Tom Paine's Ghost is excited to announce
a composition competition.
A $100 cash prize will be awarded for the most aesthetically powerful multi-media blog post.
Post content is limited only by the bounds of imagination.
Keep in mind Tom Paine's Ghost was founded amidst a battle to defend freedom of the press and we hope to echo that theme throughout our pages.
Submissions will be selected and judged on the basis of four criteria:
1. Clarity
2. Originality
3. Integration (at least three forms of media must be utilized, images, text, movies (you tube or vimeo), audio, etc.)
4. Power (the post's ability to motivate readers to action).
Submissions will be accepted until the summer solstice - June 21st, 2010. Please submit a link to your post in the comments section below along with a short note explaining why you feel your post meets the criteria. Selected submissions will be linked in a submission post here at TPG and voted on by our panel of citizen judges. The winner will be announced on July 4th, 2010 and will be notified by email. Whether this is your first post or your one thousandth all submissions will be reviewed.
You may also submit your post in an email to kristopherhite@gmail.com.
The above scene is one of ten panels that adorn the double doors to the octagonal building known as the baptistry in the center of Florence, Italy. In 1401 a competition was held among the sculptors of the day for the privilege of creating these doors. Doors Michelangelo would later dub the "gates of paradise." The use of point perspective and heightened human realism marked the end of the dark ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. As we emerge from eight years of darkness perhaps a competition in the context of New Media can facilitate the evolution of our communication.
~Cheers to revolution via evolution!
~Cheers to revolution via evolution!
6 comments:
Ghiberti's doors are amazing and a symbolic beginning of the Renaissance, but it was the ingenuity of Brunelleschi's dome across the way that always amazed me. A few years after the competition for the baptistery doors there was a competition to complete the dome of the cathedral. Ghiberti entered the competition, but was bested by Brunelleschi who created a technical masterpiece far surpassing the doors, in my opinion. Together then these men's artistic and technical ideas shaped the end of the dark ages.
My own research centers around the end of the comic dark ages, reionization. The cosmic dark ages are a period of time between about 300,000 and 1 billion years after the big bang where there were no stars or galaxies. During reionization the first stars and galaxies formed and the modern era of galaxy evolution began. Quite and amazing analogy to the cultural renaissance. Perhaps I should write about this...
I think exploring the analogous potential of cosmic re-ionization and the cultural renaissance is a brilliant idea. However, I would deduce that they are analogous because the periods of time they both succeeded have been mistakenly understood to be "dark" and empty and void of "knowing." I think it would be more interesting to argue that the smeary, rewritten, consciously contrived version of mediaeval history that has sunk deep in our collective cultural understanding is much like the time on Earth that preceded the first appearance of stars and galaxies, that both were periods of profound holism, unsensationally brimming with the foundations of all matter and knowledge--a richly saturated but star-less sky supplanted by glistening heavenly bodies in perfect geometry, and likewise fame-less monks who healed the cancerous and lame, premier decipherers of universal truths credited to later "light"-dwellers Copernicus and other great men of fame who's discoveries survived the careful revision and distortion attempts of the (re)written-record-makers.
See response...
http://www.tompainesghost.com/2009/11/post-with-most-on-tom-paines-ghost_12.html
Kris,
I'll be happy to promote your contest, but I highly suggest putting some information about it on the front page. I came to your blog and couldn't find anything about the contest quickly. I had to then go back and find the comment you had left at 3DQ.
I will also nominate one of my own posts from 3QD in the contest!
Good luck.
Abbas
Also, Kris, you really need to collect all the submitted posts in one place so people can browse them. And have a link to that from somewhere near the top of your front page. Put some effort into it, man! :-)
Abbas!
You rock. Thanks for your submission, your post on 3QD, and suggestions. You are 100% right. I will begin to construct a logo to display on the front page right away. I will collect entries into a page and link to them from under the competition logo as well. The reason there is no such submission page is that you are the first entry quite honestly. I have had some comments of interest but no actual submissions until now. I figure 6 months will be plenty of time and am planning to promote the competition heavily in early January. Again thank you both for your submission and for reigniting my fire for this project and blogging in general. I appreciate you good work at 3QD!
Sincerely,
Kris
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