A strange day. I'm feeling disconnected from the world more and more, and perhaps this Coronavirus lockdown is part of it; the general lack of human contact. I wonder if the recent political changes are due to people, normally interested in their own lives and worlds, now have nothing better to do than interact with the news feeds on social media, become armchair politicians, and now, unlike 20 years ago, can instantly start movements and get political changes done. It seems a little scary to have a mass of any-old-person control the country in this way, but then, I've felt that about actual politicians for years. We're all at the mercy of idiots. I cope by paying absolutely no attention to them or any political movements, limiting my interest in politics to studies of human history and the singular moments of voting.
In art news, I've started to consider some art books about my existing music, and update my album artwork. Over time, I've changed as an artist and improved massively (well, hopefully) but I have a legacy of old stuff that is still there, and needs updating every so often. I've done a lot of that with my paintings, a lot of re-framing, and with the new Synaesthesia and Animalia albums, have updated these two oldest works (I don't know if I'll update anything else for now - I must be aware of the balance of creating new things vs. archiving old ones).
Eight of my albums have been commercially replicated on CD:
Mark Sheeky, The Love Symphony (2012)
Mark Sheeky, The Anatomy of Emotions (2016)
Mark Sheeky, Cycles & Shadows (2017)
Fall in Green, Testing The Delicates (2018)
Mark Sheeky, Music Of Poetic Objects (2019) [8-Page Booklet]
Marius Fate, The Modern Game (2019) [8-Page Booklet]
Burn of God (2020) [8-Page Booklet]
Fall in Green, War Is Over [EP] (2020) [8-Page Booklet]
I've also, in the past, made up a small number of CD-R albums with laser-printed art:
Mark Sheeky, Synaesthesia (1999)
Mark Sheeky, Synaesthesia (2002)
Mark Sheeky, The Incredible Journey (2002)
Mark Sheeky, Animalia (2004)
Mark Sheeky, Flatspace (The Official Soundtrack) (2007)
Mark Sheeky, The Spiral Staircase (2008)
Mark Sheeky, Stupid Computer Music (2008)
Mark Sheeky & Tor James Faulkner, The End And The Beginning (2009)
Mark Sheeky, The Twelve Seasons (2009)
Mark Sheeky, The Infinite Forest (2010)
Mark Sheeky, Once Upon A Time (2010)
Mark Sheeky, The Sky Disc [EP] (2011)
Mark Sheeky, Bites of Greatness (2013)
And a few albums have never been released on CD, like Pi (and the new ones), but I've often prepared CD artwork them. Now I think I'd like a few of the best albums to be commercially replicated with an 8-page booklet, so I've spent today and yesterday updating the artwork to 600dpi - enough for a nice 24cm square poster for each page, and adding more pages as needed.
They are only on sale on my website and my personal contact and I've hardly sold any of these. It seems more were sold in the early days, and I've sold the odd album at live events. CDs are perhaps not a popular format now, but perhaps they will become popular again, and importantly art should have a real, physical presence... digital art is ephemeral and literally worth less than 'real' art. I own several CDs which are really precious things to me - and other albums which are not, naturally, but the cheap ones in cardboard sleeves feel of less value. I really want my albums to feel and look as important as they are to me - I make these as artworks, as my legacy, as something as valuable and artistically important as any painting - and I'm sure that one day, they will be seen as such, so they must be presented at their best.
So I've added are for Tree of Keys, Pi, and The Spiral Staircase. The Spiral Staircase artwork is all new, different from the art in the previous CD editions. I created it using a variety of digital organic-style texture generators and an effect called Vortex Warp many years ago. This is the first time I've re-visited that effect in over ten years. The ribbed stair-like images seem to match the music, which is some of my most dramatic and powerful. Years ago, Susan Mascarenhas made a fantastic 40 minute video projection to accompany the live performance of the whole album. Here are some of the new pages:
