Archives for 2000

Jakob Nielson has

May 15, 2000 by Michael Boyle

posted his reactions to the Poynter study about reader’s habits on the web. I occasionally disagree with him, but I think Nielson is right on in this case.

on the weekend, which was essentially an ode to Montreal, and my neighbourhood. Last weekend was full of parties, full of art, full of expressive, intelligent, engaged people just busting out with creativity and life. I spoke with 2 newly working filmmakers (doing it locally), a bucketful of artists who are doing a group vernissage next weekend (I’ll try and scan the invite soon – it’s nice), a writer named Yann Martel who’s publishing his second novel Very Soon Now, a guy who does relatively naive watercolors – but then scans them and does minimal, subtle processing in photoshop, which moves the work in an entirely different direction.

On the weekend

May 15, 2000 by Michael Boyle

I came across the amazing (though relatively slight) Liner Note Preservation Society, via the very pink and blue Pith and Vinegar. I posted about it at the time, but all was lost in the ether due to some problem or other at Blogger.

I’m not really

May 15, 2000 by Michael Boyle

a big stats watcher, though I do check from time to time. I’m certainly not on any of the lists and don’t worry about that. At the same time, I quite shamelessly took a deskcam pic of me wearing my Fray tee on Friday, and Derek Powazek linked to it Saturday. It is amazing to see how much the flow increased. It’s quite odd, in fact. And oddly satisfying, I’ll admit, even though it happened in the manner it did.

There is a distinction

May 15, 2000 by Michael Boyle

to be made between genomics and genetics, incidentally, that I neglected to make yesterday when I linked to the Wired piece. It was pretty sloppy of me to have done so, because several years ago I made that mistake out of ignorance and studied it enough to learn the distinction. Which I’m not going to get into here. But that sloppiness on my part doesn’t mitigate against the fact that artists are, or can be, probes dealing with issues that are forthcoming. This doesn’t happen in a specific way but in terms of general principles. Which I’m sure galls many scientists to no end. But the ethics and philosophical principles underlying science are as important as the scientific work itself. And that’s what artists are about, in their often quirky, confrontational way.