"Rubicon" "Simon Tarr" "Torrent" "WTF"

Looking at my analytics, I discovered that people have been finding my site using the search keywords "RUBICON" "SIMON TARR" "TORRENT". This makes me happy, though a bit puzzled.

Um, you can already see Rubicon at full resolution for free at this site. Though I admit, you miss out on all the cool hidden DVD stuff, so a torrent of the DVD image would have that.

But the packaging is so pretty—the look of the print on the disc, the hidden messages in the insert. I designed it to be a whole package, and it really works and is gorgeous.

So, look. If you want the whole Rubicon thing and were going to torrent it so you can get the DVD features, but are just too hard up to buy it (you can even get it used... some people really didn't like it), drop me a line. We can work something out.

Evaluating Confirmation Bias

In Seth Godin's usual, preternaturally succinct style, in his post "How'd It Work Out", he writes:

Doctors and consultants and builders are often hesitant to ask about how something worked long after the work is done. It feels like nothing but a chance to hear a complaint.

Professors are perhaps the worst at this. So many academics have invested so much ego in how they teach what they teach, the thought of finding out years later that their underlying assumptions are wrong is terrifying.

Plus, the typical course evaluation method occurs formally at one point: at the end of the semester in which a subject is taught. But if what you are teaching is truly resonant, its effects will likely not manifest until many years down the line.

Indeed, assessing at that level requires more resources than deans are willing to commit—they'd rather staff the whole place with adjuncts, and what they want to hear from alumni is how much they are going to donate. But that's to be expected.

We as professors have to have the courage to accept that we may be fundamentally wrong in our approaches. Academics as a whole are not very good at that. We may have excellent research methods when it comes to our areas of expertise, but when it comes to curriculum design and pedagogy all that seems to fall away. At every institution I've worked, when faced with modifying curriculum, I usually find myself faced with arguing against mountains of unfounded anecdotes and isolated data points. 

What's wrong with being wrong?

Theoretical Spirit Animals

Once again, I gave my grad students a really strange writing assignment for their blogs:

I had dinner the other night with a job candidate (for a film studies professor job) and two other professors. A playful topic of conversation/parlor game came up that went something like this: "Who are your theoretical spirit animals?" How would you answer this? How might you be tempted to adjust your answer from the perspective of someone trying to get a job? How might you interpret this as the odd-person-out (e.g. An artist among theorists/historians, or a theorist among artists)? I'll share my response at the end of the week too.

I think I confused a couple folks, right off I started getting questions like "should I actually name an animal?" So, I'll work on the wording for next time. It was just such an interesting conversation—a really good job candidate and a few friends, but with the added conversational ballet of the job interview, I had to bring my grad students into it.

Anyway, I was the only maker at the table, so for me there was the immediate feeling "aw man, I get to look like the least well-read person at the table again." There's often this inferiority complex that sets in among artist-academics when we're around theorists and historians, like we have to pretend we're equally enamored with and fluent in critical studies as we are with making art. I feel it sometimes, and I fight it. That whole thing's another blog post.

Point is, here's this job candidate facing this question over dinner, knowing that even though we're clearly friendly and easy going, we're still here to pass judgment. So where do you take this? Do you choose safe influences? Do you try to toss out an theorist that might be totally unheard of?

I flashed back to my very first tenure-track job interview at Penn State, where during the job talk, someone asked me to talk about my filmmaking influences. I can't remember all the people I named, but among them were Dziga Vertov and Andy Warhol... and my explanation behind them was that I was particularly moved by filmmakers whose work was just as much a manifesto as an artwork. It was a good talk and I got the job.

But back to dinner. Names flew all over the place. Ah, of course, Foucault. Ah yes, Marks. And Marx. Begrudgingly, Derrida. Many of the theorists names I'd not read very much, some not at all, and some I had never even heard of. And I'm a pretty smart guy. Ah well. My answer that night at dinner came last, I preceded it with the caveat that these were my picks "this week." They were:

Stan Brakhage, who made me really understand how personal making art could be, and whose writing was plain spoken and curious to understand deeply.

Hollis Frampton, who could make something that was at once so beautiful, so profound, and so silly.

David Foster Wallace, who is currently captivating me with turns of phrase that are stark and devastating and perfect.

And Chick Strand, for whom genre was irrelevant, and every film felt immediate and fresh, as though it was being discovered at that exact moment.

I Use This Stuff (Mobile, part 2)

Continuing with my post about what I use on my favorite computer (my phone), now we enter the area of boring but useful. I use WeatherBug Elite, because I like to look at data and the stock weather app doesn't have enough information for me. I need maps, radar, pressure. Amazon's app is better than using the mobile website. Flashlight, because I stub my toes. Dragon dictation is good, but I don't use it. Nebulous Notes is a fantastic way to write text and sync it through Dropbox, but again, I don't use it very much because it doesn't fit my writing workflow very well.

For food, I can't say enough about Paprika. It's amazing, I use in on my phone, iPad, and laptop. It's the first thing that's been able to sync my recipes across devices, and grab recipe data easily from standard formats. If you cook, this is the one. Epicurious is good for finding new recipes, but the interface suuuuuuucks. I love Yelp for finding restaurants. Martha's recipe app is pretty good, but it's hard to get the recipes form there into Paprika to keep forever with non-Martha recipes. Yes I call her Martha. Shut up. Seafood Watch because I eat a lot of fish. I never use the Zagat app, it's not as intuitive as the books. Ness is stupid, and I deleted it.

Performing. I use TouchOSC for video performance (like TIA MAK and such), it's about as simple as an external control surface can possibly be, it sends triggers to various apps through Open Sound Control. Sonic Life is similar, but it triggers based on algorithms from Conway's Game of Life. I've not used it in a show yet. The fact that I have GarageBand on my phone melts my brain, I want to travel back in time and show it to high school me. GuitarPro could be good for displaying and organizing guitar tabs, but the method of getting tabs into it unwieldy.

Reading. All my stuff is in iBooks. I have like two Kindle books, I just don't use it. XKCD, obviously, because it's the best web comic out there. I like those two poetry apps because I like poetry.

Reference. I have always carried a copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence with me on every handheld device I've ever owned. MyGov tracks every member of Congress and every US Senator, their spending and donors, contractors in their districts, etc. Fun stuff. Your Rights is a nice little ACLU app that reminds you of your rights with respect to law enforcement. US History is fantastic! It's got every major influential document, state of the union, inaugural, and so on from the Magna Carta to present.

Movies. I need IMDB because I can't remember what else any actor has done when I'm looking at their faces. Netflix, because I need to be able to watch Spongebob at any moment. NFB, because every single amazing animation from the National Film Board of Canada is available to watch FOR FREE.

Travel. I use TripIt, it's a good service that keeps track of what I'm doing when I'm out of town. Fly Delta and Flight Track are a little redundant, but I'm anal about flights. Road Ninja sucks. City Transit, Subway Map, and Hop Stop are all to navigate the NYC transit system in different ways. I'm a subway/bus master when I'm in the city.

Finance. Nothing that amazing there, just tracking expenses and paying bills. I keep all my frequent shopper cards in Key Ring.

1 Trick Ponies. I've never actually used Skype on my phone, but you never. I use Shazam once in a blue moon when I'm in a place and need to know what the song is that's playing. I copy receipts with JotNot.

And finally, I keep stuff that I can't or don't want to throw out in Sys/Utils so they don't clutter up the rest of my screens.

And boom, that's my phone. I didn't go into what games I play (I'm simontarr on Words with Friends) because who cares. I'm planning to do one of these for my computer later on. Should amaze my students with how few apps I actually use.

Could You Rate My Films?

I need to ask you all a favor. If you've seen my movie, Rubicon, could you please rate it at Amazon? Though it's been selling pretty well, very few people go back to actually give it a rating.

There are a couple odd reviews from people who thought they were buying a different disc, and those can't get removed.

Whatever you thought of the film, I'd really appreciate it if you could spend a moment and a couple clicks to give it a rating. Especially if that just happens to be a good rating. I'm just sayin'.

And what the hell, as long as you're there... if you could do the same for Quark Star, that'd be really great too!

I Use This Stuff (Mobile, part 1)

I'm sick. My brain is not able to do anything that is complex, so while this stupid virus works its way through me, I'll do something simple that I've been planning to do for a while—an update of the stuff I use on my devices. I last did this in 2008, with one post for Mac and one for Windows. Read those for a laugh.

A couple big changes. 1.) I don't use Windows for anything except GameMaker. 2.) I use mobile devices a lot more. 3.) I use a laptop for almost everything that doesn't require 8 Xeons pounding on it. Which is to say, pretty much everything. I mean, when a laptop has a quad core i7 with the same amount of RAM, it's sort of silly (in a good way).

First up, mobile. I have an iPhone 4S, which is officially my favorite computer I've ever owned. I don't care if there are ever flying cars because we have these things now. I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan, which I don't really come close to saturating, but I really like not thinking about my usage, especially when I travel.

I've got screen shots of my various app screens, which I'll go over, and then split the posts as they get too long. I'm sure there are Android versions of most of this stuff, but I don't much care.

My current lock screen is an image of the Bacon Monster from the marvelous Laura Fisk of Fisk and Fern.

We've got bunches of her stuff all over the place. She's awesome.

Here goes. In the dock, I always have these four items, my music library, Safari, a folder with the App Store, Mail, and my settings, and finally OmniFocus. I use OmniFocus to do all my task management, syncing from my laptop to my phone. The best task management app for me, bar none. A little pricey, and a little too complicated, but it is magnificent.

Tweetbot is my twitter app of choice, ever since Twitter wrecked their own app. Yeah yeah, Facebook. Cal, Contacts, Maps, YouTube, all obvious. I use ZipList for grocery shopping, it's pretty great and I can share lists with my wife. Instapaper is, just, well, you have to try it. The service is free, but the app is paid. You use is to save the text of web pages to read later. Sounds dumb, but just try it. Squarespace is what I use to blog from my phone. Evernote (free app, paid account) is what I use as my note taking, idea dumping ground. I listen to quite a few podcasts, and Instacast is what I use to listen to them, since it manages them better than iTunes, and allows you to stream. That Pinboard icon is just a link to Pinboard.in, which is what social bookmarking should have been all along. 1Password is a must-have app for desktop and mobile. Words With Friends is only on my front page because if it's not, then I forget to take my turns, even though I'm going to lose anyway (my username is simontarr).

My second page is the camera page. I never use the stock camera app unless I'm using the quick shoot from the lock screen. Camera+ is my go-to image taking app, it's got excellent control and is super-precise. Why use ProCamera, then? It is the Camera+ of video. If I'd known about it first, I'd probably only use that, but it doesn't have a volum-control-as-shutter option. Instagram is marvelous. Incredibooth is stupid but cute and free. 360 is my favorite pano photo app, and you can (imagine!) save the images and look at them elsewhere! Flickr's app sucks, and I'll stop using it when my Flickr account expires and i don't renew it. SketchBook Mobile is my favorite sketching app, but to be honest, I usually just use paper and pen. I don't know why CarMinder is on this page. I bought it to keep track of car service, but I haven't been diligent about it.

Then there's my video folder. 8mm is cute but dumb, I never use it. iMovie is... well... come on. I still can't believe I can edit 1080p video on my phone. Vimeo's app is ok. JJ Abrams' Action Movie makes me giggle every time I use it.

Size Matters

In a given year, the biggest class I teach is about 100 students (intro students learning not to drool on the computers). The smallest is 8 (grad students learning not to drool on each other).

Ever since I was a little baby art professor, it has been standard procedure to bitch and moan about class sizes. Like, "how dare they put 18 people in a 16 person class!"

I exclusively teach artmaking, so the concept of teaching something over 45 students was unthinkable to me until I adapted the fundamentals class in digital art into its current form of 100 people making things.

I'm not going to talk about credit hour economics in this piece, I swear. And I'm not going to describe the process rationale behind the change from a traditional make-digital-stuff course into the humongous thing it is now. Those are interesting, but for later.

There's this assumption when I talk to people about the big class that it is some necessary evil that I would eject in a heartbeat were I at a richer school or in a different economic time. That the one best pedagogical model for making art is a small circle of no more than a dozen apprentices sitting at the feet of the master. Not true.

This is a long way around to my point, which is this: size matters, but not in an obvious way. This dawned on me this morning as I thought about the wacky array of courses I taught this year. My Big Class is always a great class. I always have a great time teaching it, and though I hit a bump from time to time if I misjudge something, it evens out and goes well. But why? Because there are so many student in the class, that statistically the composition of each class is about the same. There will always be a certain percentage of on-the-ball superacheivers, soul-searchers, just-gimme-the-graders, I'm-smarter-than-you-ers, prodigies, geniuses, and doofuses. There are slight variations, but the character of the mix is remarkably stable.

Whenever I get a really good or interesting class, like my teeny-tiny grad seminar, I have this anxiety that I will never be able to replicate the experience for future students. Like a great music performance, you can mimic it, but you'll never catch the lightning in the bottle again. With so few people, the entire feel depends on the chemistry of the players.

So much of the teaching I do is in the large setting where I can could on my designs working pretty much no matter what. It makes it so clear in a small seminar how much actual knowledge is created by the group and not dictated the professor. Very unnerving to have proof of how little control a teacher actually has. Unnerving and lovely.