I finally got a chance yesterday to pick up a copy of Susannah Gardner’s new book, BitTorrent for Dummies…

…because of the excerpt on page 229:

The mention was included in “a list of sites that provide public domain media and art,” in the company of U.S. Government Graphics and Photos and Project Gutenberg. What a compliment. Thanks Susannah!

Update: I’ve converted all my photo galleries into blog posts.

Travis Smith used one of the photos from my Pilot Mountain photos as inspiration for a painting.

Here’s the original:

Just before I left North Carolina for California I got an email from Enda O’Donoghue, an Irish artist based in Germany, asking whether he could use one of my photos as the basis for a painting. He acknowledged my public domain dedication, which was cool, but wanted to ask anyway, which was also cool. Of course I said yes, and we emailed back and forth a bit.

Turns out he’s done a series of paintings based on interesting photos he’s found on the web, usually with all the blips and blops that come with low resolution amateur shots. In fact he was disappointed my photos were so clear. Sorry. The photo he chose was one of a potluck dinner prepared by our residence area for Thanksgiving back when I was a senior in college (November 2001).

At one point he asked me whether the white blob was mayonnaise—and whether the “meal in question” had been any good. It struck me that maybe he didn’t realize this was a fairly typical Thanksgiving dinner, one of those cultural events unique to America. So I explained:

The white blob is Cool Whip (fat free whipped cream) on pumpkin pie. To the right of the pie is green bean casserole, beneath that in the lower right corner is what they call cornbread “dressing” in the South, but “stuffing” elsewhere, except it’s cooked outside of the turkey in a big lasagna pan. The yellow stuff in the lower left is a mystery to me. It looks like rice, possibly in a cheesy sauce possibly with some broccoli in it on the left. The red splotch in the top left is cranberry sauce/mold, and of course above that is a bread roll. I don’t believe that was my plate, so I’m not sure if it was good or not. I’m a fan of turkey and gravy, and green bean casserole mostly.

Sometime last week I got an email back with a photo attached saying the painting was complete! How cool is that?

Of course if you didn’t know it was a photo of a 35×23″ painting, you might think he’d just run my photo through a creative Photoshop filter. So now I’m mulling over whether to purchase the painting to hang over my dining table—after he exhibits it in Germany and Ireland.

I think it’s hella cool, but I wonder whether my future dinner guests would think so?

i’ve been listening to some of the this american life episodes that i downloaded for my road trip while i’ve been unpacking, and i’ve noticed two things.

first, nearly every episode triggers a tight feeling in my throat like i’m about to sob. i wonder if this is just a characteristic of the episodes i downloaded (all of the favorites) or if this is an inadvertent effect of the show in general?

and second, i’m finding that the sound of my voice when i’m mentally composing something to write is starting to sound a lot like ira glass. especially the pauses and repetition.

what i was actually composing in my head when i had those thoughts went something sort of like this.

i want to take a momentary break from the chronicle of my cross country move and subsequent settling to exhibit a single image. it comes to me from someone who appreciated my photos and their public domain license enough that he was inspired to use a photo to create a wholly new work of art. something unlike what i do or might plan to do. but strange and interesting and compelling in its own right.

it’s such a small gesture, unlikely to have much economic impact on either of our lives. but in a world increasingly filled with the rhetoric of intellectual property and digital rights management, this small transaction–i snapped a photo, he used the photo as a basis for something new–seems almost monumental.

mike’s art is not the only example of this, it’s only the latest. i’ve kept track of all the examples i know of people taking advantage of my public domain photos on my creative commons page.

program cover for the Islam and Hinduism in the Indian Ocean World conference at ucla using a photo i took in tanzania as the background image.

score another point for the creative commons!