Sunday, February 23, 2014

Ozine Keen  

How keen are you to get involved in an online magazine?  

In his ongoing study of the preparation of online magazines in the field of printmaking, the author utilizes an article from England. The first of ten points to consider before launching the magazine online (here, he refers to it as “Ozine”) is discussed.


How keen are you to start PrintmakingWorld Ozine?

To my knowledge, I am the only person in the world who is keen on starting an online magazine (actually, a dozen of them) for the printmaking world. In her article from last October, Rachel Bartlett, in Great Britain, wrote an article for journalism.co.uk and gave ten points to consider. The first one is, “How keen is anyone else (besides me) on starting such a magazine?”
How do I know? The article goes on to suggest finding out online. Go ask people. But, how do reach the people? I get many emails and pop-up on websites asking for my opinion, my interest, my contact information; all of us have this happening all the time on social networks and the media. It’s too much, and I don’t want to add more junk to people’s email.
Also, handling the response, if there is any, raises another warning flag. Already I am spending too much time at the keyboard. The responsibility of listening the answers to, “How keen are people in participating or subscribing to an online printmaking magazine,” is huge.

I am keen

All through my fifty years in printmaking, I have absolutely loved the magazines associated with design, art, and printmaking in all its forms. When I was a professor, I subscribed too many of them—notably Print Collector’s Newsletter. That magazine shut down years ago. The Journal of the Print World almost shut down, but it was saved by Rebecca Ronstadt and is still going today. I got an issue of Printmaking Today, published as a paper magazine only in England.
However, I confess these magazines don’t make my heart go pitty-pat; there are two reasons: One, they only publish old news and this bores me. Secondly, they are weak in the face of today’s world situation—problems which, in my opinion—must be addressed educationally.
By “old news,” I refer to constantly being reminded of great old prints and brand new prints that look old, prints from a dying world that existed when there was time and money to indulge in printmaking as a leisure activity and a minor commercial practice. I was fortunate to live through the cycle of boom and bust in printmaking. I learned a lot.
Plus, I taught college students through the generation that was, as I look back, the end of the salad days of printmaking—right before the onset of the age of digital reproduction. The internet is often compared to the invention of moveable type by Gutenberg (an error—the Koreans invented it centuries before him; it was the chase Gutenberg devised for mechanical reproduction).

Ozine

I believe there is, nevertheless, a huge community of people who have some kind of printing experience in their life, and they like it, or like having tried printmaking. Mostly it came at an early age, and left an impression on them that lasted. The presses I make—small, portable and as beautiful as I can make them—bring people to a stop and they like to talk about printmaking as a craft and art.
To me, this is a thread, or the tip of an iceberg (there must be a better metaphor to describe the potential audience for an online printmaking magazine, an Ozine).
Rachel Bartlett’s article advised, “test the water” before you start:
“For larger-scale crowd sourcing projects, which involve the readership helping towards production of an issue, it may be sensible to first get an idea of how keen the readership is in being more actively involved. Tarun Rai, chief executive of Worldwide Media, publisher of Femina magazine which in April produced an edition made up of only reader-produced articles, said the team first used Twitter to invite followers to share their responses to specific questions or subject areas.
"The readers were actually quite keen to write", he said. This led to the magazine asking their readers to send in a story idea, along with an example paragraph, based on standard subjects which feature in Femina, including work, relationships, health and fitness, and sex.
"Once we did that, we got a humongous response," he said, with the best ideas then invited to send in their full entries for possible publication in the magazine.”

Standard subjects

Were I to start an information gathering campaign, I would be tempted to imply or suggest that my energies would be directed to the standard subjects of printmaking we all know about from paper-based publications of the past, but to take non-standard subjects into account also, based on what has happened since 1980.
People born after 1980 are called Millennials because they were about 20 at the turn of the century—graduating from high school, some going on or entering trades and professions and, by now, in their mid-thirties. This is not the world of the ‘80s, when I started my ventures outside the college printmaking world.
I believe what I learned in college is of small importance except for my firsthand experience with the increasing importance of politics and economics in the arts that are thwarting educators in the United States. One of the results is that there are still “standard” subjects in printmaking that are limiting access to the printmaking experience.
I have made progress in solving the limitation of size and weight of the common etching press by making mini etching presses; it is not enough and my personal limitations are the problem here.

New standard subjects

In the example above, Femina magazine had as its standard subjects “. . . work, relationships, health and fitness, and sex.” In my opinion the standard subjects in a printmaking magazine should be traditional subjects plus non-traditional subjects. It should borrow life issues from other magazines, like Femina, on the subject of work, for example, as in making a living. Health, also, as in non-toxic printmaking materials. Fitness might fit in there, too.

More importantly, to me, the non-standard subjects stand out and they are rooted in the history of printmaking itself. I do not mean the college brand of printmaking history, which is that printmaking somehow evolved out of painting and thus wins the label of “fine” art printmaking.

It is the other way around. Thanks to printmaking in all its varied forms, painting has achieved importance—and not only painting, but all art forms that are conveyed to us like reports.
“The report of an event is more important than the event itself, for it is the report to which we respond, as most of us only get the mediated report—not the actual experience of being present at the event.”

Thanks to technologies—all technologies that are possible by exact replication of images and sounds in a persistent medium—we live in a world that seems to be immediate (i.e., im-mediate, without mediation) yet is almost entirely a media event. All technologies came out of printing from the day that someone in a setting, at a time before recorded history (yet, by their act of printing their hand on stone, recorded history) made an intentional print.

Non standard printmaking subjects

People are cutting blocks for printing plates with CNC routers, laser engravers, and 3-D printers. They are casting blocks in plastic and producing prints and books with all kinds of technologies. To the diehard printmaker who is deeply invested in handcraft and a tight-knit social network and collector world, these are not printmaking.
To the Millennial, however, it is not a problem to consider that a block was cut with a laser engraver or that the print they are looking at was made in part by a printing plate that was downloaded on a computer, an image that came from another part of the world. In fact, the Millennial communicates in kind with people all over the world—why should artists be locked in the past? Are not artist’s ideas and expressions of importance?

My history is involved

What about teachers? I consider myself a teacher without a school—a “de-institutionalized” teacher compared to those who, in the words of one of my former students, “institutionalized artists.” I chuckled when she said that, but then I realized that the expression didn’t carry the same implication for her that it did for me.

It is crazy to think a 3-D printer that is capable of printing out a plastic gun that really works can also be a way to print out a printing press—but I am not crazy to think so, and I plan to make this happen. However, it will take a village, as they say, or a factory school, to realize this dream of mine.

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