This time it is true. Thing-a-day will strike again on February 1st 2008. New Sign-ups will open on January 21st so come back for updates and information about the second round of this unstoppable collective creative sprint.
The thing-a-day month of February was a great success and more than 1200 original pieces of content were created. Next official group meeting is being discussed right now. The summer doesn’t seem to be the best time. We’re coming up with a plan to make thing-a-day better for all of you soon…
But remember, if you were already a user, the blog is still open for you to post stuff on a daily basis. If you would rather do it with a group, then we ask you to be a bit patient as we get ready for another (real) round.
Thanks everyone for your enthousiasm!
I’m stuck here at a conference in SF, so I won’t be able to make it to the party - I’ll be back in Montreal tomorrow evening - but I’d love to talk about how we can keep this going. Here’s a pic of a neat car I saw in SF yesterday…
Doesn’t matter if you posted once or you posted every day, come meet in person for a discussion about this experience, your work and ideas and what the next steps for the project might be.
Saturday, March 10th at 4 pm at Eyebeam, 540W 21st street in New York.
This last week it’s been more or less impossible to get online, but here are the board frames I’ve worked on, completing a second section of the ‘Zuky and the Bird’ storyboard.
Thanks M&M! - you have inspired a wonderful adventure! Thanks everyone! - life has been helluvva lot more exciting for all your wild and diverse creations!
Zuky and The Bird - part 2:
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The ending comes as no surprise. The ending comes a day late and a dollar short. You wish you could change the ending but it’s always too late. The ending justifies the meaning, or vice versa. You keep putting off the ending, but you know it will eventually arrive. The ending is teleological. The ending gives shape and definition to your existence. Without the ending you would drift, endlessly. You have nightmares of infinity. The ending is your satisfaction and your disappointment. The ending is the point at which order is restored and new things begin. The ending is in the air, apparent. Everything that begins must rise and converge.
When Saddam Hussein was executed, I was traveling between Philadelphia and Chicago, waiting for the boarding announcement at the Philadelphia airport. They played the footage over and over again on CNN, on the screens throughout the terminal. I looked at all the faces around me and I wasn’t sure how to read them. Disgust? Satisfaction? A lot of ambiguity was in the air. The children all looked confused. They had questions and their parents would later have to answer them. I wondered how many of them were flying for the first time. It occurred to me that I had never before watched a hanging. They walked him up to the trapdoor. He refused the hood. They derided him. He looked fearful and defiant and courageous. How many of the children were flying for the first time and how many of them remembered September 11th? There was no connection between this and that but for fear and causality. How would I explain this to them, to the children hugging their teddy bears and clutching their blankets tightly, excited and anxious about their first flight, watching a hanging, over and over again? There are chains of events in the world. These things won’t always make sense, and in the end the world is often quite a brutal place. But airplanes hardly ever crash, and even though all that seems so close to you now, it is really far, far away from us. We are safe here and I will buy you an ice cream now. Let’s go.
We remember the first fire, the first car crash, the first televised catastrophe, the first assassination, the first death we see first hand. We remember the man falling to the ground clutching his chest in agony, the tightening of the noose to the condemned man’s neck. We’re more inclined to forget the first time we taste strawberries or the first time we dance. These endings frame our lives, every tragic one of them.
So nothing new today, except for the admission that I didn’t follow through… I was doing so well and dropped it on the last day.
I suppose that *is* something new… and that would definitely be stretching it.
It’s been a fun ride… challenging, for sure.
I enjoyed everyone’s work, and I hope you all keep creating.
-Alexia
It’s been, uh, real, folks. Now maybe I’ll have time to catch up with what the rest of you were doing all month!
I can see this tree from the 3rd floor window. Also, I’m shy. When I was pasting the arrows on it today (paste == scotch tape, not glue) I felt afraid that people would come by and accuse me of littering, ruining a tree or some such. I was even planning on taking my pictures then taking all the arrows down. One woman walked by and stopped. I was pretty apologetic and she was pretty unimpressed. “It’s not hurting the tree, is it? I think you should leave it up and watch from your window: maybe people will come by and laugh. Don’t worry about it!”. I’m not sure who these people are that I expect to materialize (”do NOT do creative acts in public! do NOT!”), but, they didn’t.
I was happy doing this one. Except my hands were freezing. The grain of the bark felt like a good place to put arrows. And I left it up, so I’ll get to see it gradually degrade from my window.
This has been a great month. Thanks.