com/wowlookwhatigot before (15th April 2013).