Dennis Hollingsworth

Vortex of Social Media

Jean Milant dropped by the studio last night, our conversation moved as it always does like a perpetual motion machine. We talked about the success and progress of his year long exhibition program at Cirrus Gallery, Once Emerging Now Emerging, which is entering its fourth phase this spring. If you are not already acquainted with this ambitious program, please click on the link and check it out, the final phase is participatory in multiple ways, one of which is that artists are encouraged to submit digitally based work that will be included in several venues both online and off. Jean showed me the submissions to date and they are inspired and inspiring.

Jean's work in creating his website Once Emerging Now Emerging, a significant feat of engineering, a story of many chapters and hairpin turns. Flush with this effort, Jean is a borderline evangelist for digital and social media... and here we were, preacher and apostate, face to face again. When Facebook and Twitter popped on our radar, I resisted its siren call. The logic was simple: this blog took enough time and mental energy, why add on a social networking service that was created to hook up college students, or a micro blogging service alongside the full featured blog that you are reading now? Jean was relentless, arguing from several directions for a fuller embrace of the IT thing.

Alright, Jean. I'll give it a shot, a strong one. This might be a trial run but I'll give it a decent length of time to prove its worth.

Starting now.

I've dusted off my Twitter account, my nom de guerre is DennisHollingsw (not the best warrior face, I know... monikers such as Monad Maniac, BigD*ckBastard, SchizoidHealer didn't cut the mustard). I'm going to refurbish Facebook and strap on the apps for my phone and iPad.

Let's do this.