Dancing Geek

I’ve always liked comics, they’re incredibly accessible mini pieces of art.  It’s art + story in explicit form, and the way that they work is a fascinating subject that Scott McCloud argues is not just words plus pictures in his book ‘Understanding Comics‘.

Combining this enjoyment with the internet then is a win-win for me, and I have more than a few webcomics in my feed reader.  But it’s not just their entertainment value that I enjoy, it’s also what they represent as a successful example of adapting to the internet as a new medium.

Some webcomic artists are people that like simply to draw for fun in their spare time, some more regularly posting that others, some higher quality finish than others, but all enjoyable as examples of a passion shared.  When the subject material itself is also a passion, as in Rich Morris’ series ‘The 10 Doctors‘, the community that builds up around it provides as much, if not more, of the enjoyment than the comic itself – which personally I’m loving to pieces.

Community however, is not limited to fanfic.  Many artists who create unique material will also have a forum such as XKCD and Questionable Content.  These provide valuable feedback for the artist, a place for informal artwork and out-of-story imagery, as well as providing a way for people to connect with each other and create a Godin-tribe.

It is this tribe that then supports the successful artists, and enables webcomics to provide income to artists without resorting to the alienating practices of selling advertising space or indeed charging for their work.  This is where the real demonstration of a working internet model occurs.  The creator provides regular, quality content and in return fans not only will pay money, but demand to be able to do so.

Requests for merchandise often come from the fans who want a t-shirt or poster with a particular piece of artwork on it (yes, artwork).  The creation of a tribe means that clothing that will allow others in the tribe to recognise each other offline is desirable to promote the exclusivity and branding of the tribe we know so well in mainstream fashion today.

As well as the demand for memorabilia is the demand for experiences, comic conventions are an obvious place for webcomic artists.  Fans want to meet the artist, ask them questions, get a signed book of their work, and simply meet other fans.  Providing an offline, real world version of the online forum allows the best of both worlds.  The ongoing benefits of internet connectivity and presence, with the enjoyment of realtime, in-person interaction to solidify and augment relationships.

All of the money given by fans is for extra services that revolve around the main product, all is considered of value and yet none of it could happen with the sense of community that is built around a free product online.  It is this that excites me – the creative material is shared with anyone and everyone around the world, and supported by those who wish to be part of the community or tribe.  Others are free to access the product, but not the sense of connection that has grown around it.

Both the creative product and the community are valuable in their own right, but by allowing the community to support the work, everyone can benefit from the creative product without restriction (except obviously internet access, which by no means is a given yet).  This free sharing of creative output is something I am very interested in, and having even just one example of it to learn from gives me hope that we may find more open ways of interacting in the future.

If you’re interested, here’s a list of my current webcomic reads (warning – possible NSFW content for some of these):

• The 10 Doctors (finished)
• XKCD
• Questionable Content
• Looking for Group
• Least I Could Do
• Calamities of Nature
• JEFBOT
• Tasty Flesh
• Geek Loves Nerd
• AppleGeeks
• Able and Baker
• The Joy of Tech
• Penny Arcade
• Sinfest
• Girls with Slingshots
• Ctrl+Alt+Del
• Two Lumps

And thanks to the way webcomics link to each other, this list is sure to grow.

Sat 7 November 2009 saw Saddlergate, Derby host a Music & Arts Festival across 3 of its buildings: The Old Bell Inn, The Big Blue cafe, and Boo! sustainable and fair trade shop.

The different venues provided a venue for bands and booze, art, music and coffee, or snacks and relaxing respectively.  Chaos found a home in the latter two locations.

We got to chat with some really nice people at Boo!, try some yummy tea and cakes, and generally relax on big cushions under hanging origami and drapes, whilst listening to some lyrical guitar followed by a violin and digeridoo duet (my personal favourite).  They also have a rather interesting little library of books you can read or borrow which I may well be venturing back to have a look at, if I can face being in Derby city centre.

Big Blue had some great art on the walls, including origami on canvas, painted canvases and cut-out art that made me think of very artistic theatre props.  It was upstairs in the cafe that Chaos actually got to do some dancing.

The space itself was “compact” with sofas round the edges, and the musicians in one corner, so there wasn’t a great deal of room for us – especially after everyone wanting to listen had crammed in.  So we ended up doing duets to allow us to actually move and stretch out our limbs at least a little bit.

The music (performed by Leela and the Spaceship – a possible Futurama reference?) was fantastic to dance to, it was a really enjoyable experience being so close to the audience and musicians, even if it did result in a few bums in faces and not so graceful attempts to avoid mass collision.  I was never sure whether the applause was for us or the musicians, but all in all we seemed well received by everyone in the room – certainly only nice things were said to us afterwards.

We did try again later to perform, but the music was evidently too catchy, or my little solo too enticing, that within a few minutes the floor was full of everyone dancing so we again had a little duet but mostly just enjoyed dancing with everyone to ‘Look Pancake?’.

Given we knew nothing about the space, the music, the audience, the duration or indeed anything really about what we were going to be doing, it was such fun to just turn up and move together in such an accepting environment.  It’s fair to say that not everything worked – the lack of space was a massive restriction, but hopefully our creativity was a match for it most of the time.  Certainly there were lessons I took away about adapting to different spaces.

I wish I had someone to link to about the event, but we were having such fun I didn’t think to find this out at the time.  Still, perhaps there will be more opportunities in the future – I would certainly welcome them!