http://benheine.artician.com/ http://benheine.artician.com/ http://uc.artician.com/members/0/9/9801/avatar.jpg en-us Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:07:18 -0500 http://benheine.artician.com/blog/2009/05/new-works-to-be-published-here-soon/ http://benheine.artician.com/blog/2009/05/new-works-to-be-published-here-soon/
I've been working hard these past weeks and I just wanted to share with you the subjects of the illustrations and portraits I'm going to publish on Artician.com in the coming days...

There will be portraits of the Cocorosie Sisters, Richie Hawtin (Canadian DJ also known as Plastikman), Nina Simone, the controversial boxer Mike Tyson and 3 new caricatures of Barack Obama.

There will also be 1 new political drawing on Swine Flu, 2 illustrations on Censorship, one painting on the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), 2 paintings on Africa, 2 illustrations on Love/Sex and 2 abstract works.

Most of that is already finished and everything will soon be available in highres here (Just need to scan each work and fix a few things).

As always, thanks to all for your much appreciated support!

Cheers
Ben




(Above image: Rough sketch of Richie Hawtin's portrait, soon to be published in colour and full quality)]]> Fri, 01 May 2009 12:28:07 -0400 http://benheine.artician.com/blog/2009/04/bravo-artician/ http://benheine.artician.com/blog/2009/04/bravo-artician/ I'm brand new here on Artician.com.

I wanted to congratulate all the talented artists, web designers and developers involved in this fantastic project (mainly: Eric Zhivalyuk, Henry Paradiz, Brandon Lis, Chris Alfano and Daniel Gallegos). FINALLY, a site that represents a serious competitor to DeviantArt!

I'm a Belgian political artist (www.benheine.com). I used to be very active at DA untill some admins recently banned one of my political work: "God is Love - Use Condoms". I explain the whole story HERE. We argued somehow and I got permanently banned, which is a disgrace for me...

This wasn't a democratic decision from DeviantArt. This is a big loss for me, especially concerning the "human network" that I had built there (more than 4 thousands personal contacts, lots of personal and professional messages...) and all the personal and professional datas and high resolution files/illustrations that still remain on the Californian server but that I can't manage and control anymore...

ANYWAY, I'm now here, on Artician and this is a tremendous pleasure and honor for me.

See you around for more powerful and clever stuff...

POSTSCRIPT: because I find it a 'must read', I'm adding below the content of a blog post submitted by Akujin (Co-Founder of Artician.com) explaining Artician's policy towards "Free Speech" and "Censorship:

"Started as a comment reply to this blog post by Ben Heine.

Artician's job is to provide creative individuals a way to present their work. It is not to police the Internet. We only remove content in any form for being spam, illegal in the USA (hey, our servers are here), or for Copyright Infringement.

We take the approach that we are more of a host rather then a police of content so we will not remove anything for simply being offense to a single person. If you have multiple Admins who can be the judge, jury, and executioner of kicks/bans you will see a situation in which the various volunteers (and/or paid staff) of a website begin to develop their own moral compass on whether or not something must be removed or not.

I believe that if there's simply a solid, rigid rule that no content is removed except for complete, defined, reasons (like above) then you will see less of this type of thing happening.

Then again, why should you believe what I say?
The answer is simple: because I am a student of history. I know what Free Speech is. I know what Censorship is. I know the exact definitions of capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism, and I definitely know what a police state is. I also would like to think that I have a pretty decent grasp of how human nature works. With that being said, as long as I am part of the development team: I will continue to promote an atmosphere of intelligent debate, equal rights, and the freedom to say what you want without retribution on the part of the staff.

On top of this my world view is shaped not only by my knowledge of history but also from my background. I was born in Ukraine in 1987 under the former Soviet Union. Today, I'm an American citizen with extended family members in Germany and Israel as well as the United States. Even today though, despite having all my education in the US (school to college), I still speak to my grandparents in Russian. I can honestly say that because I know history, despite having been only 4 years old when the USSR collapsed, I am eternally grateful for that fact. And because I know all of this, I am tolerant of views that are contrary to my own, even if I disagree.

Having said all of this, it might be a good time to end this blog entry but there's still something I need to point out.

Artician has areas that are considered "public" and there's also that which is considered "private". For this reason while we may not delete an artwork submitted, we might decide to unlist it from Browse, Explore, or any other public listing. Likewise we might remove a forum post or thread if it offends specific people. This is because these areas are public and also because in public we need to show some restraint in provoking random visitors. On your own subdomain, however, you represent yourself and as such should be responsible for the content. So as long as it's not Spam, Illegal, or Copyright Infringing we will continue to tolerate it even if we disagree with it's content. Because removing your digital voice is like denying you to your digital habeas corpus."
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