"I'm taking the question marks in my life and bending them into exclamation points. I am the human interrobang." Pete Ippel #ALLRISK ‽

Learn more about Martin K. Speckter, innovator of punctuation.

Thank you to @rejon for Fabricatorz @pianoBrad for wonderful avatar creation video tutorial unleashing the power of Inkscape to create and share. Download inkscape. Thank you to @n8willis @christopheradam @davelab6 for revealing the awesome and useful interrobang, News Cycle, and your vast font knowledge. Also gratitude goes out to @WebChickBot and Point.B Studio for supporting and sharing ALLRISK in the Artists In The Information Age Exhibition.

SHARISM is a Mind Revolution: The more you share, the more you receive. It is a ideology which promotes the sharing culture and economy as a way of thinking.

For the past few months, I’ve been working closely with the Museum of Ventura County to create a design for their Dia de Los Muertos event.

Museum Of Ventura County Dia De Los Muertos T-Shirt By Pete Ippel
In this wearable art, I have taken the traditional imagery of the calaca (Mexican skeleton) and given it a contemporary flavor. The interactive garment allows the wearer to take their celebration of El Dia De Los Muertos in a new direction.

Once the shirt has served it’s purpose as clothing, the wearer is encouraged to cut out the printed image and create a decoration for their own altar by simply attaching the arms and legs to the torso.

My design is intentionally open, so that the new collaborator can add their own decorations, flowers, or write directly on the printed cloth. By working together, we both realize our creative vision, celebrating the spirit of our ancestors and loved ones. Truly a move toward Open Fashion.

Jordan and Nicole vector drawing by Pete Ippel

When I was in Europe in May I flew through London and got to visit with a very close friend of mine. Nicole and I met at Cornell, and we really hit it off athlete to athlete. She was studying in the hotel school and I was studying fine art. The ways in which we spent our time were very different besides our academic pursuits. She was in the pool practicing her water polo shots and defense while I was doing everything to run faster and jump higher at the track. Despite our disparate likes, both of us shared a love of sport.

While I was at school, she gave me “The Little Book of Olympic Inspiration”, what a thoughtful present it was. So many of the pages are dog-eared and offer up pearls of wisdom. A personal favorite is from Bobby Joe Borrow, a runner who struck gold in the 1956 Melbourne Games, “Whatever success I have had is due to being so perfectly relaxed that I can feel my jaw muscles wiggle.”

This resonated very much with me before I approached the bar to leap 2.15m in 2001…absolute calm and clarity led to a successful jump. This clarity wasn’t an instant type of thing that you can turn on and off. It is learned, practiced, and developed over long periods of time.

I’ve talked in the past about decision making and when to nuke ideas, I want to share a small excerpt from Daniel F. Chambliss, who is a sociology expert and also a coach.

Great accomplishments, we often assume, require heroic motivation: an intense desire to be the best, an inner strength beyond all measure, some special love of school, of family, of country. Some one of these, must, we think, drive the superlative athlete…In fact, world-class athletes get to the top level by making a thousand little decisions every morning and night.

If you make the right choice on each of these — decide to get up and go to practice, decide to work hard today, decide to volunteer to do an extra event to help your team — then others will save you ‘have’ dedication. But it is only the doing of those little things, all taken together, that makes that dedication. Great [athletes] aren’t made in the long run; they are made every day.

Jumping back to the summer of 2002, I can remember the best answer I ever heard to the question “What is an artist?” was from a 20 year old art student I was dating named Katie.

She simply replied, “Artists make decisions.”

That graceful answer has been with me for 8 years, I’ve never heard a better one…I’ve listened to many other people try to explain what an artist is, but it gets too complex and grandiose. Frequently people, including other artists, will lose their train of thought and become scattered in their definition.

Before I edited my artist statement for this year, it used to read “I’m in the business of communicating ideas. I solve problems. I think abstractly. I make decisions.” So applying Chambliss’ concept to an artistic career, one must make the same assumption — that an artist must, every day, make critical decisions that all add up to success…

So fast forward to 2010, presently Nicole is an water polo playing hospitality expert and will be marrying a British soccer fanatic in 2011. Clearly she’s been making the right decisions…Her club team the Otters has even competed (and won) against some national teams from eastern Europe. Recently I was asked to design their “save the date” card. I really enjoy looking at the happy couple in their respective sporting outfits in a simple red and black composition.

There are certain moments that drastically alter the trajectory of a life-path. Being open and aware to those instants is absolutely essential regardless of one’s career.

I returned from the Libre Graphics Meeting that was rife with inspiration. The event was hosted at the Pianofabriek in Brussels, Belgium May 27-30. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience, here’s what I learned:

Generosity is contagious
I had ordered a computer as soon as I found out that my talk The New Folk Tradition: Aesthetic and Community Resonance between Open Source Graphics and Fiber Arts was accepted at the beginning of May. It was to be my first new computer since 2004, and boy was I due! Unfortunately the delivery from Lenovo did not arrive by the 24th when I left. So in a bind I decided to stop by Fry’s on the way to LAX and pick up a little Acer Aspire One netbook.

I arrived in London, downloaded Jolicloud which is based on Ubuntu and started to play around on the train to Brussels. The issue was that I’d not used Unix/Linux since I worked in Motorola in 1999…my how things have changed, so easy to use (yes I like GUI)! So I thought that I was going to give my presentation using Open Office, well when I saw How to Run an Art School on Free and Open Source Software by Florian Cramer, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh I was blown out of the water by their image-centric presentation. I got to chat with them after the talk, and they told me about the FOSS program Impress!ve.

At this point, Christopher Adams showed me how to use a shortcut (alt + F2) to access the repository by calling on gksu synaptic.

So at that moment I scrapped my plans of the standard Power Point-esq (gasp) presentation. After just a few hours at the LGM I already knew how to utilize new tools, and put down some roots with other artist do-ers with similar interests. Rad.

After a vegan lunch we relaxed in the courtyard drinking Belgian beer (thank goodness for the Westmalle tripel) and getting to know our peers.

Another important aspect for me was the instant application of what I learned. WiFi was free and available all over the complex, so while you were watching a talk you could download and try out the software to apply the concepts that were being explained. In addition, birds of a feather (BOF) meetings were scheduled so that people with similar interests could gather to speak about a topic. In my case I was inspired by Susan Spencer’s talk and her project relating to OPEN FASHION. You can learn more at Sew Brilliant. In the BOF meeting, she pulled out one of the most amazing contraptions I’ve ever seen, it was a brass pattern adjuster, that would change scale by rotating a series of screws in a certain order. She even had the manual that dated from 1888.

Basically it was a slide rule for tailors and seamstresses. Susan’s and her partner Steve Conklin (who is a developer for Ubuntu) have a vision where a designer can upload a pattern, another person (who may not be the same size) can adjust it to fit using the program which is based on scalable vector graphics, print and tape up the pattern and sew the custom garment. What an excellent idea, so naturally I included it into my talk. Now check out the video of Pete Ippel relating Asian stitching, 80′s sweaters,Tron, quilts, and weaving to open source graphics.

Great planning matters
Each day of the conference the organizers kept the program on schedule, and the diversity of the talks really demonstrated an expanded view of Libre Graphics. Thanks to River Valley TV for archiving all the LGM 2010 talks.

In addition to software development, there were presentations about metaphor, Tight Pants, Community, publishing, font design,multimedia sound performance, and some miraculous demos. I was particularly impressed with Laid Out and the new brushes for Krita.

Confused? Ask for help
It is incredible how generous people were at the conference, as a n00b it was invaluable to be able to ask a question and get a straight answer, and if the person asking didn’t know, they would refer you to someone who did…The organizers wore aprons and buttons and were always available for help.

Reclaim your tools
I began to understand this overarching theme after a few days into the conference. Formerly I’d been envisioning code as magic. After seeing the Nodebox 2 demo, I downloaded the beta and was able to modify an image or a line of code to make changes to an output. That was a huge breakthrough for me I saw directly that through transparency comes understanding. That’s what F/LOSS gives when code is viewable and modifiable the developer and user are on an even plane, and both can create new tools to suit their needs. There exists a sense of community that is absolutely impossible with closed code.

Work together
I’ve been licensing my art under Creative Commons for a few years, and I am confident that as the young people who have “grown up digital” and the first generations of free culture pioneers continue to push for more openness and transparency on many facets of life from government to software, clipart to color we are in for a very exciting ride.

Please visit the review page for other articles, photos, and a video archive of all the Libre Graphics Events.

If you find yourself in Brussels, use the map below to visit the Pianofabriek. It’s an amazing arts / culture venue with a lovely courtyard, gallery space and cafe.

View Libre Graphics Meeting, 2010 in a larger map

Resources for downloads mentioned in this post
Desktop publishing Scribus
Vector graphic editing Inkscape
Bitmap editing Gimp
Bitmap editing and painting (check out the new brushes) Krita
3d modeling and animation Blender
A new software application for creating generative art using procedural graphics and a new way to approach graphic design Nodebox 2
Ditch hierarchy Peer-To-Peer Design Strategies

How I got involved in Free Culture / F/LOSS / Creative Commons
Often growth is sparked by a change in community…prompted by a different geographic location.

In October 2002, I had just moved to San Francisco and was looking for community. Leaving the comfort of my undergraduate institution and support network in New York, I was seeking attachment to my new home.

I initiated a project called “Free Memory” where the intent was to give away an anonymous gift that brought attention to technology and our relationship with memory both on a disk and in our mind. Looking back at the task I stated that free meant free from price, obligation, need to pay, and also free content.

I desired to connect with the folks on the street, and get out from behind the computer screen…to enrich online life with offline life and vice-versa. Looking back, mobile computing was not an option for me, I had a desktop computer. That project grew and spread so that I even got a video response from across the country:

The Free Memory Project from Thorsten Claus on Vimeo.

Alan Toffler states in his book Future Shock from 1970, “…that enormous changes ahead…overthrow our values with respect to money and success.”

After creating the project OBAY.INFO I was contacted by council for Ebay.com and subsequently looked to Lessig’s Group at Stanford (which lead me to Creative Commons), was fingered in a Canadian Ad Campaign, and was invited to the To Share Festival in Turin Italy. Read all the posts about Obay.

Following Obay project I took a job working as a mentor for pre-professional dancers at the San Francisco Ballet. Over the six years I was there, I learned that a robust community was built with freedom. What I found was that kids would act more like adults when they were given the opportunity to do so. The same was true when I coached high school basketball for 4 years.

I left the Ballet at the end of 2009, and when I moved from San Francisco to Ventura, California, I began an intense production phase to kick-start my full-time art career. By comparing pixels to patchwork, vectors to stitches, bitmaps to patterns, and layers to quilts, I started to discover the aesthetic and community relationships between open source graphics and the fiber arts.

So why does all this happen? Enjoy the following video to gain some insight on the cognitive reasoning:

Thank you to Jon Phillips, Barry Threw, Christopher Adams, Femke Snelting and everyone else at LGM 2010 for helping me feel so welcome in this amazing community.

Assignment notes (from Marcia Lyons) 1999

Using Flash (4!) as your tool create an abstract experience in black and white that includes the 4 visual cues / navigationally in 4th dimension (feedback).

CUES

1. Scale: proportion
2. Negative / Positive space
3. Movement / Direction
4. Hierarchy –> Focus

Freshly Painted Flowers, originally uploaded by hypermodern.

Acrylic and colored pencil on vellum. Nine by twelve inches.

– Taken at 10:02 PM on May 12, 2009 – cameraphone upload by ShoZu

Fire and Fizz, originally uploaded by hypermodern.

The newest installment of the Strycker and Ippel drawing collaboration
– Taken at 9:46 PM on May 11, 2009 – cameraphone upload by ShoZu

So the Headlands Center For The Arts has a new online application program called “SlideRoom” it’s super easy to use, and it works great. I really hope more organizations start to use it. I imagine it would really work well in the art school application process…it makes a slide list receipt/confirmation of upload that you can print out as well. How handy.

The one thing that I wish was that it was more intuitive to shuffle the order around. Once uploaded, the images were not easy to move, so they stayed in the same sequence as they were uploaded.

I just finished up the application for the Tournesol Award ($10,000.00 and a studio in the Marin Headlands *my favorite place to bike*) below you will find the submitted letter of interest.

Dear Tournesol Award committee:

The Headlands has been an integral aspect of my life in the Bay Area. I am an avid cyclist, and last Saturday I was riding my mountain bike on the Miwok trail north of the stables, when I encountered a rough-skinned newt sauntering across my path. I took pause to study his movements and the intricate texture of his skin. It’s experiences like these that ONLY the Headlands can offer and inspire the way I think about the world.

I have an expanded view of works on paper, and as such I have executed projects that integrate digital drawing techniques, various mounting methods, collage, and found objects. My work is simultaneously influenced by technology, while intuitively responding to the embodied experience of life.

Each work has a self-contained reality and often a forthright sense of place. Through the choice of bright colors, condensation of space, and manipulation of visual cues, I create experiences that imply phenomena and images that exude their thing-ness. That is, the unique properties of the subjects depicted are emphasized. What my artwork lacks in verisimilitude, it gains in joyful complexity and honest wonder. I have been gradually getting larger with my practice. Presently I am working on an ambitious four by eight-foot piece of paper, and I want to move even larger, yet I have run out of wall space in my bedroom.

The beauty of our earth inspires me, and I strive to acknowledge the wonders of the natural world by expounding on intuition while maintaining a clear focus on my life as an artist.

As an athlete I understand the rigors of repeated practice, and it is undeniable that creativity and discipline go hand in hand. A residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts will have a profoundly positive effect on my artistic endeavors because I will have a studio that will be a consistent environment in which to work, as well as a nourishing community of peers that is following a similar life path.

Formerly, I have worked up to four jobs at once to pay for the extensive debt I incurred during my tenure at Cornell and the San Francisco Art Institute. I have continued to create new art through all of this, and still maintain an exhibition record complete with solo shows.

Starting in June, I will be working solely for the San Francisco Ballet as their residence manager, and as such, I will be free from noon to seven daily to work in the studio. It will be the first time since graduate school that I will have a block of time dedicated to artistic creation. I aspire to spend that time working at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

My commitment to pursuing a life as an artist is unquestionable. By winning the Tournesol award I will engage in a more complete art practice. It will be my distinct honor to represent the Headlands Center for the Arts as I continue to move forward with my professional art career. Thank you for your consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Ippel

Pisina in progress, originally uploaded by hypermodern.

In progress on my new painting called "pisina".

1. Watching a 3am football game at Cornell in the snow and seeing people act like kids again.

2. Hugging Jennifer, putting my nose in her hair and smelling strawberries.

3. Feeling my body relax when my head hits the pillow at night.

4. Remembering the joy in my father’s face on the first day of kindergarten.

5. Hannah’s eyes when her head is tipped down.

6. Having sled day with my boys at home.

7. Getting packages from people, love in the mailbox.

8. Wearing my Ezekiel hat and thinking about how much it means to me.

9. Blueberry cheese muffins from the dragon.

10. Putting my hands in things that are squishy, i.e. pudding mashed potatoes.

11. Being a respected person by my peers.

12. Taking pictures of friends without them knowing (candid shots).

13. Going to the top of the clock tower for no reason, just the view.

14. Walking alone and thinking about how smart I feel in the plantations.

15. Driving Cars.

16. The nape of the neck.

17. Cuddling with someone I care about.

18. Dancing at a party and getting noticed.

19. Learning new dance moves.

20. Bragging about how cool my parents are.

21. Being so dead set on moving to California.

22. Knowing I could quit school now and get a really great job.

23. Understanding that my family loves me no matter what.

24. Nature at Cornell and walking home at night is so beautiful.

25. The understanding that I can, in 15 minutes learn and understand a new computer program.

26. Knowing that I value relationships over grades and act accordingly.

27. Having the audacity to dress the way I want and know that people wish they were me.

28. My confidence in all my skills.

29. I love going to a new place and making new friends, especially with common interests.

30. Hot, steaming fajitas with crisp vegetables.

31. Day dreaming about how I am going to have a beach front house and make money typing on my laptop in my boxers.

32. Working hard and getting a cool drink in the summer.

33. Cheese Fries the old way at Tasty Dog.

34. Eating tons of candy with the knowledge it will never turn to fat.

36. Being 165 pounds of twisted titanium.

37. Listening to the three Gymnopedes by Sate and relaxing.

38. Changing my earrings and sunglasses to redefine myself.

39. Everyday is Halloween.

40. Trying new art supplies for the first time.

41. The memory of sledding down the steps in a big snow storm.

42. Trying on clothes and buying parts of an outfit for cheap.

43. My mobile from the Viking museum in Denmark.

44. Natalie’s smile and her laugh when I tell her a really stupid joke.

45. What did one burp say to the other burp? Letís be stinkers and go out the other end.

46. Asking pops to go to 7/11 for an ice cream cone.

47. All the Ladies I saw in Sweden, and enjoying the culture.

48. Comfy shoes and socks.

49. Playing basketball on Laguna Beach.

50. Lying on a blanket with Collene in a field of dandelions.

51. Styling my hair in spikes.

52. Dick the barber from the Sanitary Barber Shop calling me Ivy.

53. The first time I told Jennifer “I love you.” at Aux Sable Locks.

54. The smell of Hershey PA.

55. Sleeping in the Arts Quad freshmen year.

56. The joy of getting Doggie to turn on.

57. Riding the Big Wheels with Gary and Sam.

58. Going to the pool every summer with Oliver Wendell Holmes School.

59. Really God-Awful Bright Hawaiian shirts, especially in polyester.

60. The Tripping Game.

61. My mother drawing pictures on the brown bag for lunch.

62. Soft peanut butter and jelly on white bread, very squishy.

63. Jell-o jigglers and Jell-o.

63. Jumping off the second platform at Rhem pool in floaties.

65. Cards (asshole and euchre) with the CC team.

66. Cross Country sports followed by McDonald’s.

67. Comfortable blanket warmth on a cold night.

68. Sleeping nude.

69. The shock of going from the sauna to the pool.

70. Watching cartoons late at night with Mikey.

71. Late night snacks.

72. Popcorn on my nightstand from The Mom and Pops.

73. Holiday magic singing carols to the bears and putting my face into the wooden walrus painting.

74. Climbing Open Bible at Mississippi Palasades, Eagles flying.

75. Surprise Birthday parties.

76. Drinking a few beers at the chapter house two years in a row at 12:01 AM.

77. Getting a free pint the second year at the chapter house when I am 22.

78. Putting pennies in the floorboards at 243 S. East Ave.

79. Disney world as a junior in high school, feeling young again.

80. Skateboarding to work at Signal Interactive.

81. New years eve and the craziness of Berlin.

82. Watching people open gifts that Iíve given them.

83. Wrestling with family members, especially pops, Bridget and Matt.

84. Having Matt Bridget and Marianne see me at Heps Freshmen year at Brown

85. Collapsing into Jen’s arms after a tough race at conference senior year.

86. Running with my father one year after he almost died from staph.

87. Playing on the power pad for Nintendo with JP in track and field.

88. Knowing how bad things could be (i.e. last spring) to how good they will continue to be.

89. Kissing and necking Erika in Dickson while the guys were outside messing around in the hall making noise.

90. Dinner and Dancing in the Prairie State Games with Lia.

91. Climbing around Louie’s rock gym roof.

92. Being able to make people smile and laugh.

93. Writing songs on the spot in my head and then singing about anything.

94. Summer trips to Warren Dunes.

95. Haunted Trails, Gradyís and mini golf in general.

96. Chuckie Cheese for Ski ball with The Mom and Rob always putting our tickets together in a cool way to get a family prize.

97. Indoor Kitchen Basketball from J Bikowski and itís legacy at home.

98. Being recruited and accepted to Yale, Penn, and Cornell.

99. Building the giant snowman, mud sliding , dressing up with the boys of Dickson.

100. All you can eat at Oakenshields and dancing at the dinner table and making fools of ourselves as the track team. The best food challenges and the dining hall classic, and bragging rites.