ArtsLab, Painting Book

Spend the morning updating the ArtsLab text, in preparation for any possible re-uploads of it to MixCloud. Added four more episodes to my account there, chosen by importance. I chose the first appearance of Deborah Edgeley, and the interviews with the since deceased Ian Parr and Dorli Nauta, and the first episode of Series 2, where the new format first appeared, complete with an interview by Jonathan Tarplee.

Worked from 13:00 writing and researching my book on painting, today mostly writing about imprimaturae. This book is taking, will take, a long time. I'd prefer it to be done in a few weeks like my novella, but I feel it will take several months.

SFXEngine v2.03, LFASS, ArtsLab

A full day. Began by updating SFXEngine, after discovering a small bug in my waking night. This led to discovering a larger bug (well, more like an error). I realised that I'd limited the Sine, Triangle, and Pulse waves to -24/+24 when this should be -48/+48. This was all fixed, tested and made live by 12:30.

Then, the new Fall in Green CDs arrived. I scanned and filed these, and did some more music admin regarding UPC codes. The admin of music is endless.

After that, I finally continued writing Oil Painting From Beginning To Master And Beyond, then launched the new SFXEngine pack. This evening, I'm typing up episode descriptions and track lists for the 118 ArtsLab episodes, to make it easier to upload the information to MixCloud (or any other platform) in future. This is a few hours work, but hopefully worth it.

ArtsLab, We Robot Videos

A busy and productive day. I started by checking the new ArtsLab blog, and deleting the ArtsLab entries from here. It turned out that MixCloud did have all of the episodes (apart from 1 to 4, these were probably accidentally deleted by RedShift early on). The MixCloud search seemed to hide some of them unless searching for a specific episode by name. I've now checked the three series' playlists, and added another for everything. Links on the right here, and on the ArtsLab and ArtSwarm blogs.

Then, charging into work on the music videos; with a few distractions. It seems that the wonderful shop Wilko is to close very soon, so I made a quick dash to town for low-priced supplies I may need for the mural.

Then back to videos, and rendering the 10 I've completed. The last 6, however, are among the most difficult. Here's a look at Mothmoon:

I will call these simply official videos. As I've said, I was unsure about that, as these don't have credits and have generally lower production values than other videos... but even that is debatable. Some older videos were simpler looking, even if they were a lot harder work to create than when using Argus. If I make another video in future, I will rename them so I could have 'Second Official Video' or something.

I'm trying not to put a massive amount of work into these. The intent was to make something like a 'Spotify Canvas' for YouTube, but these are already closer to full-length animated videos that that. I must not waste too much time on these when I could be spending time on new art... the month, like the year, is running away on me.

ArtsLab, Talent, Midnight Cowboy

I feel odd; stressed with many half projects. Two days ago, shortly after my last blog post, I read the sad news on Facebook that a guest from ArtsLab, Dorli Nauta, had died. She was one of a small number of guests I'd remained in touch with to some degree. She'd even attended some of our Fall in Green shows. This made me look up her interview, and made me realise how important those old radio programmes were and are.

I noticed that some of the programmes were now, again, missing from MixCloud. As a result I vowed to check them all and correct any missing data. I also decided to create a second blog, an ArtsLab Archive. I detailed the programmes here on this blog as I made them, but I thought it would be neater if a second blog detailed this instead, in the same manner as the ArtSwarm blog. So, on Sunday night, I started the process of noting the programme details, and yesterday created a second blog (artslabarchive.blogspot.com) and transferred the programme details for the 100+ shows there. I'll continue this process today, and eventually upload the missing shows to MixCloud. I have recordings of all shows from Series 1, Ep. 12 in 128kpbs MP3, and shows 1 to 11 in 64kbps M4A. Show zero is lost forever. That was my 'training' show, so not really a 'proper' episode, but still a loss, to me if nobody else.

For most of yesterday, Deb and I went out, to Sandbach for a wander and break. It was a nice break, but didn't relax me much. I feel I have too much going on, tied in knots. The mural, the Steam issues, the intended re-recordings of 4 or more albums. Little painting done. The awkward and bulky lights still unfinished. I hate any state of incompleteness. I want to charge at everything to get it out of the way, to finish everything neatly, but I know that this will take time.

This morning I was reminded that I have no natural skills. I was/am always slightly annoyed when people call me 'talented': I'm not. I have no natural maths ability and was not taught any, but I've learned maths by hard crawl, inch-by-inch, hand by hand, until I knew enough to program with. I have no talent for programming, but too, learned it by hard and slow crawl, hand by hand over the sharp, black terrain of ability. I have no natural drawing skill, but have slowly learned that. No natural painting knowledge or ability. I have no natural musical skills, apart from a good memory for a tune, yet again, have learned (and am learning) to play the piano, by slow crawl along the black desert of broken obsidian. I have no natural singing ability, but have learned to sing by the same slow and difficult crawl. And so it is with everything. No talent. No help. No encouragement, only discouragement. Every tiny gain is a battle demanding immense strength. Every tiny win consolidated and carefully registered to preserve it.

What is life but this? Slow learning which is consolidated. Learning new things, and storing that knowledge. Maintaining a good record. Time has massive power. I remember the Buddhist wisdom from my twenties: we can't fill the bucket in one day, we only need to add one drop. We also need to check it for leaks. As I get older, the time spent fixing leaks becomes greater than the time spent adding drops, but doing both is important.

So, today, I'll continue to work on the ArtsLab Archive, and then try to hammer away at the next rock-face: the music videos for We Robot, then the mural (which is still in limbo), then Cycles, A Walk In The Countryside, The Dusty Mirror, Nightfood, Secret Electric Sorcery, the lights, the Descartes painting...

Our day ended by watching the end of the brilliant Midnight Cowboy, which I'd seen years ago. All lives are Rizzo's; hoping for some magical event, like a lottery win, or waiting for some fantasy Florida. Life isn't leaps, it's slowly building a mountain and shaping the sides to make it beautiful. My mountain today feels like tarmac, or black glistening rocks of a glassy mineral. I must continue to shape it, and perhaps add more colour.

Radio Video

I dream of a chef making tomato pasta sauce and he is using sausages mashed up with beef (two parts beef to one part sausage). He washes the meat in dirty dishwater with detergent suds in it, which I object to. I advice him that he should quite cookery and become an artist, and we move to an hall, like the exhibition room upstairs at Stockport Art Gallery, where some people, art club executives, are sitting behind a desk. The chef enquires and is accepted, and he loves painting.

I think the dream is telling me to paint.

A full day today. Started by booking my Covid-19 vaccine appointment because today these became available in my age range, then some video work, inspired by the Neorenaissance Online exhibition plans.

Created a new video for Mandalino from Apocalypse of Clowns. This is a simple tune and video, using some footage shot for ArtSwarm, plus some time-lapse clouds captured last year. It involved a complex mix and took a long time to balance, partly because the glittery, night-time, images are quite strong for me here. I would have liked to include some stars, but I am happy enough with the results.

Then, some editing of the 'I, Spider' video for the new recording featured in Tree of Keys 2021. The music has changed just enough to invalidate any spoken parts.

Neorenaissance has had a few technical hiccups, as well as about 10 spelling or grammatical mistakes which I shamefully didn't even think of looking for. I wanted to include a link to the Swift music, but the streaming of audio is nigh on impossible. The exhibitions are PDF based which limits including audio (well, basically you can't) which made me ponder the inefficiency of so many online things. PDF format is good for books, magazines etc. but was never really supposed to be interactive. HTML was designed exactly for that, but is so awkward to author and bespeckled with conflicting versions, style sheets, plug-ins and other nonsense that it's always looked ugly or been difficult to author or navigate (or all three). It's 2021, 30 years since the invention of the web, yet text, with images, and optional audio (never mind video) is still stupidly complicated. In the end I ditched the audio idea and left it up to the museum whether and how they included it.

In between this I photographed my newly framed paintings. That's it for today, though I just heard a rumour that The Myth of Sisyphus has been on Chester's Circl8 radio, at least for some sort of mention, which is to be celebrated.

I must next finalise Nightfood. Every day my eyes and head aches and it is hindering my work capability.

Admin

More Future Snooker and Future Pool work today, so pleased that I decided to work on the soundtrack. Each game will have a selection of tracks. I've also sent out some preview copies.

The other main job of note was setting up a new MixCloud account as it seems that the ArtsLab playlist on RedShift Radio has been deleted, so I've created my own account to create new playlists. More disturbing is that five shows appear to have been deleted too. It appears that one can upload music to MixCloud anyway, so I might have the option of merely hosting the old programmes myself. Having one giant feed for RedShift Radio, rather than one per show, is bonkers. Nobody would want to subscribe to every show, but many people might like to check out specific programmes.

RedShift have announced that they are ending live broadcasting (nobody listened, never in my years there did more than 10 people tune in) and switching to a podcast format. They should have done this years ago, I think, but live radio is more exciting, even if nobody actually tuned in, in practice. With a podcast format, anyone could make the shows at home, and thus avoid the studio all together. In a way, its the beginning of the end of the station, but of course, there is something to be said for grouping together (although I've just argued that grouping together in one account is silly).

Blue Carpet (or The Hotel Carpet Blues)

I'm working in music at the moment, assembling a new album of experimental works, the best of the things I've created for my old radio show, ArtsLab, and some things I've made for ArtSwarm. I'm remaking (or at least touching up) almost all of the tracks. There are a few that won't make it onto the album because I don't think they are good enough, or were simply one-off recordings that were put together without keeping any of the source material. I'm putting some on SoundCloud, and here is one called "Blue Carpet", or the Hotel Carpet Blues. It was a song about carpets. The comedy is unpinned by reality and metaphor. This is the magic of creativity.

Blue Carpet (or The Hotel Carpet Blues)

I'm threadbare, pulled thin
trodden like the mud on my skin
Walked on and ignored
and covered in dust
my yellowing fibres resembling rust

I'm flaky, snaky, falling apart
the weave on my soul chokes the wool in my heart
I'm holding together as dust
My skin is a colourless crust

I'm a hotel carpet, in a cheap Parisian backstreet
I'm choking on the nothing and the cigarette friends that I meet
well, they meet me,
they fall on my face and get crushed in
its the closest to love I get these days

I'm a hotel carpet, yellowy beigey putrid
Yes why not drag your rotten luggage over me

Walked on and ignored
covered in rust
my yellowing fibres resembling dust

Rug!
Rug!
Rug!

Art Swarm

Well, my new video show went live last week, ArtSwarm, which is the logical continuation of the ArtsLab radio show I've been doing at RedShift Radio for past few years (as regular blog readers would have noticed!)

Producing a radio show for the past two years has been a really interesting experience, and great fun. The key skill for working on the radio is probably multi-tasking. I never really assumed that anyone was listening. The figures were small, typically under 10. I remain amazed at how my radio peers acted as though they were broadcasting to the nation or the world, rather than to a small room of (mostly) people that they knew anyway, or often broadcasting to nobody at all. Most listeners listened later, streaming the show at their leisure, which is the current trend in media. There is something to be said for live broadcasting, it certainly is more edgy and exciting than pre-recording, where things can be edited. The training of presenting a live show is very good for confidence because of this; it stops you worrying about making mistakes, and gives you the freedom to just do it. This is why successful presenters of all sorts often start in radio; it's the paragon of media training.

As most people listen later, I thought it would be good to aim for that, and to boost inclusivity wanted to make something that would allow people to share things, so the format for the second year of ArtsLab was to simply broadcast things that people have made. It became a sort of tutorial on how to create things in a hurry. Lots of the results were bizarre, often rough and ready, but, wow, often inventive and inspiring and pushing boundaries. The things I've heard on ArtsLab have certainly crept into my music, and my last album Cycles & Shadows, which was largely piano with spoken word, is so different from my former music due to this. The album I'm working on now will continue this trend into avant-garde pop, and a further step away from the Jarre and computer-game sound that dominated my earlier years.

All good things come from contrast and opposites and my rejection of the automated for the human is a great source of creative energy for me; my painting itself was a rejection of computer graphics.

Anyway, ArtSwarm, conversely, embraces video. It seems a logical step up to create an inclusive video show; a show where people make things to a theme each fortnight, then we all see what everyone has done. When I started painting, this very format made me paint. It was great training, and I'm sure that many good and exciting videos will get made due to ArtSwarm, the combination of pressure due to time, the guidance of a theme, but also, freedom without censorship (well, no quality judgements, it merely has to be YouTube legal).

I had hoped that ArtSwarm would be less work than ArtsLab to produce, which was about 2 days per week. Being fortnightly, it should be (and I'll save the 4 mile walk there and back - but that was as much a health benefit as a chore).

Ramble over. Onward to great things! Show number two is coming soooon.

Only Four More ArtsLabs

For anyone reading this blog, you might notice that it's become a vast archive of my weekly ArtsLab programmes for RedShift Radio. In four weeks I'll be leaving RedShift, and so this will become more of a normal blog, that is lots of rare and random notes on things.

My show will continue, but on YouTube as a video show called ArtSwarm. I think video is the best mass medium for the Internet at the moment, and the new show will be the same format, a mix of any new art; audio, poems, videos, images, anything that artists anywhere/everywhere create and send me each episode to include in the programme.

I'm creating a second separate blog just for ArtSwarm, which will archive those episodes (it's so useful to have that record) and mention other things related to it. If you are interested in it, then do follow that blog, which is at artswarmtv.blogspot.co.uk.

The show will go out live on a new channel on YouTube each Friday at 8pm London time. You can subscribe to the channel here.

The New Renaissance

If the history of art tells us anything, if the history of science does, is that discoveries never end, and that new, vast worlds are always unexpected. I would imagine that in 1840, visual artists had considered their art refined to the ultimate degree, yet it was merely the start of what we call Modern Art, due to photography.

Now, as then we stand on the cusp of a new dawn. The Internet marks the start of a new epoch for humanity. What makes people different from animals is that we can learn and teach. Chimpanzees can learn skills, like breaking a nut with tool for example, by watching other chimps, but if that chain is broken, the knowledge is lost and a chimp must become an inventor again to relearn a skill that countless forbears has learned countless times. Humans did this at first, but soon, information stuck. Speech was developed, stories could be passed on, and knowledge through the generations and to other tribes. This was first first epoch of intelligent life. Written language was the next great leap, then printing which led to mass literacy, then electric communication which permitted the instant conveyance of the latest ideas, and now the Internet, allowing collaboration and the instant access of the best knowledge, the latest information instantly.

This new epoch has and will change humanity forever, and will change art too. The peaks of exceptional humans of the past are now sanded smooth by waves of people, vast numbers of great people who can now share ideas instantly. This is the age of the genius, which makes it harder for exceptional people to excel, but being exceptional was never easy.

In visual art, the twentieth century was all about exploring the palette, the genres of art from pure abstraction, to realism. From surrealism to symbolism, from craft to conceptualisation. In music, this was largely done by Bach's time, in that the scales and chords were then known; of course, music changed too in the twentieth century with serialism and other developments, but the basic structures and rules were set centuries ago, as they were in literature and drama millennia ago.

Leonardo da Vinci argued that visual art is superior to the other arts because it communicates with the most sacred of organs, the eye. Holiness aside, humans communicate primarily with vision. Like other primates we learn be seeing other, empathic communication. Other senses are secondary to vision. Television is vastly more popular than radio. Music can touch emotions instantly, but it struggles to communicate intellectual information. Images are how the brain operates. How often have you dreamed a sound? Or a smell? Or a touch? Or a poem? Images are the key to the way our minds work, and art is about mind touching mind.

Thus, visual artists can now at last rejoice! Here we stand upon the crest of a dawn, and one that is yet to be seized. It is ironic that the new soup of information creates apathy, rather than opportunity. From soups, islands must rise. The foam will disperse!

The visual arts are set to begin, at last. There has been no Bach of visual art, no Mozart, no Beethoven. Visual artists have become specialists in their narrow genre, this is the doom of the innovator, but now the time of innovation is ended, and yet few see this. As in any art, especially one so very badly trained as painting, people spend a long time exploring and not building, although to build palaces we must first know all of our materials.

The palette is set, and now it is time to explore it, and use it to lighten up the great darkness that pervades contemporary society. This is at least my goal. Perhaps it is all of our goals now. As machines replace each function, to create a love art will probably be our destiny as a species.

ArtsLab Two Hour Launch Special

I'm now writing/editing this post at 09:07 on 12th September 2023. Originally this post marked the first ArtsLab episode, my first RedShift Radio broadcast. From that point, and for the next two-and-a-half years I blogged my ArtsLab programmes here on this blog. On Sep 10th, 11th, 12th 2023 I decided to create a separate ArtsLab Archive blog instead (like I did with ArtSwarm), so copied those posts there and removed them from this blog. You can find a link to the ArtsLab archive on this blog somewhere.

This post remains as a reminder of what those posts originally looked like. At some point after I left RedShift Radio the ArtsLab playlist was removed from MixCloud. RedShift became a community podcast-creation hub rather than broadcasting 'live', and at that point stopped being a radio station. The RedShift people felt more like a family than a work team, and all of my memories and experiences of ArtsLab and RedShift were happy. It was an honour to be part of Crewe's and Nantwich's smallest and best radio station.

ArtsLab with Mark Sheeky
Show Zero
Broadcast on RedShift Radio 23 September 2015, 2pm to 4pm BST.

Richard Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896)
Kate Bush, Waking The Witch (1985)
etc.

All past ArtsLab programmes can be listened to on Mixcloud.

You can listen live during the broadcast on www.redshiftradio.co.uk.

Mork Calling Orson

And really that title is little to do with anything. Sorry I've not been blogging much these days. I've become more of a Facebooker but sometimes one needs to put down more than a brief idiom.

I've not painted much this year but have five or six paintings in progress. That will end the ones I had planned for definite competitions etc. plus a few for arts sake. It's ironic that the art's sake ones often turned out as good as the ones that I put a lot more time and thought and work into. Predictably, pictures like the Octopus Attacking a Lighthouse Before Being Assumpted into an Angel painting which I didn't much rate before I painted it, turned out rather well.

It's an idea from a few years ago at a time when I was painting lost of pictures about isolation and sexual frustration. I got bored with those so decided to paint the opposite thing.

Now I'm getting back into writing and have written a flash fiction entry for Salt Publishing, just for fun but I enjoyed the experience. I've finished reading Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton, a book that was only moderately good. It was very good at conveying an exact mood of frustrated anger at being romantically rejected when obsessed. The whole book suffered for being too embittered at times, and not brilliant in language, often repeating the same words and rambling. It reads as though the author was an embittered drunk at the time of writing but it's mastery is that fluidity, reading like one stream of feeling which is not easy to maintain for the length of a novel.

I'm working on a new short story about an artist whose works remain unseen, an author whose words are unread, a musician whose music is unheard, every frustration of mine of the last few days. In this way, it is like that story, but no bitterness here, only inspiration. I think I'll love this tale already.

It's been my busiest year ever. I've released The Love Symphony, composed and produced another pop album, Black and White (frustrated that I can't find a singer to sing it with me, but when I do it will be waiting, I won't become Orson Welles and wait forever for one project when I can write new things so easily). I've updated my game Flatspace IIk and released that, then in March painted over 200 watercolours for my poetry book 365 Universes (the poems are mediocre, but I'm pleased with the illustrations) and then published it, founding Pentangel Books. I've painted over 20 oil paintings, made the Bedlam cabinet (post below) and the elaborate God Being Killed frame (perhaps my best oil painting to date), entered about fifteen competitions and exhibited lots including at Crewe Hall, Jobling Gowler, and two solo exhibitions, given three radio interviews for the first time, organised a poetry night, illustrated all of William Blake's "Songs" at my first trade show (the Tyger pictured below), designed some fantastic objects including several (wonderful) brass and marble letter racks and a robot donation box, and lots more mundane stuff such as recording lots of sound effects and writing music for IndieSFX, and created a few music videos.

Yet I find I'm penniless and have no hope of owning a house or car, my art seems to be terminally and frustratingly unfashionable to juries so few people are seeing my work except in local shows I organise myself. I haven't sold any music all year which made me sad because I know how good some of it is (although Celestial Radio honours me by broadcasting some - thank you to Parveen). Still, at times it seems that the more I try the more the world seems to push back!

Fortunately I can easily overcome such difficulties with a mental switch. The rest of this year will be at least as productive, starting with the completion of my first novel, composing a new first movement for The Love Symphony and then writing all of The Death Symphony. I also have lots of oil paintings to complete, a major solo exhibition in Shrewsbury (my largest of the year and my first in that great town - poster below) and, well, lots more than a normal human could possibly achieve. Or me.

In preparation for future literary glory I've decided to attend the Cheshire Prize for Literature Awards ceremony.

I expect to win this, and then find a publisher to publish my novel... but if I don't I'll invent some other expectations. I like coming up with ideas.

Keep well. If you want to enter the Salt Publishing writing competition I had a go via their website.