Periscope For Artists

Last week I started to use Periscope. It fulfilled my current social media needs as an artist and designer. If you make creative things, I would  recommend checking it out! filming a live doodle on Periscope. Periscope for artists is a great idea. If you are an artist/designer or general creative then read on!

At the moment among other social media, I use –

Blog – To do a weekly in-depth blog article, LINK.

Twitter – tweet my art and ideas, LINK.

YouTube – To make instructional and inspiration videos and a vlog, LINK.

I also to a lesser extent use Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit and linked in.

However, as you can see, a live element was missing…

The Live Element – The Energy Zester 🙂

I wanted to record things in the spare of the moment. My Vlogs are thought out and planned carefully.

Periscope, on the other hand, allows spontaneity, mistakes, mess ups etc.

I heard a podcast about periscope by Pat Flynn SPI. I thought this would be great to show stuff in the spare of the moment. As things happen. Little nuggets of ideas or creativity.

In my opinion, Periscope isn’t all that innovative to tell you the truth, like a lot of popular social media, it brings elements together that favour the user experience better than its rivals and predecessors.  Periscope is also easy, I haven’t tried its rivals so I am not in a great position to judge them. However, it is more personal than Google Hangouts and much easier to setup. Once you get to know it, it is as simple as typing in your title and then clicking on the red button!

Exciting!

What I Have Used It For So Far…

So far I have used Periscope to –

• Do a doodle as an ideas generator jam. It is actually fascinating, as I draw, if someone likes a part of the drawing such as a space dog I made, they will give me hearts (a bit like like in Facebook). I equate this with jazz, and improvisation. If you draw, you should try this.
• I talked about my 3D prints. How I made them, how they were printed out, this proved very popular and I got lots of hearts!
• I talked about how I got some other FabLab processes.
• Also, a walk around Edinburgh (watch using your network provider and not wifi is really expensive on your monthly GB allowance! Crikey!
  

  filming a live doodle on Periscope

Also as a Periscope user, there is something addictive (perhaps novelty) going on the world map and finding out scopes, I watched a moon telescope near New Orleans, sunset in Hawaii and so on…

Things I’m going to try soon…

• A live feed during my workshops, with permission of participants of course!
• Showing how my art is being constructed at FabLabs Makerspaces
• When I go away to other places, my thoughts on world cities, nature etc
• Lots more things, watch this space!

So all in all, Periscope is like other tools and social media in general. The live element in my opinion really gives it the extra excitement especially when people make a comment and give you hearts that shows that they like what you are doing!

There are a lot of other artists who are already using Periscope and “killing it”. The most famous one is Amanda Oleander .

I will definitely be using Periscope more in the future.

Check out the video below of an example of how I have been using Periscope –

So what Do You Think?

So what do you think as an artist/creative? Have you used it? Do you like it or not?  Any tips or requests as to what you want to see on my Periscopes?

Check here for examples of what I did in my first week of using it. I will check back on the blog post in about 6 months time to see where the Periscope journey has taken me!

What You Can Do…

You really need a smartphone, iPhone and download the free app and then go. There are attempts at getting it on your PC using emulators but I tried and it didn’t work. 🙁

Take recordings of what you are doing, your inspiration. Show people your world, it really is like a Periscope! People will tune in to your, see what you see, then go away and tune in somewhere else in the world.

If you found the information useful in the blog post or on my site and you would like to show your appreciation, you can make a donation with Bitcoin –

Donate Bitcoins

All in all, what amazing times we live in, speak soon! I want to hear how you are using Periscope for your own art! 🙂