"marketable" (?)

M dot Strange wrote me an email recently in which he said that he had once made a shirt, wrote on it "professional" as a way of establishing his pro filmmaking status. i love that.

he is in NYC this week meeting w/ some people. this time, his shirt reads "marketable." i love that too.

i can't claim to be nearly as cool as M, with his str8nime and subliminascope (see below) productions. and, well, not everyone loves it but maybe a small (?) group of friendly fans.
relative to why i'm publishing references to his work here: i identify with the DIY spirit and practice shaping M's work. i mean, we have to be thinking about what self-publication means, now, in time where we find it's possible to make things of amazing complexity with New Media technologies. we have to think about it because it's one (obvious) thing to publish great stuff in the best journals--"better," books--but if you "simply" makelittlefilms, maybe that's not so impressive. i don't know; this seems important. but so for now, i'm ID'ing w/ this (the clip, below), simply enjoying it, a series of responses to M's We Are the Strange that do double-time explaining his production mode, "subliminascope."

for what it's worth, i see some pretty obvious (and amusing, if tragic) analogies to how some people in Composition view New Media productions. either way, it's not intended to be a serious critique; it's funny. watch:

here's the truth: i must admit that i have never watched We Are the Strange in its totality. i have, however, enjoyed watching the various clips available on YouTube, reading the stories surrounding WATS, gazing at the amazing images M creates, and talking w/ M about art and education.

i'm responding to a DIY thing in digital filmmaking. i'm not a gamer, not so much into things that are bizarre and head-explodingly frustrating . . . but i make films and appreciate people who find a way, a techne, ("the available means of persuasion . . . ") especially if it means finding a way that does not sell itself out to those powerful forces taking on the work (and rewards) of defining the artform in a public way (i.e., studios, curators, etc.). still, i will break if it comes down to it (let's be honest), so maybe all the more reason for me to appreciate the radically new, the radically independent (reminders).