Team Fortress Classic: Forge Revived

A map I’ve made for a 22 year old game has been discovered by another developer and given a new lease of life.

I first played Team Fortress Classic when it came bundled with the Game of the Year edition of Half-Life. I was really excited to try it out, having read the back of the box, noting that it was another full game included. 

This was back in 1999, and the early days of internet gaming, and, I suppose, the internet. Team Fortress Classic was an online-only, multiplayer, team-based game, where everyone performed a specific role to lead to your team victory. I instantly loved it, and found a few great servers to play on regularly. The 56k modem was a bit of a pain in the neck, especially if someone tried to ring through, but it was still an awesome little community and a lot of fun. 

I’d been making games since I had a copy of AMOS Professional on Amiga as a kid. When I got Half-Life, it opened up a whole world of developing for me. It came with the editing SDK on the CD, something pretty rare for the time. The tool was called Worldcraft, since renamed Hammer, and although it had a pretty steep learning curve, it was also incredibly powerful. Not much has changed with the original version compared to the latest-used in creating such wonderful titles as the new VR Half-Life: Alyx. It’s still my game creation tool of choice. 

So I’d made quite a few maps, had some mild notoriety as a mapper, making a few maps for TFC and Half-Life Deathmatch/single player. I also made a few maps for an upcoming mod called Mutiny!, which was about piracy and adventure on the high seas. My brother wanted to be part of that development team as an animator but he didn’t get asked. He was furious when I was part of the team, as one of the only mappers. The mod never made it past alpha, sadly, but it was pretty polished and I might dig out some of the old files if I can find them.

The date on Forge readme file says I’d completed it in August 2007, so already pretty late in the life-cycle of Team Fortress Classic, although still before the online juggernaut of Team Fortress 2 had been released. I think the only server I’d probably be playing that on in those days was a weird UK server called Royston Vaysey, named after the League of Gentlemen Comedy show. I often asked the admin to upload a map to try out and see how it worked. I don’t remember giving this map an official release, perhaps we only played it once or twice and I found it had some errors so I parked it on the back burner for a while, eventually forgetting about it. I don’t even think I’ve the source files for it anymore. I was still in university when I made this, I probably did it between second year and third year, on my summer holidays. Probably before starting this blog!

So fast forward to present day… another keen mapper emailed my old address, asking if they could edit my map to smooth out some of the issues and make it more playable for their Team Fortress Classic Server. I was quite shocked, having forgotten about this little project completely. Of course, I gave permission and asked to be informed of any updates. I was very happy to see some of my old work brought back to life and enjoyed on full servers again. So here it is: finally an official release of the Team Fortress Classic map, Forge. I feel like it could be inspired a bit by World of Warcraft, theres certainly a hint of snowcapped mountains and molten metal. Maybe it was more of an opportunity to mess around with the HL: Rally textures for the snowy roads? No idea, its been quite a while. 

Heres a link to the download, and if you want to play it, it’s available to vote for on the ‘OldSchool TFC’ server. Enjoy!

IRL BALACLAVA

About a year ago I spent some time doing a residency in SHIFT in Cardiff. SHIFT was a brand new and exciting art space in the centre of Cardiff, supported by the arts organisation & charity Axis. The space was absolutely huge, having been an underground Virgin Megastore back in the day. I instantly wanted to make use of the environment to make some large scale works, but it took me a little while to actually make any. I focused on smaller works and using the size to better understand my subject matter and composition before eventually sizing up to larger pieces. I’m happy with how that body of work turned out, and how it helped me realise what I wanted to get out of landscape painting.

During this time I experimented with an idea that I had left simmering on the back burner. I’d always been interested in the unusual (and disturbing) crossover of violent materials and children. I’ve written about this quite a bit, particularly regarding The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the freshly apparent glorification of ‘the good old days’ by kids. It’s something that has always been a big part of my work, and when exploring the historic violence in Northern Ireland using video game software, I found there was an inherent link between simulated online violence by kids and the real-life violence that influenced so many.

With this small project, I want to make something that bridged that link whilst also using new technology. I had a few ideas from before about using the idea of a balaclava in my work after seeing a piece by Paul Granjon–that had absolutely nothing to do with paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland–but it inspired me to use it as an object because it's such an iconic and thought evoking symbol.

I actually don’t like using Snapchat, but it has featured in my work and influenced my practice a fair bit. I suppose I referenced it most directly in a project emulating Willie Doherty in a lighthearted series of live online ‘performative’ pieces, and there is some similarity with the work I did with #rambo. I did personally use Snapchat for a few months when it came out but pretty soon after I gave up and stopped updating or checking it. I know it's super popular with kids, I imagine in part due to the 100% inaccessible UI that makes it inoperable to the boomer generation, a bit of an ‘anti-Facebook’. I thought it might be interesting to create something along the lines of a face filter that used a balaclava, and Snapchat’s relatively simple filter-making software allowed me to do this.

When starting this project I found it drew out some parallels between IRL activism, online anonymity, gaming culture, privacy, oversharing and illegal activities. Why not use a balaclava to hide your identity for online activities? I suppose the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask would be more appropriate when referencing these issues, but as someone from Northern Ireland, it's hard to move past the image of a balaclava and its inherent implication.

As it stands, I might break this work out for an exhibition some time. I understand it is possible to use geofencing to localise a Snapchat filter for events and such, or do I have a device in the exhibition with Snapchat locked in for people to post their own balaclava photos? Or why not both? Maybe a running feed on a display of people’s filtered faces when posted on social media and tagged with a specific hashtag. The balaclava model might need a little more fine-tuning and tweaking but the overall concept and execution is solid. Now to work on a face mask & ventilator filter for this COVID-19 pandemic…

Red Dead Fashion

I recently stumbled across this weird and unique subreddit:

r/reddeadfashion has taken gaming avatar customisation to a new extreme, evolving into some strange Red Dead Redemption based Instagram vs IRL simulacra.

We have redditors creating digital avatars, customising their hair and appearance before kitting them out with some unique in-game clothes. Some are trying to mimic real people/celebs and other pop culture references (as seen recently in Soul Calibur), but it’s the submissions that are just trying to look cool or unique that interest me the most. Here are a few of my favourites so far:

Banning r/me_ira: What happens when you drop the /s?

Reddit occasionally bans controversial subreddits, chiefly based on moral decisions. A few examples would be digital cesspits such as r/beatingwomen, r/incels and more recently r/watchpeopledie.

r/watchpeopledie was removed the day following the horrific 2019 New Zealand mosque mass shooting, where it had posted videos glorifying the violent event. There is a similar thread to last week's banning of r/me_ira.

r/me_ira was a place for witty user created content about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The name comes from r/meirl, a popular subreddit with self-deprecating memes, looking at the funny side of being a depressed millennial. r/me_ira was followed the same concept, with the same grisly humour managing to dovetail perfectly with the Northern Ireland mentality.

I must admit, I have enjoyed and laughed many times at the memes, with razor-sharp critical commentary and political satire on the events in Northern Ireland. However, the 'Irish' sections on Reddit have always been populated with Irish-Americans, and this is where the problems started with me_ira.

I've written about how our native gallows humour predates The Troubles, citing Flan O'Brien as an example with his seminal masterpiece, The Third Policeman. I wonder if this humour can be interpreted as some kind of coping mechanism? Either way, it's clear that this particular subreddit was misunderstood by many Irish-American posters.

The sarcasm of this parody subreddit was utterly lost on these trolls, and their ridiculous pro-IRA contributions were largely ignored and downvoted. As people from Northern Ireland, we like to laugh at ourselves. r/me_ira offered a Hole in the Wall Gang approach to the historic conflict issues for the post-Good Friday Agreement generation. By contrast, the pro-IRA posting from mostly American Redditors failed to embrace the self-deprecating nature of the subreddit, attempting to stir up Republican action from across the water in some kind of self-righteous Hollywood crusade.

There is a lot to unpack with this kind of internet behaviour. We see a common theme run through all right-wing/nihilist/extremist/alienated cesspools across the Internet. The predominant use of memes is perhaps one of the weirdest things to investigate. Easily sharable and instantly recognisable, they offer simple punchline opinions with often funny or cartoonish imagery, disguising their actual negative implications. It's easy to understand how the humour in a subreddit like r/me_ira would be misinterpreted as one that glorifies violence and nationalism, as opposed to one which condemns it. In the end, it appeared that few could distinguish between this fine line, and an ever-increasing controversial contribution from right-wing 'plastic paddy' America led to a full ban.

Like most subreddit bans, the ban on r/me_ira was triggered by the reaction to a horrific event: the murder of Lyra McKee. One of the few moderators of the subreddit commented:

'…it is good it came to an end. It was filed with yanks as many others mentioned and trying to ban all the ignorant folk was hard. The jokes got repetitive, and it went from okay to dog shit when Lyra McKee died (rip).'

'Parody turns to support when the educated craic dealers are switched with ignorant yanks. Fun while it lasted, but I guess that's another Irish sub freed of yanks.'

They are referring to the harsh criticism of McKee and the glorification of the idiot children who shot her. One American 'Fenian' commented 'No one should care about a Fag Journalist'. It's so strange to witness a comedy subreddit evolve into the very thing it tried to parody. We are surely better off without it.

Revisiting Digital Border

I’m not one from shying away from revisiting old ideas and bring new concepts, techniques or approaches to the work in an attempt to develop my practice in some new direction. I’ve written about this a little before, when making my emoji still-life paintings last year and how they are a continuation of my eBay Morandi project from 10 or so years ago.

I would consider Digital Border to have been a very successful work for me. It has opened a number of doors through exhibitions and awards (it was shortlisted for the 2018 Lumen Prize). This work was an attempt to make some physical objects out of an abandoned interactive game project. The game had just begun to pivot towards using a different tool to create it as I felt that it didn’t fit the narrative or approach that I wanted to fulfil my project: looking at topographies, immigration, Brexit, intergenerational trauma-related stories and modern day issues with conflict areas. So, as I was drawing the experimental stages of this project to a close, I decided to try and make the most out of the scenes I had already created. Although the work was unsuitable for a 3D interactive game, I felt that I had created a beautiful randomly-generated environment, and, through populating it with found in-game objects, camera tricks, rain and ‘atmosphere’, I had made something that wholly captured the mise en scène I was looking for.

After some further investigation, I created digital photographs of my generated environments and had them printed on small gorgeous acrylic/aluminium panels as some kind of miniature votive mobile phone worlds. These were exhibited in a few shows (In Cardiff, Brighton and Nantes) and shortlisted for the 2018 Lumen Prize.

I made a proposal for SWAP Editions latest open call–BREX Kit. I was to make another one-off print to be included in their Brexit artist first aid kit. My proposal was selected and I had to make this new work.

I ran into a few difficulties: It had been some time since I last made one of these ‘digital photographs’ and I had to manipulate some older games in Unity to make it work. I had since made some Digital Border video pieces and also experimented with a dual-screen live projection, resulting in issues with in-game cameras. Additionally, due to this, I had reduced some of the post-processing effects such as vignette, bloom and colour correction. This all had to be reintroduced and was an absolute pain to find my original settings. It’s kind of back to where it should be, but I did keep the wide field of vision from the video work because I liked its drama and it also helped to differentiate this new piece from the previous work.

My other issue was how I was going to produce 18 editions of this work. The acrylic/alu panels are super sexy, but they do cost a fair bit to make and take a little while to be printed and shipped from Germany. I wanted to try some giclée prints after having a few really nice ones made for the South Wales Pipers Club (a musical endeavour close to my heart). We had some giclée copies made of old Irish piper paintings to raise funds for the club and also for people to own them if they wanted. I was thrilled with the results, and so I ordered some Digital Border prints from the same printers.

They've just been delivered to the curator in London, and I am looking forward to seeing how the work will appear in the exhibition and as part of the 'Brexit First-Aid Kit'.

FIRST BLOOD AND FACEBOOK FILTERS

NEW WORK: #rambo

This is a project I’ve been attempting for a while. It’s taken inspiration from two separate incidents: one wild night in the Brazen Head in Dublin spent messing around with Facebook filters, and an old video piece by Al Pritchard featuring the climactic scene from First Blood delivered ‘en Español’.

Previous works have explored both emoji culture and online social media sharing, as well as re-appropriation of pop culture imagery. This project is something of a Dadaist approach to these different articles.

This work started off with a Facebook Messenger filter over a live video of First Blood. I made use of the ‘Medusa’ filter, with a head of snakes and a yellow forked tongue when the mouth opened. My initial thoughts were to have the work as a video piece, but after a few attempts, it became apparent that it was working better as still images. These stills were easier to edit, and using the post-processing of Facebook Messenger I ended up with some jpg files with filters, stickers, emoji, text and backgrounds.

When I describe these works on my website, I talk about the relationship between the film's core themes (depression, PTSD, and post-conflict mental health) and the blasé nature of millennial internet users approach to these issues. To those not overly familiar with the franchise, John J. Rambo is the typical gun-totting 1980/90’s macho man musclebound hero. The first film actually portrays him fairly different to this popularise image from the sequels, in that there is only one (!) death, and that it uses his mental health issues to explain his actions. It does this through horrific flashbacks from his experiences in a Vietnamese concentration camp, culminating in his eventual mental breakdown at the end of the film where he discusses in graphic detail how he and his squad were ambushed and mostly killed. I wanted this to feed into the work and be reinterpreted through the prism of self-deprecating internet subcultures such as r/meirl and suicide memes.

INTERACTIVITY AND EXPERIENCE

This past year I have been thinking about the role of interactivity in my work. Typically, my digitally produced work compromises of two parts: the exhibited piece, and a digital download. To give two examples–Clifton & Postcards from Ankara.

Clifton was a reimagining of the Avon Gorge created for the Bristol Photography Festival back in 2010 via the popular multiplayer game Worms. A video capture of one CPU controlled match was displayed via a data projector in the gallery. With Postcards from Ankara, physical postcards were produced of five scenes taken from a game that I had created and exhibited as such.

When exhibited, my work regularly opts for a more curated experience. By that, I mean the work typically consists of either screenshot or video, within which I have personally constructed the path of the viewer. This could be through a screen capture of a playable scenario (which I have acted out) or using some software to generate a specific still image from the game. Each of these methods allows for a work that is non-interactive and exists in the traditional gallery space to be viewed, as one might consider a painting, photograph or video piece.

The interactive element has always been via an external download. In Clifton, the map I made for the work was available, via my website, to be downloaded and implemented with the user’s own copy of the game. In work where I have created my own games (such as Postcards from Ankara, etc.), copies of the game are also available to download in Mac & PC formats. Part of the attraction from this method of production & distribution is the running parallel with the nature of gaming in the internet age. People make things and post them on the internet, often for free (or at least pirated for free). I wanted to try and tap into this with my own work, as I believe that it's deeply ingrained in both the medium and culture.

I found this dual method of curation and exploration to be beneficial. Being able to dictate someone’s experience of my work in a gallery setting allows me to set the boundaries, to let as much or as little to be shown, and also to create limitations within the work. This entirely suits the work and the environment. When exhibiting digital work, or more specifically Game Art, there is inherent difficulty in how to go about it. There can be problems with computers, Game Art can be made from badly hacked together mods and glitches, how to introduce interactivity in a meaningful way? I have experienced some good and bad examples of this, the worst perhaps being a sign apologising as the work was unable to function. There are many benefits to showing a non-interactive piece, especially with Game Art.

In some ways, allowing a digital download of the work is somewhat similar to a magician revealing their tricks, or, in traditional art terms, a painter exhibiting their sketches and studies. I’ve always been fascinated by the processes of artists, and especially love when galleries and museums curate both finished pieces with unfinished or preparatory works. Indeed, in many of my created gamescapes, it is possible to move the camera around and find mistakes, optical illusions and tricks, or to simply walk off of the edge of the playing area and fall endlessly.

The idea of a self-playing game was something I had been investigating. This started with changing my once interactive Schooldays Over into one that could simply be left and watched. I read an article (tongue in cheek) describing how people would soon no longer have time to dedicate to playing video games, and that a self-playing game would solve this conundrum. There are further examples of self-playing games exhibited in the traditional white cube space.

I’ve felt that my digital work is very much implicative of my paintings. It is perhaps through this lens that I am drawn to the non-interactive method of exhibition. I like to think of my digital pieces as ‘living landscapes’, and plan on proceeding with this duality of exhibition and download.

SKYROADS BOX ART ii

A few years ago I decided to make some box art for an old favourite of mine, the DOS game SkyRoads. I was using the emulation software Boxer, which displays your game collection on digital shelves with the big box art front and centre. It was about this time that I realised that my virtual copy of SkyRoads didn't have a cover, and after a little searching around the internet I discovered that, as the game had not received a proper commercial release, it never had a physical box.

So I made fake box artwork for this game as a bit of a fun design project in an airport waiting lounge, and after uploading the results to this blog I promptly forgot about it. That is, until recently talking about SkyRoads with a friend, after which I  googled it to find out some piece of information. When the search came through on Google, my faux-artwork was right up there at the top of the page. From this, I decided to do a little bit more digging to see if it had appeared anywhere else.

I was pretty amazed at what I found next: someone had edited and printed out my box art to fit their copy of SkyRoads (including the yellow sticker). I wonder if they knew it was not the real artwork and just my little afternoon project? Will there be any long-lost boxed copies of SkyRoads appearing on eBay with extortionate prices? Who knows?

You can read my original blog post here.

Half-Life: 2018

Working with a 19-year-old game engine

For a recent project, I’ve decided to make a change from using the game development tool Unity and begun producing some work using the original Half-Life Goldsrc engine. I did this because I felt that there could be a much easier setup of a server (using a deathmatch/bot driven system), familiarity with the tools and knowledge of its limitations. There is also a definite history of artists using this engine for game art such as Tobias Bernstrup, Aram Bartholl and projects like Velvet Strike. I’ve also made some stuff with it in the past.

Valve Hammer Editor

During development for Schooldays End, I wanted to move away from interactive work to creating self-playing work. This would be easier to display in a gallery setting, require less setup, and avoid the immediate problems inherent in typical interactive art (of any kind). I piggybacked a version of Jumbot, and, with some modifications, I was able to get relatively close to an autonomous first-person deathmatch game with on-screen narrative elements. The prototype worked well enough for me to invest more time in creating the map for the scenario.

Simplified prototype game

This proved to be quite the problem. Although I had some experience in the past working with Valve Hammer Editor, I found it somewhat clunky to set up from scratch (via Steam on a boot camped Mac), and once I got into the swing of things, there was seemingly no end of errors and issues. Finding fixes to problems was also tricky, often encountering dead links on old forum posts. Very different from my experiences with the most positive and supportive community with Unity.

In-game screenshot

Currently, I’m trying to find a way to record a video of my game in action for exhibiting, but I’m now having trouble with the game quitting after 5 or so minutes.

Part of me is strongly considering switching back to using Unity after completion of this project as I’m not entirely happy with the text-based narrative and the other aesthetic compromises.

ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION PROCESS

WORK IN PROGRESS

I thought I’d like to show a little bit of work in progress and also talk a little about my processes for this latest project.

For this piece, I’ve used a Unity plugin to create some Perlin noise generated landscapes. These landscapes were randomly generated again and again, until something that might work as a naturally occurring border appeared. To this, I first add a body of water, a skybox, lighting, weather, and flora. I then use a first-person controller to explore my environment, adding in downloaded 3D objects from found sources via the Unity store.

Within the play-throughs, I try and find little scenarios that might work with implicit narratives, perhaps items that might be identified as relating to an imagined border situation while simultaneously referencing gaming semiotics.

Above is one finished image. Throughout the development of this project, I have taken 100+ of such screenshots. Below, are a few examples of my different attempts, showing my exploration with adding and subtracting objects this screenshot. Unity allows me to work in a painterly kind of way, building up composition via this process until I have something with which I am happy.

Incidentally, this particular shot was inspired by a painting I had completed many years ago, taken from a Google Street View trip around Northern Ireland.

Nokia Cocks Twitter Bot

NokiaCocks is an automated Twitter bot that periodically tweets lewd text-based penises, reminiscent of the glory days of the Nokia 3210.

0-0 ////////// Ð

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) January 1, 2018

Two things influenced this project: to rejuvenate a previous attempt to recreate this era, and my ambition to create an absurdist Twitter bot.

My first attempt at this was back in May 2017, where I had a little fun making the tweets up by myself. I lost interest after a few weeks, assuming that it had run its course. More recently,  after experiencing some hostile bots on Twitter, I planned to create something of a counter-bot which sole purpose was simple, puerile humour. I felt like this would be a perfect opportunity to develop my NokiaCocks into something autonomous.

By randomly choosing different parts of the penis, the bot is able to make up to 5million different variations. At a rate of two cocks per day, the twitter bot will, theoretically, be able to produce enough cocks for 6,978 years worth of tweets before repeating itself. Starting to sound a lot like Silicon Valley here.

ΘΘ ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] Փ . . . .

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) December 27, 2017

∞ // 0

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) December 25, 2017

( ) ( ) ------------------ ø

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) December 24, 2017

I see this Twitter bot and my School Days Over self-playing mining game to be very similar. Both have been born out of a response to the very recent globally detrimental use of computer automation and also as an attempt to capture something fun and perhaps culturally significant.

I look forward to what this bot will produce over the next few years.

Cine Lo-cal

Episode I: The Room



I’ve been sitting on this idea for a little while and was spurred on to see it through to completion by uncovering an article about the tolkieneditor. That is an anonymous editor who has cut the horrendously overlong trilogy of The Hobbit films into one succinct 4-hour experience.

This project is not unlike that, taking what is necessarily a bloated source (The Room) and condensing it down into something more palatable. Where this differs is in that I’ve cut out all extraneous scenes in the film and left only the incidental footage of San Francisco.

The Room has largely been considered the worst film of all time, so much so there is a new comedy about the making of it (The Disaster Artist) coming out soon. When watching this film for the first time, I couldn’t believe quite how much filler material was left in the final cut, and how much of this excess landscape footage worked well.

I felt like this would be a good time to make something slightly humorous and abstract out of the film.


Cine Lo-cal Episode I: The Room from rouse_j on Vimeo.

What has actually happened, and to my surprise, is a somewhat coherent stitching together of typical San Francisco scenery that alludes to both the nature of tourist photography and traditional Hollywood filmmaking. The footage is quite peaceful to watch, and I think it stands alone rather well as in its singularity.

For added absurdity, I’ve repeated this 3-minute sequence until to fill approximately the length of the original feature film of 1 hour 40 minutes. To watch the entire thing would be considered a slog, and to some extent this references the source material too. What we have left of the film appears in exact order with stock city ambience as the audio.

In deciding on a title I came up with Cine Lo-cal, a little play on words for something that is both about location and also a stripped down (or low calorie) substitute. This also allows for some development of the project to include perhaps a few more films in the series. We’ll see how this goes.

EMOJI & EBAY MORANDI

A CONTINUATION...

So I’ve finally succumbed to producing some work about emojis. As much as emojis are the lowest common denominator (in so far as internet culture), they do offer something that I’ve found tirelessly endearing and humorous.  

The influence of emojis is immediately visible across all generations and is indeed a product of the post-internet age. Much has already been written about the subject, and there are already a large number of artists using the symbols as inspiration. I read someone referring to them as modern day hieroglyphics, and although this is somewhat true, I think this is something of a narrow approach.

I’ve explored the idea of using everyday objects in still-life with both painting and collecting found images in my project ‘eBay Morandi’ from a good few years ago.

The following examples are of three radio devices that I selected for their similarity in shape and arrangement. I was interested in using contemporary objects with unusual form factors and also in how people photographed them for different purposes (in this instance, for sale on the popular auction website, eBay). I also produced some paintings for this project in a similar manner.

The inclusion of still-life artists Giorgio Morandi in the title of these projects is a little bit of highlighting and positioning the work in a historical context, and a little bit of my fascination of repetition in art. Morandi lived through two world wars and never once faltered from his signature approach. Yes–I acknowledge that there are some landscapes and other pieces, but Morandi was mostly known for his excellent still-life work. Something about how emojis can be repeated to drive home a point, or how some people use the same emojis so many times they become associated with them on a deeper level relates back to my understanding of Morandi’s clear focus on painting his pots, vessels and cups.

I have some hesitation to produce work based on emojis. Consider firstly how much of a cop out (culturally) it is and secondly how there are already artists producing work thematically inspired by them.  I think this could be an intriguing and unique take on the subject and, if it works, could be something of an easy win. In an interview with Axis (arts website) I mentioned that I’d like to revisit eBay Morandi at some stage. I’m not sure this is quite what I had in mind, but it does feel like it could be a spiritual successor. Stay posted for further developments.

COMMUTE TEST

& EUson FOLLOW UP

I met someone I hadn’t seen in a long time last week who asked me about how I was doing with some of my sound art work. I recalled a project I started a little while ago where I was playing some feedback into Logic Pro X and using the Flex Pitch and Melodyne style auto-tune tools to digitally retrieve some musical notation from the noise. The example that I added to this blog was a version of the feedback-rich European Son by The Velvet Underground, as this experiment (somewhat fittingly) had just followed the death of Lou Reed in 2013.

I thought about revisiting this project as I’d never really fully explored what results this process could bring and in what way could the algorithm be manipulated. Also, it's a process that I’ve been able to do before, and it should be a relatively easy win to make some new work.

To start with, I recorded some banal commuting in an attempt to break the idea down into perhaps its purest form. I had considered using some more recognisable recordings, such as from popular culture/film/history but decided to keep it simple. There might be something more meaningful in the future, but I wanted to start again with something fairly basic and see if it can work.

The outcome has been somewhat different this time, with the software manipulation proceeding to one further stage whereby the interpreted notation is printed off as a score. I felt this might be an exciting lead to something physical, or perhaps as a piano recital, or maybe even a printed book of sheet music documenting my totally dull commutes over a period of weeks.

The Digital Scores project by Berlin-based Andreas Müller-Pohle springs to mind. Müller-Pohle digitally interpreted the oldest known photograph and then, in binary, printed off the results. This was back in 1995. There might be something about the choice of photograph here that might inform my future choice of subject matter regarding my audio sources.

I can’t help but feel that a lot of ‘Digital Art’ seems to involve the mere act of translating one thing to another: something of an analogue/digital conversion. I’ve written a word down in my sketchbook that I thought might describe this type of practice–Conversionism. I’m not trying to assume a new ‘ism’, just a trait that I have noticed for some time about art like this. Perhaps this speaks more about my hesitancy about this kind of work than the broader art world, but there probably should be something more about Digital Art than solely using technology to convert one thing into another thing.

POSTCARDS FROM ANKARA

NEW PROJECT

I've updated my website & axis with details from my latest project, Postcards from Ankara. It's been really great to work with digital/ceramicist Sarah Younan again.

The exhibition entitled A Space to call my Own is in CerModern in Ankara, Turkey, and opens on the 14th of April 2016.

Here are a few images I will be displaying: