From: [email protected] (Dr. Laurence Leff)
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.d, alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.graphics, alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.digitized, 
rec.arts.fine
Subject: fine art digitized groups general info, welcome and FAQ
Date: 5 Jun 2004 03:00:01 -0500
Message-ID: 
Reply-To: [email protected]
Summary: We are distributed fine art electronically throughout USENET-land!

Archive-name: pictures-faq/fine-art

This is the welcome message and FAQ for

alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.d
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.graphics
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.digitized

WE ARE NOW ON THE WEB.  Archives can be viewed at
         http://www.wiu.edu/users/mflll/art.html

These groups all deal with the use of computer graphics and computer
digitization in art.  These are all moderated groups.

The two alt groups are for the posting of digitized files.
These materials are also being made available via FTP for those sites
not receiving the alt groups.

alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.graphics is for those pictures done using
computer graphics programs.

alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.digitized is 
for people who have made paintings, drawings, prints, etc. 
and wish to distribute reproductions of same. 
Thus those who have used "conventional media" to produce their art work
and wish to digitize same and share this with us, will have their
material posted in this group.

Pictures will be accepted in 
any reasonable format including IFF, TIF, GIFF and JPEG.   We will attempt
to convert formats such as BMP to GIFF or JPEG, unless indicated otherwise.
Some readers complained when I sent a BMP file.

(If we are unable to view the picture with our hardware/software environment, 
we may ask the contributor to mail us slides or other similar hardcopy so that 
we can perform our moderation.)

alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.d
will be a discussion group for both of the
above picture groups.  For each entry in
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.graphics and
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.digitized
the poster must send a short biography and any other information
associated with the drawing.  Art submitted without this information will not
be processed.

The biography should include:

a) name
b) education
c) affiliation
d) physical mail address
e) electronic mail address
f) exhibition record (optional)
g) age (optional)

ALSO PROVIDE INFORMATION ON media/programs used FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS.

This is intended to be the same sort of information that would be
included in art book.

A long-term goal would be to assemble an art book and/or a CD-ROM
based on the work submitted.  (Of course, we would request the consent
of each poster prior to including their work.)  This would include
the possible non-profit distribution to art departments worldwide.

People wishing to discuss the use of computer graphics in fine arts
may submit their postings to alt.pictures.fine-art.d

archives can be found the file
/pub/fine-art
on wiu.edu
by anonymous ftp.

The file "list" will contain a list of what we have.

(Remember to set binary--most everything is binary or compressed except the list.)

Your moderators are

Eugene V. Solot, M.F.A.             Laurence L. Leff, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Art          Associate Prof. of Computer Science
  Emeritus
Western Illinois University         Western Illinois University
312 N. William Street
Colchester, IL 62326                Macomb, IL 61455

Please send all submissions to:
  [email protected]

and send all administrative electronic mail to:
  [email protected]

We also ask all people reading this posting to tell artists and the
local art department about our services.  Most artists are NOT on
the net and you are probably the only way that the artists you know
will hear about us.   We would also appreciate it if you would offer to
help them with such tasks as obtaining an account with access to USENET,
reading and posting news, uploading files and performing the digitization.  

Thus, please spread the information so that
everyone can take advantage of this service.  Thanks!

The following are answers to some of the questions raised during the
original call for discussion.   We feel these may be concerns of new
subscribers and potential posters.  We thus include these issues.

1) Copyright protection
Please don't post any material that you haven't done yourself.  This is
to avoid copyright problems.   In other words, this is not the group
to send your copies of the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh's works.

We are concerned that someone on the net might steal and plagiarize
pictures distributed on this group.  In other words, some unscrupulous 
individual might monitor these groups, download a picture, and then remove any
signature with a paint program.  Then, they could submit the picture
to a juried show or as homework in an art class.  That would be a risk
that would be born by any contributor.  We trust that artists monitoring
this group would be of fine character and never do something so
dastardly.

However, we strongly recommend that no individual contributor 
distribute more than five drawings using these group.  This is also a 
reason that we will be requiring the biographical information.  If
someone wants to exchange more works, they can do this by private
electronic mail.

2) What is art?

Someone asked, "What is art?"

We will not censor anything for posting.  However, we will limit the
works to a manageable amount--in order not to swamp the net or those
wishing to monitor these groups.

Of course, if we are making up a disk or publishing book, we will use our 
discretion in choosing what will make the best possible publication.

3) How do I view the art work?

There is a wonderful FAQ posting that deals with picture formats.

It is posted regularly to alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.d

It is also available from a couple of mail servers.  For anonymous FTP access, 
you can look on either rtfm.mit.edu  in the directory 
/pub/usenet/news.answers, on archive.cs.ruu.nl [131.211.80.5] in directory 
NEWS.ANSWERS, on cnam.cnam.fr [192.33.159.6] in directory /pub/FAQ, or on 
ftp.uu.net [137.39.1.2 or 192.48.96.2] in directory /pub/usenet.  In all 
cases, you'll want to get one or both of the FAQ parts named as files
"pictures-faq/part1" and "pictures-faq/part2".  Both parts are also 
available on bongo.cc.utexas.edu [128.83.186.13], in the gifstuff directory 
as FAQ.abp.1 for part 1 and FAQ.abp.2 for part 2.
    For e-mail access, send a message to [email protected] with 
the mail body "send usenet/news.answers/pictures-faq/part1" to get the first 
part, and "send usenet/news.answers/pictures-faq/part2" for the second, or 
e-mail to [email protected] with "send NEWS.ANSWERS/pictures-faq/part1"
and/or "send NEWS.ANSWERS/pictures-faq/part2" in the body of the message.