Over the last week or so YouTube’s algorithm, or perhaps whomever manipulates it, eased off the stranglehold on my videos. New comments and subscribers started to trickle in after weeks of silence. And so, I thought, perhaps it wasn’t a waste of time after all. I also noticed that people have watched over 3,000 hours of my videos cumulatively. Note that one of the reasons I’ve stuck with my blog for so long is that WordPress doesn’t use algorithms in its reader, in which case I don’t get crushed by people catering to the dictates of the algorithm, and appealing to the lowest common denominator.
And so I decided to make videos for my series of 6 articles addressing Abominable Ideas in Art. Some of you may remember those. It’s not terribly a lot of work to convert them to videos, and I add spontaneous new content as I go, and not just all the visuals, either.
Though, speaking of visuals, I definitely get into playing around with overlapping images, juxtapositions, and other ways to visually manipulated imagery. I inadvertently created at least one rather beautiful image as happenstance to doing the video editing. Behold:
Right. I used that for the thumbnail. It used a digital collage I made a few years ago, which my older fans might find familiar.
For some mysterious reason I’m now better able to make my audio recordings, though I’m still just using my smart phone, which I hold in my hand while recording. I did the audio in one take, and it’s part reading my article and part off-the-cuff additional commentary. I think this video reflects my personality better than the others for this reason: it being more spontaneous.
If you watch it — and it’s worth it — it helps me battle the algorithm if you watch the whole thing, and give it a like. Though, that Salvator Mundi video has 108 likes to just 2 dislikes, and the average view was just over 30 minutes. There were over 3,000 views. That’s actually quite good, but it did me no good, and the algorithm buried the video, slapped a tombstone on top, and stomped up and down anyway.
Also, the most popular video I ever uploaded — it has over 56,000 views — on another channel, and from 2017, mostly got down-votes. It was critical of Damien Hirst. Hot controversy is possibly a good thing.
I have a good feeling about this new video, but I tend to be a closet optimist who never gives up.
~ Ends
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 