The reel with me in the shed got 400k views. The one of me actually carving? 200.

I keep going round in circles on this. The most watched thing I've put up this year was a shite phone video of me pulling a first proof off the press, shouting "look at that now, the head on her" at no one. Four hundred thousand views, sure. And the properly made one, the close up of the gouge cutting into the lino, nice light, good edit? Two hundred odd and mostly my mother.

Not complaining, it paid for ink. But there's a part of me that worries I'm training the algorithm to want the shouting and the mess, not the work. Like the room gets packed for the bloke in the apron and empties out the moment he actually sits down to carve.

I don't know what the answer is. I'm not about to perform a breakdown for the views, my own genuine ones are enough of a show. But I do catch myself framing shots now, thinking will this one pop, and I hate that I can't tell anymore if it's the craft people want or just the theatre of it. Are yous all just making the loud stuff now and keeping the real work for the buyers? Or have you found a way to make the quiet post land too?

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Lukas Brandt·5d

I know this feeling well, though your ratio is kinder than mine. I once had thousands of people watch a thirty-second clip of me scraping back a failed painting with a palette knife in frustration. The painting that took four months to get right, filmed properly in the studio. Barely anything.

The thing is, the scrape was real. The frustration was real. People don't watch for the finish, they watch for the moment. And a first proof coming off the press, that's a genuine moment. The well-made close-up is a document of work, but it doesn't have the same pulse in it.

I don't think you're training the algorithm so much as the algorithm is showing you what most people actually want, which is proximity to the making, not the made thing. It's uncomfortable but it isn't dishonest. The question is whether you can live with that split between the audience that likes the shouting and the audience that buys the work. I suspect they're not the same people, and that's alright. The ink money came from one, the next body of work from the other.

I wouldn't stop making the proper ones. Just don't expect them to perform. That's not what they're for.

Niall DohertyOP·5d

Ha, the scrape. Now there's a thing I'd watch, and I'd watch it twice. Sure there's more truth in one frustrated swipe of a palette knife than in a whole gallery wall of finished work sometimes.

But you've hit the nerve of it for me there. "People watch for the moment." I've been sat in the shed arguing with myself about whether I'm cheapening the craft, when the lad watching it is probably not thinking about craft at all, he's watching a man lose the run of himself over a bit of ink and wood, and there's something recognisable in that. We've all had the thing not go right and wanted to throw it at a wall.

Still. 400k of me shouting at me own feet, and the mother's the only one watching the real work. I'm not sure I've made my peace with it yet, but you've given me a better way of looking at it anyway. The proof coming off the press, that's a moment, and the close-up of the gouge is... a document, like you say. Both have their place. Only one of them pays for ink though, so the algorithm and I are in a dance whether I like it or not.

What happened the failed painting in the end, did it get rescued or did it stay a casualty?

Ramesh Jha·5d

This is a real thing you are touching, ji. In my work also the same pattern. When I teach the young girls the Mithila art, I show them the finished piece with the fish and the peacock and the fine lines, and people say very nice. But when I show the video of my hands mixing the natural colour from the leaves, grinding it slowly, that one goes far. More people want to see the making than the made, I think.

But I would say do not worry too much. The shed video and the apron, that is not noise only. That is the human thing. The people who come for the shouting, some will stay for the work. And even the two hundred who watched your real carving, those are the ones who will buy your print or learn from you. The four hundred thousand gave you ink. That also has value.

The close up with the nice light, you keep making those. The other one you cannot control, it will do what it does. But the work is what you are, and that will not change because of the algorithm.

Niall DohertyOP·5d

Ah now, that's it exactly, and you've said it far better than me. The making, not the made. There's something in watching the hands do the thing, isn't there, before it's all tidied and framed and pretending it was never a struggle. The grinding of the colour from the leaves, sure I could watch that all day myself and I don't even know the first thing about mixing natural dye.

And you're right about the staying. I hadn't thought of it that way. The shouting gets them in the door, but it's the carving that keeps them stood there. I've had two commissions this month off people who found me through the silly yoke of a video, and when they wrote they mentioned the work, not the apron. So there you go.

Mithila art now, that's a whole different world to mine, all that fine line work, the discipline of it. I take my hat off. The patience alone would near kill me and I carve ruddy hares for a living. Would love to see some of it sometime if you've it up anywhere.