Stephanie Vacher

This is my Northern Voice 2008 slacker liveblog:

I’m currently sitting at a table with Victoria Potter, Q, kdon, Karen and Richard, and we are officially qualified as Northern Voice Saturday slackers. Due to the unaccountability of morning alarms, an undisclosed number of people in this group arrived late to the convention, and got lost somewhere around 25th and whereverthehell on our way here. Others of us are just plain awesome and couldn’t fit into the standing-room only keynote.

10:27- We’ve arrived and plotted our territory for the day, just in time for the NV coffee break. I’m seriously clueless as to whom of us are going to be consuming decaf. That’s just weird.

11:34- Just got out of Nancy White’s presentation called “Why I slowed down blogging and started drawing on walls” wherein we collectively drew images of ice cream on big sheets of newsprint. In an attempt to find our “visual voice” we were reminded that, as bloggers, we should concentrate more on communicating visually. Nancy argues that words are tough, and people spend too much time arguing over syntax and meaning. Chocolate was involved. Chocolate is key.

11:38- Dave Olson is talking, Fuck Stats: Make Art. He says, it’s not the image of art, but the creation that is important. This is disturbingly similar to the thesis of my presentation (later today, you should go. Go to it, go!)

11:44- The schlock layer, “commercial pablum.” Nice.

11:52- I’m finding it disturbingly easy to follow Dave’s thought process. Maybe it’s because the brain of an artist never works in a linear fashion, things just click like clockwork. I’m going to give Dave a 1-up-mushroom simply because he’s capable of giving a presentation that does happen to follow some sort of linear process. This is hard to do. As an aside, it’s time to upgrade your heroes: Let’s talk about Thoreau and Edward Abbey, these people are terrorists. Lived in the woods, lived in the desert, remember to research these people. Seriously, this is important.

11:56- I would like to subscribe to the Pig Express.

12:06- Dog game +1

12:20- Shiitake mushrooms grow on logs, they cross pollinate. Mushrooms will start to grow on one log and then migrate to other logs, and then you pick them and eat them, and grow some more.

1:11- Lunch blog. The lines are long and the food is short and I somehow managed to score one of the last red tortillas. kdon says it’s a step up from pizza and I’m inclined to agree. After a short jaunt to the Salt Spring Coffee shop with Mike Boronowski and crew, we’re trying to decide what presentation to attend next. It’s looking like we’re going to check out Alan Levine’s “50 Web 2.0 ways to tell a story.” For right now, I’m going to finish my coca cola and find a way out of this maze of enormous camera lenses, coffee cups, and mac laptops. I think I’ve seen a grand total of 4 non-mac based laptops here.

1:31- I’m sitting dead centre in the room, surrounded by people with goofy electronics hanging off their laptops, cell phones popped open and actively communicating, and lots and lots of chattering mouths. The lights now dim, the music’s stopped, and Alan Levine is starting to talk.

1:35- http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+ways

1:45- The story of Cinderela, told in powerpoint. AKA how NOT to tell a story.

1:57- I’m publicly daring someone to take flickr and create a “choose your own adenture” story using hyperlinks in tags, and awesome images directly from their flickr account. Or maybe I’ll just dare myself to do it. This is a great, inspiring talk, Alan. It’s giving me lots of ideas on how I should use internet storytelling applications to do my evil bidding. Also, choose your own adventure stories were awesome. I would always manipulate them so that my character would die in the end.

2:27- Let’s discuss Alex Waterhouse-Hayworth: The past, “In a car driving to Calgary with a stick shift and it keeps slipping.” Thinking about the three dimensions of photography, the conversion and corruption from film to digital stock, scanning polaroids, and bananas (actually, no scanning of bananas.) Lighting images with a match and then scanning the results. He’s talking about the artificiality of viewing an image on a LCD monitor that has been uploaded to a web browser, scanned in previously to the computer or transmitted via digital cameras, and saved to memory cards. Also, what is flickr 3.0?

2:37- “Everybody wants to be diffuse glow.”

2:44- Just discovered Alex Waterhouse-Hayward’s blog: http://alexwaterhousehayward.com/blog/blog.html

2:47: Marc (I think it’s Marc…) brings up the advent of MIDI to which a lot of people get confused, but in relation to the generational divide between analogue and digital media recording. This is getting edgy.

4:08- Spent the past while preparing for my presentation. Wish me luck!

5:10- Welp, that’s over. Now I’m listening to Boris speak at the end of the conference craziness! Congratulations and thanks to everyone who came to this conference, it was a great time getting to meet new people and hang out with people whom I already know. Woo!

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