I believe in truth and energy and that one can sense these as they shift. The feeling is like a wave cresting: a flowmotion form that reflects its surroundings while establishing a novel case that redistributes prior categories.
It does help to be a rich and fancy person with the leisure and space to savor the play of mind modeling panoplies of form, but privilege and social position are also attended by distraction and inanity that disrupt one's realization of broadly intelligible and human stuff.
There is cultural value in time spent obscurely, in tracking particular courses that may be some times crowded and other times lonely. There is resonance in making life choices that have the heft of hearty chunks of a whole life, not just the glittering moments.
It's not just about waiting for your audience/market to grow up and get bank. It's about how toiling on, or standing in contradistiction to the general image of one's time, contributes to and shapes the reception and meaning of one's productive practice.
But the hating on people for getting money for "nothing" reads as sour grapes. I'm not a fan or reader of Penny Arcade but those guys have been working at that shit HARD for a very long time. You want to get paid for nothing? Do consistant work for 5+ years in a way that speaks to the people in your community... then you can get paid for "nothing" too.
Why do we get mad when people we don't know give money to people we don't know for reasons we don't understand? This happens to me too.
The fan club used to be a thing. A fan would pay for a membership just to have something with their name and their idol's name on it at the same time.
This fee includes a membership card, occasional newsletters, and most importantly.... THE AUTOGRAPHED GLOSSY.
Obviously this needs to be tweaked according to the type of fan you have. Some people have fans for whom the autographed glossy is a highly charged object of a sexual nature. Some people have fans for whom the sexual charge has been presumably sublimated into some kind of intellectual prerogative.
Times have changed, but our nature hasn't changed. Sex, empathy, and authority are still the name of the game and the factor to be exploited.
My point is, I believe we as a people could do well to recall the fan club model.
"alls im saying is, we have reached critical self awareness of crowd funding / value dialectics"
as i wait for my chicken to bake and the go see jpa do his thang and maybe sit in on guitar solos, and to avoid thinking about how long i've known jpa and how long we been playin musics and how old we are all getting and blah blah blah... let me dissect this sentence for fun and hopeful funniness and also to type and ramble because i quit smoking and all i do is ramble and type now:
"alls im saying is" In summation of all of my previous thoughts upon the subject of this thread
"we" we, as in the collective internet consciousness of people who would spend enough time on the internet to be on UHX, a general pool, a general net, a WE in the grand tradition of vague "we"s a very lazy and loose "we" an intellectually non-rigorous "we".
"have reached" it seems that there is some evidence based on the links provided by people, things i have talked about with other people irl, as evidence in that one company's self aware kickstarter, the other person's indiegogo, the wtf aspect of that one lady getting 1 million to make an album because she showed some artist boob, etc etc
"critical self-awareness"
the point at which we collectively become aware of what was previously not seen as a pattern when that lazy "we" starts to float over that subjective nowness with a more objective perspective some people call that sort of objectivity of one's self, or collected selves, a "critical" view, others might say "self-awareness" i used both cause like fuck it it sounds maybe smarter to put them both in there?
of crowd-funding vs value dialectics
crowd-funding ie kickstarter, indiegogo the other sites out there that u can google for a list of, all of which are ways for you to get funding, either in escrow set ups or just straight donation set-ups, etc etc the concept of crowd-funding i think we all understand
but like we are talking about value-added tiered systems wherein "if u gimme this much i give u a t-shirt"
at first we might have been like "oh boy this band/entrepeneur/inventer/craft person has such a good idea and i want to feel good by giving them just a little bit of money and wow if we ALL just gave a little bit do u see how much and how big this could really be??? oh boy social networking and crowdsourcing are such powerful new methods of monetizing and funding creative projects in this new digital age and are disrupting the old systems and old filters and i feel like i am a BIG PART of something, maybe just one $5 to $50 cog, but look at those progress reports! they are really gonna make that pewter bottle cap bike pedal mp3 cd album framed vintage whatever whatever!!! yay for all of us together this is so awesome......" three weeks to three months go by and then we get an email "hey thanks again for donating here is your free file/jpg t-shirt" and we are llike "yeah its cool to have the token but the real reward was the GIVING"
and then after a while we're like
"WHOOOA EVVVERY DAY someone has an awesome kickstarter on my facebook wall! this is really catching on! im excited!
and then after another while we're like
"whoa all the bands have the same shit: $5 file, $20 shirt and CD, $40 LP, $100 skype concert, $400 thanks mom we know u sent us the $400, $1500 we will play for you [travel not included].... hmm this is getting kinda weird"
and then after another little while yr like
"do u think people are just sitting around at bars and shows talking about how maybe they should start a kickstarter like that one friend of a friend at the other side of the room did and i wonder how they spent the money and should i have just given pennys a day to make it safe for that dirty third world girl to drink the water and go to school instead of paid for this fucking hipster to make another fucking chillwave CD or what"
and then yr like
"i think im gonna make a joke, or at least laugh at a joke about kickstarter"
and then yr like
yeah but damn people still be making money tho, yo
and then yr like
critically self aware of the crowd-funding vs value dialectic
They volleyed the ball on the Scientology thread too.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a themed cocktail party that was just about Scientology and Kickstarter? Half the guests would come dressed as their favorite Scientology stars and the other half would try to recruit them for their favorite Kickstarter pitches.
(K-Dawg and I would break off and argue about Eric Holder anyway.)
I read this thread really quickly, I might repeat some of the stuff others have already said, but I really wanted to chime in. As much as I am glad Kickstarter exists, as much as I like the fact that there is a convenient place where a "community of people" can give money to an artist whom they find to be deserving, I also feel scared of the effects Kickstarter has in the way people interact with art, as if it was merely a commodity. I am afraid that Kickstarter is becoming one of the only option for a community to actively support an artist. The existence of Kickstarter makes the need for government, state and city funding for the arts less important seeming. It's also a bit of a free for all. When you get a grant usually there is a panel of your peers choosing projects based on the quality/worthiness of the work presented. I think that kind of feedback can be pretty crucial in an artist's evolution. With Kickstarter, it's really anybody making whatever, but also a bit of a popularity/hype contest. Which is not what art should be about. I think the point made by Frogtor about not enjoying being trapped creatively and having to meet certain expectations from your backer is important. Art is not about "I will make you 25 minutes of music", there should be more freedom in there to change your mind and make something else of value, you might make something so much more amazing on a whim than you would if you had been super prepared ahead of time. And I feel like a lot of the artists who's Kickstarters I have backed must be feeling this way because from many of them I have yet to see ANYTHING. It's weird to give someone fifty bucks and be given a super ugly t-shirt and never hear back from them again. And owls has a good point, too. People who come from money have it made in the art world. I'd like to think of myself as one of those people who have worked pretty hard since I was young. I started doing this as a teenager and didn't go to art school because I was in such a hurry to make things. And I lived off nearly nothing for many years and I have no regrets. Honestly it wasn't that hard. Like owls said, young people have the energy to do this. But I do remember being in social settings, wearing my clothes that pretty much came straight out of trash cans, and looking around the room to find that other people my age obviously had some form of parental help: their pants looked nice and well-fitting. One thing I did have going for me is Canada. Canada, at least up until the Harper government came into power, had funding for its artists. And the three grants I applied for were successful. The first one, when I was nineteen, pretty much saved my life and has kept me on a good track since.
And now we are back around to arts patronage! This is what arts patronage has always been about. Having a patron so you can be free to pursue your art.
Historically, the artists who resisted the system of patronage (Mozart, e.g.) had a really fucking hard time. The flip side of patronage is you are beholden to some idiot who has no idea what he's talking about. Like Mozart having to spend the vast majority of his time giving harpsichord lessons to rich people's shitty kids. He hated it so much and really resented having to do it, so he intentionally did a bad job and was an asshole. He died penniless, in debt, unappreciated, and of the plague. He is buried in a mass grave in some unmarked pauper's cemetery! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!
Then in the 19th century when dudes decided to truly get out from under the patronage system, this led to the creation of the public concert tradition, which is the system we still live in today. And at first it was like, wow, how cool is this, that you can just put on a concert and CHARGE ADMISSION and anyone who wants to can come! Now we are truly free!
Except OOPS, actually all they did was exchange one financial hegemon (some rich asshole) for another (the stupid-ass public). Now instead of being beholden to one guy they were beholden to "the audience." And they ended up just as resentful and pissed off as dudes in the past. And just as poor.
Jeebus: "One of the company’s three co-founders, Yancey Strickler, said that Kickstarter is on track to distribute over $150 million dollars to its users’ projects in 2012, or more than entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), which was $146 million."
It's really depressing that the entire yearly budget for the NEA is less than $150 million.
I for one am not surprised that Kickstarter has given more money to artists than the National Endowment for the Arts in the same way I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that all book sales on Amazon over a certain period add up to an amount higher than the combined total amount of money made by all independent American bookstores over that same period. I mean, I have no idea what the numbers are, and I have a hunch that bookstores still make more money than Amazon, but if I was to discover that Amazon makes more I wouldn't be shocked. Our friend pointed out that Kickstarter is becoming very important at funding certain types of technology and design. I think that is going to continue growing. Another friend told us that she knows a guy who has gotten a Kickstarter for each of his last three albums, that to me is a sure sign that soon people's patience will wear thin. Don't abuse the system, you'll make things worse for the others who haven't had their chance yet...
My personal solution is to underline how important it is to pay for certain kinds of things whatever chance I get. When people don't pay for a camp site, or steal from a small town health food store I call them "turds" to their face. From now on whenever someone spills out the contents of their penny jar while giggling as they try to get into a show I am going to say "No, you can't get in.". I'll happily give someone a break or make a deal with them if I can gauge that they are legit, but I have gotten pretty fucking sick of flakes.
Supporting the arts doesn't just mean that you should be the one that's being supported. I'd be curious to hear how well those "donate" buttons work on people's websites. I'd happily give more to people who's work I am really into.
ok guys, sorry to bug, but just a little reminder that there are just 10 days left until August 1st, which is when my rent and utilities are due. If you haven't already donated a month's rent/food/utilities to me please consider doing it now.
I have a donate (I just accidentally wrote "donut", mmmmm) button on my site that I sort of forgot about.
I put it there when I was actively trying to raise a little scratch for film, I think related to a trip I was taking. I have made probably just two, maybe three requests for donations related to special projects, and everyone who donates gets prints in the mail. It has worked really well for me... I never needed more than a *little* extra to make something happen, and was/continue to be humbled at my community's willingness to support me.
That being said, I'll probably take that donate button down soon because it's just random and weird to have a general request for money hanging out on my page. Not that I would turn down money for art, but the flaccid sad little donate bar is unnecessary.
I wonder about Kickstarter going to pieces before I ever get to use it! Like, we'll all get so tired of contributing to/being inundated with increasingly stupid or boring projects that we'll all hate Kickstarter and think it's gross.
I haven't had a specific project that needs funding, and what I need funding most of all is GEAR. Where's the gear grant???
Using Kickstarter to cover costs incurred months before fundraiser occurs: OK or weird?
With a grant, I think it is maybe normal to use it to pay bills (I've heard some artists with grants say that even though the grant specifies new work/proposals, the thing that is done is that finished work is submitted, so the grant covers your past expenses). With Kickstarter, the expectation might be different just by virtue of its being based on social/public goodwill. You have a more personal obligation to people. Thoughts?
I think how you use the funds is up to you. The important thing is that a) you supply all your rewards and b) you make a good faith effort to complete the project.
I've given to many projects and I'm bummed out by delays or failed projects. That happens and hey, at most I maybe gave $100? Probably more like $20. So no biggie.
the_owls , it is funny because this is the same dilemma that nonprofit arts orgs always face: it's always way easier to get project-specific funding instead of general operating support which is what most arts organizations really need.
Man, I hope I've never bummed anyone out with my projects or rewards. I always feel really weird and nervous about receiving crowd funding... you gotta do a good job because someone gave you billz to try!
Amazing just to hear John K say "a cola-like substance," but it is also cool to see how an old pro handles this fundraising medium. The goal is $110,000. His video is really simple and mostly contains him looking in the camera and 'splainin.' He shows the viewer that he and a team are already quite prepared to execute a final project: they show the storyboards and layouts. But then, to really make you feel super involved, he takes you through a joke and then "live" draws the punch line. So it really makes it feel like if you throw your change in the hat, you will definitely see something really specific occur that you will have been a part of. He is drawing it for you! Plus, he really explains the project in a personal way. So you feel like you are not just making art... you are helping out one specific person.
I think that crowd funding as a concept is awesome. Even more, I think it is required, at least some of the time. It can make a community aware of what is happening under their nose and also give that community the sense that the art belongs to them a little bit. I do think that it shouldn't be all about crowd funding and certainly not all about Kickstarter. Mikey: I know what you mean about delays and failures and maybe losing $20 to $100 but I feel like artists who get grants, or crowd funding under any other form, owe it to other creative people in similar situations to make something out of that cash. There are many people who'd be too happy to use those failures as legitimate reasoning for shutting it all down. Flaking is lame.
I am currently living off a grant and technically I have accomplished what I told the people who gave me that grant, but I am waiting to be done with this whole other aspect of the project, to sort of impress the jury. "You gave me money for a book, look, I found a publisher to put it out in another language.". I am about a year late on what I had written in my application, but I am going to add all these other things I made to the package and I know they'll be pleased to see that I really stretched my resources.
The ethics of being funded by your community (according to me): -You should be able to change your mind about your project along the way as long as the results are of equal value. -It's ok to be late as long as you can justify it with evidence that you've been working your ass off. -Always give a final report. -Words like "Kickstarter" and "young artist" lead me to believe that you see this opportunity as a way to help you find some sturdier grounds from which to build your career. That means your life quality should be slightly improved after you've made the thing you got the funds for. Your proposal should allow you to grow.
owls: I think it's totally fine to ask for money for gear. In fact I've seen it in people's Kickstarters. "I want to make this, for me to make this I need to buy this type of camera.
Comments
I believe in truth and energy and that one can sense these as they shift. The feeling is like a wave cresting: a flowmotion form that reflects its surroundings while establishing a novel case that redistributes prior categories.
It does help to be a rich and fancy person with the leisure and space to savor the play of mind modeling panoplies of form, but privilege and social position are also attended by distraction and inanity that disrupt one's realization of broadly intelligible and human stuff.
There is cultural value in time spent obscurely, in tracking particular courses that may be some times crowded and other times lonely. There is resonance in making life choices that have the heft of hearty chunks of a whole life, not just the glittering moments.
Time is the medium of mortal choice.
diminishing returns tho
how they gonna make their next buck tho
http://www.indiegogo.com/penis-arcade
But the hating on people for getting money for "nothing" reads as sour grapes. I'm not a fan or reader of Penny Arcade but those guys have been working at that shit HARD for a very long time. You want to get paid for nothing? Do consistant work for 5+ years in a way that speaks to the people in your community... then you can get paid for "nothing" too.
Why do we get mad when people we don't know give money to people we don't know for reasons we don't understand? This happens to me too.
What about the fan club?
The fan club used to be a thing.
A fan would pay for a membership just to have something with their name and their idol's name on it at the same time.
This fee includes a membership card, occasional newsletters, and most importantly.... THE AUTOGRAPHED GLOSSY.
Obviously this needs to be tweaked according to the type of fan you have.
Some people have fans for whom the autographed glossy is a highly charged object of a sexual nature. Some people have fans for whom the sexual charge has been presumably sublimated into some kind of intellectual prerogative.
Times have changed, but our nature hasn't changed. Sex, empathy, and authority are still the name of the game and the factor to be exploited.
My point is, I believe we as a people could do well to recall the fan club model.
alls im saying is, we have reached critical self awareness of crowd funding / value dialectics
I don't know what this means. Please go on...
What information could possibly be special or exclusive?
Everyone has a twitter!
For $29/yr. Michael Buble will happily answer that question for you.
as i wait for my chicken to bake and the go see jpa do his thang and maybe sit in on guitar solos, and to avoid thinking about how long i've known jpa and how long we been playin musics and how old we are all getting and blah blah blah... let me dissect this sentence for fun and hopeful funniness and also to type and ramble because i quit smoking and all i do is ramble and type now:
"alls im saying is"
In summation of all of my previous thoughts upon the subject of this thread
"we"
we, as in the collective internet consciousness of people who would spend enough time on the internet to be on UHX, a general pool, a general net, a WE in the grand tradition of vague "we"s
a very lazy and loose "we"
an intellectually non-rigorous "we".
"have reached"
it seems that there is some evidence based on the links provided by people, things i have talked about with other people irl, as evidence in that one company's self aware kickstarter, the other person's indiegogo, the wtf aspect of that one lady getting 1 million to make an album because she showed some artist boob, etc etc
"critical self-awareness"
the point at which we collectively become aware of what was previously not seen as a pattern
when that lazy "we" starts to float over that subjective nowness with a more objective perspective
some people call that sort of objectivity of one's self, or collected selves, a "critical" view, others might say "self-awareness"
i used both cause like fuck it it sounds maybe smarter to put them both in there?
of crowd-funding vs value dialectics
crowd-funding ie kickstarter, indiegogo the other sites out there that u can google for a list of, all of which are ways for you to get funding, either in escrow set ups or just straight donation set-ups, etc etc
the concept of crowd-funding i think we all understand
but like we are talking about value-added tiered systems wherein "if u gimme this much i give u a t-shirt"
at first we might have been like
"oh boy this band/entrepeneur/inventer/craft person has such a good idea and i want to feel good by giving them just a little bit of money and wow if we ALL just gave a little bit do u see how much and how big this could really be??? oh boy social networking and crowdsourcing are such powerful new methods of monetizing and funding creative projects in this new digital age and are disrupting the old systems and old filters and i feel like i am a BIG PART of something, maybe just one $5 to $50 cog, but look at those progress reports! they are really gonna make that pewter bottle cap bike pedal mp3 cd album framed vintage whatever whatever!!! yay for all of us together this is so awesome......" three weeks to three months go by and then we get an email "hey thanks again for donating here is your free file/jpg t-shirt" and we are llike "yeah its cool to have the token but the real reward was the GIVING"
and then after a while we're like
"WHOOOA EVVVERY DAY someone has an awesome kickstarter on my facebook wall! this is really catching on! im excited!
and then after another while we're like
"whoa all the bands have the same shit: $5 file, $20 shirt and CD, $40 LP, $100 skype concert, $400 thanks mom we know u sent us the $400, $1500 we will play for you [travel not included].... hmm this is getting kinda weird"
and then after another little while yr like
"do u think people are just sitting around at bars and shows talking about how maybe they should start a kickstarter like that one friend of a friend at the other side of the room did and i wonder how they spent the money and should i have just given pennys a day to make it safe for that dirty third world girl to drink the water and go to school instead of paid for this fucking hipster to make another fucking chillwave CD or what"
and then yr like
"i think im gonna make a joke, or at least laugh at a joke about kickstarter"
and then yr like
yeah but damn people still be making money tho, yo
and then yr like
critically self aware of the crowd-funding vs value dialectic
Wouldn't it be cool to have a themed cocktail party that was just about Scientology and Kickstarter? Half the guests would come dressed as their favorite Scientology stars and the other half would try to recruit them for their favorite Kickstarter pitches.
(K-Dawg and I would break off and argue about Eric Holder anyway.)
5 to 9:30am
only on
680 AM the Fire
As much as I am glad Kickstarter exists, as much as I like the fact that there is a convenient place where a "community of people" can give money to an artist whom they find to be deserving, I also feel scared of the effects Kickstarter has in the way people interact with art, as if it was merely a commodity.
I am afraid that Kickstarter is becoming one of the only option for a community to actively support an artist. The existence of Kickstarter makes the need for government, state and city funding for the arts less important seeming. It's also a bit of a free for all. When you get a grant usually there is a panel of your peers choosing projects based on the quality/worthiness of the work presented. I think that kind of feedback can be pretty crucial in an artist's evolution. With Kickstarter, it's really anybody making whatever, but also a bit of a popularity/hype contest. Which is not what art should be about.
I think the point made by Frogtor about not enjoying being trapped creatively and having to meet certain expectations from your backer is important. Art is not about "I will make you 25 minutes of music", there should be more freedom in there to change your mind and make something else of value, you might make something so much more amazing on a whim than you would if you had been super prepared ahead of time.
And I feel like a lot of the artists who's Kickstarters I have backed must be feeling this way because from many of them I have yet to see ANYTHING. It's weird to give someone fifty bucks and be given a super ugly t-shirt and never hear back from them again.
And owls has a good point, too. People who come from money have it made in the art world. I'd like to think of myself as one of those people who have worked pretty hard since I was young. I started doing this as a teenager and didn't go to art school because I was in such a hurry to make things. And I lived off nearly nothing for many years and I have no regrets. Honestly it wasn't that hard. Like owls said, young people have the energy to do this. But I do remember being in social settings, wearing my clothes that pretty much came straight out of trash cans, and looking around the room to find that other people my age obviously had some form of parental help: their pants looked nice and well-fitting.
One thing I did have going for me is Canada. Canada, at least up until the Harper government came into power, had funding for its artists. And the three grants I applied for were successful. The first one, when I was nineteen, pretty much saved my life and has kept me on a good track since.
It makes sense that if you have financial security you can be more free to pursue your artistic endeavors.
I often think of what someone told me that KDC said. Something like "I'd rather live in my car..." That often gives me a sort of hope.
Historically, the artists who resisted the system of patronage (Mozart, e.g.) had a really fucking hard time. The flip side of patronage is you are beholden to some idiot who has no idea what he's talking about. Like Mozart having to spend the vast majority of his time giving harpsichord lessons to rich people's shitty kids. He hated it so much and really resented having to do it, so he intentionally did a bad job and was an asshole. He died penniless, in debt, unappreciated, and of the plague. He is buried in a mass grave in some unmarked pauper's cemetery! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!
Then in the 19th century when dudes decided to truly get out from under the patronage system, this led to the creation of the public concert tradition, which is the system we still live in today. And at first it was like, wow, how cool is this, that you can just put on a concert and CHARGE ADMISSION and anyone who wants to can come! Now we are truly free!
Except OOPS, actually all they did was exchange one financial hegemon (some rich asshole) for another (the stupid-ass public). Now instead of being beholden to one guy they were beholden to "the audience." And they ended up just as resentful and pissed off as dudes in the past. And just as poor.
And so here we are!
YOU CAN'T WIN FOR TRYING
Someone I know just just finished the original version of a book they had been working on for three years. Now to finish translating it in English.
Jeebus:
"One of the company’s three co-founders, Yancey Strickler, said that Kickstarter is on track to distribute over $150 million dollars to its users’ projects in 2012, or more than entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), which was $146 million."
It's really depressing that the entire yearly budget for the NEA is less than $150 million.
Our friend pointed out that Kickstarter is becoming very important at funding certain types of technology and design. I think that is going to continue growing. Another friend told us that she knows a guy who has gotten a Kickstarter for each of his last three albums, that to me is a sure sign that soon people's patience will wear thin. Don't abuse the system, you'll make things worse for the others who haven't had their chance yet...
My personal solution is to underline how important it is to pay for certain kinds of things whatever chance I get. When people don't pay for a camp site, or steal from a small town health food store I call them "turds" to their face. From now on whenever someone spills out the contents of their penny jar while giggling as they try to get into a show I am going to say "No, you can't get in.". I'll happily give someone a break or make a deal with them if I can gauge that they are legit, but I have gotten pretty fucking sick of flakes.
Supporting the arts doesn't just mean that you should be the one that's being supported. I'd be curious to hear how well those "donate" buttons work on people's websites. I'd happily give more to people who's work I am really into.
strong call
WHAT?
I put it there when I was actively trying to raise a little scratch for film, I think related to a trip I was taking. I have made probably just two, maybe three requests for donations related to special projects, and everyone who donates gets prints in the mail. It has worked really well for me... I never needed more than a *little* extra to make something happen, and was/continue to be humbled at my community's willingness to support me.
That being said, I'll probably take that donate button down soon because it's just random and weird to have a general request for money hanging out on my page. Not that I would turn down money for art, but the flaccid sad little donate bar is unnecessary.
I wonder about Kickstarter going to pieces before I ever get to use it!
Like, we'll all get so tired of contributing to/being inundated with increasingly stupid or boring projects that we'll all hate Kickstarter and think it's gross.
I haven't had a specific project that needs funding, and what I need funding most of all is GEAR. Where's the gear grant???
Using Kickstarter to cover costs incurred months before fundraiser occurs: OK or weird?
With a grant, I think it is maybe normal to use it to pay bills (I've heard some artists with grants say that even though the grant specifies new work/proposals, the thing that is done is that finished work is submitted, so the grant covers your past expenses). With Kickstarter, the expectation might be different just by virtue of its being based on social/public goodwill. You have a more personal obligation to people. Thoughts?
I've given to many projects and I'm bummed out by delays or failed projects. That happens and hey, at most I maybe gave $100? Probably more like $20. So no biggie.
Should we start a Fart startup... a Fartup?
Amazing just to hear John K say "a cola-like substance," but it is also cool to see how an old pro handles this fundraising medium. The goal is $110,000. His video is really simple and mostly contains him looking in the camera and 'splainin.' He shows the viewer that he and a team are already quite prepared to execute a final project: they show the storyboards and layouts. But then, to really make you feel super involved, he takes you through a joke and then "live" draws the punch line. So it really makes it feel like if you throw your change in the hat, you will definitely see something really specific occur that you will have been a part of. He is drawing it for you! Plus, he really explains the project in a personal way. So you feel like you are not just making art... you are helping out one specific person.
I do think that it shouldn't be all about crowd funding and certainly not all about Kickstarter.
Mikey: I know what you mean about delays and failures and maybe losing $20 to $100 but I feel like artists who get grants, or crowd funding under any other form, owe it to other creative people in similar situations to make something out of that cash. There are many people who'd be too happy to use those failures as legitimate reasoning for shutting it all down. Flaking is lame.
I am currently living off a grant and technically I have accomplished what I told the people who gave me that grant, but I am waiting to be done with this whole other aspect of the project, to sort of impress the jury. "You gave me money for a book, look, I found a publisher to put it out in another language.". I am about a year late on what I had written in my application, but I am going to add all these other things I made to the package and I know they'll be pleased to see that I really stretched my resources.
The ethics of being funded by your community (according to me):
-You should be able to change your mind about your project along the way as long as the results are of equal value.
-It's ok to be late as long as you can justify it with evidence that you've been working your ass off.
-Always give a final report.
-Words like "Kickstarter" and "young artist" lead me to believe that you see this opportunity as a way to help you find some sturdier grounds from which to build your career. That means your life quality should be slightly improved after you've made the thing you got the funds for. Your proposal should allow you to grow.
owls: I think it's totally fine to ask for money for gear. In fact I've seen it in people's Kickstarters. "I want to make this, for me to make this I need to buy this type of camera.