On our progress today for the new website, we have been working on the
Alternating Current home page, making it complete with information that you might want to know about our company. We have completed our mission statement, the "about us" page, and information about our company name and why we chose it. I have listed the basic paragraphs here, if anyone is interested in reading them and just can't wait until the website is constructed.
MISSION STATEMENT:The mission of the
Alternating Current Arts Co-op is to bring fresh, innovative art projects of all kinds from the small stream to the mainstream to a world that desperately needs it, while always providing the lowest prices, the most exposure, the best networking, and the most updated information we can possibly offer; to make art more than a luxurious afterthought; and to provide artists of all kinds with the opportunity to promote themselves.
ABOUT US:Alternating Current Arts Co-op has been around for almost a decade and a half, bringing you powerful, thought-provoking, and life-changing art and artistic endeavors. We encompass all that exists in the arts, from music to writing to photography to d.i.y. projects to apparel to theater to anything in between.
We are here to challenge you to create new and bold art; then to give you an outlet to mainstream that art to a larger audience. We distribute, produce, market, sell, and love innovative, fresh, controversial, and important creative works and social/political commentaries of all kinds. Sticking to the
give-a-man-a-fish theory, our belief in helping you help yourself is what makes our co-op a unique and necessary resource for artists. We give you the tools to make yourself successful, which will not only give you a better sense of accomplishment, but will also further your feeling of community, while connecting you to other artists who value art the same as you (and we!) do.
Alternating Current began in 1994, first under the Detroit-based
Broadway Kids Productions, then the Chicago-based
Spy Kids Productions (yes, prior to the ridiculous movie!), then the Seattle-based
Indie Arts Co-op, changing as we transitioned through time and puberty and high school and college and cities and interests and hobbies. We are Boston/Cambridge-based pseudo-adults now, with arts and sciences backgrounds, who have merged the best of both worlds to form a name that encompasses a whole spectrum of different meanings and evokes beautiful, intense, and passionate imagery:
Alternating Current.
The new
website is going to be huge; as our expansive world dominance of the arts and social awareness grows, so, too, does our
website. We have tried to make it as navigable as possible, but we are well aware that it contains an enormous amount of information that will probably not be entirely consumed by your mind in one sitting. So we invite you to come back. Over and over. Check out what's new, from our news blog to political events to our ongoing calendar to our discussion forum; get involved in our many other projects, and of course let us know what you think. If after you have searched, you still cannot find the information you seek, please feel free to
contact us or search for answers in the technical thread of the discussion forum once our website is up and running.
Because we are a co-op, we work hard to bring you materials and resources that are effective and inexpensive. The large majority of the money we make off the selling of products or benefit shows goes back into making new products and bringing new art to the mainstream. The little bit left over to feed us ramen noodles and to buy a few postage stamps barely covers the costs of the
Alternating Current rental space, so any donation you could give out of the kindness of your creative mind would help us immensely in furthering our efforts to keep art from being just a luxurious afterthought. Please donate what you can by using our paypal address: alt.current@gmail.com; no amount is too small.
We give you many resources and opportunities to make amazing art and to market it to the masses. So you have no excuse. Go make your art. Be the catalyst. Be the change you want to see in this world. Make something amazing out of your mind.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?What is an alternating current?In a nutshell, an
alternating current (AC) is an electrical current with a magnitude and direction that vary cyclically, as opposed to the constant direction of the
direct current. AC systems overcame the limitations of the direct current system used by
Thomas Edison to distribute electricity efficiently over long distances. One of the first practical devices to transfer AC power efficiently between isolated circuits was an
induction coil, a device using pairs of coils wound on a common iron core, which was an early precursor of the modern
transformer. AC voltage can be stepped up or down by a transformer to a different voltage, which leads to significantly more efficient transmission of power. The system used today was devised in the late nineteenth century, largely by
Nikola Tesla.
How does this pertain to our co-op?We think this is the coolest name we could have possibly ever come up with. It not only blends our love of science, art, society, and invention, but it deals with movement, currents, power on the scale of
what you put into it is what you get out of it. The alternating current was an invention that helped bring power, electricity, audio, radio from a small scale to a large scale, to residences and businesses, over long distances, to the masses. And that is our aim: to bring d.i.y. art from the small stream to the masses. The name
Alternating Current signifies motion, momentum; this is exactly the feeling our co-op encompasses: a lively nature of electricity. The word "alternating" gives the connotation of being something other than the mainstream, and that is precisely what we are: a current going out into society and providing the electrical charge to invoke motivation for something other than the mainstream, providing you with the energy, the momentum, and the tools to change the way you think about art and society, or - at the very least - to make you want to change something you see around you, whether on a small scale or a large scale. We give you the power to be the change.
