etsy has promised to start implementing a relevancy algorithm

I like etsy, but there are certain design flaws that make me wonder if etsy's creators have ever heard of usability.

Why do they use flash for statistical data? I have to wait for a whole flash animation to load when i want to see who has 'faved' my shop, and instead of just showing the number of favs next to the view count for my items, i have to click my way through; first to the item's page, and then to the tedious flash animation.

Anyway, they've promised to start using the ranking people give each other's items to help the search relevancy;

"Future phases of Search will include upgrades to the relevancy and ranking of the results. The way current search results are displayed (ranking) is based on chronology (most recently listed items first). We believe that Etsy buyers will be better served by a system that takes into account both ranking and relevance in a way that helps them find items they’re looking for according to various criteria by category. And, for those buyers who may not know what they're looking for, we also hope to introduce later in 2009 tools to foster discovery based on all the hearting and curating that takes place across the Etsy community every day."

Why they didn't use it to begin with will remain a mystery to me, but i hope they make these changes sooner rather than later.

Etsy has too many buying options (i count 15), and none of them work satisfactorily. If only etsy would have an interesting algorithm like flickr, it would work better (and more profitably), and i'd be sellíng more.

Etsy's creators have made some very altruistic statements about helping atists/artisans, and cutting out the dealers ie. connecting consumers directly with makers, but the truth is that if etsy is to succeed (and i hope they will), then they will replace the dealers, and even if they aren't as greedy as ebay or amazon, they will profit by it. So if they want to be good, they should build something that works, not something that just looks like it should work.

Here's a link to my etsy store just to make this more relevant.

Cultural Confinement according to Robert Smithson

I never understood american landart. Smithson and the rest of them were too abstract for me, although I thought that maybe I could change my opinion if I could ever go and see what they had done onsite. But I recently stumbled accross an excellent article about the beginning of land art in america which quoted Smithson, and I was most impressed by what he had to say so I went looking for more and here's what I got;

"Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition , rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells- in other words, neutral rooms called "galleries." A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by society. All is reduced to visual fodder and transportable merchandise. Innovations are allowed only if they support this kind of confinement."

That is far and away the best critic of galleries I have ever come accross. It makes me want to read more.

STRANDBEESTEN_TRAILER from Alexander Schlichter on Vimeo.

i didn't understand kinectic sculpture until i saw one of george rickey's works in lehnin last summer, and i was checking out some of his works on youtube when i stumbled across the work of theo jansen. that is one crazy artist! very inspiring.

this is the poster for an exhibition i will be participating in.

Curated by Carol Zakaluk.
October 17-25, 2008.
Opening Reception Friday, October 17, 5-9 pm.
Author's Talk Wednesday, October 22, 5-8 pm.
Gallery Hours : Daily noon - 6 pm.

'green' exhibition @ havenarts.org

i never thought so much would happen this year: first the 'nature art symposium lehnin', and now, at the end of the week, an exhibit in the haven arts gallery in nyc! (not to mention my productive visit to england)

ironic that i set myself 'green' goals at the beggining of this year, without guessing that i would participate in a 'green' exhibition.

green goals

even if the heaviest snow of the winter was two weeks ago spring is definately here in berlin and my goal is to do more work in green. green is my favorite colour, and although i have done quite alot of work in green i've hardly ever accomplished anything in spring. last spring i did a couple of 'snake' motives which i am really pleased about, but they were not green, one of them was almost black and white.

what i really need to do is something as simple as this;

(this was done by andy goldsworthy)

my images have made it into the top row of google image search results for landart!

thanks to picasaweb :)

i read about how uploading images to picasaweb gets better google image search results, and that was the primary reason for using picasaweb. using picasaweb after using flickr is about as frustrating as opening a tin can without a can opener, and after uploading two dozen images more than a year ago, i went back to using flickr and almost forgot about picasaweb until i found my images at the top of the search results in one of my routine landart image searches about a week ago.