Music Videos and Tit for Tat

Quite a slow few days and suffering the effects of the anxious and excited weekend. Continuing to work on music videos, and hoping to move as efficiently as possible to complete a few videos, and complete The Modern Game. Time is short, and I have so much new work I must create.

I've sketched scripts for three videos so far. The trick is to work out some sort of narrative with characters in locations I can easily access. Most of my music is without lyrics, so there is a lot of freedom, but stories often need a story in the music, which can be an ethereal thing. All videos should be appealing and have a similar tone and feeling to the music. For a relaxing tune, like Islands of Memory from Synaesthesia, there might be no need for a plot as such. Ths video for this is a pretty computer animation. I would have preferred something about deep water, wildlife, old photographs and all sort of things. For now, the existing video will suffice. I really should have done this sort of thing at the time of writing the music, and find it annoying that I can't move on, but once again look backwards. I want to forget old work and push on, but often feel trapped in refining and improving and sorting out the past.

One Monday I started to make a full size mock piano, or part of one, for filming, and yesterday bought a few more props. I've also started to modify my music software to export frame numbers for different main sections of the music. This was a feature I programmed in for the Challenger music video (I think) but it could have benefitted from a few tweaks to give me some clues to where in the song different frames are.

I've also been thinking about game theory and tit for tat strategies, after watching a BBC4 programme about it. It made me wonder if this reflective behaviour, with an essential small amount of freedom that leans towards co-operation, might be some sort of universal law that can apply to economics and physics, as well as behaviours.

More Channel Progress

Have spent today finalising the existing videos for the new Mark Sheeky Music channel. I've decided to remove some of the existing videos which aren't of perfect quality, but keep those on the artworks channel. They are artistic historical documents, and these can be gradually replaced with newer videos if needed, but this will keep them on YouTube to some extent, and the experimental nature of some, like China Syndrome, is artistically interesting, even if I find them a bit blurry and grainy these days.

Most of the rest of the chanlled is now set up and the new Challenger video in 1280x720 look stunningly beautiful.

This will go live on the channel in mid August. Now, what to do. I have a huge list of music that needs a video. I'd love Tor to come and film a video for some of the great The End And The Beginning tracks, like Nineteen Eighty Five. Perhaps I could relaunch the album, and work on a sequel for us, or something.

I also have Marius Fate to work on. Oh, so much work and possibilities.

New Music Channel

Had an enjoyable hour last night on Tim Lee's RedShift Radio programme, The Doorstep Mixtape, talking about many aspects of art and music, fitting an enormous amount in actually; from A.I. and computer game programming, to feeling in music and acoustic instruments versus synth music, to Marius Fate, Fall in Green, and painting too. I also enjoyed hearing about his album project, Tulpa, in between tracks, which has some elements like The Modern Game.

Today is mercifully cooler and I've had a very full day setting up a new Mark Sheeky Music YouTube channel, converting short introduction videos to introduce each album. I recorded ten of these yesterday, although I decided to re-record one today. I've also uploaded a few videos that are of sufficient quality.

Now, should I leave the old, existing music videos on my other channel until I create new ones, or delete them? It would make more sense to leave them there, as people might discover the music that way, but my sense of order and completeness makes me want to delete anything that is imperfect now, and restart building a new collection of music videos on the new channel. I also have a dream of remaking some videos, like Islands of Memory, which were good quality enough in the first instance. All videos must now feature at least me.

One discovery was that I could convert the original 720x576 resolution Gunstorm file, cropping the ancient credits and adding a new ending. This means that I can upload a new, visibly higher quality version of the video to the new channel, ready for a spectacular premiere there. The video has been uploaded twice so far I think. First before Tor changed his name, then again with new credits, which meant that a few thousand people seemed to miss it as the popular video creator, Dr. 'Ashens' Ashen, had plugged it with the old address and artist name.

Music Videos

Annoyingly hot, too hot to work or compile music videos. Didn't get below 25.5 degrees in my room all night and the computer only makes things hotter.

Have recorded a few short videos about selected albums, but this too is very hot work and the small room I film in is over 30 degrees. The conversion process is long and I'm unsure whether to retake videos or use what I have. Often a first take is the most direct and honest, but I regret not researching details such as track listings before talking about the music. It would have been better to record a small number of videos for this reason, to iron out the learning process.

Heat and Video Work

A day of burning heat. Awoke at 01:50 by a violent explosion of thunder which shook the house. The storms that followed were amazing to see, fantastically bright and terrifying fork lightning. The day remained blazing and too hot to venture outside.

Spent the morning converting and uploading the remaining three art videos, so five new films in total are all set to appear over the next five weeks. The Tower of Bees painting is due to be shown at the Bickerton Art Exhibition, so might even be sold before the video premieres, which is an interesting notion.

After that I started the account set-up process for Apple Artists. I will probably create a new channel for music videos, and will revisit all of my current videos and work out how to efficiently make new ones in high quality. The newer videos are far better than the few older ones, and grainy video experiments like the Mice or Chine Syndrome video were fun and useful at the time, but now seem horribly dated. The workload to remake some of these can be immense, so I must make the result artistically useful and engaging. The film quality of great films of the past like Un Chien Andalou or Nosferatu is irrelevant compared to their artistic quality, so I must aim for a video that captures some technical and contemporary psychological zeitgeists, as well as complements then music.

I remember updating the ultra-complicated Challenger video before. Now the script seems remarkably simple. The experiences of ArtSwarm have truly been good training for video creation, which was the primary role of ArtSwarm. It is this that has led to my current renaissance in video.

Anyway, I was digressing. I was amazed to find out that Challenger was still in V.G.A. quality, rather than H.D. so I spent the evening updating the graphics to 1280x720 and preparing to cross my fingers for the mammoth graphics render of this. At any point, memory might give way on a project like this. One option is to render the separate components as separate films, then overlay them rather than do it all in one process. It takes about two hours for my computer to build this video. I will wait for a cooler time. It's simply too hot to subject the computer to such fan whizzing. Here is a still from the H.D. version.

Meanwhile I will start storyboarding for new videos and try my best with my limited resources. I really need my old camera cleaning and its damaged lens fixing, but we must work with the poor tools we have, and with our magic fingers and minds, produce wonders. Limitations are so often beneficial.

Wirral, Bickerton, David Lawton

Began this hot day by converting and editing some new painting videos, then heard that I'd got two of my three submitted paintings into the Wirral Society of Arts Open Exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery. I've often thought about entering this exhibition, and it's been recommended to me in the past, but I don't drive so public transport access to any exhibition venue is a vital to me. Carrying paintings also limits their size. My love, darling queen of art, Deborah, helps me with deliveries and trips as much as she can, but can't always do so. In this case, the fantastic print maker and W.S.A. member, Barbara Barlow, has helped and made entering this possible. If I could get to the gallery more easily, I could probably apply to be a member; but I cannot for this reason alone. This is nothing to do with art ability. Social connections are made from overlapping webs, and those of mine concerning transport are frail.

Some exhibitions are easier than others to get to. The difficult ones for public transport include the day-trip to Machynlleth for their annual exhibition, or local galleries like the Chapel Gallery Ormskirk, and here at the Williamson. By comparison Birmingham or London are easier to get to, but everywhere is expensive. It's rare for a competition to cost under £100 in transport costs and entry fees.

In the afternoon Deborah and I drove to Bickerton to drop off four paintings for their annual exhibition and sale, another difficult place to get to, but many artists visit there, so I can often find a lift somehow. I've shown work there for many years now, this village show grew from many local village shows and has a wide mix of art; generally conservative, pretty, low priced. This show opens on July 27th and runs until the 4th of August.

After that, a trip to see David Lawton for some portrait photography and art inspiration from this master and master enthusiast of painting and literature. He is a unique artist, spending long days and weeks working on a small number of exquisite portraits, driven by an unstoppable internal passion.

Art Videos

A difficult night due to my regular abdominal pains from which I awoke lethargic if not actually exhausted, but I pushed on with work and decided to film some more painting videos. I would love to make some more music videos. Looking back, I see a lot of good music that really needs a good video, and I'm generally unhappy with the quality of almost every video. In some cases poor tracks have been chosen, for various reasons. The Tree of Keys album, for example, evolved from ArstLab and ArtSwarm pieces, so some of those tracks use those videos yet many of the best tracks don't have videos.

The Jarre's Party video from Bites of Greatness was itself made hurriedly as an animation experiment, rather than a conscious choice to find a track something like a single; Pandora or Jellyfish or Trax are more catchy. Ultimately, the work of making a good video is large, and making 20 or more would take many weeks or months.

Generally, newer videos are quicker to make and higher quality. I need to develop some sort of strategy for this. I am as much as recording artist as a painter, but the quality of the videos does not always indicate the quality of the music, or the work I've put into the music.

The new art videos are filmed but not yet edited. This will take a few days. Tomorrow I will deliver some paintings to the annual Bickerton Art Exhibition, then visit the great Chester portrait artist David Lawton.

New Love Symphony Video

Still thinking of music videos, so much missing. As a result, I have revisited The Love Symphony. In 2015 for the Phenomenology of Love exhibition I made the 42 minute Love Symphony film (the details are probably blogged here), but for reasons of file size I didn't keep all of the source videos. I'm constantly aware of the efficiency of storing the right quantity of data. In this case, it made it difficult to make edits or new versions of the film without a crude and destructive cut of the full film.

Last year I re-downloaded as much of the source material as I could locate. At least one film is lost forever, simply deleted from the Internet Archive. Most of the other films (at least 20) were still there, but needed re-converting, and I was unsure whether I had resized these, or converted the frame rates. There were also some self-recorded films which I also deleted (perhaps most foolishly of all as these were certainly unique). These were however very short segments which were made hurriedly and can be easily mimicked.

I've spent part of yesterday and today recompiling the footage for the first 10-minute track, There is no Love and the More I search the Less I Find. The result isn't 100% like the original but is very close. Some segments, such as the San Francisco Earthquake segments seem to have changed since 2015, they seem more grey (rather than pinkish, apparently not a result of my colouration) and perhaps a little cleaner, but this might well have been due to my original conversion. I am using identical software however. There were two hand filmed segments; of a receding clock, and a clock face. I have re-filmed these hurriedly in one take, although arguably these look little better than the original because they are now the same clock and seen from the same attitude, conveying an air of reminiscence. The original 2015 clock was a rather beautiful, antique grandfather clock owned by the artist Jan Pienkowski.

After compiling the final film, I used AviSynth to set the original film side by side with the new one to check that it was frame identical. In timing it is, and many frames are identical. There are some slight changes due to 'hand' editing of a few sequences.

I'd like to make a higher quality remake of this film one day. For now, this will do. It's a piece of history. The final segment is also quite complex. If I can edit that together, then I will have the vast majority of the material of the original 42 minute film. For now, this new edit is set for a YouTube premiere on Saturday 27th July at 6pm.

I still wonder whether a separate YouTube Channel just for my music videos would be a good thing. My channel broadly covers art and painting, performances of various sorts, experimental films and ArtSwarm-like video-poems, short musical pieces, and full 'official' music videos. This might make it harder for people who only like one thing to see just that one thing, although everything is divided into playlists. One argument against this move is that I've got some music that isn't officially released, like the Plastic Superman song, and other ArtSwarm music. Would that be for my art channel, or music video channel?

Ideally I would now blink and have videos for all of my extant music, well, those highlight tracks currently shown on the Cornutopia Music channel.

Now off today to deliver a new painting masterpiece to a customer. This work is a paragon of my new symphonic style, and I hope to talk about its merits at some point, but for now, it must remain a secret.