From Freak to Geek
or
Something Funny Happened on the way to the Macintosh
By Martin "Memo" Dybdal
 Getting computerized has certainly been one of my smartest moves and I recommend it warmly to my fellow artists - if they haven't done it already. I'm a photographer (living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark), but I think just about any artist in any field would benefit from it.
I decided to get computerized for mainly two reasons:
1. I found out that computers could be useful, cool and fun.
2. Everybody else was beginning to use computers. I was beginning to feel like a Danish Rip van Winkle. [Rip van Winkle n 1: a person oblivious to social changes 2: a person who sleeps a lot] I now own a PowerBook G3 as well as a Palm and I'm a successful computer user, but let me tell you how it started.
Bad beginning.
My first experience with computers dates back to university. This was before the GUI [Graphical User Interface], or at least before the GUI came to other machines than the Macintosh. I took a course in computers, namely how to use the programming language "Pascal." The whole thing was quite austere, 2 persons per computer, monochrome screens and "error" messages on the screen for what seemed like every other command. We spent a lot of time on theory, which I haven't ever had any use for since and which we were taught in a classroom with no computer in sight.
I found the whole subject completely useless and disrelated to what I wanted to do, so I more or less gave up computers for the next ten years.
It wasn't completely useless, though: My buddy, Ole, and I sent a message to Anne, another computer student: "Dear Anne; You have nice eyes and ears, will you date us?"
I can't remember whether Anne ever replied or what her answer was. Maybe she was secretly in love with us and her answer was lost somewhere in the complicated computer network of the University of Copenhagen, we'll never know. (Anyway, she's married now.)
The living dead.
I spent the next many years as a computer zombie: An unwilling slave to the beige monsters that I was occasionally forced to operate if I wanted to live at all.
I would cope by asking knowledgable people for the exact instructions. I asked and asked and meticulously wrote it all down on paper. After which I asked some more.
Often, the people I asked would come over and handle the problem for me - I suspect it may have been to avoid more asking, although nobody ever said so, not to me at least.
I even got a computer from a friend who's a writer and was upgrading, but never got around to using it, except for this: I turned the computer on and off several times and sat there watching "Norton Commander" boot up. I also looked at the green, blinking cursor quite intently for several seconds expecting it to do or say something, anything. I may have become a wiser man for it, who knows.
I honestly tried to set it up, but found out that the disk drive could only take 800K floppies and a friend who's a programmer told me that this was becoming outmoded but I could "always upgrade the drive or copy onto two disks." Yeah, right.
This prompted me to make two important decisions:
1. I wasn't going to use time, money and effort on upgrading a halfway obsolete machine (if the floppy drive was becoming obsolete, how about the rest of the machine?)
2. I was going to have a working, up-to-date computer, or I wasn't going to have one. So I junked that computer, which in retrospect was probably a smart move. And I stayed away from computers for the next several years. Not so smart, maybe.
Coming back to life.
I began to awaken gradually from my sleep, when my friend Eolake Stobblehouse got a Power Mac. I would often come over to his place and see the art he had created on it and how you could surf the net. And, of course, I had the good fortune of being able to follow his sites MacCreator.com and DOMAI.com from the stage of creative idea to fully fledged, successful sites. I learned that computers could be uncomplicated, fun and useful for an artist. The PowerMac even looked good.
Then came the iMac and I was really sold on computers. I wanted one. Eolake, perceptive as always, decided at the same time that I needed one and asked me if I wanted to buy his used PowerBook 180. So, I got my first computer.
My first important step in computing was to immediately find the power button on the 180 and turn on the machine, much to the surprise of Eolake and Peter (a friend of ours who is a professional programmer), who had been making guesses as to how long it would take me to turn on the 180 (it's a little tricky, the power button is on the back of the machine).
I got home with the PB, plugged it in, and cracked open the book "Macs for Dummies", which Eolake had thrown in with the computer. I learned the difference between a single and a double click, how to name a folders, how to drag and drop, navigating through the menus and all the basic terms of computing : RAM, ROM, Bytes, Bits, SCSI, freeze, crash, desperation, etc. I made my first word processing documents (in color and using fancy fonts, of course). I still recall the joy of "making it work", one of the great pleasures in life.
David Pogue
David Pogue deserves special mention: "Macs for Dummies" is a tremendously good book, which I recommend to each and every mac beginner. It's superbly humorous and instructive. I've since then graduated to "Mac Secrets" (by Pogue and Joseph Schorr) which is so well written that you can read a paragraph as bedtime reading and apply it directly the next day, without consulting the book again.
Alive
First of all, of course, came e-mail. The basic ability to communicate is essential to an artist. Few artists, if any, live lives of isolation. An artist needs inspiration and support and should also give it. E-mail was fantastic: It really expanded my communication factor. I could also send pictures by e-mail. The advantages in relation to making prints and sending them were huge in terms of cost and trouble. For example, I got accepted by my stock photo agency after having sent samples by e-mail and then doing a face-to-face presentation on my PowerBook.
I also use the Internet for getting inspiration and ideas from the works of other photographers. Plus I keep myself up-to-date on the developments in cameras and other photographic equipment. I've also written a couple of camera reviews for photographyreview.com
By the way, using the PowerBook as a portable portfolio has several advantages: It's more compact, more convenient and the quality is fine (I have a G3 "bronze keyboard" (Lombard), which has a large and bright screen).
I also own a Palm IIIC, where I keep a photo album, which I can always whip out if people ask what I do. It's been a tremendous success to get computerized. There are lots of new possibilities showing up, such as digital photography. As yet, I haven't gone into digital photography (I deliver slides to my agency which they scan), but the development looks too exciting for me to stay away for long.
Computers are definitely the future. Well, actually they're the present too. The way I see it, they're a great tool for the artist and will add fun and warmth and communication to his life.
Martin Dybdal
Copenhagen, 23 September 2001
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