Today I am happy to talk about a Dhuyvetter web project about which I am very excited, but with which I have had no hand in creating. My daughter Taylor moved to New York last spring to pursue her career as an actress and model in the creative heart of the country. During the past eight months, she has experienced many of the transitional experiences that all young adults face, compounded with the challenges of starting in a difficult industry while 3000 miles from her home. Though I have tried to be supportive through the past year, there have been many times when I have simply had to stand back and watch with terror and admiration as she navigates each turn.
A month ago she called me excited about a new project she was starting with a friend. While my first fatherly reaction was concern over how she could do this project while working, auditioning, modeling, and (I hope) sleeping; but I heard in her explanation an excitement and passion that pushed me past my questions.
Around the first of the year, she and her partner will be launching a arts website called All of the Above. Artists from their broadening circle will post audio and video, photography and visual arts, prose and poetry for exposure, feedback, and connections. The website title came from the creators’ initial discussion about the siloed nature of arts sites and a need for a site to capture the eclectic reality of the artists with which they live and work.
The past month has been taken with creating the website (not yet launched) developing a logo (appropriately colored Millennial Pink), and developing the launch content that will set the tone for later submissions. They have used the social tools of Facebook and Instagram (as well as traditional word of mouth) to herald the coming of AOTA, and have developed plans for marketing and monetizing the site.
As I watch the birth of this project with admiration and bursting pride, I also note how this illustrates a key reality of the digital world. The gatekeepers between ideas and distribution are gone. High level productivity is available to all for very little cost. A website costs almost nothing. The tools of broadcast are universal. Now, which this has also allowed for an increase in wide spread poor quality work, it also gives the chance and a voice to every creator. I hope that AOTA will become a long-term broadly used platform for artists and art lovers to voice and judge and criticize and applaud, but mainly to dream.
I will post the AOTA website as soon as it launches. For a look at the preparations going into the site you can follow the Instagram Here