ThoughtSpurs

There has been a furor. The popular TradeMe auction site has banned some painters from listing their works on the site. Their reasoning: the paintings are not the artist’s own work. They, it has been argued, breach the copyright of a photographer. This raises an interesting question about the nature of copyright and what constitutes art. There are other issues relating to trade descriptions of the work, but for the purpose of this discussion I will set that aside. Here's the bully: Painter sources an image published on the internet he models an oil painting on the photo, making little or no alteration to the composition of the image. At first glance you might think the images were the same. But only at first glance. One, you see, is a record of a landscape created using a scientific instrument and some chemical processes. The other is a painting. There is little artistry in the work that is, in fact, the photographer's own. He has made a record of a scene. One might argue that ...

I've just watched a terrific DVD. Eric Clapton talking about and performing the music on his tribute to Robert Johnson. Click Here to find out more All of my life I've loved the blues as a musical genre. I've never really understood why it it made me feel better. Until recently that is. I mean, when you're down you have to have some way of releasing it or it's just going to burst a seam somewhere. For some people excercise works, other find solace in meditation (which I have just begun to try with results ranging from falling asleep to something nearing an ecstatic release. Just learning to quiten down the chatter in my head without distraction is something of a mission). Clapton's music has given me an idea which I'll be pursuing through this week. I'll keep you posted. If you're interested in the blues you might also like to check out the music of John Hammond, I have been listening to his album - featuring the songs of Tom Waits Wicked Grin (also ...

Let me tell you now that I have never felt worse, and that is why my blog has been erratic. My health seems at a low ebb and, ironically I am becoming more and more involved in the rather strange world of Integrative Medicine (IM). Ok, holistic, dammit. I would rather avoid that term because it conjures associations that are somewhat misleading. As the publisher of Wellspring , a project I rather fell into, I have had a great deal of contact with practitioners involved in anything from Aura Soma to Zero Balancing and have, by and large, been impressed with their professionalism and commitment to making a difference in the lives of their clients. The problem is this: the entire category of wellness and complementary medicine is fraught with misconception, mistrust and a lack of common ground between conventional or alopathic medicine and everybody else. I have found that, just as you cannot separate out the body / mind connection from the complete picture of an individual's health a...

This week two new media properties I have been developing go to air. The first is IN2IT, an infomerical along the lines of Family Health Diary and Eating Well, both concepts I developed for brandWorld - the company I co-founded in 1996 and sold in 2000. I continue to work with the company helping develop these innovative media solutions. It's not high art, but it is my art. The second is TXT2TASTE, which I didn't conceive, but have been consulting with the agency, Publicis Mojo to help steer the project. I like the innovation of the Mojo idea. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays to consumers - teaching them to behave in new ways. I have also been working on some truly weird permutations of the infomercial concept - I'll share more with you later. But for now I'm just playing with some ideas that should be very different in this category. I'm beginning to wonder how many of the genre can run before consumers become immune or resistant. Time will tell. I...

Tomorrow I am speaking at a conference on the subject of integrative health - I guess in may capacity as the creator of the Family Health Diary and publisher of WellSpring. It will be an interesting day, attended by a spectrum of wellness professionals from general practitioners and chiropractors to pharmacists and naturopaths. Should be fun. I have prepared some material that should put the cat amongst the pigeons. I guess one of my greatest concerns about the concept of integration is that human nature always has a negative effect. Rather than a harmonious, homogeneous whole forming, there tends to be territorialism and power plays. In the mid 90s I sold my business to a larger agency that promoted an integrated model. "We can", they said"take care of all of your communications requirements." At which point they would reveal an organisational chart that, for all intent and purpose, looked like a multi -tentacled kraaken grasping at every budget morsel that was ava...

I don't revel in the misery of others. I watched the footage of Caroline Marcil on TV One's late night news broadcast. Caroline was asked to sing the national anthems at an exhibition game between the Canadian and U.S. national teams in Quebec City. Two lines into The Star Spangled Banner, Marcil appeared to forget the lyrics and left the ice briefly. When she returned with a lyric sheet in her hand, she slipped on the ice and fell hard. By then the crowd was booing loudly. Totally humiliated, she gave up on the performance. The game went ahead without the singing of anthems. I felt bad that we subject someone who obviously has talent to international humiliation by media. The sniggering of the show's minor talent hosts was worse than the item. I felt embarrassed for them. I fail to see how Kate Hawkesby's talent for reading from an autocue and being a fashion manque would ever work with The One & Only framework. Perhaps the Brazilian channel Globo have got it righ...

It has been a slow week for blog posts. I've been distracted with real world matters - moving house, school holidays. Going through my inbox this morning I found a regular mail that spots consumer trends. The latest issue talk about Generation C - consumers who want to have direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them. Access to media ranging from the ability to send stills and movies from a humble PXT phone to sophisticated movie making with digital video and PC based editing software gives anyone with access to quite low cost technology the ability to create and transmit ideas with no friction at all. The web gives us all an audience. Some of the most popular expressions of access and creativity have been where consumers create advertising for companies - such as the Converse movie gallery. The big question this raises is, what does the future hold for ad agency creatives when literally everyone and anyone has access to both the medium and the message? Brand ow...