SeattlePrintmakersCenter

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.