Art Collaboration Trifecta

My Facebook friends got this memo (and are surely sick of my self promotion by now), but for everyone else I want to ‘yell’ about how cool this is.  Unable to embed my audio player into this blog post, I’ll provide the direct link to the sound piece I’m referencing in a sec.

I drew the following piece, entitled “Theater of the Mind” (2011)

My friend Tom Curry, a Chicago poet, was inspired to write about it and my other friend, Mike Hayden, a San Diego musician, created music to enhance that spoken poem. Tom is a member of the Waiting 4 The Bus Poetry Collective and Mike is a member of the band Sleep Lady.

This fantastic collaborative project can be heard here. Just scroll down and click play.

Tom has also written a poem on my 2010 drawing “The Springheeled Piper“.

I’m so proud that I am surrounded by talented folk and that in this digital age, this type of collaboration can occur across the country or globe. I’m grateful to live in the age of Web 2.0 – where consumers are publishers. I will consume. I will publish. And I will invite others to get involved in “group art” and communal promotion. There are too many unsung talent heros out there.

Additionally, this slick link was posted to my Facebook wall by a friend and I would highly encourage everyone who has a Facebook account (because login is required) to try this. Even though it is a very egocentric interface (all social media is) it is a cool way to visualize your network.

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Social Network Geekery

In one of my graduate classes an assignment is to map out our Twitter network. A couple of the online tools used for this produce some pretty cool images (at least I think so) with regards to the nodes and ties, it almost looks like a universe of stars or constellations. I like to see data in visual form anyway and, while I do not follow a ton of peeps (and have even less followers) it shows the strength of your network and where to possibly beef up. I would recommend trying it out with your own network just to see a map of your connections. Both applications are free (require no download) and take literally 10 seconds to generate your map. Go!

Here is what my Twitter network looks like according to Twitter Browser by Neuro Productions.

I'm sure your network will be bigger than mine. And I'm fine with that.

There is also a tool that helps map Twitter mentions. Shockingly, it is called Mention Map. I don’t do a ton of this, but here is the visual product:

You're happy I'm pointing out this app? Ah, don't mention it.

If you would like to be part of my future maps, I invite you to follow me on Twitter – I will most certainly follow you back. Cheers!