Thumbnail from A Cathedral of 7th Chords.Index:
1) Introduction
2) Art Criticism
3) Intrusive Thinking and Creativity
4) The Role of Missing Information in Creativity
5) Art and Algorithms
6) Art, A.I., and Culture
7) Autism and The World
8) YouTube Channel
9) Miscellaneous
A Club that would have Me as a Member (Revisited): In advance of remarks concerning my YouTube channel, Autism and The Arts, let me state clearly that I have created this channel under duress.
Social media has practically killed off unique creators such as myself. My channel, in so far as I cultivate subscribers, will be more about the community that forms around those who self-identify as having autism than me. I have no problem with this occurring, should it occur, but I am trying to build a brand around my creative efforts first and foremost, not autism.
If I lived in an urban setting where I could thrive by the fruits of my labor, I would do so, but autism has made me fearful of unstructured environments, so I have built a clubhouse instead, albeit a clubhouse flying under a false flag.
I received an invitation from another YouTube creator months ago to appear on his podcast. Complicated cataract surgeries delayed me keeping this date, and a lengthy recovery voided the opportunity. More to the point, this conversation would have likely centered on the the plight of young men who see themselves as social outcasts, or INCELS (involuntary celebates). Though I can see the connection of this topic to autism, and even to my own solitary life, I viewed this exposure as potentially leading to traffic arriving at my channel for another set of reasons. Even to call myself a “neuro-divergent” is to wrap myself in an unproductive identity.
Identity has replaced traditional creative pursuits like art and music for young people because of social media. Where one has no talents or interests, one has an identity. Not only is the world poorer for this squandering of energies into things that have no longevity, but I am poorer because there are few left to appreciate creative endeavors of any kind.
YouTube and Mixed Feelings: My goal in starting my YouTube channel in 2023 was to cannibalize my twenty year-old website for content, since I have been incapable of driving traffic to my site (and Google has not seen fit to help me).
In the early 2010s, I created a Vimeo channel to handle animation work because YouTube was not judged to be well suited for this esoteric content. However, it was doubtful Vimeo understood the low-tech analog nature of my work. They catered to high production value short films. Hence, my Vimeo site was abandoned, and I no longer possess a password that will let me back in.
Initially, short horror animations had more traction on my YouTube channel, although there is little to pick through from my website on this score, even with the recycled Vimeo content. I began making new animation to feed what little demand there was, but this is not what one should be doing at sixty-four years of age with failing eyesight. As of May 2023, my longer form videos began to build an audience, so I ceased production of short-form animations.
Thumbnail from A Cathedral of 7th Chords.
Eyesight versus Camera: Time lapse photography of my art process is a large part of the YouTube equation. This form of documentation is easier to pull off than hand-drawn animation, but there is still my corneal disease to consider: The camera must be given preference of position, which means I sit further from the easel or drawing surface than is to be desired. Of course, I can swoop in at the end of a painting session, after the camera shuts off, and fine-tune my brushwork.
Frankly, it is a pain to set up the camera and carry out these joyless operations. And to be even more frank, it is possible that my underperforming channel is contributing to disenchantment around my art projects.
Painting in progress (5/31/23).
YouTube and The Unique Creator: YouTube, in theory, might help with my branding, but it is unlikely to produce serious art collectors of my work.
The artist content providers one sees on YouTube are not selling their creativity or art. They are either pitching a “you too can succeed” art business model (like any other useless SEO), or they are selling their personality and/or opinions. This is the para-social dimension of social media, and it is the primary mode through which creators gain subscribers, income, and fame.
Unfortunately, this social media dimension of YouTube forces content providers into negative feedback loops, where videos about specific topics get more views than those about their art. They must keep making the same video over and over again to feed the algorithm, otherwise they will perish. Many creators simply go away after a while, especially if they are one-man operations, or their niche topic does not have a refresh button.
Low Barrier of Entry (Or Why I am not Famous): If one accepts the premise that artistic success often relies on exploiting one’s childhood to create nostalgia bait for others of the same age, then my time to profit came and went.
My generation, in their peak earning years, had money to spend on nostalgia—for sure—but those set to exploit it in the pre-digital age were few. More to the point, I have rarely stylized my art to cater to a nostalgic impulse, apart from the odd appropriation of a Hanna-Barbara cartoon character. By the time I turned twelve in 1970, I had stopped watching Saturday morning cartoons out of boredom; and perhaps this snobbish-ness sealed my fate.
I have used the same tools as YouTuber RedPilotSun to create media, but my outcome has been different because I am trying to shoe-horn artworks into a digital domain where much of the original work (dating back to the 1980s) is analog.
Moreover, more recent art subcultures have developed around niche curatorship of lost-and-found media, or media made to look lost-and-found. There are fewer creators in the classic sense, where an artist develops a body of work and cultivates an audience. These current-year Internet movements are more like transient group endeavors, with multiple contributors adding one-offs to evolving forums.
Copyright © 2023-2022 michael l. teague all rights reserved.