IT'S NEVER THE MONEY, IT'S ALWAYS THE MONEY

Sticker shock palliative: "Don't choke. Bespoke!"

Okay, maybe you still won't feel better about paying big bucks for what you think ought to be yours fer nuthin', but at least you know the person selling whatever you're buying thinks hand crafted goodness is worth the price.

A couple of weeks ago, Adam Davidson wrote a terrific short article in the Sunday New York times on the peculiar and economically dismal business of hand made haberdashery.

You don't have to be a clothes horse to recognize one of the strange ironies of his story, and how it relates to creative work at a place like 1AU Global Media. Hand worked wonderfulness costs money, but hand worked wonderfulness does not get made in massive Pacific rim factories. Still, you have to ask yourself if any handmade anything is ever worth the pain, for buyer and seller alike. Like all things of vital importance, the answer depends.

We understand the seller's dilemma immediately. Handwork means there's no economy of scale. You can only make what you can produce yourself, and you can only raise prices so far until you destroy your own market.

For the buyer there's the hassle and headache of having to specify endless details for that special custom something. Specificity takes time at all stages of the process and generally costs a lot more than a commodity. And yet the option persists. What's more, some things practically demand handwork while some things inevitably require assembly line solutions.

You probably buy a certain class of handmade products regularly: food. You know that deli you always visit where they make your turkey and sprouts on rye to your own, custom spec whenever they see you come in the door--extra hot peppers, hold the mayo? It might just be a sandwich, but it couldn't get made the way you really want in a factory, on an assembly-line, or by machine. Way down the spectrum there's the linen and candlelight place downtown for which you made a special Saturday night reservation. The ginger Seabass with asparagus you ordered appears at your seat by means of delicate hand work in the kitchen. Unlike the waxed papered sandwich at the deli, all the little details matter here: the precisely poached vegetables, the razor thin curly cue of lemon skin along the fish, the cobalt patterns on the plates themselves.

There's no such thing as a handmade car, at least not in a conventional sense. But this is really a blind alley. By coming up with examples of mass production's efficiencies and successes we're avoiding the central question. We understand why handmade goods cost more. The question is really one of value proposition: do you consider that cost overage worth it? It's arguable that all restaurant purchases require some measure of handwork, perhaps more than most other industries. There may not be a lot riding on a successful outcome of your turkey sandwich. If you're honest with yourself, the same could be said of that expensive Saturday restaurant experience, too.

But does it matter?

It matters to me.

I cannot pretend that modernity's technological marvels sometimes facilitate just what I'm looking for without need for an artisan's influence. The computer I'm using at this moment came off a factory assembly line. (I'm going to side-step the enormous creative collective that designed this electronic palantir.) So did the desk chair on which I'm sitting. But most of the commissions we undertake here at 1AU are for creative work that's precisely unlike anything that's come before. That's the great differentiator, and that's why slapping together a bunch of video clips in the preinstalled software on your own computer isn't the same thing.

Adam Davidson's article talks about a Jamaican tailor living in Brooklyn who makes $4000 suits for a living but could never afford to buy what he sells. Does he make suits for the money? Of course. But is he in it for the money? I doubt it. It's too much work, too much identity, too much of himself in each suit that leaves on the wealthy backs of his customers. When someone walks out of his shop wearing a sharply creased suit to a midtown power meeting, the immigrant tailor knows he just influenced––ever so slightly perhaps, but genuinely influenced––the direction the world will tilt that day. Whether it tilts for good or ill is a subjective consideration--a big one, I realize--but I'll leave that for another day. He added something to the world, something of himself, and that makes all the difference.

Money pushes all of us around, no doubt. But I've yet to meet a creator who avoids doing the actual work of creation. The cynical part of my brain compartmentalizes industrialists from more easily identified creators, from artists. But I think this is probably a narrow view. The successful industrialist creates by establishing wide-field solutions to complex problems. He or she may not be designing the new 3D model for a piece of consumer gadgetry, or the actual sewing patters for the fall pret a porter collection, but he or she is solving conceptual problems to bring those items to life. Handwork? Hard to say. I suspect that craftsmanship is a term that fits more comfortably with the work of actual, physical creative work. But creative work always requires handwork, no matter what form it takes. That this creative process affords different navigational routes through time with different appraisals about the value of money is what makes it tricky. The big differentiator, I believe, is that while the "mass producer" may be motivated by the creative impulse, the hand working creator almost always sees themselves in the labor. I suspect that while all of us who do one-off, custom projects want to be respected and well paid, we don't do what we do simply for money. We do what we do to change the world's tilt, even if it's for just a moment.

--MS

PS -- Have something to say? Leave us a comment! Don't want to miss the latest from 1AU? Sign up on our mailing list. (Cool email like ours is better than that boring stuff that clutters your inbox, right?) Consider yourself a fan? Please re-Tweet us, post to Facebook, or otherwise forward us to your friends. Cool? Yep: cool.

RAIN AND SUN

The rain speaks.

I'm standing at the window watching a heavy, late summertime rain fill the air. Early yesterday, bright sun washed out the sky; it hadn't occurred to me that a storm may be right behind.

By and large we at 1AU work in a high-tech world. That means we spend a lot of time around computer monitors and electrical cables and cameras and, of course, endless hours inside. We work by electronic light. We breathe recirculated air.

It almost sounds like life aboard a spacecraft.

But today it's raining, and it occurs to me that the vaguely romantic mood I'm in directly relates to the water falling from the sky. I laugh at myself when I think of how I sat in my car this morning, strategizing for a minute as I tried to think of a way to minimize the soaking I'd get when I opened the door. I considered all of the options, worked out the moves like choreography: sling my shoulder bag securely, then grab the flip-lid coffee cup with right hand while I pocket the car keys with my other. I'd adroitly bump the driver side door shut with my right elbow, and dash for the door, 50 meters across puddle-strewn pavement.

Ready...? "Go!"

Result? I got wet. And then I stood at the door to my office looking out through the glass--dripping, slightly chilled-- and I decided not to be annoyed at all.

Rain falls; winds blow; temperature changes. The natural world speaks, but not to us. It speaks and we may listen in, like passengers in a train terminal listening nonchalantly to a private phone conversation in the chair next to us. The natural world offers food for thought, backdrops for moods, be they bright or melancholy. The natural world is not something to resist. Taken with a measure of grace, it's a touchstone, always surprising, always authentic, often changing, yet reliable and honest every single day.

As artists we should be open to all sorts of influences, from surprising physical experiences and diverse people. As the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurasowa said, "Artists cannot avert their eyes." Where that comment evokes considerations of social justice, and nuanced political observations, and moments of transformation, I'm sitting here with rainwater on my glasses recognizing how it also suggests that we not lose touch with sources of inspiration directly enveloping us. Sometimes it's rain; sometimes it's the act of band-aiding a paper cut earned when you rush to refill the aging inkjet printer in the corner. Inspiration comes from observation, and observation comes from wanting to be a participant in your own life rather than a spectator.

Today the sound of rain--that low, white noise vibration––becomes a natural soundtrack to the movie of my day. But so do bird songs in sunlit afternoons, and the mournful whistles of late autumn breezes as they coax me to pull the sides of my collar closer together. Sights, sounds, feelings of air on skin: the natural world is raw material for art. And as regular readers of this column know, I believe art is the natural byproduct of a vibrant life.

MS

Back to DC, Back to the Future

After a terrific week at the Jackson Hole Science Media Symposium, we're headed back to DC. It was great to spend time catching up with old friends and terrific to meet lots of new people with awesome ideas and energy.

The coming change of seasons feels like an appropriate bookend to this adventure. We're looking forward to exciting new projects in our queue, and look forward to staying in touch with you. (Hey: that rhymes!)

Go farther.

--VW, MS

ICONS

Sometimes unexpected events of the day overwhelm the best laid plans. This week's intended blog post was ready to go, when news came over the weekend that Neil Armstrong had died at 82. Perhaps the most famous astronaut to ever have lived, he was, ironically, also one of the most reclusive. The very traits that made him the perfect choice for commanding Apollo 11 disinclined him to seek fame, or celebrity, or the trappings of political power. Very few people in history are known so famously for such a briefly defined sequence of events in their lives, or single utterances made famous beyond all comparison. But there's a reason the title of this blog is what it is: Armstrong was an icon.

Gallons of ink and millions of pixels have taken flight considering every aspect of the man and the legendary mission on which he flew. I find his extraordinary story compelling for many of the same reasons that billions of other people find it extraordinary. But let us not forget the value of his existence beyond mere recitation of one-of-a-kind acts. There's also this: how many millions of people, with no direct connection to science nor technology nor multibillion-dollar government programs, have been deeply inspired––creatively inspired––by Armstrong's one small step? The power of an iconic image is like a crystal. No matter what light enters it, the refractions that scatter around the room can scintillate and surprise. Moments of inspiration take on endlessly surprising trajectories of their own, put in motion by iconic forces. Some see themselves in Armstrong; some dream about emulating him. Others imagine the many internal monologues he told himself, or could have told himself, or the stories others told about him. An icon radiates, and science teaches us that radiation generally flies off in all directions.

Almost everyone is less famous than Neil Armstrong, but that's hardly the reason I'm confident this will be the only posting on the web you read today (and probably ever, I'd wager) to juxtapose the name of another great who died just a few days before the first man on the moon. Remy Charlip was one of the founding members of the Merce Cunningham dance company, but earned a measure of fame and respect from a certain slice of society for his work as a children's writer and dance educator. Known for his inspired, brainy-yet-never-stuffy flights of invention, Charlip drew little distinction among writing, illustrating, dancing, and other forms of art. “It’s one of the hardest things to do — to be free enough to dance, to move around,” he said in the New York Times back in 1997. For him, the act of invention meant letting go of preconceptions about what had been done before, and ranging out into new territory. One of his most famous pieces was something he called the "airmail dance". Charlip would mail drawings of various choreographic poses to dance companies and then see what those companies might create based on his epistolary sparks.

Icon? Maybe to some. I always liked Remy Charlip. I loved his books as a kid. I saw his performance company The Paper Bag Players live at Lincoln Center years ago, and recall the show warmly. Was he as iconic, so to speak, as Armstrong? Who cares? Armstrong's influence on my childhood passion for all things spacey most certainly propelled an interest in science and exploration and ultimately artistic pursuit of the unknown. But Charlip's influence on my imagination similarly, if less famously perhaps, helped shape my genuine belief in abstraction of ideas as a means for pursuing truth. Charlip demonstrated humorous, thought provoking lessons about turning ideas in unusual ways to reveal something unexpected and beautiful, and what I absorbed about his courage to experiment with daring invention propels my life as an artist to this day.

The point is, iconic power comes from representation, sometimes described by an event but more often embodied by a person. Too much power invested in icons becomes purely hagiographic, and in my mind ultimately self-defeating. On the other hand, cynical blinders to iconic influence forgoes powerful opportunities for inspiration. But in the middle of these extremes there's something profound, even as it's obviousness hides in plain sight. We should be respectfully aware that people just like ourselves might do extraordinary things that influence the world in unexpected ways, giving each of us license to get up in the morning, rub our hands together, and say to ourselves, "Okay. How am I going to make this a valuable day?"

--MS

PS — Have something to say? Leave us a comment! Don’t want to miss the latest from 1AU? Sign up on our mailing list. (Cool email like ours is better than that boring stuff that clutters your inbox, right?) Consider yourself a fan? Please re-Tweet us, post to Facebook, or otherwise forward us to your friends. Cool? Yep: cool.