Kieran Egan
English gardens are designed for summer's space, for the warm days and long evenings. Not a huge amount of thought is given to how the garden will look in the winter. In the sodden English climate the garden is typically cut back in the late autumn and abandoned till spring begins to move the roots and seeds again. Planning a Japanese garden requires that one deliver thought to each season equally. This doesn't mean that the garden has to look the same in each season, but that it must offer to its participants throughout the year the qualities of mind and soul for which it was designed.
One product of this all-seasoned approach is that one cannot deliver too much space to plants that will flower profusely for a just a few months and then be uninviting to the eye. The only element whose contribution to the garden will not significantly change with the season is, of course, stones. A Japanese garden may be designed without a pool, without trees, without a tea-house, without plants even, but it is inconceivable without stones.
The great gardens of the early period yielded to the smaller scale domestic garden after the mid-13th. century. The austere and simplified and more abstract gardens, such as some of the more famous Kyoto temple gardens were the result of Zen Buddhist influences during the 15th. and 16th. centuries, while in Europe (what?). The refinements of Zen gardens led to the quest for both greater simplicity, recognizing the beauty of the informal and irregular, and even the imperfect scattering of formal patterns that nature will always manage. So that search for aggressive neatness, order, and symmetry one finds in many western gardens, is deliberately undermined in the Zen garden. Some famous Tea Masters would say that the sweeping and cleaning of the garden should be given to a boy or an old man, because they would not be excessively scrupulous and neat.
I suppose I should have written something about wabi-sabi before this point, though I am unsure what to write. It is a central and commonly mentioned Japanese aesthetic principle, derived significantly from Zen Buddhist sources, and it lacks an easy definition. It represents a reaction against those aesthetic principles, and styles of life and soul, which glorify symmetry, order, completeness, and so on. It resists the appeal of clean, finished surface, of precise angles, and also of elaborate ornateness. Wabi-sabi involves, by contrast, a recognition of the desirability of incompleteness, or irregularity, of unfinished and rustic surfaces, of the unpretentious and natural. In a room governed by wabi-sabi, there would be nothing outstanding, shown with pride at the expense of other things; all have a place, all are to be undemonstrative, and we are to delight in the imperfect, the incomplete, and the modest.
So I should not be struggling for smooth finishes, symmetry, and precise order&emdash;even if I could achieve any of them. The abuse of wabi-sabi is to see it as a negative principle&emdash;as failure to achieve a professional modern finish&emdash;instead of seeing it as beauty available to a very refined sensibility that goes far beyond conventional good taste. The acceptance and delight in imperfection, of course, can seem confusingly close to the Irish acceptance of imperfection in one's work. But they are really worlds apart, in more senses than one. Wabi-sabi is a positive austerity, whose principles I think will not really dominate my work. I suspect I would have to have greater skill to be able to construct according to wabi-sabi principles.
Beginning the garden
I had earlier built part of the retaining wall for the raised garden, just to have somewhere to throw the soil I was digging out to make the strip in front of the fence where the black bamboo is now growing. By the time I began to work on the garden seriously, it was fall. Even unchanging stones suffer from decaying leaves settling over them. Overhanging the garden site is one half of a birch tree from the condominium garden, and it began to drop early retirees onto the mounds of soil in September, with a wilting promise of tons more to follow. In high winds I watched them, like fallen angels diving down and turning my potential paradise into something that looked rather more like the other place. I was reminded of Milton's magical glimpse in Paradise Lost of the fallen angels "Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks / In Vallombrosa." Except, it turns out, that Milton never visited Vallombrosa, a mountainside valley near Florence. If he had, he'd have seen that it was mainly wooded by conifers.
Well, that's a bit off the point. I needed to negotiate with the chair of the tenants' committee in the condominium to get the tree branch cut off--something I assumed I'd have to pay for. But I could in the meantime go ahead with building up the wall and garden despite the leaves. For a while they would serve as compost, but I'd need to have them out of the way by the time the garden was complete. Also the birch would make the pond impossible, or at least they would make any fish's life impossible. Tall birches are beautiful drifting trees to look at from a distance, but they are dirty beasts close up. They dribble gallons of sticky sap in the spring, strips of end-branches throughout the summer, and a ton of seed and then tons of leaves in the fall. No pond could survive the onslaught. I describe the removal of the tree in the Pond chapter.
Here's the beginning of the pond, and look at that magnificent fern. I will transplant that before digging much further, and then maybe transplant it back again, two feet higher, once the garden has been raised. The black fabric is to prevent weeds growing out through the wall. If something is to grow through the chinks in the wall, I'd like to choose what, and plant small rock plants myself. That will require my shoving topsoil into the chinks from the other side.
Now I am the kind of person who reads. I mean pathologically. And while I can't complain, having gained something from literature and being able to manage road signs, there are penalties for excessive literacy. Like many of my bookish ilk, I feel compelled to read whatever is in my line of sight. On a bus, with nothing else to do, having worked my way around the ads., and, fretful at running out of symbol fodder, I will seriously pour over the text on the back of the ticket. So, taking on a good outdoor task like building a Japanese garden has meant that I balance the labor with studying books about Japanese gardens. And there are a lot (and now one more for anyone who might follow with the same affliction).
There is quite a variety of such books. I like most the ones that outline basic Japanese principles, but seem willing to acknowledge that it is, in the end, your garden and you can do what you want. The other extreme includes books, usually by enthusiastic Americans who have made themselves experts, which severely rebuke the reader for any temptation to trespass outside the Japanese garden rules. They write with a presumption of the readers' guilt. They write with pursed lips and transcendental diagrams, laying down rules that you must follow or expect a censorious group of Japanese authorities, armed, to come knocking at your door to exact revenge for your infringing such rules as determine the proper placing of stones.
Now I need to confess the reason I am a bit sensitive about these censorious books. It's not just that I can't always follow exactly how sets of scalene triangles determine how three stones ideally balance each other out. While I was still working on the fence, I kept my eyes open for appropriate plants for the garden area. I wanted things that would look good in all seasons, plants that would provide pleasant contrasts of shape and size, and one or two items that would be striking, in a Japanese kind of way. I had seen a number of pictures of those pom-pom cut junipers, but whenever I found one in a nursery, it was rather bedraggled or mangy. Driving by a small nursery in the fall, I saw out of the corner of my eye a luxuriantly heavy-headed rich green pom-pomed shrub by the side of the road. I pulled left into the next street, left, and left again, till I was back at the nursery. The juniper was just what I had been looking for.
The owner of the nursery came out. He was Asian, which somehow added authenticity.
"How much?" I asked.
"$200."
"Oh dear. Too much," I said regretfully.
"How much too much?"
Panic and calculation: What was the ideally right answer&emdash;which would save me most and not have him refuse to sell?
"$100."
"O.K."
Shoot. I should have tried $125. I drove home with the juniper barely contained in the trunk of the car, the big bobbed heads waveing cheerfully at pedestrians. It was bigger than it had seemed by the roadside.
Later I was studying one of the more reproachful books. A chapter on "training" shrubs was largely taken up with instructions on torturing trees by constraining their roots, or nipping their buds, or tying pieces of thick bamboo to their branches and hanging weights on them till they conceded and were crunched into the desired shape. After this, the author had the nerve to say that one should never have in one's garden one of those poodle-cut trees.
The up-tight author claimed that you are allowed to accentuate or exaggerate the tree's or shrub's natural form, but "a tree that is poodled into heavy, dense tufts would hardly resemble the natural form of any species." Another book, to rub it in, talked about those "insensitively poodled" trees. Heigho. Well, one can see his point, of course&emdash;the dwarfing of bonsai and the bud nipping and weighting COULD just about happen in odd circumstances in nature, whereas no natural event could lead to stripping off the lower branches and rounding the greenery on the ends. One may interfere with a tree or shrub in order to exaggerate some natural form, but not create an unnatural shape. But my Irish side had concluded some time ago that Nature is greatly overestimated as an ally in gardening. I say that, while also acknowledging that when we garden we become partakers in the deepest mysteries we face: of the turn of the year, of the growth and death of living things, of our strange place in nature.
Anyway, here is the juniper in its pot, waiting for inspiration to strike me about where to put it, and the wall extending up and around to contain the accumulated soil from the excavation of the pond. You can see Moby Rock peering over the wall. Moby deserves better than that, of course, and I will reduce the height of the wall when the pond is filled in and itself walled round.
But spring is coming, and seems unconcerned to delay because of my bad back&endash;&endash;from all that digging. It is unconcerned that I haven't yet got the pond sorted out. It is unconcerned that the garden area is not ready for planting. We have no choice but to cooperate with the terrible inexorability of time and the seasons that we can't outrun. One might be called to Zen contemplation of the cycles of life and how we are a part of them, but one can also, Irishly, fret at what still needs to be done, recalling Dorothy Parker's eloquent capturing of one component of our complex response to the unstoppable spring: "Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants." Well, in the present case, threatening to get mucked up with all the wrong plants.
Having dug out the soil and built the wall, I now have to decide just what I am going to make in the garden area. There are two general kinds of Japanese garden. The Tsukiyama style, in which small hills and stones and shrubs represent mountains and their forest and trees, and in which a pond represents the ocean. And the Karesunsui style, in which sand represents the ocean, and lines of stones represent rivers, and standing stones are mountains. This latter is the style that became prominent with the influence of Zen Buddhism and its monastery gardens. Given the rainforest setting of my garden, I feel less inclined to try to replicate, however inadequately, the sparse elegance and strange harmony of Ryoan-ji. I'll visit Kyoto to enjoy that. I'm more inclined towards stony verdure, lush evergreens amid stones, rounded box or privet and short spiky plants. Well, we'll see how it goes. The garden is unplanned except for these vague ideas, and I will be interested to see what shape it takes, and am now as I write as ignorant as you about how it will turn out.
Much of the general shape of the garden was driven by the building of the bog, described earlier. From the bog, the stream cut the garden into two parts. That gave me a small high patch beside the bog, in which I decided to plant pom-pom tree, a longer but quite narrow curved patch from the bog down to the edge of the pond, largely hidden by the white mass of Moby Rock and slabs of liner, and an irregular slice between the bog wall and the pond, which has the hose snaking across it.
The moss garden.
By chance, visiting Japanese gardening web sites I saw a reference to moss gardens, and discovered there are an amazing number of sites dedicated solely to moss gardens. And there suddenly was the idea that I should make one of the two remaining chunks of garden space a moss garden. I began by setting some of the larger stones I had gathered from earlier digging along the curving strip to the right of the stream. This did some damage to the knees.
I had some time earlier bought the one concession to color in the garden, so far. This was a miniature rhododendron. I planted it near the top of the curve towards the bog, and also added a few small ferns. Around these, and the stones I was ready to fill the space with moss.
I began hunting down chunks of moss from around the garden. I discovered three kinds, and decided on the most plentiful variety, that had made a home under shrubs and in the shade of fences, under ferns and behind the house; anywhere the sun didn't get. Having spent a number of years cursing the prolific moss, and trying to kill the damn stuff, raking it out of the lawn each spring, I now found myself treasuring every couple of square inches I could find. I was particularly irritated when I found a patch that had some of that damn lawn grass growing through it. How to pull the grass out, without breaking apart the beds of moss, was the challenge now.
I was having to be a bit furtive, sneaking under my wife's plants when she was out, slicing under thick pads of moss, and liberating them to what was an inch by inch and foot by foot accumulating moss garden. My fear was that my eagerness to get at the moss, might be undermining some of her plants. I was careful to add spadesfull of soil wherever I seemed in danger of exposing roots.
My harvesting of the rapidly depleted stock of these valuable small green plants became more desperate. I rapaciously loaded every square inch I could find onto my shovel and planted it around the stones, but I was running out of moss and was far from covering the space available. I had to become more furtive The neighbors' garden had lush chunks up against our fence, and under shrubs in their border. It seemed fair game to lean over the fence and pull up a spadefull, as these beds of moss were continuous with those on our side of the fence. But even when I had cleaned out all I could reach, there was still a discouraging acreage of soil showing in the lower half of what was beginning to look like a moss garden. Further toward the edge of their border, under shrubs and plants, I could see rich patches of lush dark green. Moss had come to seem like gold. Knowing that the neighbors, who had just bought the house and weren't yet moved in, were not there, my lust for more moss drove me to skulk into their garden, guilty spade at the ready. They wouldn't want moss growing in their border anyway. I was doing them a favor. And they'd never know it had been there. So the moss garden crept a further couple of feet towards the pond, flowing around the large stones and beginning to converge on Moby Rock.
But I had run out of moss, and there were feet to go. I wandered around, scooping out tiny pieces I had missed earlier. The front garden! I had forgotten the front of the house, and the dark patches under ferns and trees. It was like suddenly coming across a treasure galleon adrift on the ocean near to one's island home. But these large patches were along the edge of the lawn, and mostly had clumps of grass growing through them. Only after I had spent some time irritatedly pulling out pieces of damn grass did the irony strike me. I had spent years killing and raking moss from the lawn, and now was distressed at lawn grass spoiling the purity of the moss.
Between bouts of moss hunting, I would sit of an evening with my laptop computer on my knees, surfing Internet sites dedicated to moss. I learned that there are around 9,200 varieties, which makes the three I could located in our garden a pretty paltry showing. I couldn't find examples of the kind I have used, so don't know its name. It isn't Irish or Scotch, which are the two I recognize, but one of the 9,188 others.
Here's what it looked like when I reached round Moby Rock to the stones at the side of the pond:
The two-needle black pine and the drama of its planting
You may have been able to tell from my aggressive reaction to the books that sniffily told me that my pom-pomed, poodled juniper was in poor taste and offensive to Japanese gardening principles, that I had been vulnerable to the criticism. And the criticism rankled, mainly because I could see it had merit&emdash;otherwise why get irked? Well, there I was as the months progressed, irked and rankled, and increasingly dissatisfied with the inoffensive juniper. A significant problem with it&emdash;and clearly I don't even now want to confess that the purists' criticisms influence me&emdash;was that the pom-poms all hung over around the same level, and as I had placed it at the top of the garden by the bog, it didn't show its individual bobbles to best effect. They tended to blur into one another. In fact, the plant looked best when one looked down on it rather than up to it. What I needed up there was something dramatic that gave height to that side of the raised garden.
I looked in the Yellow Pages for places that sold evergreen and ornamental trees. One place, outside the town in a suburb I had yet to enter without getting lost, said they had a number of two-needle Japanese black pines. I drove over, and indeed they had acres of shrubs and trees. And there stood a set of half a dozen magnificent pines of just the kind I was looking for. They were each about five to six feet tall. But would they fit the space I had by the bog? And how much were they? $450?! Plus $40 for delivery.
I couldn't afford that. But then it turned out, thanks to you, indirectly, that I could. Now I'm not sure it's proper to discuss this kind of thing with a book's readers, but here we go. I had begun this book by simply writing a bit of text to accompany the pictures I was putting on my WWW Home Page. Then I found some of the incidents either odd or funny and the text became more elaborate. Some kind people said they were enjoying studying the story, and so I extended it a bit further, and then took the plunge of packaging the bits I had then written and sent them off to a literary agent. She was, to my surprise, quite enthusiastic about it, sent it to a publisher, who accepted it, and offered a cash advance. The really sneaky part was that because I was now working at something that had a reasonable prospect of making money, I could write off all the costs against tax. So, I decided that, dammit, I was going to get one of these splendid bonsai-ed pine trees after all.
Outside the shed that clearly served as the office stood a wizened, weathered old Japanese man. As I asked him about the trees, he looked at me through crinkled smiling dark eyes. If you wanted a picture of the perfect ancient sage, here he stood, eyes looking at mine with a luminous intelligence. He nodded slowly as I spoke, encouraging me to go on further about what I was looking for, and where it was to fit. I stopped and waited for his reply, and we looked at each other for a moment in silence. He paused, then seemed ready to tell me what was surely going to be some insight into the nature of pine-things or human life in general, but then gestured at his son approaching on a tractor. The old man didn't speak English.
The son spoke it with confidence, though not with much comprehensibility. We circled the set of pines. They were twenty years old, had been bonsai-ed and would grow very little more for the next twenty years. They had appealing arms and tufts of green needles like deep plates on the end of each branch. I felt I was going from pom-pom poodling to plates, at considerable cost, but the trees were very evocative of Japanese styles I had seen in many pictures. The problem was whether the bole of roots would fit into the space I had. It was agreed that I should go home, measure the space, and then come back and choose my tree.
The pom-pom juniper would look fine, I thought, to the side and rear of the teahouse, but I didn't want to put it there yet as it would likely get damaged by the carelessnesses I had come to recognize as ingredients of my style of building. I dug a hole in the middle of the vegetable garden, now cleared for the coming winter, in preparation for the juniper. My fear was that removing the juniper would destroy the bog. The bog was held in by walls on two sides, by the weight of soil and stones on the side where it flowed into the stream, and by the packed soil at the rear where the juniper sat. If I were to simply dig out the juniper, I could be removing the bog's support, and the weight of stones and water would tear through the liner and pour into the hole.
So, first, I drove about ten six-foot long bamboo poles I had bought for some reason down between the bog and the juniper. Then I added a couple of long metal rods, and hammered some pieces of wood across them. I thought that this should be enough support, and then gingerly dug out the juniper. It came up quite easily, its root bole still largely in the shape of the tub I had bought it in. I dragged it into a wheelbarrow and replanted it in the hole in the vegetable garden. I also dug up the maple I had been sold as an evergreen&emdash;evergreen till its leaves fell in October. I dug this in beside the juniper to await the completion of the teahouse.
I dug out as much soil as I dared from the hole by the bog, in preparation for the pine. I had a space of about two feet by a bit less than two feet. It would be tight.
A few days later I went back to the nursery and chose the tree I wanted. None of the men whom I had met previously was there, but this time I was helped by a big, tough-looking man who seemed like a samurai warrior out of place and time. He thought the tree would fit into the space I described, and at $450 one might expect him not to be too doubtful or irresolute. It would be $50 to deliver. I said it had been $40 last Sunday, so he shrugged and said $40. It would take two of them to deliver it, and they would show up later in the day.
He arrived with another man whom I had not seen on either of my two previous trips. The samurai looked at the hole, and told me to dig out more soil, pointing particularly at the bog side. I said I feared the bog collapsing. This he clearly felt was a weakling's fear, and he gestured that I should get to work while he wheeled the tree up the garden. The two struggled with it. Even allowing for the fact that the second man was anorexically slight, the samurai was also having trouble with the tree. It didn't seem to have that much more bulk that the juniper, but I guess its root bole was much bigger, and it was maybe three feet taller.
"Which way round? Once in, it stay so. Decide now," the samurai ordered. He and his miniature helper held it on the wall by the hole. Alas, I thought I wanted it exactly the opposite way around from the way they held it. With much grunting, they slowly moved it round. Then I was told to dig out even more soil. I did so, and then the samurai took a spade and sliced away further at the thin support of the bog.
The remaining problem was the bamboo canes I had supporting the bog. The two branches on that side had to be able to stretch out beyond the bamboo, so I pulled the bamboo sideways to enlarge the space where the branches could slide in. The other main obstacle to the root bole was the wooden supports I had slammed in place against the bamboo.
He said something in Japanese, and the sword carrier grabbed and pulled the first support, but the bamboo held, and I was instructed to pull the other. One doesn't quibble with one of nature's samurai, even though I was much less confident than he was that disaster wouldn't follow. I pulled it out, and all was still well. He still wasn't convinced he had enough room, so hacked some more soil away. Then the two of them with what was probably exquisite Japanese cursing eased the tree off the stones, and tried to maneuver it into the space. It didn't go easily, and there was some tugging as a branch got caught in the fence and another in the quince, and when parts of the root bole stuck against the bamboo strips, and when the bog side branches had to be slotted between the bamboo poles. In each of these maneuvers, the aspect of the tree I had wanted to face the teahouse was turned a bit and then a bit more, until it finished up about 45° from where I had wanted it. But with all the cursing and sweating and struggling, I didn't have the heart to point it out, deciding that it looked good from all angles, and, as I'd only had a minute to decide, maybe fate would make as good an aesthetic choice as I had.
And then it was in. The samurai stood on the wall and kicked the top of the root bole down. But it was hindered on the bog side, so he wanted the bamboo poles removed. We took them out, and the sudden rush of stones and water still didn't happen. The tree went in, with a few more foot stomps onto the top of the bole. He quickly tossed soil around, and began soaking the whole area with water, carrying the soil down around the roots. When it was flooded, he paused, let the water sink, then piled on more soil and repeated the process.
Then he clearly decided that I could handle the rest, gave me instructions to repeat the process till the soil was up to there&emdash;he emphasized, pointing insistently, till I indicated with my finger on the narrow trunk of the tree where I was to stop piling soil. Fertilize next spring with 14-14-40, two spoonfuls only. I think. Then do it again a month later. Shoot water from hose up through the pine needles to release dead ones. And away they went. Leaving me to admire the handsome pine:
Here is what it looks like from where the teahouse will be:
It is odd to be doing all this when some features of the aesthetic of Japanese gardens don't appeal to me at all. The problem with that statement, of course, is that it suggests there is a single graspable aesthetic. But I mean the kinds of things one sees in typical books about Japanese gardens. What does appeal, even though I don't think I will be able to replicate it in any way, is the stark clear areas of crushed granite gravel, with well placed dark stones, with a few stately stands of sparse bamboo, with perhaps a couple of thoughtful ferns. There is a narrow line between the careful wabi-sabi refined elegance of the casual unpressured naturalness and a simple mess, and the season's change, with untrained growth and autumn leaves can easily cross the line. Unless one is there everyday preserving the apparent randomness.
Go to Part II
Watching last weekend's dance performances — the Dec. 2 Mark Morris Dance Group at the Moore Theater, and the next night’s performance of Zoe/Juniper at On the Boards — brought to mind some of the dances I've seen of the Aboriginal people of northeastern Australia. This is not to say that the contemporary dance works last weekend looked at all like Aboriginal dance, but rather that each had deeper metaphorical and interpretive qualities than immediately met the eye.
Aboriginal dance is profoundly invested with human connection to the natural world — animals, spirits, celestial forces, water, fire, and the physical environment. All are alive. The dances are meant to evoke and strengthen these relations, and to make real that which cannot be easily seen. They, and their accompanying music and body painting, may seem quite simple to those unfamiliar with the culture.
What you or I might see as the dance of a man imitating a kangaroo can have multiple layers of meanings — especially when viewed within the broader matrix of Aboriginal sacred and social life: How to properly hunt; the virtuous qualities the kangaroo possesses; implications for how humans should behave; the connection a kangaroo has to a constellation of spiritual powers that inhabit the land; or the totemic meaning of this animal for specific clans or moieties.
Even young Aboriginal people, through inexperience and lack of information, might see these dances on the most elementary level, but as they grow older they will learn more about the dance’s sophistication.
Because we are missing these shared experiences, we can’t observe contemporary dance with the same comprehension and appreciation that a fully initiated Aboriginal man or woman might view their own performance traditions. There is no common lexicon that we all share and understand about these dances, and we are not likely to have learned or performed them at one time or another.
Further, contemporary dance emphasizes the individualized look of each choreographer’s work, and embraces an enormous variety of aesthetic approaches and cultural influences. Last week at Meany Hall, for instance, I saw a dance by an African American modern ballet choreographer with a score composed by an Indian American tabla virtuoso, whose music was inspired by a Russian composer and that included Central Asian throat singing. The dance’s theme was a modern read on a Persian/Arabic legend.
Contemporary dances often have conceptual underpinnings that ask we understand what the choreographer is trying to say through the unique expression of his or her work, sometimes helped along by a choreographer’s statement in the program notes. In an interview on KUOW that he gave while here for the Moore shows, Mark Morris said he never reads these notes before a show, suggesting that all he wants to know about a dance will be revealed in its performance.
That may explain why, of the two choreographers last weekend, Mr. Morris' work had the more universal appeal. Of course, part of it is simply his fame. Whatever he might do, he has the stamp of critical and popular acceptance that makes it easier for an audience to support his work, even that which might look “different” from what they usually see.
Still, in addition to his reknown, he more often than not creates dances that are near pitch-perfect partners to the classical or contemporary music that accompanies them, therefore comfortable for audiences used to seeing dance structured this way.
The first work on the program at the Moore, “Festival Dance,” was a classic of this genre. Premiered earlier this year, it had a lovely score by Johann Nepomuk Hummel — a contemporary of Beethoven, played beautifully live by a trio of Joanna Frankel, Andrew Janss, and Colin Fowler.
Morris’ musical knowledge and sophistication was evident throughout the piece, a sunny idyll for six young couples. A series of easeful duets was performed wonderfully by the company, interwoven with lines of dancers that echoed the choreographer’s intimate knowledge of folk forms. The lyrical movement had an appealing restraint; it could easily have been performed more assertively, but wisely was not.
A choreographer of complexity and range, Morris is sometimes a bit precious, as with one dancer “bouncing” another, and often too slavish to the beat or line of music he obviously adores. “Festival Dance” holds these tendencies, if not fully in check, then certainly in no way damaging to the flow of this charming work.
Most interestingly, the dance is a text on the facility Morris displays as a superb dancemaker. Extended phrases flow easily one into another and nothing appears forced. Motifs are repeated and expanded upon with a depth that appears deceivingly elementary: A lovely arbor of arms, which couples run through, dissolves only to later reappear, and lines of dancers arrange and rearrange in those “folky” segments. The audience is delighted by these devices, intuiting perhaps that what appears so simple really is not. It is Morris at his most broadly appealing, with his movement devices choreographically masterful.
When he took a bow at the end of the evening, both with his company and then alone, I realized anew that he was not the young sprite that I still remember — the slightly pudgy and devilish faun of his youth. Here was a greying man in his mid-50’s, decades older than his dancers. “Festival Dance,” for all its sweetness, was a bit elegiac in retrospect, with Morris — the now-mature artist — celebrating the dancer’s youth. No lament, just perhaps an acknowledgment on his part.
The second dance of the evening, also seen for the first time in Seattle, was “Violet Cavern.” Choreographed in 2004, it is set to an atonal, sporadic and often loud score by The Bad Plus, a trio crossing the lines of jazz, rock, and new music featuring piano, bass, and percussion. I’ve seen a number of works by Morris over the years, but have not had the opportunity to see him extend his reach through to this genre. Suspended above the stage was a series of rectangular forms, covered with sprays of black lines that were ingeniously lit at different times with a range of colors.
The marriage of the music and the movement seemed to be a struggle for the choreographer. Perhaps it is the improvisational nature of jazz, or the alternations of bombast with silence. It was not distinctive music and not easily danceable. Morris has worked from time to time with newly created scores, but likely nothing quite like this.
The dancers also seemed to struggle at times, especially in the beginning. Most troubling seemed the movements that were rapid and muscular with big, off-kilter leaps and turns, quick spins and fast stage crossings. Some of the newer dancers in the company seemed to be trying to figure out how it all worked, though as the dance progressed they appeared to find their ways.
There are seven sections to “Violet Cavern.” Some were lovely, containing moments such as a spectacular exit off-stage, with all the dancers spinning like tops; at one point a standing dancer crossed the stage, accompanied by two dancers on their backs on the ground, pushing themselves along with their feet. At another, pairs of dancers traveled across the stage, one insouciantly slapping the back of the hand of the other.
Still, the piece in its entirety was too long, and some sections went nowhere, as when the dancers lay on the ground for a very long time doing rolls, leg lifts and splits, as if in a yoga or stretch class. It seemed as if Morris was exploring what fit with the music, not quite settling on comfortable material.
The beautifully-lit set pieces suspended above the stage reminded me of mid-century fiberglass lampshades, with the same luminescence and black free-form lines that sat upon a variety of kitschy lamps with hula girls or oddball shapes. Along with the identifiably “jazzier” sections of the music, the dance made me think of Jerome Robbins' 1950s experiments, such as “New York Export: Opus Jazz,“ or “Moves,” a ballet performed in silence. Robbins was seeking new and expressive ways to look at the relationship of sound (or lack of it) and movement. Perhaps Morris, like Robbins with his own catholic taste in music, was seeking the same with this score.
The edgy and visceral “Violet Cavern” allowed viewers to engage differently than with “Festival Dance.” It is not as easy on the eye and the ear, and therefore on the mind. We are asked not to sit back and watch enjoyably, but to actively meet what we see and bring our own sense of meaning to it, however abstract or mysterious that might be.
In that same KUOW interview, Morris was asked if he had ever choreographed a piece with no accompanying musical score. Yes, he said, he has, in 1990 while working in Belgium. It is called “Behemoth.” I hope that some time we can see this silent dance here in Seattle.
Morris’ work stressed the primacy of choreographed movement, and its relationship and partnership with music, all in real-time and marked by the measure of the score. The lighting, décor, and costuming acted to support these paired elements.
Zoe/Juniper’s work, “A Crack in Everything” took a much different approach, blending movement with an ambitious visual and stage design in service to “an experiment in permeability and containment, aggression and catharsis.” Rather than a single composer, we had a collage of music. At various moments of the work, video, lighting, costumes, and stage design assumed primacy over the dancing. The effect was total theater, with multiple levels of expression.
As the program notes further relate, “The installation and performance are meditations on moments that divide people’s lives into these non-linear experiences of time and how our memory creates its own separate physical life, space, and time.” While not exactly a road map for viewers, those who read this beforehand might very well have been looking for tangible representations of these ideas to bring coherency to a piece with a range of stage elements and concepts at work.
Zoe Scofield, choreographer, and her husband and creative partner, the video/sculptor/photographer and performance artist, Juniper Shuey, ask us to see what they see, but in a manner that allowed much latitude for our own interpretation. We are free to make our own stories, to just let it flow over us, to accept some parts and ignore others. Or to try and sort it out at a later time, as some images remain with us and others are discarded.
In February of this year, I saw an abridged version of this work as part of the A.W.A.R.D. Show, also at On the Boards. It did not cohere as a complete statement, but I was struck by several aspects: ghost-like video projections of dancers, a long red string connected to a performer’s mouth leading off-stage, and a dancer, Scofield I believe, against the back wall of the theater, drawing outlines of herself with a marker, which when she moved away, remained for us to see — an after-image of her real being.
As we enter On the Boards, there are several feet of a shiny white stage floor, almost like water, and behind it a downstage scrim acting as a screen, on which is projected what appears to be an ivy-covered wall, perhaps shimmering in a bit of wind. It is a placid scene, yet portentous, as we wait for the action to begin.
We first see two dancers, who are soon mated with their video doppelgangers, setting the stage for the work’s major premise — the illusion of our reality, juxtaposed with that which exists in other dimensions, filtered through our own memories. There are five dancers, all excellent, but especially interesting are the lanky Rajah Kelly, the only man, often portraying a menacing or controlling figure, and the shortest of the quintet, the very direct and clear Anna Schon.
The woman with the red string coming out her mouth enters early and re-occurs as a motif. Information at the On the Board’s website said this image represented to Scofield both capture and journey, as well as pain, and was derived from a back injury so severe that she thought of pulling her spine out her mouth.
The visuals in this dreamscape are perhaps the strongest element: A run of bright lights at the back of the stage occasionally setting off a blinding glare perhaps to signal a new reality; or those projections of the dancers, used too judiciously. I would have liked to have seen more of them. The costumes, by Erik Andor, are light-colored body suits, covered at times in tunics, the dancers wearing golden half-face masks, as if from a Greek or Roman play. That strange menacing force, played by Kelly, is at first dressed in what reminded me of the giant lobster costume from the movie “Matinee,” at another time a Tuareg tribesman in face-wrapped mufti.
Perhaps the most powerful and enduring segment is one that has been expanded from their performance last February. A dancer, Scofield, spends a great deal of time doing that sketchy outlining of herself, this time all the way across the stage on that front clear plastic scrim. The images she leaves are very evocative, looking less like complete people as she goes along and more like received memories, arms more pronounced here, legs there, sometimes even one or two looking more animal than human. At one point the clear plastic is separated from its white background and flown above the stage, remaining there for the rest of the show — an elevated Proustian remembrance of things past.
While the performers are very fine dancers, the choreography itself is not always the strongest link. Many segments seem to go on for too long, the idea played out before the dancing ends, though I liked Scofield's strong and sinewy approach to movement. Most striking was a quiet trio stage right towards the end of the 70-minute work, where the upright dancers stayed together in simple steps, occasionally seeming as if they were leaving the stage (at least one briefly does disappear), but then changing course and moving back on.
Full of metaphors, and mysterious moments, “A Crack in Everything” is an accumulation of images. It is not conventional in the way of “Festival Dance” or even “Violet Cavern.” Viewers are left to experience, but also to interpret from their own experiences. Some will see a profound commentary on reality, some a reflection of their own personal searching. Some will create a linear narrative, others might be frustrated in trying to make sense of something that the creators are telling us, but we just don’t get.
Andy Wilson (Dropbox)
As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to surge in October 2020, most office workers found themselves entering the seventh month of home working.
With vaccines on the horizon and (pre-emptive) rumours that offices would start to reopen in the new year, some organisations decided never return to an office-based environment — at least not one recognisable to the pre-pandemic way of working.
Dropbox was one of the first to make that decision, announcing on October 13 that “starting today, Dropbox is becoming a Virtual First company.” In a statement, the company said, “remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work.”
Existing offices shut for good and in their place, Dropbox Studios opened for collaboration and community-building. Using the studios for solo work was strictly forbidden.
Almost two years later, Andy Wison, director of product at Dropbox, spoke about the experience of becoming a “virtual first” company and what lessons Dropbox has learned along the way. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did Dropbox decide to become a fully remote company and how did you go about developing your ‘virtual first’ strategy?
"We are a company that builds products that enable people to work remotely, so very early on in the pandemic, we decided we needed to live our product truth, by working remotely and learning what works with our own teams before releasing our products into the world.
"‘Virtual first’ [the name Dropbox gave its remote work strategy] was a very thoughtful process. We didn't just sit down and say: 'We're all remote now, let's keep it that way.' We spoke to lots of other businesses that had been working remotely pre-pandemic, asking what had been successful for them, what was challenging, what processes they had put in place, and from those conversations we started to build our new company strategy.
"For Dropbox, virtual first means that our primary place of work is remote, but it doesn't mean that we won't ever come together. We replaced our offices with studios so colleagues can come together to collaborate with their teams; however, it was important that people didn’t swap coming into the office with coming into a studio five days a week.
"We don’t want our employees to say: 'I'm going to be in studio, Monday and Tuesday every week,' because that creates a proximity bias, and we didn't want to go down that route. We wanted to truly live that approach of working remotely and to understand what that would mean to have people working wherever they wanted to in the world."
When developing your new strategy, why did you decide on the remote working route rather than adopting a hybrid model?
"Through the development process, lots of different models were weighed up. At the time we were making these decisions, people were thinking that maybe we'll get back into the office early 2021, so we actually evaluated lots of different working models before settling on virtual first.
"We ended up ruling out taking a hybrid approach because we didn't think it would ultimately be equitable to all our employees in the aftermath of the pandemic. We’d already started expanding our hiring pool geographically and didn’t want to be limited by location moving forward."
And as the world started to emerge from the pandemic, how did the strategy evolve?
"Underneath virtual first is a number of tenets that define how we think about the future of work. One of those is ‘asynchronous by default,' the idea being that if we're going to have people working remotely, that shouldn't mean they spend eight hours a day on video calls. Instead, at Dropbox, you're measured on your output and the impact that you make, rather than how many meetings you can sit in.
"That then led us to think about how much time we should be spending in meetings, and as a result, we rolled out something called ‘core collaboration hours’ where employees reserve four hours each day to be available for meetings. That means there’s times when you're open to meet with your team or anyone else in the company, but also that you've got those other four hours in the day to focus on the work that you need to do.
"Does that mean you wouldn't flex that to meet with somebody who's in a different time zone or something else? Absolutely not. It's your time to manage as an individual, because we're measuring you on the impact and output that you're making.
"Something like a-synch by default also means that you're thinking differently about how you use your time. It’s a precious resource and we want our employees to learn to value it more. It’s also really important that as a company we try to keep work human.
"We want to get this strategy right, but it's an iterative thing. We know that on the way we're going to have to nudge it a little bit to get things on course and we’re still learning as we go. But I think that what’s important is that if at the heart of it, we tried to keep everything human and build a collaborative work environment that's very flexible, then ultimately, that's all right."
How was the decision to go fully remote received at the company?
"Before we made the announcement, we ran some surveys at the company and we found that around 74 per cent of our workforce wanted to work remotely, for either some or most of their time.
"Then, after about six months of working remotely, we surveyed our staff again, and what we found was that people liked the flexibility. We repeated the survey again at the end of 2021 and found that by Q4 of 2021, around 63 per cent of respondents had adopted the async by default approach and over 80 per cent had adopted core collaboration hours.
"What was really interesting is that 72 per cent said that they felt more productive as a result of the changes, which is amazing, and that same number, 72 per cent, felt that they had a better work life balance, which is one of those things that helps to make work more human. We want our employees to have a real life, we want people to have the flexibility and to take ownership of their deliverables and how they balance their work.
"Throughout this whole journey, we have absolutely listened to the company and been sure to continually ask them if this is how they want to work."
What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced since adopting your virtual first working model?
"When we first rolled out virtual first in October 2020, we were all still in this rather bizarre pandemic-induced environment, so at that point, it wasn’t that much of a huge shift because most people were still in lockdown and working from home. As a result, the immediate implementation of the strategy was probably much simpler than it otherwise might have been.
"I wouldn’t say there’s been any particular challenges, but we have had to change how we think about a lot of things we used to take for granted. For example, when hiring, you have to start thinking differently because all of a sudden, you're hiring from anywhere.
"I've hired five people in the last six months, all from very different locations around the world. At the start, it did take a little bit of a mind shift, but it also means we’ve now got a much bigger talent pool to recruit from.
"We put training in place to help managers hire remote talent, form remote teams and ultimately get all these new virtual employees to work together and build bonds, as that’s a very different experience when you’re used to doing all those things in-person. We also ran workshops with employees about how to brainstorm virtually, how to manage their time, how to manage project deliverables, to how to implement core collaboration hours in a way that would work for them.
"Opening up the studios has also provided a real opportunity for Dropbox; it’s the next chapter in how we work together. Where and when we can, we’re aiming to bring teams together at least once a quarter in either our permanent or on-demand studio spaces.
"However, getting together in person is purely so we can focus on generating ideas and connecting with each other, it’s not about using the space for holding in-person meetings. That's really important to us and, as a result, our studios don't have desks because that's not the purpose of them. They're for getting people together, creating ideas, moving things forward."
What have been the biggest benefits of of “virtual-first”?
"It allows us to come back to our mission as a company, which is building a more enlightened way of working. It also allows us to live our product truths, as not only are we building tools for remote workers, but we can prove they work because they’re underpinning our own work strategy.
"In terms of benefits to our employees, people working at Dropbox routinely say they feel more productive and have a better work life balance because they can take control of their working hours and flex time in a way that works for them, which is so important to us.
"The other really important thing we've done is get better about protecting people's time away from work by introducing something called ‘unplugged paid time off.' Because we’re all so used to getting communications via lots of different tool, including your mobile, when you take time off, it can sometimes be difficult to separate yourself from work when your emails are in the palm of your hand.
"So, we introduced something called unplugged PTO, which means that when you sign up to take your holiday, you just tick a box saying: 'I'd like to get unplugged,' and then when your holiday starts, we turn off notifications and disconnect all of your accounts until you return.
"We're really trying to think about that well-being aspect, because one of the biggest challenges with having a remote workforce is making sure your employees properly disconnect. We're trying to think through ideas like that to make sure all our workers have a better employee experience and as a result, we’ve seen 1.7 times increase in the number of people applying for jobs at Dropbox."
What have the biggest lessons Dropbox has learned throughout this experience?
"The first is that great talent really does come from anywhere — but that means you've got to put the effort in to find it and to build an environment that’s inclusive for remote workers. If the rest of the team is going to be in the office nine-to-five, five days a week, and you're hiring someone from a different country, what controls are you going to put in place to make them feel like a valued, equal member of the team?
"The second one is to think about personal rapport as well as work rapport. If a team were to be sat around a bank of desks, they’d probably all be chatting about what the weekend was like or what was going on in people's lives.
"In a remote environment, you mustn’t lose sight of that general camaraderie that builds up in a work environment. Think about how you can recreate that in a virtual environment.
"For example, we have regular coffee chats and at my weekly team meetings, everyone is asked about a big event that’s happening in their life outside of work. When things are tough, I think it’s really important that, as a team, we can all rally around and help where we can. That really helps to build a closer-knit team.
"The third one is to ditch the unnecessary and unwanted meetings. As we were implementing virtual first, we actually had this moment where we all looked at our calendars and thought, ‘What are the meetings that are in there that really don't need to be meetings?' From that moment on, we had to be a little bit ruthless with ourselves and really start to question if something truly justified putting in a meeting or could it instead be an async update.
"Those are the lessons I've learned, and I think virtual working provides a massive opportunity for anybody who wants to hire great talent, have a much better work life balance, and have employees are feeling more productive. Those are the real benefits that teams can get."
As technology continues to take a larger role in corporate sustainability practices, CIOs can play a key role in driving both business value and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.
In fact, creating and implementing a comprehensive sustainable technology strategy must now be the core mission of a purpose-driven CIO.
Every executive in Accenture’s latest sustainable technology survey agreed that technology is critical for achieving sustainability goals. So why have only seven per cent of businesses fully integrated their technology and sustainability strategies?
In part, it’s because this will require a fundamental shift to a business model that will affect the role of the CIO, who may not even be aware that their expertise is needed to address these challenges.
Delivering on the promise of sustainable technology will require CIOs to take a seat at the sustainability table, where they must work in close collaboration with other executives to identify the technologies that will help their company achieve its ESG goals.
Despite how critically intertwined these goals are with technology investments and operations, less than half (49 per cent) of CIOs are included in their corporate leadership team’s decision-making processes around sustainability objectives and plans.
Without CIOs being involved in these core responsibilities, ESG targets suffer — which is particularly concerning when considering companies that take the lead on ESG issues outperform their competition financially, generating up to 2.6 times more value for shareholders than their peers.
Why are some companies slow to action?
Given how important sustainability metrics are to companies and their stakeholders, it is crucial to identify why it is taking so long for some organisations to jump on board with new technological innovations to implement meaningful change.
Research has uncovered the following challenges:
Examining these hurdles more closely, Accenture developed a Sustainable Technology Index, which ranks performance against the three elements on a scale of 0-1.
Interestingly, it revealed a “crowded middle” around the median score of 0.45, with roughly 60 per cent of companies posting scores within the range of 0.3 to 0.5. Put simply, this indicates that most organisations still have a long way to go in achieving a sustainable technology strategy, creating an opportunity — and sense of urgency — for CIOs to foster greater education and implementation of suitable solutions.
New responsibilities for CIOs
CIOs must be proactive in progressing these organisational shifts, as business leaders will continue to lean on them to ensure company technologies are providing solutions without contributing to an environmental problem.
While in years past this was not an active concern, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector has recently become a larger source of climate-related impact. Producing only 1.5 per cent of CO2 in 2007, the industry has now risen to four per cent today and will potentially reach 14 per cent by 2040.
Fortunately, CIOs can course-correct by focusing on three key areas:
As a first step in this transition, CIOs can begin assessing their organisation’s technology through the lens of sustainability to ensure that those goals are being thought about in every facet of the business.
In addition, they can connect with other leaders in the company to encourage greater emphasis and dialogue in cross-organisation planning for technology solutions as they relate to sustainability targets.
What are the benefits?
While the path to implementation requires comprehensive analysis and a proactive approach, a switch to sustainable technology leads to numerous benefits for the company, its sustainability goals, and CIOs themselves.
Sustainable technology contributes value across the board: 48 per cent of companies said that they saw increased revenue, 49 per cent saw a marked improvement in talent recruitment and business innovation, and 53 per cent said they’ve been able to use these changes to meet their ESG targets.
In fact, companies that adopt sustainable technology to a significant extent achieve four per cent higher ESG scores from Arabesque S-Ray, a global specialist in measuring ESG metrics.
Accenture
The emphasis on sustainable technologies also reflect a turning point in how organisations interact with CIOs. The expertise of these leaders is now needed across all aspects of the organisation, emerging as a strategic asset and a key part of a company’s sustainability DNA helping accomplish goals much larger than focusing solely on internal operations.
While these new responsibilities can certainly be daunting, they also mark a significant opportunity to transform the way a company views its technological resources, along with a turn in how company leaders and investors view and value CIOs as important decision-makers in the greater strategy of the organisation.
Just over the crest of the highest point on Sand Hill Road, amid a cluster of relaxed buildings that could easily pass as residential units, sit the offices of Andreessen Horowitz (A.H.). Inside, you enter a lobby that doubles as a library featuring some of the favorite books of Marc Andreessen, who originally made a name for himself as co-founder of Netscape, the early web browser, which sold to AOL.
There’s a wide array of books in the A.H. lobby – from highly technical tomes about coding to more popular and well-known best sellers that have been ingested by millions, like Built to Last by Jim Collins. Reflecting on the self-conscious nature of the book selection and placement, the receptionist describes how each book was selected for a reason. Each book has a story behind it, she says. There’s a lot of modern art, too, all around, and within the bowels of the offices once you’re past the reception, including Robert Rauschenberg paintings. It’s all part of the brand. Anyone who has worked in venture capital understands that the industry is driven by sales as much or more as by thinking or ideas. And, when it comes to marketing and public relations, one thing is certain: No Silicon Valley venture firm is as vociferous and aggressive with marketing these days as Andreessen Horowitz.
Ben Horowitz was a product manager at Netscape, then co-founded the software firm Opsware with Andreessen, which eventually sold to Hewlett Packard for $1.6 billion. Horowitz, who was chief executive officer of Opsware, is the effective manager, while Andreessen, who was the chief technology officer of AOL, is a technology genius. The two have been inseparable since launching Andreessen Horowitz in 2009, and the firm has raised about $4.0 billion since. That is an ungodly amount of capital raised, especially in such a short period of time. It took the firm where I once worked, Summit Partners, which is considered a top-tier firm as measured by returns, 15 years to get to that level. A.H. has done it in five. In a very short time, A.H. has become one of the hottest Silicon Valley venture capital firms with investments in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Airbnb, Box, Foursquare, and Skype, a deal that earned A.H. investors a 4x return on the firm’s $50 million investment in 2009.
Nearly overnight, Andreessen Horowitz has leaped into the top-tier of Silicon Valley venture capital firms, and the firm’s momentum has only increased thanks to some combination of brilliant salesmanship and marketing — a new model that is highly differentiated as well as, it seems, more creative and more entrepreneur-friendly than the traditional venture capital firm model. We’ll get to that in a bit; Let’s start with the marketing.
The way Andreessen and Horowitz market their firm and themselves is by producing “thought leadership.” Horowitz penned a book about his experiences as an entrepreneur before becoming a VC entitled The Hard Thing about Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers,which was well-received by everyone from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs toThe Economist magazine. “These are halcyon days in Silicon Valley and other hives of entrepreneurship around the world,” the Economist review gushed, “Nobody knows this better than Ben Horowitz. One of the Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, Mr. Horowitz was previously the chief executive of a prominent start-up and personally experienced what he dubs ‘the Struggle.’… Not all his advice is compelling, but there is more than enough substance in Mr. Horowitz’s impressive tome to turn it into a leadership classic.”
Meanwhile, Marc Andreessen is outspoken to say the least, and perhaps his most quoted phrase to date is, “Software is eating the world” (this even serves as the tagline on the A.H. company website). He jumped onto Twitter in earnest this past January, and hasn’t stopped tweeting since, accumulating over 25,000 tweets in that time-frame. He tweets about education, financial systems, political institutions, and, obviously, a lot about technology.
An analysis of Andreessen’s peripatetic tweeting revealed that Andreessen tweets between 50 and 200 times a day, with an average of 120 tweets a day. On one day, February 5th of this year, Andreessen tweeted over 500 times, including a lengthy discussion about the future of the news business. His feed is required studying around Silicon Valley, where Andreessen is highly respected for his intuition and insight especially about the Internet and software, according to my conversations with Andreessen’s fellow board members (Andreessen sits on the boards of eBay, Facebook, and Hewlett-Packard).
Andreessen takes to Twitter akin to how an impassioned preacher might take to the pulpit to deliver a big sermon on Sunday morning. Some refer to the Andreessen monologues as “rants,” while others refer to them as “meditations,” but regardless, a lot of people listen when he goes into pontification mode. He outlines his thoughts and points in sequential order, then pushes the tweets out one after the other, starting with “1/” then “2/” and so on. One latest example, from June 1st, involved robots and machines. Here is how it went:
“1/One of the most interesting subjects in modern times is the “robots eat all the jobs” thesis; best book on topic: [a link to Amazon for the book “The Second Machine Age” by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee]” 2:10 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“2/The thesis is that computers can more and more substitute for human labor, thus displacing jobs and creating unemployment.” 2:11 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“3/At core, this is Luddism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite ) — “lump of labor” fallacy, that there is a fixed amount of work to be done.” 2:12 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“4/The counterargument is Milton Friedman: Human wants and needs are infinite; there is always more to do. 200 years of history confirms.” 2:15 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“5/To avoid the Luddite mistake, must believe “this time is different”, that either (a) there won’t be new wants and needs (vs human nature),” 2:15 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“6/Or (b) It won’t matter that there are new wants and needs, most people won’t be able to adapt to contribute & have jobs in new fields.” 2:16 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“7/While it is certainly true that technological change displaces current work & jobs, and that is a serious issue that must be addressed…” 2:17 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“8/It is equally true, and important, that the other result of each such change is a step function increase in consumer standards of living.” 2:17 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“9/As consumers, we virtually never resist technology change that provides us with better products/services even when it costs jobs…” 2:18 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“10/Nor should we. This is how we build a better world, Boost quality of life, better provide for our kids, solve fundamental problems.” 2:19 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“11/Make no mistake, advocating slowing tech change to preserve jobs = advocating punishing consumers, stalling quality of life improvements.” 2:20 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“12/So how then to best help individuals who are buffeted by producer-side technology change and lose jobs they wish they could keep?” 2:22 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“13/First, focus on increasing access to education and skill development — which itself will increasingly be delivered via technology.” 2:23 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“14/Second, let markets work (voluntary contracts and trade) so that capital and labor can rapidly reallocate to create new fields and jobs.” 2:24 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“15/Third, a vigorous social safety net so that people are not stranded and unable to provide for their families.” 2:25 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“16/The loop closes as rapid technological productivity improvement and resulting economic growth make it easy to pay for safety net.” 2:26 PM — 1 Jun 2014
Pause. Deep breath. Twenty minutes passed. Then, it seems, Andreessen got a second wind:
“1/The flip side of “robots eat all the jobs” not being discussed: The current revolution in the “means of production” going to everyone.” 2:47 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“2/In the form of the smartphone (and tablet and PC) + mobile broadband + the Internet: Will be in almost everyone’s hands by 2020.” 2:48 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“3/Then everyone gets access to unlimited information, communication, education, access to markets, participate in global market economy.” 2:48 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“4/This is not a world we have ever lived in: Historically most people in most places cut off from these things, usually to a high degree.” 2:49 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“5/It is hard to believe that the result will not be a widespread global unleashing of creativity, productivity, and human potential.” 2:50 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“6/It is hard to believe that people will get these capabilities and then come up with… absolutely nothing useful to do with them.” 2:50 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“7/And yet that is the subtext to the “this time is different” argument that there won’t be new ideas, fields, industries, businesses, jobs.” 2:51 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“8/In arguing this with an economist friend, response was “But most people are like horses; they have only their manual labor to offer.” 2:55 PM — 1 Jun 2014
“9/I don’t believe that, and I don’t want to live in a world in which that’s the case. I think people everywhere have far more potential.” 2:55 PM — 1 Jun 2014
Phew. I’m exhausted just re-pasting.
Evidently, Andreessen is a freak of nature when it comes to the ability to process inputs and outputs – so much so that Teddy Roosevelt might have had trouble keeping up. But when it comes to his own sense of himself and his operating philosophy, he seems quite clear. In fact, Andreessen’s Twitter bio says a great deal: “FOR creators & contributors to technology, science, art, ideas, a better world. STRONG VIEWS, WEAKLY HELD. Proud solutionist since 1994.”
It’s also clear that Andreessen takes to Twitter as both a preacher, and a listener/learner because he often engages with people who reply to his tweets, and as was mentioned the back and forth can take his number of tweets into the hundreds on any given day.
Andreessen’s public persona, stated as an artistic identity (or aspiration), stands in stark contrast to the way most venture capital firms are oriented. When I worked as a venture capital investor some ten years ago, the hot firms were Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Accel. All of these firms had charismatic leaders with a gift for sales and marketing. In fact, anyone who has worked inside the venture capital industry learns pretty quickly that sales and marketing skills are prized more than just about any other skill, even technical expertise, because you have to get deals by winning entrepreneurs over. If you don’t sell in venture capital, you lose. Inside the belly of the industry, I heard the quote: “Second place is first loser” for the first time. It’s easy to laugh about, but that’s the mentality of the industry. And, you’re only as good as your last deal.
John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins worked in marketing for Intel before becoming a venture investor. Cloaked in prestige, these firms got the best deal-flow, since partnering with Kleiner meant a Gold Standard seal of approval. Kleiner made hundreds of millions of dollars for investors on the first wave of the Internet as well as technology pioneers in general, with investments that included AOL, Google, Amazon, Juniper Networks, Symantec, Genentech, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, and Electronic Arts.
Today, Kleiner Perkins still has a premium brand, and John Doerr is widely respected, especially by the senior states-people of Silicon Valley. Yet, as someone who works with or speaks with countless entrepreneurs, Kleiner Perkins is rarely a course of conversation these days. Kleiner is becoming old school. As I’m sure even John Doerr would admit, Kleiner is no longer the “hot” VC firm. If anything, Kleiner is seen as a bit stodgy (as stodgy goes in Silicon Valley). Kleiner is old power, if you will.
The predominant old way of thinking about venture capital is that you: a) build up a great brand and reputation with a large portfolio of investments, b) hire partners who have individually strong brands of their own, and c) collect hefty management fees on each fund. The industry standard is a 2–2.5% yearly “management” fee, a figure that gets pretty large on a billion dollar fund. And, in my experience, not surprisingly, the senior people get a disproportionate slice of that management fee. At the same time, the venture capital industry has been a glaringly poor-performing asset management group, consistently under-performing the S&P 500. (For more detail on the struggles within the VC industry, a latest article on theHarvard Business Review Blog by Diane Mulcahy, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, entitled “Venture Capitalists Get Paid Well to Lose Money” is well worth reading).
That was then. This is now.
In a white paper on the subject of old power versus new power, Henry Timms, executive director of the 92Y in New York City and founder of the social media movement #Giving Tuesday, along with Jeremy Heimans, CEO of Purpose, write that old power is scarce, held by a few. Old power acts like currency. It is top down, and hierarchical; it commands. The old power pie is fixed – either you have it, or you don’t. Think of Washington DC or Hillary ’08 as old power. New power, on the other hand, can be multiplied and acts like a current. It is collaborative, non-hierarchical, open and participatory. The new power pie can be expanded the more nodes are added to the network. Think of Twitter or Airbnb or Obama ‘08 as new power exemplars.
These days, the title new power in Silicon Valley would go to either angel investors writ large, such as YCombinator, or Andreessen Horowitz, and not just because they are marketing the hell out of themselves and their ideas. The team at Andreessen Horowitz plays down hierarchy and seeks to be inclusive as it expands to nodes at the periphery of its network. A.H. sees everyone as a potential contributor to its network. Members of the team who I spoke with emphasize that the power of a network lies in its external nods (i.e. distant acquaintances) – a nod to inclusivity and the need to constantly expand the network. The firm’s strategy is nearly perfectly positioned for what entrepreneurs look for in a partner today.
For one, the emerging generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs has learned just how confrontational the relationship between venture firms and founders can be. Nick Bilton, a reporter for the New York Times, detailed just how acrimonious things can get between founders and boards in his latest book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, which details the clashes between Twitter’s board and founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams. Savvy entrepreneurs naturally want to avoid acrimony as much of that as possible, and one of the main ways they try to do that is to partner with venture capital firms that are either led by entrepreneurs or very “entrepreneurial friendly” – meaning for simplicity sake that investors are nice people, who understand the realities and inevitable ups and downs of the creative process. A.H.’s mission and public relations strategy is squarely aligned with entrepreneurs.
It’s all about the ecosystem
Of course, every venture firm naturally tries to market themselves as entrepreneurial-friendly. What differentiates Andreessen Horowitz is something else, something very different than Kleiner, Sequoia, Benchmark, or Accel have done. Using customer relationship management software as a foundation, Andreessen Horowitz seems to be creating one of the largest, most networked, and powerful ecosystem platforms in the world. It is an astonishingly simple idea that yet is disrupting old power on Sand Hill Road and in Silicon Valley venture capital.
I received a detailed tutorial on the A.H. software system from a woman whose job it is solely to build out the A.H. network. Here is how it works. Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur who wants to sell into General Electric. Well, a host of A.H. relationship managers can type “General Electric” into the system and presto: You see dozens of contacts within the A.H. ecosystem working at G.E., including Beth Comstock, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer. The software also specifies who from A.H. is the primary relationship owner, and when the last contact was made. All interactions get tracked, even emails, so that anyone at A.H. can review the relationship history. And, the large and growing team only increases the power of the ecosystem as they contribute to it.
It starts to sound a little freaky, and it definitely felt a bit transactional when I thought about my name being just another A.H. contact, but this is not like the Wizard of Oz, here. The A.H. team, from the top down, is very open about the A.H. proprietary system and network for anyone curious to learn about it. And, some of the smartest minds in business, including G.E.’s Comstock, are paying very close attention. Comstock is also taking steps toward using a similar ecosystem approach with G.E., as I’ll touch on later.
Entrepreneurs value a few things from VC investors, namely the ability to help hire good people and the ability to access customers. Ron Conway, who like YCombinator is considered by many to be a premier angel investor in the Valley, used to be seen as the most networked person in the Valley. He kept track of all of his key relationships in Excel spreadsheets that he and his team then sent to the entrepreneurs he backed so that Conway can make introductions to potential new hires or customers.
A.H. takes the relationship management system to a whole new level. The firm sees itself as a talent management company, and the model that Andreessen and Horowitz used comes from a very surprising place as far as innovations in Silicon Valley go: Hollywood.
Hollywood? Yes, Hollywood. It’s counter-intuitive, I know, but here’s the quick story.
When Andreessen and Horowitz came together in 2009 to start a firm after their time together at Opsware, they focused on recreating a talent management model like the one pioneered by Michael Ovitz, the founder of Creative Artists Agency. Akin to CAA, yet unlike traditional venture capital firms, A.H. employs dozens of people whose job it is build relationships with people who can help Andreessen Horowitz companies. In Hollywood, Ovitz’s model of talent management, agents spend a great deal of time building up their clients and developing their talents; the focus is on using relationships to advance the talent’s best interests. A.H. puts that model into motion to support all that it does to source, develop, and support entrepreneurial ventures. I was at an event hosted by General Electric in San Francisco last year where I saw the model in action.
G.E. hosted the event in a cool warehouse space in San Francisco’s creative and highly entrepreneurial “Dogpatch” neighborhood. As backdrop, there was a giant G.E. aircraft engine lit by reddish mood lighting, and the purpose of the day was to help G.E. build awareness and relationships. I was there in part because I was a member of a small innovation advisory panel assembled by Comstock to help G.E. think out of the box. Ron Conway was there, and said hello. So was Eric Ries, a best-selling author who wrote a book called The Lean Startup, a book that building products and services by releasing ideas quickly and learning from fast iterations about what works and doesn’t for customers. The book has become required studying for both Silicon Valley web entrepreneurs as well as most G.E. employees, thanks in no small part to G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt’s glowing endorsement. You get the basic picture.
Anyhow, at the event, I also ran into Suhail Doshi, the founder of mixpanel, a hot start-up in the mobile analytics space. I had met Doshi, who is in his early to mid 20s, previously at a dinner hosted by a mutual friend. Not only did we share a lot of laughs, I was very impressed with him. He was clearly a very focused and talented entrepreneur, and he displayed all the characteristics – curiosity, collaboration, drive, and resilience – that you see in the most successful entrepreneurs.
After Jeff Immelt and Comstock spoke, Doshi and I hung out by the giant engine, and decided to snap a picture. There to take the picture, about 20 feet away, were two people from Andreessen Horowitz. These two A.H. employees were at the event seems to network like crazy, but their first job was to talk with Doshi about how mixpanel was going and what his needs were. One thing that Doshi wanted to do was meet Beth Comstock since he hadn’t met her yet. The A.H. partners offered to help but since I knew Comstock well, I was happy to make the introduction. Doshi and Comstock ended up speaking for about 10–15 minutes, as other executives, many of them older, from more industrial companies, waited.
Ron Conway can only cover so much ground on his own. The same is true for John Doerr. Either of those highly successful Silicon Valley investors would like to help their entrepreneurs in any way they can, I’m sure. But the fact of the matter is that Andreessen Horowitz is the firm that has dozens of people out there acting as catalysts, relationship managers, and dot connectors for an ever-growing ecosystem to support entrepreneurial value creation.
The A.H. software tool allows the team to further delineate a contact to show how that person can add value to the A.H. entrepreneurs: Say this person, someone like Beth Comstock, has “enterprise-level” purchasing ability (i.e. the ability to spend a large sum), or is an “early adopter,” or whatnot. Again, A.H. team members constantly emphasize that value is created at the edge of the network, so they are very inclusive in the way they develop their ecosystem. You never know where the next Mark Zuckerberg is going to surface, so the A.H. team visits 20 college campuses a year in search of talent, often accompanied by people from their portfolio companies.
Unlike the small, hierarchical teams at most venture firms, the A.H. team is chock-full of “partners,” all of whom are specialists: there are 26 investment partners, 16 partners specializing in marketing, sales and business development (i.e. people who help build sales teams), 12 partners specializing in “technical talent,” basically an in-house recruiting firm to identify and track the best technical talent, 7 partners who specialize in recruiting executive talent, 9 partners who are pure marketing specialists, 5 partners who specialize in corporate development (i.e. helping A.H. portfolio companies with their exits), and 22 partners focused on “operations” or making sure trains run on time.
Of course, not all “partners” are equal. In addition to Andreessen and Horowitz, the firm has seven general partners, all of whom are men: John O’Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan, Peter Levine, Chris Dixon, Lars Dalgaard, and Balaji Srinivasan. That’s pretty old school, but people inside A.H. insist that they are trying very hard to recruit a female general partner, going so far as to say there is a list of 300 prospects. The supply side has indeed been limited when you factor in that GPs at A.H. have all started and grown successful tech companies. Diane Greene, founder and CEO of VMWare, would be great, but she doesn’t seem interested in becoming a VC, and there are only so many Diane Greenes. Big changes are brewing as new women-led venture funds have spun out of Kleiner and other big firms. It’s only a matter of time for the new generation of female founder CEOs to come of age and exit their companies, ready for the fields of venture capital and A.H.
All of that said, I cannot emphasize enough how different the A.H. model is from the traditional VC firms. When I worked in the industry, the people we were there to serve were the senior people in our firm, and help them to be more successful. On every email, the culture was to address our notes from the most senior to the least senior. Our firm was structured to help the partners succeed, and helping entrepreneurs came after investment sourcing. Success meant making money. Period. Of course, A.H. is focused on making money as well, but based on the firm structuring alone, A.H. has flipped the traditional staffing model on its head, and is clearly focused on finding ways to create as more and more value from its network – and, ultimately to make entrepreneurs successful.
It’s interesting to see that so many people are considered “partners,” a noticeable absence of the hierarchy that defines most venture capital firm cultures. Most venture firms are driven by a handful of partners, and supported by vice presidents, associates, and analysts. What’s more, while in the past, some Silicon Valley venture firms had hired one or two people to help with market development, those people were seen as a nice to have. At A.H. specialists are the firm.
What I find most fascinating about the A.H. ecosystem model is that, while it may feel transactional, most innovative businesses of the future are going to have to be highly networked, and enable large ecosystems. There was only one Steve Jobs. For every other company – such as G.E., let’s say – the ability to innovate and grow is increasingly dependent upon drawing the best talent and ideas into the company’s ecosystem. So, for instance, we heard a lot about G.E.’s focus on “big data” at that event last year. Well, then a bunch of entrepreneurs, industry thought leaders, and venture investors walked away with a clearer understanding of G.E.’s assets and needs – making it all the more easy and natural for them to call Beth Comstock with a hot lead or idea. G.E., not surprisingly, established G.E. Ventures, a venture investing arm of its own in Silicon Valley to take advantage of just these types of opportunities. Companies don’t innovate, people do. The more companies can learn to act as platforms for innovation, as Apple or Facebook do so well, the more innovations can flourish. A.H. is just a networked platform for innovation, with a mission to help entrepreneurs and creators capitalize on opportunities with the best people and customers quickly.
While it’s clear that Andreessen Horowitz has bounced into the top echelon of venture capital firms, at least with respect to ability to raise heaps of capital quickly (an unheard of $4 billion raised just 5 years into existence), deal-flow, and the premier brands it has invested in, the commercial success of the model is still far from proven. Time will tell whether playing for the long-term relationships will translate into superior returns. What’s more, because A.H. has raised an astounding amount of capital, which leads to more and bigger investments by blanketing Silicon Valley and beyond with bets, the team will get spread more and more thin. The key question is this: what do entrepreneurs get out of it? Perhaps they can get better served by going with a firm where the partners aren’t overwhelmed. It all depends on the people involved.
One thing is certain: The new firm in town has made all the other venture capital firms look like white sheep, upended from a steady state by the rise of angel investing, and Andreessen Horowitz, perhaps the blackest sheep firm of them all.
By MIKE PASINI
Editor
The Imaging Resource Digital Photography Newsletter
Review Date: May 2012
Updated for Photoshop Touch v1.2
Just a little while ago we were enchanted with compact netbooks that pretended to run big applications like Lightroom and now we're a little in love with tablets that admittedly don't run the big stuff but promise their own take on things. Like Photoshop Touch.
Apple had quite a head start on the operating system with OS X and the gestural user interface with the iPhone before it turned a sheet of glass into a tablet and launched an industry. Its imitators have found it a hard road to follow.
And even Apple's effort was a read-only start, with the first versions providing more of a window on the Web than a blank canvas to realize your vision. Still, it was an exciting start and development didn't lag for apps that could do things for photographers.
Indeed, photographers have found tablets handy companions. Not only for showing off a portfolio or photo shoot in an accessible and effective way, but even in the studio as a monitor for tethered shooting.
Still the limitations -- like no system-wide color calibration -- have been daunting. And, for the most part, haven't been addressed. Relaxed a bit perhaps (with more RAM) but not resolved.
Despite the constricting environment, app developers have been busy. We've been reviewing some of the more promising tools including WD Photos, Datacolor SpyderGallery, Nik Software Snapseed, Revel, Pholium and now Photoshop Touch.
These were all version 1.0 apps. Our approach when reviewing a new concept is to test the concept more than the implementation. So we come to the $9.99 Photoshop Touch not so much to compare it to Lightroom or Photoshop or iPhoto, which we think would be a mistake, but to evaluate it for what it is.
What is Photoshop Touch? It's a layers-based bitmap editor built for tablets running either Android, on which it was first released, or iOS.
LIMITATIONS
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The limitations of a tablet environment are worth pointing out. Not only do they include the lack of system-wide color calibration but they also restrict image size. And the desire to hide the file system from the user makes finding your images an app-by-app adventure.
Snapseed worked well within the same limitations, but it's important to note that it isn't the application but the operating system which imposes them.
Besides portability, one of the benefits of working on a tablet is the touch interface.
We've found, however, the touch interface profits from the use of a stylus with these applications. Your finger is precise enough for Web browsing (although that can be argued) but when it comes to precision drawing, you need a stylus.
One limitation Adobe has gotten around for this app, though, is the lack of a Flash player on iOS. Photoshop Touch uses the AIR runtime, which shares a lot with Flash. But primarily Photoshop Touch relies on Actionscript.
FINDING IMAGES
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The first tablet limitation we ran into was really one of a tablet's attractions: the invisible file system. You don't worry about where your image is because it tags along with the app that created it.
That's a problem -- eventually. And for image editing software, right away. You have to find an image to edit it, after all.
There are a lot of places for images to hide on a tablet where the file system is invisible to the user. It can be frustrating to work on an image in one app and not be able to find it in another.
Local photo storage on the iPad (which is what we used for this review) is either your Photo Stream or Camera Roll, the two places Snapseed can access. Photoshop Touch, however, can also grab an image with the tablet's built-in camera.
Files. Lots of sources, including Adobe's Creative Cloud.
And Photoshop Touch can access images that are not stored on the tablet. You can access Adobe's Creative Cloud, Google and Facebook. With the 1.2 revision, Photoshop Touch makes it easier to sync files with the Cloud in a variety of formats.
The images you pull into Photoshop Touch are downsized if they exceed the app's maximum file sizes.
But there are two file size options starting with v1.2. You can choose between a larger file size than the default but with fewer possible layers or stick with the default and the maximum number of layers.
If you want to use 16 layers, the maximum file size is 1,600 x 1,600 pixels. But if you can live with 10 layers, you can go up to 2,048 x 2,048 pixels. The app's default is 1,600 x 1,600 with 16 layers (the previous standard). You can change that in Preferences.
THE INTERFACE
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When you launch Photoshop Touch, you're presented with a signon screen that yields to a two-button screen. They don't look like buttons, but the two big blue boxes offer the option to Begin a Tutorial or Begin a Project.
Two Buttons. Begin a Tutorial or a Project.
When you've saved a few projects, as Photoshop Touch calls them, that opening screen will display a light bulb button for the tutorials, a button with the two blue boxes and a thumbnail for each project you've saved.
There's also a menu of icons across the top of that screen. They are: Creative Cloud options, Save options (share and print), Folder options (add, move), Duplicate a project, Delete a project, Facebook and Settings. And at the bottom of the screen there's a Plus icon to add a new project (settings its dimensions) and another to create a new project from any source.
We'll go through the tutorials in a bit, but first let's look at the interface to the application itself.
That interface is a gray background with a menu bar on top and darker gray sidebars (which you can easily slide off the screen by tapping the arrow at the bottom of them). The left sidebar displays tools and tool options when you tap a tool to access it. The right sidebar manages the image's layers.
The Interface at a Glance |
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Adjustments |
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Effects: Photo Tab (v1.2) |
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Dialog boxes do appear now and then. We had some problems with a few of them obscuring the image and being stubborn about where they were. We couldn't, that is, move them out of the way.
For example, using the Crop tool on a portrait-oriented image obscured the bottom two handles. We couldn't move the image or the dialog box out of the way.
You might think that the obvious solution is to rotate the tablet. But funny thing. Photoshop Touch doesn't change orientation. It stays in landscape mode.
Adobe revealed the secret to us finally. Move or resize the image with a two-finger gesture. We'd been brain locked in stylus mode.
While the interface itself is pretty simple, it packs a lot of power in its menus. In that it resembles Photoshop Mouse.
Layers
The menu bar, for example, has a left and right menu as well as a small arrow in the middle of the menu bar to hide it. The options are displayed only as icons rather than text. That can be a little disorienting at first (our preference would be text and in fact, that's what the pulldown menus display) but you quickly learn your way around.
And if you're working with a few layers and want to see exactly how they stack up, you can rotate your canvas in 3D to look at it sideways and see each layer explode from the one behind it (as illustrated above). This worked a little before v1.2, which flickers annoyingly as your try to rotate the image.
Otherwise, you can just use the target in the top left corner of the layer icon to enable or disable display of that particular layer.
A CATALOG OF COMMANDS
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With a touch interface, there are no secret key commands to learn. It's all staring right back at you from the interface.
So if we list all the commands here, you can use your Find command to look for any capability in Photoshop Touch that you might be interested in.
Menu Bar with Back, Add, Edit, Select and Transform, Adjustments, Effects, Miscellaneous, Full Screen
The left menu has four options:
There are some powerful options there like Extract and Refine Edge.
On the right menu, there are five items:It's worthwhile listing the fonts included with Photoshop Touch, too. It's quite an extensive list, even if most of them are display fonts:
Tools Menu
Adobe Caslon Pro, Adobe Garamond Pro, Banshee Std, Birch Std, Blackoak Std, Brush Script Std Medium, Chaparral Pro, Charlemagne Std Bold, Cooper Std Black, Cottonwood Std Medium, Flood Std, Fusaka Std, Giddyup Std, Hobo Std Medium, Juniper Std Medium, Letter Gothic Std Medium, Lithos Pro, Madrone Std, Mesquite Std Medium, Minion Pro, Myriad Pro, Nueva Std, Poplar Std Black, Postino Std, Shuriken Boy Std, Stencil Std Bold, Strumpf Std Open, Tekton Pro Bold, Trajan Pro.
On the tools menu you'll find: Marque Selection, Lasso Selection, Magic Wand Selection, Paint Brush, Clone Stamp Tool, Eraser, Blur Tool. They're listed below the selected tool, which moves to the top as soon as you tap it.
Hold your finger or stylus on any of those commands to see the fly-out options. Marque can be rectangular or round, Lasso can be freeform or polygon, Magic Wand can be scribble or brush, Paint can be paint bucket or spray, Clone stamp can be clone or healing brush, Blur can be blur or smudge.
On the layers menu there is a button for layer settings and another to add a layer as well as a stack of layers with buttons to turn off their display. Layer settings include Opacity, Blend Modes (Normal, Darken, Multiply, Lighten, Screen, Linear Dodge (Add), Overlay, Difference, Subtract), Merge Down, Merge Visible, Flatten Image, Match Color, Delete Layer.
You can't name layers or group them and a few Photoshop blending modes are missing but it's a very good basic layers kit.
As you can see, that's not just a list of Photoshop Touch commands, it's an outline of the power of this release in a nutshell. Selections and layers (with a healthy assortment of blend modes) is at the heart of it. With the Healing Brush and Scribble Selection thrown in so you won't mistake it for Photoshop 3. And all of it is accessed from an icon-based menu system that will be immediately familiar to users of Photoshop Mouse.
Adobe doesn't provide a manual with Photoshop Touch. Where would they put it, you might wonder.
We've admired the manuals that came with early versions of Photoshop, which took pains to teach the art of image editing to the growing numbers of Photoshop users. And we've admired early Photoshop Elements versions which did the same thing in HTML.
Adobe has abandoned documentation entirely, leaving the task of educating its users to third parties. Elements has since evolved into follow-the-steps dance lessons for image editing magic. Lightroom gives you five rules, period.
Photoshop Touch takes off on Elements's approach with a large set of tutorials that take you step by step through a job. It even recognizes if you get out step with the tutorial, letting you step back to get in sync again.
We went through each of them and describe them in the following notes:
There isn't one of those we haven't actually had to do in Photoshop over the years. They're real image editing tasks that are often hard to conceptualize. But once you know how to go about it, they're a piece of cake. And Photoshop Touch shows you exactly what to do.
The only one that stumbled a bit, but finally redrew the screen, was Make a Painting. Otherwise, everything ran very smoothly.
The trouble with tablet software is that there seems to be a different app for every possible function. You might prefer to set up a folder of radio station links in your browser but each station has its own app, an approach we find far from efficient.
A Portfolio of Examples |
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In the photo editing world, this rabbit-like reproduction gives us a lot of camera apps for phones and a lot of confusion when it comes to images. Some applications are just filter factories. Some are camera apps, enhancing the built-in hardware. Some focus on photo refinements. Some on photo sharing.
Photoshop Touch really doesn't compare to other offerings, even though there's a lot of editing overlap with products like Snapseed, Revel and iPhoto. It strikes us as the tool to use not when we want to tweak a photo so much as compose an image. And that composition might just be no more than a concept we want to work out, a design we want to sketch.
Of course, it's hard not to compare its editing features with other software.
One feature not available in Photoshop Touch that is in its desktop brother is Straighten. You can rotate an image layer freely or with snap-to enabled but there's no button to automatically straighten the image.
On the other hand, iPhoto promises to automatically straighten your image. You don't have to do anything (like draw a line on the horizon you want to straighten). It will find a horizontal to flatten. Whether you like it or not.
Those are, clearly, approaches as different as a stick shift and an automatic transmission. If you went to a beach party and spent too much time flirting with the keg, you may prefer the iPhoto approach. If you want to align one layer to another in a series of sunset shots, you might prefer the Photoshop Touch approach.
One's a convenience (when it works as you expect); the other's a tool.
That's just scraping the surface, though. The non-destructive editing of iPhoto is not quite how Photoshop Touch works. It's a bitmap editor. Your originals are not sacred, although when you save a project, you don't overwrite the original image file itself. You create a project file that is subsequently overwritten when you next edit it.
Our examples are all "after" images but for a peek at the power in Photoshop Touch, we took a screen shot of a gradient adjustment on a layer to deliver you some idea of where Photoshop Touch can take an image.
This one started out as a scan of a negative, which we copied to Creative Cloud and retrieved with Photoshop Touch. We used Levels to optimize the tones in the scan and then duplicated the layer to apply the new Soft Light photo effect. That was a bit strong for the entire image, so we added a gradient. In the screen shot we're adjusting the gradient to fall on the key parts of the subject. For the final image we drew a selection over the stylist's face and Extracted it from the layer beneath so it was perfectly sharp.
That's pretty elaborate photo editing.
What about those 19 megapixel images that iPhoto can handle? That's a clear advantage to iPhoto over the current version of Photoshop Touch, although v1.2 does Boost from 7-Mp to 12-Mp images.
We haven't used the $4.99 iPhoto (it breaks our software review budget) but we find it about as appealing as its desktop sibling, which we don't use. Both seemed designed for simpler expectations than most of us have. They are self-contained worlds (with plenty of export options but no plug-ins) that resemble playpens more than studios.
CREATIVE CLOUD
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With Photoshop Touch, you get the core functionality of Photoshop on your tablet and can share projects you originate in Photoshop Touch with a desktop version of Photoshop.
Going the other way doesn't work as well, though, with Photoshop layers flattened on import into PS Touch.
You move a project to Photoshop by copying it from your tablet to Adobe's new Creative Cloud. You do that in Photoshop Touch. From the main screen, just tap the Cloud icon on the top menu bar, select the Upload option, then tap the project you want to upload. Assuming you're logged in, that's all there is to it.
To open the psdx project file in Photoshop, you have to install the Creative Cloud plug-in. The version we installed only worked with Photoshop CS5 but Adobe tells us "the plug-in has been updated. It should work fine with CS6."
In fact, the whole Creative Cloud seems updated since the first version of this review and we've updated our screen shots below to reflect the current layout.
Creative Cloud |
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First log into the Web interface to your files on Creative Cloud and select the get icon (the last one) to copy the image to your local machine or just to open it in Photoshop CS5.
We did that with a book cover project called Blind Faith and all our layers came across just as we had set them up on the iPad. So our sketch of a cover turned into a real Photoshop project.
Of course, you can upload an image to the Creative Cloud to work on it in Photoshop Touch as well. Just use the Web interface you accessed to get a file and click the Upload icon.
RETOUCHING A SCAN
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We had a 35mm black and white scan to the Creative Cloud so we could pull it into Photoshop Touch. It took a while to show up on the iPad because it was a big file and took a while to upload. And when we opened it in Photoshop Touch, that took a while, too, as the app resized it to its 1,600 x 1,600 canvas.
We tried both Levels and Curves to adjust the rather dark image. While we found Curves to be a little too Fisher-Price, it did let us lighten the shadows and midtones while protecting the highlights.
As a simple black and white, though, the image lacked some drama. So we added a photo filter to make it a duotone, which we liked very much.
But as a scan, it had a bit of dust here and a thread there. So we tried both the Clone Stamp and the Healing Brush tools to clean it up.
Clone Stamp wasn't easy. Like the Curves adjustment, it had a toy-like feeling on the iPad that we don't experience on our laptops. Where Curves seemed to make too large a change with a small shift in the curve, the brush seemed to make paint too broadly and make source selection difficult. It takes some getting used to.
The Healing Brush was likewise a bit less responsive than we're used to but it did do the job. Oddly, it too had a Source option. It could be that the iPad needs a little help with that.
We made retouching significantly easier by enlarging the image (zooming with a two finger spread) and using the brush on the enlargement. That worked.
THE PRICE, HILDA
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We've been using Photoshop Touch for weeks. Long before, that is, Adobe announced Creative Cloud and Creative Suite 6.
So for the most part, we've been considering it as a $9.99 photo editing app which you can buy from the iTunes App Store or Google Play. But special offers for Adobe Touch Apps will be available for customers who sign up for annual membership of Adobe Creative Cloud, the company said.
We popped into the Creative Cloud, which is just coming online now, and found the Touch apps are available, at least for 30-day trials.
So has Adobe sold us on the concept of layered image editing with the first release of Photoshop Touch?
Yes. It's well implemented. Everything you see works as promised. Except we wish we could see a bit more of our image when a dialog box covers it up.
And we look forward to seeing a little more layer power as tablet hardware matures. Tablets are funny devices. At first they pretended to be touch-activated browsers. But we expect them to be a lot more than that. We like the form factor and we like the gesture-based interface. But we want the horsepower we're used to on our laps, too.
Meanwhile Photoshop Touch is a nicely tailored version of layer-based editing for those of us who like to take our images somewhere beyond what the camera captured.
We prefer, that is, to use other apps (Snapseed comes to mind) to refine and fix our photos. Even to warp them into something a little different than the camera captured.
But when you want to experiment by compositing images or adding text, layers are the way to go. And Photoshop Touch can get you there. Already.
Watch a video of Stouse talking about the creation of the Peace Garden: https://newsinfo.iu.edu/asset/page/normal/5477.html
A semi-circle of bamboo poles outline the perimeter of a small garden in the northeastern corner of Darrough Chapel Park in Kokomo, Ind. In the center, 10 stone pillars representing virtues -- inscribed with words such as perseverance, integrity and serenity -- surround a solar-powered fountain. On the east side of the garden hangs a bell converted from a 105-millimeter Howitzer shell and suspended by a rope in the Japanese gate.
Designed by Karla Stouse's Indiana University Kokomo students, the Peace Garden honors the concept of peace and World War II heroes -- Pearl Harbor survivors, interment victims and the men of the 100th Infantry Battalion.
"Focusing on the project really had a positive and calming effect on all of us," said Stouse, a senior lecturer in English at IU Kokomo. "We were really focusing on the concept of peace, and it changed the way we negotiated and dealt with each other. A lot of people have done a lot for us, and this was just a chance to deliver back a little. The garden is not about war. It's about the people who sacrificed and gave up a lot so the rest of us could have a peaceful existence."
The Peace Garden was a partnership between IU Kokomo and the City of Kokomo Parks and Recreation Department. IU Kokomo students, faculty and staff designed and constructed different aspects of the garden, which was first conceived after Stouse and students in her Asian culture class traveled to Hawaii for a course during summer 2006.
While in Hawaii, the students had the opportunity to interview internment victims, Pearl Harbor survivors and men from the 100th Battalion. When the students returned to Indiana, they separated into groups and created a plan to honor the people from the three populations they met on the trip. Inspired by what they learned and observed in Hawaii, the students worked elements of Asian culture into the design. Stouse's goal was for the students to take artistic and cultural elements they had observed in Hawaii -- that would not only reflect the culture but also the concept of peace and the people -- and incorporate them into a design for the community to enjoy.
After the initial design phase, the students created one plan for a Peace Garden that featured elements from each group in the class to create a project that was later carried out by Stouse's future students.
The design incorporated pillars, which students observed at the Japanese Cultural Center in Hawaii. The pillars were ballast stones that had been carved by indentured servants who left Japan for Hawaii. The 10 pillars in the Peace Garden are each inscribed with one virtue that represents an aspect of a peaceful life. Each student in the class selected a virtue for a pillar that represented his or her personality.
Flowers reminiscent of Asian gardens are planted around the garden and include zebra grass, juniper, Japanese maples, foxtail, bayberry, hydrangeas and hibiscus. In the center of the garden is the solar powered water fountain, which Stouse says typically appears in the center of an Asian garden. Three wooden benches surround the garden, each representing one of the three cultures the students studied in Hawaii.
The flag flying from the pole outside the rim of the garden honors the survivors of Pearl Harbor. The flag once flew over the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, and was purchased with money from an Indiana Campus Compact grant written by IU Kokomo senior Cayce Arnett.
Arnett, who is majoring in English with a minor in international studies, was one of the students in the class who traveled to Hawaii when she was a freshman at IU Kokomo. She said the trip and the project helped her gain an experience she could not have obtained from a book. Meeting the men of the 100th Battalion had a great impact on Arnett, who says the trip to Hawaii was the first she'd taken outside of the Indiana region.
"What I learned from this experience can't really be put into words," Arnett said. "That class and that trip set the stage for the rest of my education and the rest of my life. I learned so much, and I've gained so much from the opportunity to go to Hawaii and from putting something permanent in our community. "
Arnett said traveling gave her an incredible feeling and allowed her to experience another culture. Ever since the trip, she has taken every opportunity the campus offered to travel, including trips to Italy, England and New York City.
"I thank Karla for all of that, because without traveling to Hawaii and without seeing other cultures, I don't think I ever would have known how important that is," Arnett said. "I couldn't have taken that with me without the trip and that class."
The Peace Garden has been a good learning experience for other students as well and gave them the opportunity to work with a variety of IU Kokomo staff. Minda Douglas, lecturer in fine arts, inspired Stouse to make a model of the plan, which was presented to a Kokomo Parks and Recreation Department meeting. The board liked the idea of the garden and approved the students' project.
During the past two years, students have worked with Stouse to write grant proposals, manage budgets, attend board meetings and obtain approval from the city for the project. The most latest addition to the garden has been the August 2008 installation of a sidewalk around the outside of the garden. Stouse said Catherine Barnes, director of IU Kokomo's Office of Campus Climate, and students from the Multicultural Student Organization at IU Kokomo provided the funding for the first phase of the sidewalk. Future students must work to obtain more money to complete the final phase of sidewalk construction.
The project was important for the students, Stouse said, because they learned a lot about a time period of American history of which they were not aware. They did not know about the internment camps or about the contributions of the men from the 100th Battalion. Not only did the students learn about a piece of America's history, they also learned key skills that will aid them in future jobs. Stuart Green, IU Kokomo interim chancellor, says the project helps transform undergraduates into engaged citizens, which is the core of the project.
"Service learning is something that is often misunderstood," Green said. "It's often seen as little kinds of projects that really don't connect what students are learning to anything other than helping the community solve a need. The idea about service learning that I think comes to life in this project -- which is so important -- resonates with a theme our campus has had now for some time, the idea of 'creating knowledge that works.'
"The idea here is that you take students' experiences and knowledge and translate them into activities that not only impact the community but also help the students understand how to use that knowledge and in the use of that knowledge they become engaged students and successful individuals way beyond the core curriculum of the class."
The IU Kokomo students hope the community will benefit from the garden. They installed a time capsule just outside the perimeter of the Peace Garden under the American flag, which the community can open in 25 years.
Students from Darrough Chapel Elementary School will visit the Peace Garden periodically to perform some routine maintenance and weed the garden. Students in one of Stouse's 2007 classes wrote educational modules for the students to understand the concept of the garden. Future IU Kokomo freshmen involved in the learning community will also continue to maintain and enhance the garden.
"Our learning community is about love and relationships, including civic relationships," Stouse said. "That certainly fits with what we're doing there. We hope that this will be a model for other educators in the area, who decide to take on relatively small projects with their classes and demonstrate to the students that they can make an impact on the community. My point to students is it doesn't take a lot to make a significant difference."
Wi-Fi as a Service market research provides an in-depth analysis of the market’s current state, covers market size in terms of sales volume and valuation, and makes a precise forecast of the market’s future course from 2022 to 2028.
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Juniper Networks Inc. (California, U.S.), Cisco System Inc. (California, U.S.), HPE (Aruba) (California, U.S.), Extreme Networks (California, U.S.), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen, China), Fortinet (California, U.S.), Ruckus Networks (California, U.S.), Arista Networks (California, U.S.), D-Link Corporation (Taipei, Taiwan), TP-Link (Shenzhen, China)
Introduce new research on the global Wi-Fi as a Service market covering the micro-level of analysis by competitors and key business segments. The global Wi-Fi as a Service market explores a comprehensive study on various segments like opportunities, size, development, innovation, sales, and overall growth of major players. The report attempts to offer a high-quality and accurate analysis of the global Wi-Fi as a Service market, keeping in view market forecasts, competitive intelligence, technological risks and advancements, and other important subjects.
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The growing demand for high-speed network is likely to drive the growth of the Wi-Fi as a Service Market size. Dial-up service has long been the most popular mode of access across commercial applications. Advanced developments have made it feasible for even residential customers to have low-cost high-speed or broadband access.
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To view the original version on The Express Wire visit Wi-Fi as a Service Market SIze, Share, Demand, Growth Anslysis till 2028
Looking for a convenient way to better your health? In today’s society, the notion of maintaining work-life balance has become practically impossible to reach. Truthfully speaking, many individuals are facing an overlap between the two, which has had a severe impact on wellness all around. What might this look like? Sleep deprivation is an example, and so are the absence of nutrients-dense meals, family time, and enjoyment.
When these issues worsen with time, only individuals end up with the short end of the stick (i.e., low productivity, mental health issues, exhaustion, etc.). One company pledged to contribute to wellness through a whole-body approach that way, individuals can continue to seek out their purpose without neglecting their bodies. Put simply, all it takes is a handful of ingredients that synergistically repair, replenish, and maintain wellness. Without any further delay, here’s a comprehensive review on Clean Nutraceuticals.
Clean Nutra, short for Clean Nutraceuticals, is a health supplement company whose members are proud to help consumers attain their best possible life. Whether individuals are in search of a solution that increases immune and cardiovascular functions or ensures the ability to experience a sustainable source of energy, Clean Nutra may come in handy. Why? Because their products have been formulated to “deliver powerful performance and purity you can count on.”
It goes without saying that the only way to evaluate the effectiveness of a supplement is by taking it over the course of time. However, individuals can at least walk into this process with some recollection as to what Clean Nutra products are intended for. All things considered, let’s decipher the Clean Nutra product offering.
Currently, individuals can choose between 14 different supplements. Below is an overview on each one, starting with the intended purpose right down to the ingredients and purported benefits.
Q Defend is a 5-in-1 dietary supplement that could potentially support a healthy immune response, lungs, and alleviate seasonal allergy response. Clean Nutra’s proprietary blend dubbed, Q-Defend™ Immune Blend (350mg), is of primary interest and comprises of Turmeric, Ginger, Echinacea, Garlic, Nettle, Reishi Mushroom, Rose Hips Powder, L-lysine HCl, Bromelain, Bifidobacterium lactis, Irish Sea Moss and Artemisinin. Other supporting ingredients include Vitamin C (1000mg), Vitamin D3 (125mcg), Zinc Powerhouse3™ (50mg), Elderberry (100mg) and Quercetin (100mg).
Internal Fire is a 3-in-1 dietary supplement desired for its ability to drive energy and libido levels. Additionally, the formula has accounted for superior mental clarity, and healthy vitality and mood. What permits individuals to possibly reach these outcomes? It all starts with the Internal Fire Trifibranol100X™ Blend (100mg) comprising of Tribulus Terrestris, Horny Goat Weed, Tongkat Ali, Panax Ginseng, Ginkgo Biloba, Long Jack L-Arginine, L-Citrulline, Muira Puama, Chasteberry, Black Cohosh, Dong Quai, and Turmeric. The second blend dubbed, the Maca Blend (500mg) includes Black Maca, Yellow Maca, and Red Maca. This trio is allegedly equivalent to 2,000mg of raw Maca root powder. Finally, we have Fenugreek (300mg) and Black Pepper (5mg).
Liver Defend is an all-in-one liver repair, cleanse, and detox blend. Starting with the proprietary blend (571mg), we have the combined effects of Celery, Alfalfa, Burdock, Yellow Dock, Methionine, Grapeseed, L-cysteine, Feverfew, Choline, Turmeric, Red Raspberry, Berberine, and Ginger. The latter is just a fraction of the ingredients, the rest includes Zinc (30mg), Milk Thistle (200mg), Beet (50mg), Artichoke (50mg), Chanca Piedra (50mg), Dandelion (50mg), Chicory (50mg), Yarrow (50mg) and Jujube Seeds (50mg).
Multimane is a dietary supplement that serves as a beauty routine. In other words, it has been formulated with healthy hair, skin, nails, and joints in mind. Based on the supplement’s fact, the formula has been split between three blends and other supporting ingredients. The first one is devoted to collagen, a protein responsible for healthy joints, and skin elasticity. The issue that arises with aging is that the protein ends up breaking down faster, making it difficult for the body to increase production.
The Multimane Collagen blend (1000mg) contains Hydrolyzed Bovine Collagen Peptides, Chicken Collagen, Hydrolyzed Marine Collagen, and Egg Shell Collagen. Following suit, we have the Multimane Keratin™ Blend (500mg) encompassing Pumpkin Seed, Keratin, Hyaluronic Acid, and MSM. There’s also the Multimane HSN100™ Blend (150mg), which is nothing without the likes of Quercetin, EGCG, Para-Aminobenzoic Acid, Glutathione, and Apple Cider Vinegar. Other equally useful ingredients include Saw Palmetto (250mg), Vitamin C (90mg), Vitamin E (15mg), Folate (1,000mcg), Biotin (10,000mcg) and Black Pepper (5mg).
Age Defend is an anti-aging dietary supplement that not only supports aging response, but also aims to fill in any voids that naturally result from the process. This primarily implies youthful looking skin but isn’t restricted to just that. The Age Defend NMN™ Blend (500mg) contains Graviola, Rhodiola, Turmeric, Collagen, Artemisinin, Beta-Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN), Alpha-Ketoglutarate (AKG), Apigenin, Pterostilbene, Berberine, Glutathione, NAD, and Indole-3-Carbinol (I3C). Others include Fisetin (250mg), Resveratrol (100mg), Spermidine (100mg), Quercetin (100mg) and Black Pepper (5mg).
GreensPower is a greens superfood powder containing a precise blend of prebiotics, probiotics, digestive enzymes, fruits, and vegetables. This 55-in-1 dietary supplement is intended to help populate the gut with good bacteria, protect the body against inflammation, support immune function, eliminate toxins, and assist with the digestive system.
The largest concentration per serving is devoted to a 2.6g superfood, antioxidants, and mushroom blend, followed by a 1.2g nutrient-dense herbs and extracts and 406mg of prebiotics and probiotics. Some examples of the latter include Apple Fiber, Inulin, Fungal Amylase, Fungal Protease, Glucoamylase, Lipase, Cellulase, B. longum, L. acidophilus, and L. rhamnosus.
LeanBurn is an all-in-one daily weight management supplement that might provide an energy surge, support healthy liver and metabolic rate and overall body detoxification, and healthy digestion. The main ingredients responsible for such range of benefits include a 112mg blend of Milk Thistle, Cayenne, Ginseng Korean Aerial Extract, and Banaba, Zinc (11mg), Chromium (100mcg), Alpha Lipoic Acid (150mg), Green Tea (150mg), Berberine HCL (100mg), and Resveratrol (40mg).
ShroomZoom is an all-in-one mushroom supplement that might support healthy memory, focus and mood. This formula is literally as the name suggests, a complete mushroom blend like no other. Starting with the proprietary blend (266mg), individuals will be ingesting the likes of Maitake, Turkey Tail, Chaga, Royal Sun Agaricus, White Button, and Black Fungus mushrooms. We also have Cordyceps (266mg), Reishi (266mg), Shiitake (266mg), and Lions Mane (266mg) Mushrooms.
MegaMale is a male performance supplement reckoned to support healthy energy, performance, and stamina. To help revive male characteristics, Clean Nutra’s MegaMale 360™ Proprietary Blend (100mg) has been equipped with Tribulus Terrestris, Ashwagandha, Saw Palmetto, Fenugreek, Sarsaparilla, Wild Yam, Nettle, Ginseng, Maca, Horny Goat Weed, and Shilajit. Other ingredients include Turkesterone (500mg), Fadogia Agrestis (100mg), Tongkat Ali (20mg), and Black Pepper (5mg).
CollaClean is an advanced collagen peptides powder for healthy hair, skin, and nails. Each jar contains 8 advanced ingredients totalling 6.6g. Specifically, these include Hydrolyzed Bovine Collagen Peptides, Hydrolyzed Chicken Cartilage, Marine Collagen, Horsetail Extract, Bamboo Extract, Acerola Cherry, Hyaluronic Acid, and Pyridoxine Hydrochloride. CollaClean is suitable for anyone who would prefer a powdered collagen solution over pills. Regarding calories, each serving comes out to about 24 calories, of which protein accounts for 6.5g, Vitamin C accounts for 6mg and Vitamin B6 accounts for 2mg.
Cardisol is a cardiovascular dietary supplement for a healthy immune response, gut health, lungs, and seasonal allergy response just like Q Defend. The difference is the formula itself, which comprises of a 620mg proprietary blend of Hawthorn, Garlic, Olive, Hibiscus, Buchu, Uva Ursi, Juniper, and Green along with Vitamin C (60mg), Niacin (2.5mg), Vitamin B6 (5mg), Folate (100mcg), and Vitamin B12.
Immune Defend is an 8-in-1 dietary supplement intended to reach similar results to that of Cardisol and Q Defend but approached differently. The proprietary blend (350mg) lists the likes of Black Elderberry, Echinacea, Turmeric, Ginger Root, and Quercetin, while the supporting ingredients include Vitamin C (1,000mg), Vitamin D3 (125mcg), and a Zinc Blend as Picolinate, Gluconate, and Citrate (50mg).
For people facing restless nights, Mag Genin is a dietary supplement that might resolve exactly that. In so doing, not only will sleep quality improve, but so will factors including mood and overall wellbeing. This isn’t surprising seeing how damaging sleep deprivation can be on the human mind, body, and spirit. Many of the ingredients found inside this formula focus on calming the mind to induce sleep. What might this look like? Well, the Mag Genin™ Blend (100mg) contains L-Tryptophan, 5-HTP, GABA, Passionflower, Lemon Balm, L-Glycine, Phosphatidylserine, and Ashwagandha. Supporting ingredients include Vitamin B6 (1mg), Magnesium (1000mg), Zinc (11mg), Copper (3mg) L-Theanine (200mg), Chamomile (50mg), and Apigenin Extract (50mg).
Lastly, we have yet another immune support supplement that targets the lungs, allergy response and of course, protects the body against free radical damage and other harmful invaders. The Artemune100X™ Immune Blend (350mg) contains many of the ingredients listed previously. For instance, there’s Ashwagandha, Nettle, Bladderwrack, Burdock, Seamoss, Monolaurin, Bromelain, Colostrum, and Rutin Powder. Others include Artemisinin (250mg), Quercetin (100mg), Quinine (100mg), Mullein (100mg), and Zinc Powerhouse4™ Blend (100mg).
Clean Nutra products are priced by the number of bottles purchased per order. Specifically, the price for a 1-bottle purchase will be slightly higher than a 3- or 6-bottle purchase respectively. Here is a quick price’s rundown for each Clean Nutra offering should individuals decide to stick to a one-time, 1-bottle purchase (the highest price per bottle):
Orders are usually shipped out either on the same day or within the next business day. From there, the timeframe for U.S. regions is between 3 and 7 business days, whereas other regions will require up to 15 business days. Bear in mind that all international shipments will incur a minimum fee of $25.
Clean Nutra currently offers standard shipping through USPS, FedEx, and UPS.
Tracking information will be emailed out once the product has been shipped and the courier of choice has provided a link.
Yes, all Clean Nutra products have a shelf-life of approximately 1 to 3 years at the time of purchase. For the exact date, individuals are asked to refer to the bottom of the bottles.
If a Clean Nutra product arrives damaged or broken, this must be communicated with customer support promptly to ensure a speedy replacement.
Yes, in fact, Clean Nutra products are tested at their in-house facilities and by accredited third party laboratories for purity and potency.
Yes, subscriptions are available on both the Clean Nutra official website and through Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program. These have been introduced to promote maximum savings.
Yes, Clean Nutra products have been protected by a 180-day money-back guarantee. If their products do not present an opportunity to Boost different areas of health, customer service can be contacted for a full purchase price refund. Thankfully, the refund policy applies to both used and unused bottles, with a limit of 2 unused bottles per return. For more information, contact through:
This is a question often asked of brands irrespective of industry. In doing some research, our editorial team was content with the following features:
All Clean Nutra products are manufactured in the U.S. at GMP-certified facilities that abide by FDA guidelines. The team pledges to source ingredients domestically and internationally, both of which are subjected to multiple quality control procedures. Put differently, the team provides reassurance when it comes to delivering the highest-quality product possible.
All Clean Nutra products have been tested in-house and by accredited third-party laboratories. The certificate of analysis (CoA) can be accessed on the Clean Nutra official website. The lab results clearly outline the manufactured and expiration dates, confirm the concentration of each ingredient and has been tested for purity (i.e., total plate count, yeast, mold, E. Coli, Salmonella Spp, and Staphylococcus Aureus) and heavy metals (i.e., arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury).
In addition to proprietary blends, each formula comprises a handful of ingredients that have been listed as “10:1 Extract”. This means that the extract under question is 10 times more powerful than the ingredient’s raw powder form, which is the main reason why each product is deemed a multipurpose solution.
Knowing that our editorial team was able to familiarize ourselves with the company, their strategies, and the available supplement’s fact is proof that Clean Nutra reflects complete transparency. We cannot stress how important transparency is, especially because these supplements will be interacting with our bodies. Thus, it is imperative to know who created it, what’s in it and whether the contents have been tested. Clean Nutra also has an upper hand as a proud member of Amazon’s Transparency Program. Being a member implies that their products are guaranteed to be genuine.
When an opportunity to educate the masses presents itself, Clean Nutra acts upon it. We noticed this on each product’s information page, where details on key ingredients are provided, along with an explanation on specific notations, the purported benefits, and the frequently asked questions section.
Lastly, Clean Nutra’s 180-day money-back certain is attractive because it is far more risk-free than conventional policies. Usually, companies accept returns as long as supplements are returned in brand new condition. In the case of Clean Nutra, individuals can return both used and unused bottles, but of course, certain restrictions apply. The latter is proof that 1) the company is confident in their solutions and 2) acknowledge the fact that not all solutions will work for everyone.
Based on the analysis above, Clean Nutra is a health-focused company whose products fall into an array of niches including weight loss, brain function, male versus female functions, and immune, skin, and cardiovascular health among several others. Their strategy entails maximizing the natural approach to healing, which has been found to target the body as one unit as opposed to temporarily targeting a specific health condition. For instance, by strengthening immune function, the gut, sleep quality, energy levels and bodily recovery procedures are poised to improve. So, whenever Clean Nutra insists their solution is multi-purpose, they truly mean it.
Besides Clean Nutra’s level of transparency, our editorial team was satisfied by the wealth of knowledge available on the official website. By no means does this mean that their solutions replace prescription drugs or treat illnesses, instead, we see potential in their ability to push individuals in the right direction. How could anyone say otherwise when the team went above and beyond to deliver potent extracts across their product offerings? Or the fact that their CoAs are available for the public to access? In accordance with everything discussed, we believe that Clean Nutra products can add value to one’s health journey.
As for next steps, we encourage everyone to do their due diligences on their product of choice. With such transparent supplement’s fact, individuals should spend time analyzing both the traditional and scientific stances of the selected ingredients, especially for those who have to take prescription drugs. In the latter case, seeking a healthcare professional’s opinion is also vital. To get started on the Clean Nutra journey, visit the official website by clicking here! >>>