SlideRoomBlog

We love getting feedback from applicants, both compliments and constructive criticism.  Most communication comes through technical support emails, and this is like research for us on how to improve the system.  However, compliments are always a pleasure, like this one:

I just wanted to say what a fantastic experience CalArts’ ‘SlideRoom’ was! It was so incredibly user friendly and I loved all the features about it - the black background, the labeling option with the extended description and how you could move around the pictures to get an overview on the whole portfolio!  It really helped organize my other portfolios that had to be burnt on CDs and sent as hardcopies for backup. I hope more institutions will use the ‘SlideRoom’ software to make the applicants, students and their own lives easier. Thanks!  — Aditi

Your welcome Aditi!  We work hard on making the entire process fun and easy for everyone involved. We appreciate the feedback, good luck with your application.

I am excited to announce that we have just upgraded our media storage & processing using Amazon’s cloud of virtual servers.  We are actually using two of their web services: Amazon S3 and Cloud EC2 Processing.  All media is processed on EC2, stored on S3 and delivered in an organized way through SlideRoom.

There are two primary advantages to this.  First, we believe it is more stable than a single server at a data center.  Amazon’s infrastructure is far more stable (and redundant) than most companies could pay for on their own.  The second advantage is more profound. We can instantly scale to accommodate high volumes of usage.  In the past, SlideRoom’s performance would slow down during “high-traffic” times because is was busy trying to serve everyone (like a waiter with too many tables).  But now we have a virtual “waiter” that can handle large numbers of people with the same ease.  This ensures the system never slows down, regardless of load.

There is also a third advantage of cost efficiency. Using virtual web services are much more cost efficient when there are irregular spikes in traffic (as is the case with SlideRoom).  For instance, one month may have little traffic in general, but one day of that month may have 100,000 users.  With a traditional setup, you have to pay for capacity even if you are not using it.  With AWS (Amazon’s Web Services) you only pay for what you use.

However, AWS will not be more cost efficient for every company.  In cases where traffic is high and steady, AWS is more expensive.  These cases should most likely use a more traditional setup.

SlideRoom staff will be spending time with their families from December 22 - 26.  We will be available again, returning phone calls (with cheer), on December 29.  While we are not available by phone during this time, applicants will continue to receive friendly technical support via email (except for Christmas day).

So we leave you with this beautiful photograph by Wilson Alwyn Bentley, who was the first person to capture images of snowflakes (1885). He figured out how to catch a snowflake on blackboard and quickly get them under microscope equipped camera.  It is from his 5000 images that we got the idea of no two snowflakes being alike.  We hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

SlideRoom service will be offline this Friday night from 11pm - 4am CST for a scheduled maintenance upgrade. Applicants trying to use the system during this time will receive notice and be able to continue their application after this brief period.

I have just posted an interview with Jay Sullivan on the ARTSblog in two parts, here and here. At the very end of the interview, I asked him about a hot topic within Public Art recently, artist fees.  His response was very enlightening because he pointed out how there is a much larger conversation to be had about how society values the time of artists.  Here is the Q/A below:

CJ: On the email List-Serve there has been a controversial debate about charging artists application fees as a way of diffusing administrative costs.  What is your position on this?

That is a tough one.  In general, I don’t think a fee would be a deterrent, but it places a larger premium on the projects being serious opportunities that are worth serious thought.

However, there is a much larger issue here. In many cases the artist is developing an idea for free, donating that time and getting no economic benefit from it. I can’t donate my time as an artist and write it off my taxes. Now, in serious competitions, artists are paid for their time to produce a model or proposal.  But I am thinking about how we value (economically) the time of artists.  Currently, an artist’s time has no economic value until something tangible is produced and sold.  But I think if a serious artist is working on project or proposal, and there is not money to pay them, they should be able to write their time off, just like a lawyer can. The ability to do this would be a public validation of the process, and expression that artists are valued and supported. So, there are other solutions for all this.

I have been invited to be a guest blogger for Americans for the Arts, and have just made an introductory post (about myself) here. They have have done a really smart thing by inviting various members of their commmunity to have a voice.  I will be posting there about twice a month to help develop conversations about technology and to draw visibility to their many noble initiatives.

Last Sunday’s issue of the NY Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to electronic screen culture.  In particular, Kevin Kelly wrote an essay titled “Becoming Screen Literate,” in which he describes a new way to think about visual content:

“As moving images become easier to create, easier to store, easier to annotate and easier to combine into complex narratives, they also become easier to be remanipulated by the audience. This gives images a liquidity similar to words … They invite the same satisfying participation in both creation and consumption that the world of text does.”

This is not a proposal, it is a fact. Online media is freely circulated, re-used, etc … and most people expect this. However, many in the art world are still fighting to protect content from Google searches, bloggers and every other form of online practice.  Not only is this a loosing battle, but it is resisting a win-win situation.

The Brooklyn Museum is a practical example of how an institution can intelligently respond to this open/free culture.  Whether it be displaying their collections on their website, hosting community bloggers, video forums or sharing photos on Flickr … they have made their thinking and their content available.  This is the most effective form of advertising and it mutually deepens the experience for everyone involved.

If you have already adjusted to this mindset, you are probably bored with this topic. Still, many believe we need to guard content to “protect” artists and institutions that have worked so hard to create it.  I’m not sure what we are protecting people from, but if you have a strong opinion either way, please share.