You see these mailboxes? They contain something. A newspaper. Which newspaper? Well, this one. And why is any of this interesting? Because, on page seven of that particular newspaper, there is an article about this man. He’s trying to collect 123,456 pieces of art over the course of a year. What an interesting person. The text of the article goes like this:
Early in the project, people and their personal stories became obviously fascinating. A short “I work in ___ and live in ___” would result in a five-deep email conversation with an interesting person I wouldn’t have interacted with otherwise. So when number #102 had to go to someone with “Historian” in their email sig, I had to know more.
As the Count High progesses onwards, and as the numbers come floating back, the ideas that people come up with are always surprising and interesting to note. One large section of contributions are the “I could never have made anything that good” artworks.
Of those, and including every other, there are strange recurring themes which continue to pop up in the art works. I’ve shown some of the pieces so far (and will continue to do so) but for the most part, entries have been kept hidden - except when the artist publicly displays their piece elsewhere, which is, of course, always welcome. The point I’m hoping to eventually make is, for the most part the artworks have been created individually, with no input from myself. These individual creations, made by artists all over the world, they all connect in strange and unexpected ways.
The Count High project is failing. There are not enough numbers going out. Not nearly enough. That means I am doing things wrong. Waiting for momentum to build has not worked, in fact, the opposite happened. In the first week, more numbers went out than over the last month. There has been a drastic drop in requests and something needs to be done about it.
I have some ideas, but they are a small fraction of the ideas which could be thought. Give me ideas, post in the comments, email in - everything needs to be done to make this a success, so even if you think “He’ll never go for this idea” send it in anyway because I’ll do it. I’ll post to that art forum, I’ll write to that radio show. In case you’re wondering, I did write to David Attenborough.
So you tell me. What’s your idea?
As mentioned earlier, the digital art community 3D Commune has really pulled together and come up with a lot of numbers. I don’t know why. Other communities have sprung up and died off, leaving just a handful of contributions to remember them by. For a while I thought the modelling community (as in real models) would take over as the leader in online contributors, but they went the way of others. Perhaps another community could eclipse the 3D Commune? For now, they seem the solid leader and I spoke with a few more just recently.
Anita Scripter (Contributor 190) began as a doctors assistant doing angiograms, which she went on to do for twenty years. “I was living back at my parents house, not working,” she says “when the dr my mother worked for hired me and taught me to do angiograms.” A process which involves “[taking] photographs with special Zeiss cameras and after injecting fluorescein dye into a vein. I taught myself the film developing and took over that part of the job too.”