LZX Video artists - Goals, venues, etc

Hello, fellow LZX artists!

I’ve been noodling a lot about my video art lately and was wondering what other LZX artists are thinking about some subjects:

Goals as an Artist
Venues for your video art
Earning from your art

I’ll start off.

Goals as an artist: My primary goal is to express my creative self though video and music. LZX equipment is a huge part of this. I also enjoy learning how all of this hardware and software works together. A big part of learning is to improve my art.

Venues for your video art: I’ve been uploading to YouTube, but I’m not very happy with ads, sound quality, etc. I just created a website called Boneoh.art hosted on SproutVideo.com. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, it’s an inexpensive hosting site. I don’t do any live performances, I’m just happy to create videos here in my home studio and post them for others to enjoy.

Earning from your art: I’ve setup a simple Etsy shop to offer a few Tee shirts and prints. I also created a Patreon page for folks that would like to support the art. Somehow I also bumped into a few websites that list Grants that are available and I’m thinking about applying.

So, what are your goals, venues, and maybe earnings? I’d like to hear what others think.

Pete

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Thank you for bringing such a thoughtful topic to the community forum. I am responding having been inspired by your shared work and process over the last year or so, here and on LZX FB. Your deployment of the video synthesizer is sophisticated and fresh.

In my observation, domestic venues are booking significantly less events overall. Interactions with gallery owners have changed categorically. The expectation and terms for showing work in NYC/LA have inverted somewhat. In the past, gallery owners might offer artists of interest varying profit-sharing or consignment terms based on attendance and sales. Currently, I am in most cases competing for bookings with artists who are willing to provide the gallery an up front deposit to avoid losses from under patronized events. That was a somewhat rare occurrence ten years ago. In summary, the amount of artists willing to perform or show work pro bono has increased as has a significant demographic willing to pay for these opportunities.

I share this perspective to describe a climate that somewhat discourages processes that are slow and resource intensive. The progress of software processes and the prevalence of platforms that prioritize short form media also contribute to the complicated landscape that multimedia artists traverse.

Your interest in grant funding as a way to subsidize a somewhat saturated market is well founded. There are indeed many available grant pipelines for creative work but also for community initiatives peripheral to creative work. Securing grants that are equivalent in financial meaningfulness to the time and effort required has been largely dependent on portfolio size and competitive credentials even if from unrelated spaces.

Put another way, it seems like a reliable way to make any medium ‘profitable’ is to make it teachable. The majority of working artists I know are involved in a cycle of learning just enough to appeal to those who have learned less. I find this dynamic frightening but relevant to your inquiry about earnings.

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Thanks so much for responding, I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed some of my videos. I’m sad to hear about how difficult it has become for fellow artists, musicians, etc. The fact that some galleries are charging up-front fees has blown my mind. Pardon my ignorance, but I had no idea! Seems like a really bad trend.

IMO you are right about short form, it seems to be the way things are heading. I think it devalues an artist’s work. Artists put a lot of energy, thought, time, and money into producing their art.

A bit off topic, my brother plays in band once in a while. It’s hard for them to find a venue, and when they do, it’s for free. And the expectation is to have all of their family and friends show up to buy food and drinks.

I’m looking at some grants, and I encourage others to do the same. You can’t get a hit until you take a swing or two.

Thanks for joining the conversation. It’s healthy for me to share my thoughts so I can get it off my chest and get back to making videos. There are so many LZX artists that are making very good work.

My wish is for all of us to be able to share our work and achieve their goals. My short term goal is to get off YouTube, IMO the only advantage is cost. I’ve been searching for video hosting, it seems that the entry cost is about $20-25 per month if you want a custom domain name and a decent amount of storage. The driver for me is to just get my videos out there where people can view them for free without ads, etc.

Thanks again and welcome to the LZX community. I’ve found this forum to be an awesome place to learn and share.

Re video hosting. I am currently working on a new site for my Video Synth work and will be using AWS for video hosting. I have another site that I built for a different project https://g-u-m-m-i.net/ which is built with Next.js and the video is hosted on AWS S3 / Cloudfront. I Think I have about 100gb of video on there and its costs me about 3USD per month, but it doesn’t get a lot of traffic, the price would go up if I started getting a lot of traffic. but for me 3 bucks a month is manageable for 100gb of video.

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Goals as an artist? That’s a good question.The answer i came up with is blowing peoples minds,plain and simple.

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Web hosting is still a challenge for me. I gave up on SproutVideo, their basic plan is $9 but no custom domain name. You need to move u to the next plan. I’m trying the free trial at SquareSpace.

You solution sounds great, but I wonder if my almost non-existant web skills are up to the task. I’ve done a bit of AWS integration with Shopify. It seems to me that AWS makes sense in how it’s setup. I was hoping to simply pick a template, change + add text and logos, and upload files. But given the amount of time and energy I’ve wasted so far, I would probably been better off doing something similar to what you have.

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Goals as an artist? That’s a good question.The answer i came up with is blowing peoples minds,plain and simple.

That’s a great answer!

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Great topic.

My goals as an artist are manifold. Short answer: I want to create things that I don’t already see in the world. Ideally, I would like to raise questions and make statements that can’t be expressed in words. Ideally, I would like those questions and statements to address some aspect of the human condition, filtered through my own experience. But I do not want to be overt or didactic. Art needs to be open to interpretation, otherwise it’s just escapist entertainment.

To expand on the idea of creating things that don’t already exist… this can embrace pure abstraction, representation, or various forms of collage and appropriation. So much can be expressed via semiotic association, reframing, montage, etc. Taking things that already exist and turning them into something novel and unexpected is really the core of the creative process. There’s nothing new under the sun. Nothing can come from nothing; creativity is not a process of spontaneous generation of the universe ex nihilo. Everything has source material, even if that material is a universal phenomenon such as a mathematical construct like a sine wave. More complex source material, such as pre-existing creative works, allows more complex statements to be made. It’s kind of hard to address questions like “What are the parallels between biological reproduction and technological design?” using pure abstraction. The risk with appropriation, of course, is the perception of creative dishonesty / theft. Derivative works must take their source material in new directions and invest them with new meanings in order to be truly “creative”.

But I digress.

Regarding finding an audience, I have always struggled with this. The difficult nature of my work, combined with my essentially antisocial personality, means my opportunities are few and far between. The art world is a social phenomenon. This applies to fine art, performing art, commercial art, all of it. I learned this in elitist art school, where I saw quite clearly that the teachers did not teach technique. AT ALL. It didn’t matter what department one was in. Painting, video, music, it didn’t matter. Students who found success after graduation were the ones who were good at networking. At the time, I railed against this, and even now it is difficult to accept. But the reality is that the quality of the work, the profound questions it raises, the aesthetic value invested within it… don’t matter in terms of finding an audience. That is an entirely different process of social networking.

Practically speaking, I would be content with merely getting short video pieces screened at experimental film festivals. In the past, I have had limited success with this. Currently I am experiencing zero success. But I know that my work is difficult, sometimes physically painful to watch. But that is necessary to convey the questions and statements I’m trying to explore. Sometimes I wonder if my (fair) use of mainstream film and TV raises questions of liability. But more likely, the super harsh chaotic flicker is just too much for people to bear, even in experimental circles. Video synthesis gives me the ability to push this beyond what the structural filmmakers like Paul Sharits could accomplish with optical printing.

Regarding the economics of avant-garde motion pictures: my advice is to choose your parents wisely. These media are notorious for being endless money sinks. The costs of production are always far, far greater than the possible economic rewards. There are very few exceptions, such as Matthew Barney, but generally it’s impossible to break even. The problem is much less acute than in the pre-digital age. We have SO MANY relatively inexpensive options. Sure, it’s easy to spend tens of thousands of dollars on video hardware, but in the bad old days one could simply spend tens of thousands of dollars on rentals, lab fees and video post.

And yet, even though production costs have diminished by at least an order of magnitude in the past 30 years, it’s still essentially impossible to recoup those costs. There’s just no market for this stuff. People don’t want it. They want traditional cinematic narrative, end of story. Europeans are more open-minded about this than Americans, but only to the extent that their governments are willing to fund the avant-garde, at a loss to taxpayers. I can’t speak to Asia, except to say that in most places there are much more pressing issues than supporting the arts.

Bottom line, art is the playground of the rich. So if you are independently wealthy, or exceptionally charismatic, or just super lucky, you might have a shot at recognition. But even that is no guarantee of financial success. I can’t help but invoke the ghost of Stan Brakhage. Here was an artist who was greatly talented, a visionary in every sense. Completely unable to support himself with his groundbreaking genius, he took a teaching position. Then he got cancer. Thanks to the medical-industrial complex in the USA, he had to move to Canada to die. After his death, he was acknowledged by the Academy at the Oscar ceremony’s In Memoriam montage. Fat lot of good that did him, or anyone.

So my best case scenario is that after I’m dead, someone might dig up my work from the Internet Archive, and maybe a few thousand people around the world might appreciate it. Until then, I am resigned to toiling in obscurity, stoking the fires of the alchemical crucible, and writing long-ass polysyllabic essays on Internet forums.

Regarding online platforms, YouTube is incredibly super evil. It will inject ads into your work, totally non-consensually and without paying you a penny. I’ve put my work my own website, and on Vimeo. Hosting expenses and Vimeo Pro subscription add up to $1300 per year and rising. But I just cannot allow Google, or any other agent of darkness and misery, to hold the keys to my little kingdom.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

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Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I found myself nodding in agreement at a lot of your points.

Art needs to be open to interpretation, otherwise it’s just escapist entertainment.
I have to be my own worst critic. Sometimes I look at my videos and I can’t make an interpretation. What was I thinking when I did that? Let’s not even go there about my ‘music’. I’m having fun, keeping busy, and staying out of trouble. While that’s not the goal, it is true!

Students who found success after graduation were the ones who were good at networking.
Yes! Also true in the business world. It’s more challenging for introverts like me. I did OK, but some times it was frustrating.

Regarding the economics of avant-garde motion pictures: my advice is to choose your parents wisely. These media are notorious for being endless money sinks.
LOL I had the best parents in the world, but we were middle class for sure. Used cars, modest home, and no luxuries. Sometimes I wonder how they raised us without eating them out of house and home (5 boys).

Bottom line, art is the playground of the rich. So if you are independently wealthy, or exceptionally charismatic, or just super lucky, you might have a shot at recognition. But even that is no guarantee of financial success.
For me, the recognition part of this is not a huge deal. It’s nice to get a comment or thumbs-up once in a while. My heart breaks for the many other artists, musicians, etc. that are very talented, hard working, and putting themselves out there without being recognized. Compare that with the ‘sucessful’ rap/hip hop artists today ugh!

So my best case scenario is that after I’m dead, someone might dig up my work from the Internet Archive, and maybe a few thousand people around the world might appreciate it. Until then, I am resigned to toiling in obscurity, stoking the fires of the alchemical crucible, and writing long-ass polysyllabic essays on Internet forums.
A bit sad, but I admit I have wondered what will happen when I’m gone. How long will the traces of our lives linger in the digital world? A typical video of mine might get 50 to 100 views. I was surprised that a recent one broke 1,000. I have no clue why, most likely something in the YouTube algorithms got triggered. I appreciate you taking the time, energy, and thought to write this essay! It helps me understand how other artists deal with the challenges that come with the territory. I hope it encourages others to share.

Regarding online platforms, YouTube is incredibly super evil.
I agree, it’s not a good place for artists at all. I’ve been looking for an inexpensive web site host for my videos. I guess that the minimum buy in is at least $20-25 per month. A lot more if you get past the basic level.

Thanks again for sharing!

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…you can (kind of) prevent this by presenting your work hosted on Youtube in an iframe on a (your) website - there will be no ads in your video, neither before, inbetween or after…

…i have ‚refined‘ the iframe-idea by putting a bookmarklet into my browsers ‚favorites’ and making a web-page that looks something like this: (ok, tried to insert javascript and html-sourcecode here, did not work, so i‘ll link to my blog entry about this)

please see
https://charlyhotel.de/loose/?post_id=71&title=youtube-advertisement---it‘s-just-much-too-much---a-countermeasure

This allows me to watch any Youtube-hosted-video without advertisement…

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I have used YouTube embedding, and it still injects other content at the end of playback. It’s recommending what to watch next. Do not want. I also do not want all of the extra text and graphic overlays. Call me a prima donna artist, but I want to have total control over the visual experience.

But for some purposes, YouTube is the de facto monopoly. I put my video synth tutorials on Vimeo, that’s a niche audience. But for my legacy 3D tutorials, I am pretty much forced to use YouTube. Currently trying to decide what to do if I start making more tutorials for 3D or AI. Really do not want to deal with YouTube, but don’t know how else to reach an audience.

Please excuse my rant, I’m so frustrated. It’s unfortunate, but it seems that there isn’t an inexpensive either web hosting site for videos or even host the videos at a CDN and build a simple website. I’ve been going crazy for several days, I am giving up and going back to making videos and music.

I understand that my needs are likely different from others. I’d just like a simple site to show the videos, no store, memberships, etc. I guess I would call this a private label vanity site for videos.

  1. Monthly billing, maybe $20 a month billed monthly, no increase after the first year. The hosting sites “compare plans” IMO are misleading. The say “$15 per month” but it’s really an annual plan that charges $180 up-front. Similar games with some of the feature descriptions.

  2. Ability to use my own domain name

  3. No “powered by”, ads, recommendations, etc. - I want a clean private label website. No site visitor should see anything other than my content.

  4. Reasonable limits on storage and bandwidth. Alternative is to use a CDN for the videos, but lower price to $15 a month, an additional $5 a month for the CDN.

Email support is a big plus, I have no patience for waiting in a chat or on hold. Just let me get on with life.

end of rant!

My thought was to use YouTube to upload a short teaser and suggest
“if you’d like to see the entire video with out the advertising, please follow this link”.

It seems like YT is really promoting ‘shorts’ these days.

I get so few views, but have a few dozen subscribers. I don’t want to abandon the few folks that actually watch. This would still allow me to be ‘found’ in recommendations.

AFAIK there is no inexpensive web hosting option that gives you control rather than makes you the subject of control.

I use InMotion, it is expensive, over $75 a month with an annual contract. I’m self-employed, so I deduct web hosting as a business expense. Virtual private server with unlimited storage. Two domain names. Performance is very good, no issues with video buffering. Support is also very good, no wait for a chat, email response always within 24 hours, usually much less. But if you have any advanced needs, they will charge big bucks for that. For example, the email server has some idiosyncrasies that I would like to address, but don’t have the knowledge, and don’t want to pay big bucks, so I live with the inconvenience.

The other way to go is running your own server, but that is even more expensive, and performance is going to be an issue. You need a business class ISP, a very fat upload pipe, and a static IP, and that is going to cost at least $150 a month. If your site succeeds and you get mad traffic, the bandwidth isn’t scalable and your server crashes.

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…so, the cheap solution is to add a 2-minute-black screen to the end of the video - after the ‚end‘-screen that is…almost no-one will watch two black, silent minutes of Youtube-video…

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As far as my artist goal, it’s to just create my art… no preconceived visions of grandeur .just another creative out let were you can make something fun and cool…

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I like this, but the AI at YT may catch on some day… not a pleasant thought :stuck_out_tongue:

…we‘ll just be creative then and think about some other solution…

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Life is funny that way. The smart folks will always find a way around the roadblocks!

I finally went ahead and got a Standard account on Vimeo.

Since the music community shares their Samples, I uploaded a bunch of videos that are fair game. The samples captured from various programs. Some were created using modified versions of sample programs. Others with custom software. The videos in this portfolio are all available for free download. Creative Commons non-commercial share and share alike.

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