A 4th day in the Macc Art Lounge today, this time rather warm and cosy. The opening times are 10:30am to 5pm, but today I left at 3pm. I delivered a new painting, Flesh Vase With Stone Flowers:
Home to find two more copies of Snow Business sold, and 67 views of my Christmas Smells Lyric Video. We are about one sale away from the mark of £200 raised.
A somewhat slow day of administration of the launch of Snow Business, which was officially released at 9am. Social media posts were made to promote it and an email sent to those on my list. Short videos of Christmas Smells were posted on various sites and the premiere of the Lyric Video went live at 7pm.
I also discovered that I can stream separate Audio waves on the MODX as part of the Live Set option. This is a great feature, as I play to backing tracks quite often. The feature is useful, but almost seems like an afterthought, it isn't possible to vary the volume of that track, only all tracks, and then the settings are forgotten when the unit is switched off. Still, this is a huge help, as it now avoids the need for using the Zoom H4 as an external playback device. Increasing amounts of all live play are done on this one keyboard - which is fantastic.
The SFXEngine upgrades are as complete as they can be from my part, I now need to wait for Valve/Steam to approve and make the appropriate changes.
Tomorrow I'm on duty in the Macc Art Lounge, then must prepare for the two live music events of the week.
This year's Christmas tree procured and named Fingerbobs. The day was spent finalising the technical parts of the SFXEngine update. I need Valve's help for the key parts, so everything is now dependent on them.
Lots of jobs to do and others to contact. Snow Business launches tomorrow! The day is set aside for that, and I have to rehearse for the 3 live shows coming up over the next fortnight.
Onwards!
A full day preparing to update SFXEngine with a new sales system. It's quite complex and involves a lot of pre-planning and setting up. A change to the program's default plug-ins means that I need to change the manual, and the tutorial and example sounds, which is time consuming, as well as create 10 new sets of downloadable content (DLC), which requires lots of new graphics and descriptions.
I've not done something like this to an existing piece of software, so the uncertainty of it all slows me down a bit. It will require getting everything in the correct order... assuming it can be done.
Well, I created the 40x new sets of art today, and performed most of the tedious but simple parts. The more complex aspects come tomorrow.
Another non-stop day. Completed the spoken word scores for the Book of Lou Salomé (we need a title). Arranged and finalised the last of my main Christmas gifts. Recorded spoken word intros for the Christmas Smells single for Circl8 radio. I created a new 'Buy Me A Coffee' channel - which is a gift giving page for artists.
This doesn't sound like much, but today has been a constant rush. Finishing many tiny jobs is time consuming. There is a certain amount of time and energy needed to change direction. I note that copying lots of tiny files in Windows is about 1000 times slower than copying one large file of the same size; perhaps the law of 'changing into a different track requiring extra energy' is a universal one. Most of the day, was spent on the Christmas preparations, an annual essential for most people.
Perhaps tomorrow I can start on the SFXEngine changes, though today is already so late and rushed that I may need a few hours to rest and get into that mode too.
An amazingly busy couple of days of computer admin, but I took time out with Deb to do some (also essential) Christmas shopping yesterday.
First! The We Robot CDs have arrived and look amazing. These are some of the best looking albums I've had made so far, and y first song albums with full lyrics in the booklet:
These will be launched on Bandcamp shortly, this week. This inspired me to look at CD images, and I decided to scan and display all of my current CDs in a fixed format, so for We Robot, these look like this:
I did this yesterday and today for most of the CDs in my collection. It's a bit of overkill to do it for the obscure ones that I (probably) have the only copies for, but I will probably do that too one day. Here, for example, is the original Arcangel CD cover, and the first (2000-era) edition of Synaesthesia, which only ever existed on self-burned Verbatim CD-R discs:
This reminded me how my CDs have evolved over the years. The Spiral Staircase had 3 different CD editions. At some recent point I re-catalogued and documented these versions, so at least that part is done.
After that job, I started to burn a few copies of Snow Business for friends and family. My mother has ordered five copies but needs them on CD. This job is quite time consuming in itself, and took me all morning. I then compiled artists' packs of the album, so that the other artists can do this too, should they want or need to.
This afternoon, I started by repairing Deb's heating system, which turned out to be a technical problem within my capabilities, so that's good. The day is flying by. I had hoped to finish the outstanding jobs before today, but they may take until Wednesday. Next, I must complete the preparations for Cycles & Shadows 2024, then complete the scores for the Salomé book.
Then I need to update SFXEngine with a whole new sales and update system, and hopefully all before Saturday. Onward!
A nice day in the Macc Art Lounge today. I literally awoke before dawn, crisped though the hard frost to the shuddering bus to Macclesfield, arriving at the art lounge shortly after 10, with enough time to open the shop, warm the gallery and prepare for the day. We had a trickle of visitors 20 or 30 before noon, then Ché arrived, soon followed by Bruce Lyons and illustrator Michelle Shore who I'd not met before.
A minor crisis hit in the afternoon when the upper floor was flooded by 2 or 3 litres of water, but a stop-cock and a wet hoover later, and all was restored, albeit damply. I was reminded that personalities are best tested in difficult times, and the already social lounge became more-so when our little team was faced with this small emergency.
I left at 3 and heard that I'd sold a painting, my second sale of this exhibition.
I painted Domination of the Fishes in 2007, and the composition was partly an extension of my 'symphonic painting' idea as used in The Migraine Tree. A single 'theme', a shape, in this case a fish shape, is used and reused in different ways around the picture, to create something like unity in variety.
To take this idea to a next level, I tried (and try) to work out where the viewer first looks at the picture, to see the first fish. This is the start of the story, the next fish is the next line, and so on. Here, the fish starts in the sky; swimming? Then we see the desert landscape below, dry and cracked, and other fish and parts of fish. The sea is dry then. Watery tentacles and other sea-like objects crawl over the strange 'mountains' on the right, and a looming figure has a fish-shaped hole. This is something like the memory of a fish, or its loss. The figure seems to be casting a spell; the title indicates its something like a King Canute figure, dominating, or trying to control, the seas... at what cost? There are other fish parts too. Overall the feeling is somewhat sad, of loss, the loss of something.
Of course, there is more to the painting than this, and even many of my ideas here are speculations. I don't plan the thoughts or feelings of an artwork first - that would be impossible. The point of an artwork is that it can only share its meaning with the viewer (or listener) in itself. It can't be explained. We know instantly and instinctively what a good artwork 'is about' but we can't say it in any way. That information can only be gleaned by looking at the artwork. We can speculate, or gain clues, or make headway in interpretation, meaning, context - but only seeing/hearing/reading/feeling an artwork really conveys it, and it does it instantly and effortlessly.
Unfortunately and annoyingly, from about 2:30 I've been in awful stomach pain, like trapped wind. This is horrible and unusual, and notable because I hardly ever have trapped wind, and also that I had this pain on Sunday after my strange illness. With fate's grace it will pass.
A full day of admin here. First monthly backups, then listing the 2024 remaster of Cycles & Shadows, a process which is only half complete. It's also the technical deadline for Snow Business, so I checked in with the participants and send the CD Artwork for proofing.
Then more work on the Lou Salome book, but not much, a couple of the scores. There are 4 left now, and I need an intro or some more structure to the rest of the book. It would be nice if Deborah wrote that, but I expect she won't have time.
A few other opportunities presented themselves, and it may be that some of the Snow Business tracks will appear on the radio this month.
I'm in the Macc Art Lounge tomorrow. Last week's illness was probably hypothermia or something I ate, or a bit of both. I'll prepare as best I can. I'm unexpectedly looking forward to it, an adventure, but I wish I had warmer clothes. This trip can be a sort of test for next week.
Charge I must. Battle entropy I must. There are many good things I can, could, would like to do. Each day of life is so very precious, and so very short.
