os150328  Go ask Media  Or a dolphin

A physical setback, a reminder of his physical limits, brings about a mood of deciding whether to go on with his ten-year plan to help build the Seattle Printmakers Center. Will age stop him? he wonders, and lyrics of many songs come to mind to guide him.

Music, the greatest art of all

Yesterday I missed what I thought would be the most important meeting of the quarter for me in my plan to help build the Seattle Printmakers Center because of a disabling pain in my leg. I couldn’t get to the meeting; I was stuck in an emergency room at our HMO and I watched the hour of the meeting come and go. I left the ward walking with a cane.

I thought, “This is not the image of a person starting the ambitious Seattle Printmakers Center, gateway to the Uptown Neighborhood of Queen Anne, the Art and Technology corridor of Seattle.” No, this is an image of an old man trying to do the job of someone in their ‘40s perhaps, or ‘60s at the most—someone who had a good decade of agile mobility ahead of him.

It was a letdown. I confess I got depressed. It isn’t supposed to be like this. As I try to restore my commitment, words from media arts come to me, such as the line from the original Planet of the Apes, a movie that informed my printmaking work in the ‘80s: "We weren’t supposed to land in the water!” one crew spaceship member shouted out to the character (played by Space Captain Charlton Heston) asking him what went wrong.

Next, lines from a song came to mind: I have my books and my poetry to protect me, from I am a Rock by Simon and Garfunkel. Yes, I have the books I wrote, and reading notes from hundreds of books and articles that I have read—such as Ask a dolphin, from an interview with John Lilly:

"...A good general rule for dealing with situations where you are overwhelmed with novelty is:  when you are in a new space where you can't account for what is happening on the basis of past assumptions, stay wide open and let your fair witness store all the information you receive.  Later on you can slow down and play it all back without editing and can evaluate what has happened to you." (my italics)

My fair witness

Many years ago, when my computer screen was that of an Apple II+ which had a black background and phosphorescent green characters and graphics, I found my fair witness lurking in the silicon-based virtual mind. She demonstrated that it was not my typing that was shaping the words on the screen, but rather that I was uncovering what she dictated what I ought to think about. She was, to use Lilly’s expression, my “fair witness.”

She’s still there, and when I construct this essay to help myself deal with the physical limitations that say, You are too old to start the Seattle Printmakers Center. . ., my screen on this newer computer is full of icons and a background photograph that suggest, Gamify your problem!

That suggestion comes from several resources, the most recent of which was a talk from Ignite Seattle #25, in which an engineer from Amazon described how he solved a problem by gamifying the Beta-testing of the company’s new smart phone. His fellow workers were too busy with their projects, so how could he get them to take time away from those to test the device and give feedback? He made up a casual video game and got the results he needed.

Another clue is, if it is a puzzle how to get the Seattle Printmakers Center to attract help in its development, then use puzzle software to show it. Earlier, guided by my “Fair Witness” I created nineteen new icons on a background image of the Dreambook building (my name for the new development at 5^th and Roy just outside my studio).

Play with that, she whispers in my ear, meaning, It’s there, you just have to uncover it.

Yes, I have my books and my poetry to protect me from depression, and a device to beta test when I get another chance to talk about the arts and technology corridor.

sp150312  What is Interval Suites?

A division of the Seattle Printmakers Center

It is “Short-term housing for visitors to the Seattle Printmakers Center, including guests and their families who come to the Center to perform or teach in programs of the Center.” This is based on the experiences of a teacher and highlights which follow. 

What is Interval Suites?

“Short-term housing for visitors to the Seattle Printmakers Center, including guests and their families who come to the Center to perform or teach in programs of the Center.”

Thus reads my brief description of Interval Suites. However, as I was in the process of designing the logo for Interval Suites, I was recounting a story—a story of some life experiences while serving as a teacher at the University of Washington. I may as well say, “While I was a student,” because I learned more than I taught.

Thanks to my students (both good students and bad students) the sum of my years of experiences was greater than what may be described in the words on my resume. In hindsight, nineteen years of teaching art classes amounted to less than meets the eye, now that I can look back at the total. This is especially true when viewed in the context of Interval Suites.

Somewhere in my collection of memorabilia from my days at the UW is a handmade book I put together for my last round of promotions. This was around 1978, and I was in the eleventh year of my stay and an associate professor. This meant that I had one more promotion to go and, if successful, I would be in the rank of full professor—the highest rank one can attain in the scheme of things academic.

This handmade book—a plastic ring binder, cheap thing—is a collection of photos and words which outline why I should be promoted. There are photos of my art, lists of accomplishments, snapshots documenting my research. What you don’t see is that it contained the seeds of Interval Suites. What I learned, mind you, and not what I taught; and I learned it from my students and my studies abroad.

Sato-Berry Hotel 

Interval Suites is a hospitality business and reflects what I learned from students like Norie Sato and Ralph Berry—a married couple who, after graduation, bought a craft home big enough for a spare bedroom. Over the next decade, their home became known as the “Sato-Berry Hotel” because, whenever an out-of-town guest came to speak, have an art show, or do a workshop, Norie and Ralph opened their home to them—free of charge.

Norie was the video curator at And/Or Gallery, which was an alternative art space and the only show in town for events that otherwise would not happen in Seattle. And/Or had a limited budgets; most of the money for And/Or came from gifts and grants. By providing out-of-town guests with a place to stay, the Sato-Barry Hotel helped make things happen for the Seattle art world.

Another influence for Interval Suites was my round-the-world trip in 1983, when I met people who opened their home to me and my family, like the first time (on another study abroad experience) when Rolf Nesch arranged for my wife and I to stay at the Munch Museum Scholar’s apartment in Oslo.

My list of inspirational and convivial experiences goes on. One has many opportunities when you are a college professor with tenure, and Interval Suites is my hope for repaying the worlds’ artists, teachers and students for the hospitality that was shown to me and my family.

I am not alone when I say that the artists, teachers and art students of Seattle will join me to help make Interval Suites another positive force in the Seattle Printmakers Center and add to its value as a city asset.

Based on the concept of concurrent engineering, the author returns from a refresher course in making icons for his computer screen by which he establishes a spot in an imaginary building he calls the "The Iconic”. He says this is an example of recursive art.

ps150310 Welcome to The Iconic

The Seattle Printmakers Center building  

“The Iconic” is the name I added to my list of thematic concepts for the yet-unrealized apartment building across the street from our family art gallery. The list will change tomorrow, but today it is the outcome of my exercise in recursivity which is essential to both the creative process and concurrent engineering (CE). Recursivity is an academic way of saying, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”[1]

The first time I learned about CE was in reading an article about 3D-printing and The Boeing Company as the engineers designed the Triple-7. It went something like, “CE means that while the engineers are designing the mechanical details, sales people gear up to sell seats on an airplane that doesn’t yet exist—concurrently. Interior designers plan fabrics for the seats and print designs for the interior, and negotiations proceed with the FAA to allow twin engine passenger planes to fly across oceans.

This scenario is in contrast to the linear engineering of times past, when—for example—the Wright Brothers were methodically assembling and testing their plane one step at a time. They did not have to sell seats on their glider—Orville was already sold.

Times have changed the way projects are conceived and achieved. It is true also when a screenplay writer is met by the fact that the movie industry depends on filling the seats of movie theaters. It takes years—sometimes decades—for an idea for a movie to find its audience, and years to produce the film.

Film producers—and the executives in the air travel industry—have to ask, “Will people pay $15 to sit for two hours watching this film?” or, “Will people pay $150 for a seat on this plane?” The living wage of every worker in the industry depends on the project being a successful example of concurrency—everything happening at the same time.

For a creative artist, this fact is a pain because it means he or she can’t let their ideas fly. A screenplay writer may want to do a horror film about mass cannibalism, but the idea will have to wait until the marketplace wants it. The sequel to Bambi, too, will have to wait.

When planning a plane, a movie, or—today, the subject of interest to me—a building for the Seattle Printmakers Center, one is tethered to the reality of the market. Since large-scale projects take years to realize, a visionary person is needed—someone who can see into the future. As no one can predict the future, we visionaries have to shore up our vision as best we can with examples from the past and hope we can offer a trajectory based on big data.

Big Data

Big Data is a popular buzzword in the software engineering world. I see big data as a combination of statistical analysis and data mining. I’m probably wrong, since I am not in the industry but rather a user of the instruments. My computer, for example, can give me an instant course, “Big Data for Dummies,” and I can mime the terminology so it fits my vision of the new building that will grow up across the street.

It is the site I have been given, you might say, upon which to model the next phase in the design of the Seattle Printmakers Center. Data comes in, for example, on justifying the economics of the Center, i.e., the premise that it will be self-supporting, create jobs, and help educators in the STEAM movement, i.e., Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math.

My cash-flow promise lies with the profitable startups that go into the building, such as Young Printmakers and Sip and Print, that are two with the most lucrative promise and harmonize with the Center’s mission. Concurrent Engineering requires the funding aspect and, like the needs that aeronautical engineers prescribe for a flying machine, must be known at the same time the apartments in the building are designed.

Who will want to live here? How much will they be willing to pay? What impression will the street-level units make on passers-by and, also, on guests at the hotel across the street? These are examples of the questions I think about—questions I am preparing to answer.

I need help, however, and to get help I need to let the people who have already given form—on paper and with data—to the project I am calling, today The Iconic.

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[1] T. S. Elliot, from Four Quartets

sp150302  A Business Plan for Rembrandt and Wine  Starting with a kernel

The next challenge for the ambitious founder of the Seattle Printmakers Center is to write nineteen business plan kernels for the nineteen businesses that comprise the entire center concept, and he begins by using the Rembrandt and Wine franchise concept. ©2015 Bill Ritchie

It began with a screwdriver

How does a home-made screwdriver work to develop a community? This is what is meant by a “kernel” of a business concept implying that a very small item can be one of the keys to writing the full plan of a new business. 

My challenge is to create a cooperative, interactive group, somewhat like a club, to build out the plans for the Seattle Printmakers Center. Seattle is a perfect place for this center, because it begins with the root of all the new technologies—the invention of the template for printing—and spins out into the unknown future, then the adventure curves back to traditional hand-printing. We discovered this principle when my students and I were in college in the 1970s and this idea is the core of the Seattle Printmakers Center philosophy.

The screwdriver pictured happens to be one of the items which is sent to buyers of the WeeWoodie Rembrandt Press. It is made of a Number 1 Philips driver bit, a wooden spool, and a stub of quarter-inch wood dowel. This home-made screwdriver is a humble, simple tool which could—if millions of them were needed—be massed-produced in an offshore company. In fact, dozens of these screwdrivers are already available online for a dollar or two each if bought in units of 100 or more.

However, this screwdriver is part of a kit to make a WeeWoodie Rembrandt Press I arrived at after a number of tries, and I was making one this morning when it occurred to me that, not only is it a little part of a bigger thing (the kit) but it is also part of a bigger plan, which is the Rembrandt and Wine business proposal.

In software engineering, I learned the word “kernel” used in the context of software operations. As I was raised on a farm, the origin of the word meant corn or wheat—any kind of seed that, when planted and cultivated, would yield more than the sum of its parts. The miracles of Nature are well-known to farmers.

Also in software design, the "kernel" can work “miracles” if it is treated intelligently and elegantly by software engineers it and resembles the creative and productive aspects of creative artists. A screwdriver, for example (and the part it plays in a larger scheme) as I am to realize my vision of the Seattle Printmakers Center is going to take the realization of my commitment to the tenets of the design.

The Seattle Printmakers Center holds a kernel of creating jobs for young people in ways related to printmaking as a complex art form. the art form is complex because printmaking is a medium that has more aspects to it than meet the eye. Printmaking is as much a performance art as its products (prints) are visual arts for the eye. This fact is at the base of all nineteen elements of the Seattle Printmakers Center. The screwdriver is part of the Rembrandt and Wine concept, as well as the printmaking toys and games (part of Young Printmakers). 

A Rembrandt and Wine franchise uses at least ten Wood Rembrandt Presses, which will be a patented design one step larger than the WeeWoodie Rembrandt Press. When a franchise is signed on, the presses arrive at the franchisee as disassembled, and each press comes with a screwdriver of the type I designed: made up in Seattle out of a bit, a spool, and a piece of dowel by members of the Seattle Printmakers Community.

(To be continued)

Reference: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2389616