RazCat

I follow a lot of people on twitter: a few friends that use it, a few celebraties with witty things to say, but also a few designers and artists so I can keep up with what others are doing. One such artist I follow is Lar deSouza of Least I Could Do. I really admire his work, his art and how he uses social media to be involved with his fan-base. Following him is how I learned about #NASATweetUp.

He was lucky enough to attend STS-135: The last shuttle launch. Even though I wasn’t in Florida to see it for myself, I was still able to experience a taste of what was happening because of Twitter. It was because of that I decided to enter the next NASATweetUp lottery as soon as one came up. When I entered and won a spot, I was ecstatic! I tweeted at @Lartist mentioning I won, and if he had any advice. He replied saying to look up the TweetUp info sites and to get involved with the facebook group that will inevitably be created for it.

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What is it about technology that makes some people utterly useless?

I had a class last quarter (because RIT still has trimesters and it’s better, damnit!) that the professor used a stand-alone projector/speaker system. Not one class with him went by where he didn’t make a snide comment about technology. “It’s the projector, it screws up the colour.” “The speakers don’t work.” “The projector doesn’t project the entire screen. School of technology, heh.” “The copier must’ve screwed this page up.”

Really?

It’s not like he’s new to all this. Some of his work is digital…

But it isn’t just him. Many artists in my school are fearful of technology. Someone openly admitted to me once that she has her boyfriend check her email because she doesn’t know how to turn on the computer.

Granted, I might be spoiled in my knowledge of how a computer works because my boyfriend and I built our own computers a few years back. Back in high school I taught myself the basics of the computer and programming websites. I feel, however, that if you gave it the time of day most of what you need to know is common sense. Even with a new computer, fresh out of the box, you knew where to plug in the monitor and the keyboard because the plugs fit in perfectly-

So why is it like trying to fit a cube into the opening shaped like a circle for these people!? really!? We had presentations for our finals and some of us brought our own laptops. One person had an older Mac and was trying to force the VGA, or the new mac proprietary video plugs into places it didn’t fit. I had to say something at this point. I grabbed the laptop, noticed it was a DVI connection and grabbed a DVI to VGA adapter from my bag to save the day.

Because I’m the only loser I know who carries around a DVI to VGA…

Oh dear readers… when it was my time to present my final, I indirectly handed it to my professor… I gave a quick rant that it isn’t Technology’s fault… the problems existed between chair and keyboard. (One person actually got it. Thank you friend in the back.) I also said that it hurt some people’s feelings when technology got the blame when it wasn’t at fault. No one takes care of it!

I got a small applause for that. My Professor didn’t say a word.

But it isn’t hard to learn! Why are artists fearful? Is it this hatred that it’ll make crappy art to replace hand made art? No… It’ll be crap art because PEOPLE will make crap art on the computer. The computer is a tool, just learn to use it, and it can do really amazing things…