Social media slippage

    I've been having a tug-of-war regarding social media and how to deal with it lately. As per usual when we travel for vacation, I limit my social media activity and stay off of the phone as much as possible. I love just being in the moment and enjoying whatever I'm doing and wherever I am without thinking about posting something. I got over that habit a while ago. Every now and then I have to remind myself  of this when I'm in my everyday life, for example, when I go to gallery or museum exhibitions. "There are no photos that I can take that will be nearly as good as the ones that the gallery or institution will have", is what I say to myself. I'll still take a few photos, but only after having looked at and experienced the work without the mediation of the phone camera. 

    On the latest trip to Mexico, one of my goals was to read much more and I did. I actually finished one book (Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler) and read through 3/4 of the other one (Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson) before returning home. I took plenty of photos, but didn't post any of them, and still haven't. I would check in on my social channels periodically,usually in the morning for a few minutes, mostly IG and Threads, Zuckerberg's new alternative to what used to be Twitter (now "X"). I didn't look at Facebook and LinkedIn at all. 

    In general, I've been feeling burnt out on social media as an artist because the algorithms are stacked against the user, unless you pay to promote your posts. As I've said elsewhere, most social media is run by capitalists whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth and monetization of everyone who uses the platforms. In order to maintain cash flow and keep users roped in, the algorithms continuously change and we are told that we have to basically be online 24/7 engaging with the platform. Like casinos, social media is structured so that the house always wins. 

    I don't know if there's a way around that and quite frankly, I'm done with trying to figure any of it out. I mainly use social media in an attempt to broaden the range of people who are aware of my work. I have come to find, and I think many of us who pay attention to how platforms work, that most of the people I connect to online are other artists and to a lesser extent, curators and some galleries. I've come to find that online activity for artists (posting work images, making reels of your practice and shows, etc...) only goes so far mainly because of the fleeting nature of people scrolling and how your posts are pushed out (or not) by the algorithms. When I post on my IG story feed, I can guess almost all of the people who have seen it before I look at the activity list under that post and it's pretty consistently the same and barely 2-3% of the accounts that follow me and that I engage with. There is no longer any kind of "organic" reach-we're siloed in. It takes a lot to produce posts and other content for social media and the return is next to nothing. We're giving Meta free labor AND content. 

    We're roped in by the POTENTIAL of gaining followers, getting shows and more through social media, but the reality is that real life interactions run the show-social media is only a tool and a good tool, if you are at least somewhat intentional about your engagement with it. I like to share all sorts of things, but mainly keep it to art-related things with the occasional dash of cats and other regular life moments here and there. After experiencing my IG being hacked last year and the building burnout I'm feeling from it, I'm on another wave of reevaluating my use of socials. For all of August, I've been trying to keep my engagement to a minimum in an effort to retool my usage and specifically how much I use it as a distraction. Over the past month, I've only posted on my story feed and mainly reposted memes and other things from different accounts. Since I read so much on my vacation, I've been making sure that I spend more time reading than scrolling on my phone. I still look at my feeds during the day, but much less than I was before going away. 

    I've been sharing a bit on Threads, but in a different way than on IG. Since Threads is supposed to be more like the app formerly known as Twitter, I take a more relaxed and open approach to posting there. Engagement so far seems a little more organic. When people I follow reply to something, that post will get pushed to me and I have a chance to follow a new account, if it seems interesting to me. I like this approach and right now, there's no ads (I'm sure they're coming) and minimal functionality, but it feels less cumbersome and over the top than other platforms. There's more to come about my evolving relationship with social media, but more later. 

TM

    

   

 

How long...?

Detail of No Way Out (2022)

[The following is copied verbatim from a recent social media post I made last week. I felt like it needed to be enshrined here, too]

Studio 12.01.22 :: I felt a perceptive shift within me regarding aspects of my work now and possibilities moving forward. Yesterday evening felt like a moment where the dust of years of different paths and influences collided and started forming a couple of new ways forward that I feel absolutely compelled to follow. An “oh shit, yes!!” moment that packs a bigger punch than others in the past.

The question of inspiration comes up once in a while and my answer is always some version of “life and doing the work” that I elaborate on. First, no idea comes from a single influence or source; there’s always a constellation of experiences-conversations, random thoughts, dreams, research, whispers, daydreaming, reading, music, doodling, walking down a different street, noticing that tiny crack in your glass-that can lead to where you are now. Everything that you’ve lived through is right in that moment of discovery. Second, I don’t believe in waiting for “inspiration”. That comes from doing the work, whatever that is for you. You don’t get anywhere sitting and making yourself frustrated that inspiration hasn’t swept you off you feet. It won’t, trust me, I know. Doing and actively participating is how discovery happens. Begin where you are with what you have and see where that takes you. Rinse and repeat as needed 

“How long did it take to to do that?” My whole life to this point, literally.

 

Still going...

    Even though I haven't been posting here, things are happening. The last time I wrote, I was still on vacation, I think, ruminating about not having posted online in a bit. Since we've been back from Sardinia and Barcelona, I've resumed posting on IG, FB, LI and the bird app. Not in quite the same way as previously, but I'm definitely back on there more, something that I'm trying to balance a little more. I don't feel the way I did before the social media break, a good thing, I'd say. It's kind of funny, but I've embraced the making of reels and posting on Tik Tok. My feelings about reels before the break was that they really got in the way of how I make art, but thinking about it a little more and having made a few shorts, I'm a bit less high-minded about them and have been able to find my own way of dealing with them. 

    The I take a low effort approach to making reels, which isn't hard to do since the apps have everything you need, like music, effects, and all sorts of editing tools. I just make sure that I'm not doing anything to disrupt my studio flow. I already document my studio practice and other aspects of my life, so adopting to them hasn't been that hard. I'm not that interested in making a lot of "how-to" vids with voice-overs, but I will do a time-lapse that shows me making part of a drawing or painting, then switch to a view of the finished or near finished piece. I'm also just into making experimental shorts with whatever platform tools there are. 

    Painting has been going fairly well. I'm just a little annoyed with a couple of things that I've been doing, but I'm trying to gain an understanding of some of my habits, as well as take time to think through my frustrations. It's important to be as open and present as possible so that I allow for opportunities for solutions to come forth and I can accept them. 

TM

Changing lanes

New work-in-progress (detail)

     I've been on a social media hiatus for almost three weeks and counting. I'm not even sure if I mentioned it in this blog, but earlier this summer, my main Instagram account was hacked and I had to start over with a new one. I was pretty pissed about losing access to the old account since I'd put a lot of time into building up an audience, plus I there's a ton of specific posts, photos and things in the old story feed  that were specific to that account. Most of the photos I have but all of the archived stories and so forth are still on there. I've been unsuccessful in regaining that account and at this point, I've pushed it back on my priorities list. 

    Honestly, by the time the hack happened, I was already growing tired of how I was feeling about my time on social media and how I engaged with it. The continual manipulation by the platform admins and whomever else is responsible for the algorithms was becoming annoying. The overall strategy of all social media platforms is to maintain your attention on that platform, which means introducing and manipulating features to keep you in the content loop as much as possible, both taking in others' content and making your own. I remember seeing a note from Facebook on my feed saying that (I'm paraphrasing here) "People trust you more when you respond to a direct message within a short time" Maybe that was referring to brands, but still, it manages to feel like you're being mentally pressured to do more and more while receiving less and less value from these sites.

    There's a lot of value to be gained from social media, especially for visual artists and other creatives. I like sharing thoughts and photos online and have done so in a variety of ways on as many platforms. I've made a lot of great contacts and have managed to get a fairly solid following, not counting the bots. However, it's really important to take some time to evaluate how we engage online. Lately, I've had several questions come up for myself that I'm evaluating in an attempt to figure out what role social media plays in my life right now:

- How do I feel about social media now? What do I feel when I'm engaging with various types of content?

- What do I get out of it for the time spent engaging with platforms?

- What are my goals are with it? What can social media help me with in this moment as an artist?

- How much time do I need to put in with commenting, liking  and otherwise engaging with others' posts?

- How is social media affecting my behavior?

    I'm sure there's more, but these are the main things that have come up for me in the past couple of weeks of not being that active on social media. I've been thinking about these things in an effort to reimagine what I do online. Top on my list is reinvigorating this blog and making good use of my studio newsletter. 

    

    With my "summer social break" that I've extended into September, I've reduced my engagement to just checking in on my FB and IG feeds once or twice a day, usually in the morning and evening. I've not posted on my main feeds nor story feeds. I've been tempted to a couple of times, but so far, I've been good about that. I'll make a post about a dear friend who passed away last week, but that's the extent of my posting anything until mid-September, maybe longer. 

    

     I don't really know how this experiment will affect how much other accounts engage with mine. I may lose some followers over this period and may gain others, I don't really know. What I do know is that I have to do something different. My very non-scientific research shows that people don't really engage with older posts much unless they are just discovering your feed and "like" and comment on a bunch of older posts. Other than that, the algorithm only shows the newer things. So, what you thought was a great post never gets much more notice beyond the initial impressions. Just after mentioning that I was taking a break, there were a few new follows over a period of a week later. Since then, as expected, it's been a ghost town and understandably so. Even when I find new-to-me accounts that I like, I mostly look at older posts and leave likes and comments on newer ones. 

    Over the past couple of weeks, I've found that my mental state of mind has improved. I concentrate much better on my work in the studio and I'm not so tired from the eyestrain of looking at my phone screen so much (I still need a couch in the studio for naps, but that's another story). Experiencing the difference in my ability to concentrate has been amazing. I feel like I've been able to return to a state of clarity that I had years ago that slowly eroded a little, I think. 

    Purposefully shifting my social media habits has been really enlightening and I'm sure there's more to gain from this change as time goes on. I'm still planning on being active online, but just in different ways. As I mentioned above, posting more on this blog has already made me feel better. I enjoy writing longer entries without the noise of social media around. It might not be for everyone, but I'm hoping that people start coming here to check out what I've been putting out over the years. 

    I'm also planning on integrating more of my general interests here, as well-it's not always about art or the making of it that matters. Lots of other things figure into what I do in the studio and I mean to include more of that here. I'm kind of tired of compartmentalizing everything at this point. Like I said to someone recently, life is art and art is life. What I mean is that life is created as we move through our experiences and like most of art, there is no playbook. All of this is made up as we live it. With art, we're constantly making new worlds and universes as we create paintings, dances that change how we experience space and movement, stories and books that transform our mental landscape.  In life, a lot of us are constantly creating and remaking ourselves and our environments to accommodate new information that we take in; taking a new walking route, changing a decision and going to another place instead of the original one and so forth. It's all an act of making, of charting new paths whether we recognize it or not. 

    TM

    

New flow

    

    The past couple of days here in the studio have been really great. I feel like I'm finally REALLY settling in. I'm beginning to feel comfortable moving around the space, although I have to keep an eye on where I leave whatever tools I'm working with. I'm back to working on several things at once and now that there's more room to move around, I tend to leave things all over the place. Before, in my smaller apartment studio, most things stayed within arm's reach, give or take a couple of yards for some things. I'm not complaining at all, just observing the difference in how I use this space. 

    Having the room to spread out also means that how I think about my work is changing. Being able to leave something out to marinate on one wall, while working on another and having room between the two things is a wonderful feeling and one that I'll never take for granted (not that I did in the past). It makes a huge difference in my creative thinking to be able to walk away from a work in progress and have room to not have to have it in my direct  peripheral vision. It makes it easier to develop what I consider a proper relationship with the work where I can really step back and see it without making visual and mental compromises with all of the visual clutter of the older space. 

    I was thinking earlier about all of the work that I have here in storage. It's nice being able to put it up out of the way and I'm having less attachment to it, as well. All I can think about is the work I'm making and am going to make and barely contemplating the older work. Some of it I feel like I want to keep around just for reminders of what I've learned, but much of it can go. I'm sure I'll look in one of those boxes in the loft months from now and be relieved that I still have certain things and more than I might want to keep.

    I've had some strong feelings about the demands of social media and a creative life. I'm doing my best to not become a slave to the algorithm and keep a good boundary between it and my life; mostly by not posting about everything going on in my life and keeping what I do post to a narrow lane of mostly art, some cats and an even smaller amount of other things. I've softened my feelings about making reels in the studio a bit and only a bit. I'm slowly finding my way around what I need social media to do for me and how I can make the best use of the tools available without giving over every ounce of creative energy to it. For instance, I've come to see that I can film certain aspects of my studio life without feeling like the action is interrupting my creative flow. This has been a revelation and one that I'm glad to have come to. In opening myself up to certain possibilities, I'm better able to find peace with that side of marketing myself and my work without it making me feel angry and rejecting all of it. 

 On another note, I forgot to give an update re: my Covid experience last week. So, I'm all better now and have been since at least Saturday. I was feeling sick most of last week, starting on Monday and by Friday, I was pretty much back to normal. I don't know what this means long-term, but so far, so good. My energy was fully back on Saturday and has held pretty well. I say this all of the time, but it really does make a difference when you realize that you're not sick any more. 

TM

10 WAYS ARTISTS SHOULD USE SOCIAL MEDIA

10 WAYS ARTISTS SHOULD USE SOCIAL MEDIA

Upon reading this great list from ArtBookGuy, I realized that I've been doing pretty well with most of the items mentioned. I would add that when it comes to social media, artists should have places solely dedicated to their own work (website, facebook page, blog) and separate accounts for other interests. 

For example, I have a Tumblr page (timmcfarlane.tumblr.com) that's basically a dumping ground for my art interests, as well as things like design, style/fashion, photography, music, random humor, and so on. My Twitter account (@timmcfarlaneart) is a mix of my own work (images of pieces, studio photos, show announcement links, etc...) and other things. My Instagram (@timmcfarlaneart) account is a mix of things, but any posts that I make that feature my work, studio shots, exhibition photos, etc...are tagged with my name. That way, if someone does a search for me on Instagram, they will see all the posts that feature my artwork and studio. I also tag all of my art blog posts with my name so that it will show up in Google searches easily. 

Last, but not least, I use my own name across all of my public social media platforms, adding the word 'art' at the end of my name. I do that to make it easier for people searching for my work online to find it with as little work or confusion as possible, since there are others who share my name. 

Locating Tweets IRL

Locating Tweets IRL

"Geolocation" is a fascinating project by photographers Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman who use publicly available metadata in Twitter posts  (hastags,etc...) to approximate the locations of random people's tweets, photograph near the location and post the tweet below the photo. 

It's meant to examine the social media bubble that many people think that they are in, that often, we fall into a fog of thinking that our online musings are not known beyond our own circle of online "friends" or "followers".
Alternatively, sometimes we forget that those disembodied texts, tweets, and status updates originate from a flesh and blood person and physical space (disregarding "bots", of course).

There are also connections to the familiar pathos of feeling alone in a crowd of people, that your particular set of worries, anger, happiness, etc... is unique and that no one else around us physically could possibly understand since we don't have any known connection with them. The photo/tweet combination seems to serve as a great reminder of how differently we interact with each other and how we see others through their musings online and through our devices.

On art and social media-an evolution of personal proportions

So, for those of you who may have been wondering, yes, I'm still hard at work in the studio, as usual. Regular visitors to this blog (or my other social media outlets) may have noticed that I haven't posted any photos of newer work in the studio in the past few months. At some point during this past summer, I made the choice to pull back from posting so many images of works-in-progress and newer pieces because I've needed to change some things about my social media interaction as it relates to my studio practice.

I photo-document a LOT and enjoy sharing images of my work and studio with those who don't live near me and a studio visit might be out of the question. However, a lot of that sharing began to muddle things for me. The sharing of works-in-progress began to feel like over-sharing. I felt a real desire to return to the mindset that I had before having a presence on the 'net became almost mandatory for artists and others to gain an audience; just me in the studio working out whatever issues that I might be having with the work and inviting people into the studio once in a while to discuss what I'm working on and so forth.

 It's tricky for creative people because we often like to have our work validated in some way and social media is a great way to have your peers (and others) weigh in on what you are doing, even if they are miles or countries away. I know that I enjoy getting a peek into what other artists are working on. The dialogues that can happen are wonderful and can be creatively invigorating. However, I found that after a while, the self-imposed "need" to post began to over take more serious considerations with the work in the studio. For a long time, I thought about how having a laptop or tablet in the studio would enable me to make constant updates from the studio. I resisted that idea and am glad that I did.

It has been a few months since I began to change the relationship between my art and social media, but the differences that it has made in how I relate to my work recently undeniably positive. Much like having painted over years of marks and drips on the wall , resisting the urge to post every movement that I make in the studio has cleared pathways for new things to happen in ways that the world doesn't need to be privy to, at least while they are happening. All of the outside stimuli has an effect on you, no matter how small. Over time, it all builds up and one day, you are wondering how you got so far away from your original intent. The proliferation of marks on my working wall wound up preventing me from "seeing" my work and made me expend precious mental energy on attempting to block out the distracting colors and patterns surrounding works-in-progress. The same thing happened with how I used social media in relation to my art. There got to be too much other "stuff" to consider and I unconsciously created mental filters that began to alter my perceptions of my work and took me away from an honest dialogue and evaluation of it, at times.

I'm much more comfortable with where I stand now with my art and social media. I post whatever articles or links that I feel might be interesting to followers here, and on Facebook, Twitter, and G+ with a focus on art-related items, but I have released myself from feeling obligated to constantly post my own newer work or works-in-progress.  I will probably return to some form of sharing studio documentation in the nearish future, but for now, it's just me, the work, and a few cups of tea to keep warm while I figure out whether to leave this painting as is, or whether I should sand it down and start over...