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Letter from the Editor

October.06.2006

Heading home from a recent trip down South, I picked a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink off the shelf in an airport bookstore.

And at the risk of appearing pedestrian in my choice of reading material — after all, I didn't find it down some dusty corridor in Powell's — I must admit to reading it cover to cover by the time I reached Sea-Tac.

The book is a study of the mysterious world of snap judgments. And after unpacking and cataloguing the hundreds of entries to our One Shot 2006 project, it's not hard to see why I found Blink so riveting.

For example, consider five minutes in the unpacking process. One label is almost illegibly handwritten; another label has been laser printed; this entry is missing a submission form; this one's envelope is marked with words for the customs officer: "No monetary value."

After reading Blink, it's not hard to see how, were I personally judging the material, these experiences (though entirely immaterial to the artwork submitted) might easily set off unconscious tripwires during the actual review process.

As it is (with me rightfully on the sidelines of the jurying process), reading the book has made me more excited than ever that we've set up the process in such an eccentric manner.

Just a picture of the work, the title, and the medium. That's all the judges are seeing. No distracting submission forms, no well-known names, no heavyweight gallery associations. Just the artwork, outside of context and stripped down to essence.

I wonder what Gladwell would think of our experiment. I wonder what WE will think once the deed is done. For now, once again, all we can do is wait to see.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our coverage of Portland's recent Jupiter event (which we pushed out our October publication date to accommodate), as well as all the other goodies packed into this month's issue.

As usual we're pretty proud of ourselves here ;>

Good reading,

m.

Founding Editor
Visual Codec
editor@visualcodec.com