ARTBASE (1)
PORTFOLIO (1)
BIO
The McElroys are a husband and wife collaborative artist, technology, and business team who bring significant artistic, technology and community development skills to Corporate Performance Artists. Joseph, is a graduate of Computer Science from Duke University and a former team leader at IBM. He has been a CEO of several companies, and has been responsible for raising $2 million to fund a startup company called EveryDayPrint.com, which while part of the dot-com boom and bust, he managed to bring to profitability and which still survives to this day.
Donna was an operations manager and PR specialist in the firms they have started together. She has recently been credited by several business leaders in the Bronx as being "top spokesperson for the Bronx." She is active in many community development projects, such as participating on the Board of the Bruckner Arts and Antique District, and working to promote many Bronx activities through an online newsletter called Cupcake Kaleidoscope.
Joseph was the leader of the Open Source Sig for the New York Software Industry Association. And was track co-chair for Open Source at the 2001 New York Software Industry Summit. He was on the advisory board for PostgreSql, Inc - the leading Open Source Database and has had articles published by Lutris Technologies and Open Magazine on Open Source business models and technology solutions. He is a database expert with extensive Fortune 500 experience. Among other awards, he won an IBM Division Award for Technical Excellence.
From magazine "Open" issue September 2001 - "The McElroys kick open the doors of old business models and capitalize on what they believe." The McElroys have achieved re-known as Open Source visionaries with interviews by Interactive Week, Infoworld, Fortune Technology, Open magazine, and others. Joseph and Donna make no claims of divine insight, but in review by Lewis Lacock, it is said, "that this dynamic duo of art are the closest things we have to true shamans today". They are doing their best to pursue the knowledge to support such claims someday.
HIGHLIGHTS
* Achieved reputation as Open Source visionarys with interviews by Interactive Week, Infoworld, Fortune Technology, Open magazine among others.
* National Columnist on Money Matters for Gather.com.
* Judge for the Advanced Technical Categories of the Emmys.
* Successfully raised $2 million funding for startup.
* Successfully built and sold two technology businesses.
* First Entry into the Multimedia wing of the Museum of Computer Art.
* Artwork collected by the Library at Cornell University.
* Artwork in the collection of Rhizome.org.
* Developed first ever Exhibition Catalog completely on CD Rom. Done for Alternative Museum. Reviewed by New York Times.
* Selected to attend first ever Summer Institute for Performance Art at The Kitchen in NYC.
* IBM Division Award for Technical Excellence.
* Various academic, mathematic and scholarship awards. Attended Duke University on a full scholarship in mathematics.
* Poetry published in various journals. Art exhibited in museum shows.
* Certificate of Artistic Excellence from Congressman Jose Serrano.
* Recognized by Bronx Borough President Aldofo Carrion for contributions to the community.
Donna was an operations manager and PR specialist in the firms they have started together. She has recently been credited by several business leaders in the Bronx as being "top spokesperson for the Bronx." She is active in many community development projects, such as participating on the Board of the Bruckner Arts and Antique District, and working to promote many Bronx activities through an online newsletter called Cupcake Kaleidoscope.
Joseph was the leader of the Open Source Sig for the New York Software Industry Association. And was track co-chair for Open Source at the 2001 New York Software Industry Summit. He was on the advisory board for PostgreSql, Inc - the leading Open Source Database and has had articles published by Lutris Technologies and Open Magazine on Open Source business models and technology solutions. He is a database expert with extensive Fortune 500 experience. Among other awards, he won an IBM Division Award for Technical Excellence.
From magazine "Open" issue September 2001 - "The McElroys kick open the doors of old business models and capitalize on what they believe." The McElroys have achieved re-known as Open Source visionaries with interviews by Interactive Week, Infoworld, Fortune Technology, Open magazine, and others. Joseph and Donna make no claims of divine insight, but in review by Lewis Lacock, it is said, "that this dynamic duo of art are the closest things we have to true shamans today". They are doing their best to pursue the knowledge to support such claims someday.
HIGHLIGHTS
* Achieved reputation as Open Source visionarys with interviews by Interactive Week, Infoworld, Fortune Technology, Open magazine among others.
* National Columnist on Money Matters for Gather.com.
* Judge for the Advanced Technical Categories of the Emmys.
* Successfully raised $2 million funding for startup.
* Successfully built and sold two technology businesses.
* First Entry into the Multimedia wing of the Museum of Computer Art.
* Artwork collected by the Library at Cornell University.
* Artwork in the collection of Rhizome.org.
* Developed first ever Exhibition Catalog completely on CD Rom. Done for Alternative Museum. Reviewed by New York Times.
* Selected to attend first ever Summer Institute for Performance Art at The Kitchen in NYC.
* IBM Division Award for Technical Excellence.
* Various academic, mathematic and scholarship awards. Attended Duke University on a full scholarship in mathematics.
* Poetry published in various journals. Art exhibited in museum shows.
* Certificate of Artistic Excellence from Congressman Jose Serrano.
* Recognized by Bronx Borough President Aldofo Carrion for contributions to the community.
Re: the struggle continues
>
> I don't deny any of the above. My line above is about an existentialist
> worldview. I don't want to get into my worldview at this point (or I'd be
> here for days), but effectively if there is no god, and we are what we have
> made ourselves over millenia, then there is no per se 'right' or 'wrong' .
> Just a human striving to affect and alter our world (and as you hint, to
> leave a better one for our genetic offspring maybe). You can't just change
> the world, because we are what we have made ourselves. But the option of
> change is not precluded. This doesn't make me a bad person or a good
> person - it just allows me to have some touchstones so that I can keep my
> view of the world and my art in perspective.
But then why castigate those operating for change? Even if impractical, they
are neither right or wrong. For change to occur, there always has to be the
early adopters - testing the waters for the folks to follow. I am a big
believer (yes) in operating in the sphere of impracticality. You always feel
like you are on a quest, never settled to die a comfortable death over years of
complacency. You have to be reasonably clever to survive without an established
niche, to not get trapped by insolvancy or an abundance of resources to be
protected.
>
> BTW, more interestingly, when writing the line above I wrote ... there is
> no per se 'truth' or ... and then I spent a while looking for the word that
> is the opposite of truth. And after a while I decided there wasn't one, as
> in 'right' and 'wrong'. I mean, you could say 'lies', but lies is not a
> state as truth can be ... or whatever. Or did I miss something?
Truth with a big T or little t? I like the first definition in dicitionary.com
"Conformity to fact or actuality." Perhaps the opposite of truth is non-
conformity.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
> I don't deny any of the above. My line above is about an existentialist
> worldview. I don't want to get into my worldview at this point (or I'd be
> here for days), but effectively if there is no god, and we are what we have
> made ourselves over millenia, then there is no per se 'right' or 'wrong' .
> Just a human striving to affect and alter our world (and as you hint, to
> leave a better one for our genetic offspring maybe). You can't just change
> the world, because we are what we have made ourselves. But the option of
> change is not precluded. This doesn't make me a bad person or a good
> person - it just allows me to have some touchstones so that I can keep my
> view of the world and my art in perspective.
But then why castigate those operating for change? Even if impractical, they
are neither right or wrong. For change to occur, there always has to be the
early adopters - testing the waters for the folks to follow. I am a big
believer (yes) in operating in the sphere of impracticality. You always feel
like you are on a quest, never settled to die a comfortable death over years of
complacency. You have to be reasonably clever to survive without an established
niche, to not get trapped by insolvancy or an abundance of resources to be
protected.
>
> BTW, more interestingly, when writing the line above I wrote ... there is
> no per se 'truth' or ... and then I spent a while looking for the word that
> is the opposite of truth. And after a while I decided there wasn't one, as
> in 'right' and 'wrong'. I mean, you could say 'lies', but lies is not a
> state as truth can be ... or whatever. Or did I miss something?
Truth with a big T or little t? I like the first definition in dicitionary.com
"Conformity to fact or actuality." Perhaps the opposite of truth is non-
conformity.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
Re: the struggle continues
Quoting Ivan Pope <ivan@ivanpope.com>:
>All power comes from the barrel of a gun.
Actually, power can also be from various energies - sexual, religious,
charisma, public opinion etc...however the long term prospects for these are
not as good as violence (energy runs out, guns last a long time)
> The arguments as above can and will go on forever. But the laws that big
> bad
> corporations use to abuse poor starving artists are also of use to the poor
> starving artists.
You are kidding aren't you? Do you know how much it costs to protect your
rights in a court of law? A poor starving artist cannot afford to use the laws
to their advantage, thus are forced to give up their rights to corporations,
who give them a miniscule renumeration.
>If you take the laws away and it becomes a free for all,
> who do you think is going to win.
Nobody is suggesting this, I am suggesting the temporary accumulation of the
various energies to create power for change.
Personally, I accept that the world is
> imperfect and that there is no right or wrong, just interpretation of the
> situation. That's what I do as an artist. If people steal my work, I might
> shrug and accept it or I might fight them.
If you could afford to fight them.
>Depends on how I feel and what I
> think I might to next. But I gave up thinking that there was a right
> worldview and a wrong worldview.
There might not be a right or wrong, but there is freedom/repression. Does
someone hold a gun to your head or not? Being ambiguously amoral does not have
to translate into inactive political stances. It is in your long term self-
interest and that of your progeny to maintain and enhance your freedoms. You
can choose to do this by sucking up to a repressive regime and becoming one of
the repressive powers, or you can stand firm with others and contribute to
freedom building enterprises for everybody.
>
> Man is alone in a godless universe. He has made himself what he is and has
> to be what he is.
We are talking to each other aren't we? We exist as a community, not alone,
and in that community we can find the richness for life and afterlife for which
we are looking. The community sustains us and allows us to operate
independently or with others as we see fit - providing that the community is
healthy and flexible enough to allow individual freedom. It is part of our
responsibility to contribute to the health of our community. Why there is this
responsibility is a subject of debate (is there a god), however, almost
everybody has an inate sense (perhaps constructed - but if so - from what
origin?) of this - sometimes rejected, sometimes ignored, sometimes accepted.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
>All power comes from the barrel of a gun.
Actually, power can also be from various energies - sexual, religious,
charisma, public opinion etc...however the long term prospects for these are
not as good as violence (energy runs out, guns last a long time)
> The arguments as above can and will go on forever. But the laws that big
> bad
> corporations use to abuse poor starving artists are also of use to the poor
> starving artists.
You are kidding aren't you? Do you know how much it costs to protect your
rights in a court of law? A poor starving artist cannot afford to use the laws
to their advantage, thus are forced to give up their rights to corporations,
who give them a miniscule renumeration.
>If you take the laws away and it becomes a free for all,
> who do you think is going to win.
Nobody is suggesting this, I am suggesting the temporary accumulation of the
various energies to create power for change.
Personally, I accept that the world is
> imperfect and that there is no right or wrong, just interpretation of the
> situation. That's what I do as an artist. If people steal my work, I might
> shrug and accept it or I might fight them.
If you could afford to fight them.
>Depends on how I feel and what I
> think I might to next. But I gave up thinking that there was a right
> worldview and a wrong worldview.
There might not be a right or wrong, but there is freedom/repression. Does
someone hold a gun to your head or not? Being ambiguously amoral does not have
to translate into inactive political stances. It is in your long term self-
interest and that of your progeny to maintain and enhance your freedoms. You
can choose to do this by sucking up to a repressive regime and becoming one of
the repressive powers, or you can stand firm with others and contribute to
freedom building enterprises for everybody.
>
> Man is alone in a godless universe. He has made himself what he is and has
> to be what he is.
We are talking to each other aren't we? We exist as a community, not alone,
and in that community we can find the richness for life and afterlife for which
we are looking. The community sustains us and allows us to operate
independently or with others as we see fit - providing that the community is
healthy and flexible enough to allow individual freedom. It is part of our
responsibility to contribute to the health of our community. Why there is this
responsibility is a subject of debate (is there a god), however, almost
everybody has an inate sense (perhaps constructed - but if so - from what
origin?) of this - sometimes rejected, sometimes ignored, sometimes accepted.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
Re: the struggle continues
Quoting Eryk Salvaggio <eryk@maine.rr.com>:
>
> Property should be abolished and all of us should work towards
> generating a pool that gets divided
> between every citizen evenly at the end of the week; sure. I'm for it
> 100%, let's abolish the concepts
> of family and religion while we're at it.
Well, religion can be abolished as well. Fine by me (another story). However,
property is simply violent (yes, state sponsored) protection of whatever a
particular group of people have decided should be protected. When taken very
far, becomes pretty repressive - small group "owns" most everything. Fighting
to abolish property, not a bad diversion, helps counterweight those trying to
own everything. It's like being one of the few sighted in a land of blind
people - are you going to rob or protect?
But we aren't going to
> convince the Getty corporation, and when
> dealing with an image that is protected by said corporation one might
> expect that corporation to protect
> its own interests. Furthermore, misrepresenting the case of "linking to"
> and "bringing up in the body of
> my own work" is unfair and hurts Curt's case. The better argument is
> that the piece is being used in a
> collage; which might constitute fair use, but I frankly doubt it would
> hold up in court if "Deconstructing
> Beck" [a cd on illegal art records consisting of electro-noise remixes
> of Beck CD's] wouldn't. [And I
> don't know if that ever even went to court.]
Laws are opinions given weight over time - they can be changed by opinions
changing over time. The Free Software Foundation is settling all cases
instead of going to court because want to get a mountain of economic dependency
on the Open Source/Gnu licenses such that any judge that overturned the license
would create such a financial catastrophy they would be too scared to do it.
So instead of arguing what is the practical now (which we would need a court of
law to decide) lets decide what the rational should be, and then go about
courting opinion until rational becomes actual.
>
> But collage is a solid argument; whereas claiming to link to an image
> when you are img src'ing it is really a
> blatant misrepresentation of what Curt was doing. My argument is that
> Curt was violating the rules,
> not that the rules were good.
Something we would need to try in a court, with legal experts. Posing such a
legal question here is like asking priests to judge a beauty contest.
On one hand there is a need for an artist
> to control how his work is
> presented [and if that means handing his work over to Getty to do it for
> them, then that's one more
> sad alternative to the pressures of independance that plague the entire
> planet] but on the other hand
> there is the right for a free flowing evolution and development of work
> into new directions. But
> individual rights to ones work should be protected, and how ones work is
> used and in what context
> they are placed is extremely important to how an entire body of work is
> potentially recieved- whether
> it makes money or not is irrelevant.
Well, if you are an extreme control freak, you can always just never show the
work at all, have it buried with you. There might be the need to control
someone from making a million dollars from mass producing posters of your work,
but fighting every extreme and minor use to prevent the latter is repressive
and suffocating.
By becoming TOO efficient at protecting rights, we will create a society that
will explode at the seams.
>
> Why is this two seperate activities? The artist is the buisiness person
> in this case, I presume, same guy.
Because as you have pointed out, a businessman is not an artist. But beside
that point, determining the best way to profit from an endeavor is not the same
thing as performing the endeavor.
> To claim otherwise is to buy into the same schizophrenia that allows
> corporations to have the rights of
> individuals but none of the responsibility.
No - two different activities - I can be both a pianist and a politician, but
being a politician does not make me a pianist.
Public opinion needs to be LEAD to require that corporations bear the
responsibilities of individuals...from artists to the press, from politicians
to ministers - an obligation.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
>
> Property should be abolished and all of us should work towards
> generating a pool that gets divided
> between every citizen evenly at the end of the week; sure. I'm for it
> 100%, let's abolish the concepts
> of family and religion while we're at it.
Well, religion can be abolished as well. Fine by me (another story). However,
property is simply violent (yes, state sponsored) protection of whatever a
particular group of people have decided should be protected. When taken very
far, becomes pretty repressive - small group "owns" most everything. Fighting
to abolish property, not a bad diversion, helps counterweight those trying to
own everything. It's like being one of the few sighted in a land of blind
people - are you going to rob or protect?
But we aren't going to
> convince the Getty corporation, and when
> dealing with an image that is protected by said corporation one might
> expect that corporation to protect
> its own interests. Furthermore, misrepresenting the case of "linking to"
> and "bringing up in the body of
> my own work" is unfair and hurts Curt's case. The better argument is
> that the piece is being used in a
> collage; which might constitute fair use, but I frankly doubt it would
> hold up in court if "Deconstructing
> Beck" [a cd on illegal art records consisting of electro-noise remixes
> of Beck CD's] wouldn't. [And I
> don't know if that ever even went to court.]
Laws are opinions given weight over time - they can be changed by opinions
changing over time. The Free Software Foundation is settling all cases
instead of going to court because want to get a mountain of economic dependency
on the Open Source/Gnu licenses such that any judge that overturned the license
would create such a financial catastrophy they would be too scared to do it.
So instead of arguing what is the practical now (which we would need a court of
law to decide) lets decide what the rational should be, and then go about
courting opinion until rational becomes actual.
>
> But collage is a solid argument; whereas claiming to link to an image
> when you are img src'ing it is really a
> blatant misrepresentation of what Curt was doing. My argument is that
> Curt was violating the rules,
> not that the rules were good.
Something we would need to try in a court, with legal experts. Posing such a
legal question here is like asking priests to judge a beauty contest.
On one hand there is a need for an artist
> to control how his work is
> presented [and if that means handing his work over to Getty to do it for
> them, then that's one more
> sad alternative to the pressures of independance that plague the entire
> planet] but on the other hand
> there is the right for a free flowing evolution and development of work
> into new directions. But
> individual rights to ones work should be protected, and how ones work is
> used and in what context
> they are placed is extremely important to how an entire body of work is
> potentially recieved- whether
> it makes money or not is irrelevant.
Well, if you are an extreme control freak, you can always just never show the
work at all, have it buried with you. There might be the need to control
someone from making a million dollars from mass producing posters of your work,
but fighting every extreme and minor use to prevent the latter is repressive
and suffocating.
By becoming TOO efficient at protecting rights, we will create a society that
will explode at the seams.
>
> Why is this two seperate activities? The artist is the buisiness person
> in this case, I presume, same guy.
Because as you have pointed out, a businessman is not an artist. But beside
that point, determining the best way to profit from an endeavor is not the same
thing as performing the endeavor.
> To claim otherwise is to buy into the same schizophrenia that allows
> corporations to have the rights of
> individuals but none of the responsibility.
No - two different activities - I can be both a pianist and a politician, but
being a politician does not make me a pianist.
Public opinion needs to be LEAD to require that corporations bear the
responsibilities of individuals...from artists to the press, from politicians
to ministers - an obligation.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
Re: the struggle continues
You guys are making the same logical dollars/sense arguments that allowing
corporations to fine individuals service charges while not allowing individuals
to charge the corporations for wasting their time.
It is not such a simple little world. Yet republicans and children want it to
be. Corporations use A LOT of public resources - yet have very little
expectation of delivering public good (other than supposed economic engine -
jobs) The Getty uses A LOT of public resources - to have little bit syphoned
off for fair use purposes is a gray area I would like to see approved,
applauded, and no longer an argument for repression.
And BTW - an artist created the image...a businessperson gave control to the
Getty. Two seperate activities.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
corporations to fine individuals service charges while not allowing individuals
to charge the corporations for wasting their time.
It is not such a simple little world. Yet republicans and children want it to
be. Corporations use A LOT of public resources - yet have very little
expectation of delivering public good (other than supposed economic engine -
jobs) The Getty uses A LOT of public resources - to have little bit syphoned
off for fair use purposes is a gray area I would like to see approved,
applauded, and no longer an argument for repression.
And BTW - an artist created the image...a businessperson gave control to the
Getty. Two seperate activities.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
Re: Fwd:
Curt,
Find a foreign ISP to host the page. I know a few good ones. Do it under a
corporate name. If they sue the corporation, just fold it and start another.
I am not sure about all the legal stuff, but use the corporate system to your
advantage. They pick on you because it is easy to make an example, lets make
it hard and expensive and a pain in the ass. I know some lawyers who will
work on some of this for free.
Mary, you opened a real bad can.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]
Find a foreign ISP to host the page. I know a few good ones. Do it under a
corporate name. If they sue the corporation, just fold it and start another.
I am not sure about all the legal stuff, but use the corporate system to your
advantage. They pick on you because it is easy to make an example, lets make
it hard and expensive and a pain in the ass. I know some lawyers who will
work on some of this for free.
Mary, you opened a real bad can.
--
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]