By “unconventional” I mean something other than classical visual or audio arts like painting, sculpture, music, etc.
I’ve never been a very “artistic” person. But when I took my first programming class, I worked on my code like it was a sculpture. I found beauty in making my code clean, efficient, easy to read, and user-friendly. It still seems weird and affectatious to say, and I wasn’t really expecting that kind of experience from that class! It was one of the only times I ever felt “artistic.”
But why not? Any medium can be artful.
What’s your non-traditional art?
Each Sunday for the last year I’ve prepared a two hour block of programming accompanied with a fancy breakfast. Basically I’m recreating the Saturday morning cartoons experience for my kid. I have a spreadsheet with over 50 different shows to track where we’re at in each one, along with when they were last played so nothing falls out of rotation by accident. I edit them all together next to indie animations (e.g. Bluehilda and Big Top Burger), music videos, those super short animations like RudeJackArt does, random old stuff like school house rock etc.
Sometimes if there’s a commercial break built into the cartoon, I’ll put something fun in there. I once hid “a Gaudi muaß sein” that video with the tongue flicking choir right in the middle of an episode of the Ruby Spears Mega Man cartoon. Have also used this format to show off certain things like a video game he’s getting for his birthday.
All of it rendered locally with openshot from the stuff on my media server. It’s one of the best hobbies I’ve ever had because not only have I been purposely discovering and preserving a lot of great indie art, I’m spending time with my kid, sharing laughs and bits of culture, making the most of the one day of the week we’re all off work, and avoiding the time waster streaming outlets where you just watch whatever CGI talking animal shit for all of eternity.
I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this, and I sometimes wish there was a legally viable and inexpensive way to share it with the world. I’ve tried sending it to family via sync thing, but they all have trouble with it. Boo.
Wow, that’s really cool! We’ve been talking about doing something similar with movie clips, making them into a cool flowing playlist.
I do wish I was better at it, or at least that I had fancier editing software. Openshot is okay I guess, but the transitions and effects are a little rudimentary. Might just be a skill issue, I’ll admit.
This sounds like an amazing project and a great way to spend time with your kid. Good for you.
It’s been good. It’s making for much more focussed, curated, and varied media consumption since its the bulk of all TV we catch during the week. He sees a lot more art and a lot more quality cartoons (not to mention in order) than other kids who just watch whatever the streaming platforms put in front of kids.
Ever since he was very little we’ve wanted to be thoughtful about what we show him. I really like to mix in old crash course serie as well, and I’m really wanting to hit the media literacy one soon. He already is beginning to understand the problem with ads and in-app purchases in mobile gaming. It’s important work to inoculate against all these media vectors so they don’t grow up assuming the way things are with modern media is normal or acceptable.
Then the next step is to make this user-friendly!
tbh it already is, they’re just not into it enough to put in the effort. And that’s fine, it’s easier to enjoy it as a hobby with an audience of two. But if it was possible to throw it up for everyone without getting sent to a DMCA gulag, I would be happy to do so.