yeah, why is it that when this sort of stuff is discussed, and represented, that whores become an instant metaphor? money and the root of all evil. there is a connection, even though it doesn’t sound like it, but we do diss certain forms, rather than observing their aesthetic differences…? oh i hope that this makes sense to someone other than me!

Really great reading here at Bilateral as per usual! Just a quick note on the blog stats stuff - Skanky Jane’s Bargain Box is a popular blog that gets lots of hits and has a good page ranking with Google - me and the crew have worked hard for that and it is imprtant to the type of blog that the Box is - ie we specialise in free publicity for artists and therefore we want to be able to disseminate information as widely as possible. How/where does our blog sit in the good/bad blog frame you posit?

SJ xx

you know, perhaps following on from my thoughts about good blogs being like good friends, i might suggest that all that stats stuff - the quantity of “hits” and how good you look on the google top-of-the-pops hit parade - is nothing compared to the quality of your blog experience. better to have 2 good buddies than 50 false friends.

i mean - first of all, it matters little if very few people read your blog - the main thing is whether it is a useful tool for you to shift your understanding of life and your experiences in the world from “nebulous” to “concrete” (yet malleable). if the blog is doing that for you, then it is worth it. in a way, the main relationship that counts is not between you and your (potential) readership, but between you and your self (via the blog).

if popularity is the goal, I have no idea how to advise anyone on what to do. My “hits” are invariably low, but that’s ok.

oh, and I have another terminology question: what is “IRL”??

thanks, it’s really helpful to have these sorts of stories because they reveal your parameters of “pass and fail” - what you consider to be success in blogging - which is an area not really much explored. When you describe your blog as as a “pretty dead kind of space”, what criteria are you using? (and what is “meta magic”?)

I have posted some more thoughts about the nuts and bolts of writing blogs - specifically my own reflections on developing a blogging “voice” over here.

oh yes, of course it’s personal! the whole reason for doing the artwork-as-blog is personal: the desire for personal transformation through action in my own life, which the blog is able to help focus and document.

and the reason for doing this bilateral blog is also personal - the argument I think is not about whether it’s personal or not… but perhaps about a different strategy of engaging with the performative aspects of blogging - the way that time is chopped up and regulated much more clearly with my art-blog activity…

as an artist i am interested in blurring the boundaries between the flow of life, and the demarcated zones of art. that’s the underlying desire of the whole of my work… so i don’t want to get carried away with the whole art versus not-art thing.

except for the interminable arguments between artists (and universities) the fact that what we do is art is kind of irrelevant. The idea of the thing we do being “Art” can often be an obstacle to the action of the project in the real world (I think you and Mickie discussed that with Andrew Frost on the Art Life recently in relation to the Tour of Beauty, right?)

of course art can be - as you say - “sporadic, introspective and not project focussed” - you just have to decide that your artwork is like that and voila, it’s art! My post here was mainly just about looking at the differences in the way my blogs operate and trying to notice some of the qualities of the two types…

i think the main difference is the quality of experience that results for me and the readers. this blog is very casual, it has a slow burning effect. the other kind (type 2) is intense, it really makes me (and the readers) aware of the here-and-now in a charged way. both are valuable.

uhmm
looking forward the ‘few more thoughts to throw out there about the nuts and bolts of running my blogging projects’ sequel ..

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, to be more precise - type 2 is a more sharply focused version of type 1?

Someone like Diego Bonetto manages to combine the two in his ongoing weedy connection blog, which is both his “type 1″ blog, and his artwork (which I suppose given my definitions above, makes it an elongated type 2).

I’d be interested to hear about your adventures with the type 2 blogs, as I haven’t found many stories floating around of this sort of thing.