that's a great idea. and on the topic of scratchbooks, some of the best exhibits I've seen on painters and architects have been ones that feature their sketches, which sometimes reveal their thought process. like the exhibits on alvar aalto, chuck close, lebbeus woods, correggio/parmigianino, and countless others. is keeping a scrapbook similar to sketching?

Harsh Patel, I love it!

I keep a journal/scrapbook. An open stream of conciousness really with random scriblings, sketches, clippings...whatever really. I love the process and I find once you open yourself up to it you tune into something special your mindis always creatively hunting for something to write or draw. I do however question if it is driving me a mad...it's amazing what you find wheb you are digging around your mind!

yeah, my scrapbooks is everwhere. i have an agenda, that turned into scrapbooks because i always cut and paste picts i like, wrote web sites, addresses, even map... whenever i'm overseas, i always draw map of the place i found interesting in case i need it some other times... also i collected them in computer as folders... they are indeed very useful for brainstorming, ideas, refrences...

Your site is such a burner. Thanks

The thing is, there's a difference between scrapbooks and image blogs. Scrapbooks are unique and private unless you reproduce them in print, and then it must be a real headache to get permissions. Image blogs are on the net, out where anyone can find and see them, even accidentally - therefore it's a form of publishing, no? Harsh Patel's scrapbook is adjoined to the website he uses to promote his work (and it's an interesting collection, lovely to look at etc), and he's just advertised it in a forum. All it would take is for one or more of the artists whose work has been ripped to object, even if they have a credit, and he could be in big trouble! It might be kind of flattering, but I don't think I'd like something like that to happen to me, even if the work in question were readily available elsewhere on the web.

I've kept notes, journals and clippings for years, but they really are for my eyes only. The blog of my own I set up early last year I'm having an on/off thing about. I've seen a few scrapbook-style other blogs while surfing around, but they haven't made as big an impression on me as the ones that have the blogger's own work on them.

And I can't work out how to round this off... Happy New Year everybody?

I think definitions are boring. It`s more interesting to work on the edge of a definition than within a definition. So to me it absolutely doesn`t matter if it`s a scrapbook or a blog or an ad or whatever. I think it`s quite hard to have control over images in the digital age.

Does that mean you'd be perfectly happy wavering in the middle ground between con + artist? Even working on the edge of a definition involves working within one, whether you're gung-ho about it or not!

Anyway, I wasn't talking about the names of things, I was trying to discuss issues to do with rights and publication. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable when I see someone who, from one perspective, could be said to be using other people's work to promote their own by association, without transforming it in anyway and, possibly, without their knowledge or consent. And THAT really would be boring.

'That' would be boring?....

Yawn.

Would it be more interesting if somebody ripped your work, Ben, so you could sue their ass for infringement of your rights? Problem is, they could now cite the above comment in their defence, i.e. "Oh, Ben said copyright issues are boring so I thought he wouldn't mind" etc.

So, when is your website going to be up and running again?