If you’ve been following me via twitter, then you already know that I bounced out of Brooklyn just before Halloween and moved down to Brasil just after Thanksgiving. I’ve loved this country since I was seventeen and took a ship up the Amazon River with my family, and I’ve dreamt of living abroad for most of my dues-paying Aughts while I waited for my career to catch up with my wanderlust.
After Lil and I got married a few years ago, it dawned on me (dur!) that our entwined paths would likely take us back to this beautiful country, her native land. My next question was uttered through a big grin: how soon can we leave? The answer turned out to be a few more years of hard work, but we finally made the jump and in addition to side-stepping this freezing winter completely, it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.
So, here in 2010, I’m working from the megapolis that is São Paulo, the largest city in South America and source of daily inspiration for me. I’m still usually stuck home with deadlines, talking to the same friends through the same applications I did when they were blocks or subway stops away, but I try to sneak away from my drawing table much as possible. My brain’s still adjusting to the metric system, to 24-hour time, struggling to think in portuguese instead of translating into it… though all of these new skills could use more practice.
In the buildup to RLP’s launch (during which I moved twice, once to a new country), we’ve had some interesting adventures along the way. I’ll post some images/video of moments to let you experience what’s crawling into my eyes, ears, brain from this lovely, lovely chaos, as you’re already seeing it dribbling out through my work.
On that note, more new new soon soon… Right now I gots RLP to draw. Tchauuuu!
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of ghosts, of places holding onto echoes of their inhabitants; when I was a kid in Florida, I spent a summer riding my bike to the library everyday and reading every book on ghost photography I could get my hands on… It probably had to do with me losing one of my grandfathers early on and seeing him hanging around our house for a few years afterwards. But when you cross that obsession and sensitivity with a love of history and culture, all of a sudden those echoes contain music, perfumes, context… and there’s a certain romance to that, of old times that have passed on but still remain.
It was also an opportunity for Seth to showcase some of his excellent photography we’ve done together over the last few years for various book projects, like the following pic:
I love this pic for two reasons: 1) it’s a total fake… I’m still in my old bedroom in Brooklyn, floating against a photoshopped Miami background and Seth lit me to match the beach moonlight, and 2) that leather loveseat is where I wrote Red Light Properties’ final 7th draft; I left it behind in Williamsburg when we moved down to São Paulo and my heart still aches for my cool and smooshy place to sit and dream.
Our current couch here aches my tuchus after extended sessions; stay tuned for fuckin’ fascinating future furniture developments.
I’m doing a bit of catch-up here as I’ve launched a new series and moved to another country since I experienced this incredible MIT conference, so please bear with me, my lovelies, as I marry the signal-gaps and blog my way back to the present:
What counts as “radio†when it comes via podcast rather than over the air? How do we create “television†as the limitations of spectrum scarcity slip away and content is delivered online?
Media is determined by conventions that emerge from both technological constraints and cultural practices – the technologies of content delivery shape the industrial and the creative modes that define something like “television.†In a world of convergence, the basis for many of the conventions that define media are in flux. How can we come to understand and redefine the industrial, consumption and creative practices of media as convergence works to erode some of the distinctions between them?
How is radio affected once it moves from the Hertzian waves to the podcast? What happens to the comic once it moves from the page to a Playstation? How are audiences responding to and shaping these shifts? And how are business models adapting to these changes?
Moderated by Joshua Green – Research Manager, Convergence Culture Consortium
Dan Goldman – Illustrator of Shooting War
Jennifer Holt – UC Santa Barbara, co-editor of Media Industries (Wiley-Blackwell)
Brian Larkin – Milbank Barnard College
Avner Ronen – CEO & Co-founder, Boxee
The fine folks at the Radar project dedicated a full episode of this season to myself and Red Light Properties, making a short film about how I create this new work at this particular turning point in my life/career.
And if you’re not already reading RLP, the first page is right here.
The third installment of RED LIGHT PROPERTIES just went live on Tor.com, where we get to spend some solo time with Jude Tobin and secretary/ghost photog Zoya Pashenko. You can check it out here:
My new series RLP launched this morning on Tor.com, and the first episode is a double-length hit-the-ground-running affair. The series starts today and runs every Tuesday for the next six months, but since you’re reading this now, you can sneer and say you were there since the beginning:
Enjoy the first hit; I’ll see you again on Tuesday.
RLP launches on Tor.com this Tuesday, January 5th.
Available Languages:
About Mister Goldman
One-man comics studio Dan Goldman works as a writer, artist and designer. Creator of the tropical- horror series RED LIGHT PROPERTIES, his previous works include the Eisner-nominated web-to-print comic SHOOTING WAR, and his recent non-fiction graphic novel 08: A GRAPHIC DIARY OF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL.
Dan is also a frequent speaker on both digital comic creation and distribution, moderating panel discussions at SXSW Interactive, his annual "Going Paperless: Using Computers to Draw Comics" panel at the New York Comic-Con and MIT's Futures of Entertainment conference.
Raised in Miami and steeled in New York, he currently lives in São Paulo, Brazil.
Dan is Also Here: