Insert Credit Art Jam 2.0 | August 2022 | purple (part II)

saddleblasters

Well, at the very least, I would read the rest of that story if there were more. (Not sure if you actually had more planned, or if you were just engaging in the classic trick of saying there’s a secret without having any idea what the secret is supposed to be.)

I thought you did a good job of making Hubert into an interesting character, even without letting us see him doing anything yet – which I suppose is a direct result of putting him at the end of a long chain of the ‘if [X] hadn’t [Y], then they wouldn’t have [Z]’ sentences. Maybe one of the reasons your instructor liked it was that you didn’t just do the exercise, but you employed it as a technique to make a character feel interesting and important.

2501

saddleblasters Yeah I don’t have a specific idea of how to fill the mystery box there in a way that’ll actually feel satisfying. It seems too cheap to just lean in on, “Well, the main character has a dubious grip on reality, so anything he hears could be profound to him.” I’d much rather hit that uncanny feeling of not knowing if something is profound or insane, that makes the reader question their own sanity before (after?) feeling superior to these characters. Just after writing this I was made aware of a writer who might be good to study for that purpose.

Bits and pieces of acquaintances, family and old memories came out in this, which is funny because I went in with only the most abstract idea and let everything flow from the unconscious. It felt cathartic to look up methods for suicide without consciously floating the possibility of using them on myself (for a change). I’ve never personally been in a psych ward, but I’ve been threatened with it and people I know have gone. If I continue the story (and there are a lot of places I could go with it) I’d like to tap into some balance between detached irony and the absurdist horror of that experience, in a way that doesn’t just feel like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which I thought was exploitative). I’m also trying to do a little research on esoteric mysticism and philosophy to give myself better tools to work with as far as understanding and deconstructing the laws of reality. (Yesterday I was trying to understand a bit of Saul Kripke - there’s tough steak.) I’d like to end this story with the universe transforming radically in some way - like the death of humanity in Childhood’s End, only instead of an epic global event it’s just two men in an institution stumbling on some absurd truth that unmakes the world. I have friends who know way more about this kind of stuff than I do.

I wrote another thing I didn’t completely hate that was sort of the beginning of a cyberpunkish noir, a bit of Gibson, David/Brandon Cronenberg and the movie Klute. The genre’s been done to death and my working knowledge of tech is not great, but doing it with a more personal interior focus as opposed to the exteriorized, expressionistic qualities of most fiction in that vein seemed like a good way to express very personal anxieties about the future. idk, it probably needs to be more fully formed. I can post it after a few more edits if anyone’s interested in giving feedback.

The irony of daring to write something I sort of like is that I will be that much angrier if I then notice major flaws in it or unfavorable comparisons to more practiced readers/writers. I just wanna be not-mediocre at something I care about for once in my fucking life lmao. But that’s why third-party critique is important, I need to know if people with standards think there’s something there who wouldn’t flatter me if they didn’t.

yeso

2501 don’t know if ultimate setting and theme align with what you’re aiming for, but you might take a look at Samuel Beckett particularly The Trilogy and also Sarah Kane (thinking of 4.48 Psychosis specifically) for ways around this

I’d much rather hit that uncanny feeling of not knowing if something is profound or insane, that makes the reader question their own sanity before (after?) feeling superior to these characters.

problem: meaning the text is more aligned with the characters’ subjectivity than being “narrated” by the author. Apologies if these are over-obvious suggestions

2501

yeso Nothing is over-obvious! (Or at least not anything you’ve posted.) I appreciate literally any feedback. I’ve never even heard of the works you mentioned, so I’ll look into them. I’m ashamed to say that despite attempting fiction writing (because written expression, for whatever reason, is just what comes easiest to me) I honestly haven’t read a lot of fiction in my life. The volume of good stuff I’m acutely aware I haven’t read vs. the level of ADHD-adjacent stress involved in actually powering all the way through a book can get overwhelming fast but… I’m trying to figure out a habit. This also means I could be blissfully unaware of how hackneyed my ideas or prose might be, so it helps to run it by more literate people lol

The narration in the exercise is definitely ironically detached for humor’s sake, though also ofc tied to the subjectivity of the protagonist in, I guess, ambiguously ironic ways. I feel like that should be interesting territory to play in, especially if I get to a point of peeling apart things like subjectivity, “reality”, etc. as we descend deeper into the spiral.

yeso

Syzygy looks like one of those autographed baseball/basketball/etc collector cubes to me

https://www.amazon.com/s?https://www.amazon.com/s?k=baseball+cube&crid=3QBKIJMVAN54Y&sprefix=baseball+cube%2Caps%2C83&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

2501 I think at least reading shorter texts (like 4.48) and passages from longer books will be helpful. Those two works came to mind bc of the black humor, institution setting, focus on anti-social behavior, and apocalyptic themes expressed in miniature (vs the panoramically literalized version in childhood’s end).

That said they’re both opaque and abstract so don’t get frustrated if you don’t “get” them - no one does!

Syzygy

malidextrious
I’ve also looked at these diorama cube things and wanted to try my hand and I have a question: where do you get the cube?

malidextrious

Syzygy It’s definitely easier to go with yeso’s suggestion and grab one on amazon. But if you have access to a laser cutter you can generate the cut file on makercase and then its your choice on type of material/thickness you want. Something I’ve learned to do since is to clean up the edges by sanding lightly with a high grain then very briefly run a torch flame on the edge and it becomes crystal clear again.

fridgeboy

Again something I’ve already shared on social media. But this little tufted titmouse had a surprise for me, I didn’t realize it had purple plumage until I was staring at my reference mixing paint

antillese

Teaser/Spoiler as it will probably go up this weekend. And mostly because I’m excited that I’ve got a song to post this month.

It’s Purple AF.

antillese

The Purple Artist’s Statement

You are playing an NES game by yourself. It’s the sequel to a hit puzzle game. It’s got a chill vibe, but as the blocks stack up, so does your stress and the intensity of the music!

That’s right! DJ Tent Mode’s Purple new track drops today! (Still unhappy with my band name.)

You can download an MP3 of “Purple Motown” here.

You can download an NSF of “Purple Motown” here. The NSF is a ROM that will execute on NES hardware, in an NES emulator, or in an NES music player. I like to use GaMBi on my phone.

This Month’s Song Process

Back at it with another one after a few months hiatus. I don’t know if it was writers block or that I didn’t respond to the “slow” prompt, but nothing came of my work on that one. This one nearly came out fully formed last Saturday. By late-afternoon on Sunday I had the overall structure, Motown drum groove, melody, and accompaniments more or less in their final direction. After sharing it with my daughter (a percussionist) she told me, “you should add a drum solo”, and DJ Tent Mode said, “alright”.

Here’s a screenshot of the final tracker structure.

The Purple (2) Prompt

First things first: I set the theme color in Deflemask to the most purple one I could find. This one was called “Vapor WEPA!”

I also feel like “purple” kinda sounds bluesy, so I started with a G-blues scale and kind of went with that for my direction.

The Delicious Process

A few weeks ago when I was stuck, I watched this video on writing drumlines:

I’ve learned quite a bit from the 8-Bit Music Theory channel and I recommend it to beginners and intermediate musicians alike. So I wanted to start with a Motown groove because it has such a different feel than the rock/back beat kit groove we are all used to. I slapped down snare hits on all the quarter notes and then broke it up with some drum kicks on the off-beats.

I know this next part will sound stupid because it’s “then I wrote the rest of the song”, but then I wrote the rest of the song. It nearly popped out of my head fully formed like Athena. I wrote a simple bass line. I moved onto the sax honk and put that down in channel two and wrote the melody in channel one. I fell back on my personal cliché of moving a few notes up or down an octave for accents which I think really added to the melody rather than just breaking it up for variety in this case.

I sat on this version of the piece for a few days and wanted to go back and add a bass solo, so I restructured the song around it and absolutely hated it. I had written something that sounded like a “Jr. High Jazz Band warmup” exercise where the band plays the melodic 4 measures in unison, then everyone has a turn doing a 4-8 bar solo occasionally separated with the melody. Reintegrating the bass solo into the last section of the piece added a bunch of melodic motion and stress to the song which was what I wanted in the first place. I’m much happier with how it turned out.

Thanks again for listening (and I’m sure the interesting discussion to follow) and thanks again for organizing @穴 .

穴

antillese this track is so cool! your write ups about your process are always so good!! thanks for sharing and participating!!

biff_stallion

antillese This tune has some delicious syncopation in it 🤘

antillese

TracyDMcGrath Which tool/s are you using for your FM compositions?

TracyDMcGrath

antillese Ableton Operator

穴

i made yet another drawing for this month’s art jam! at first the color was more purple-ish but after the post processing i did it looks a lot more like pink. so my artist statement for my piece is: purple part II? more like pink! cuz the sequel to purple is a pinkish purple!

here’s a bigger version without the imgur thing. the gif is quite big so it takes a couple of seconds to properly load
(or at least with my internet/browser combination it does)

antillese

穴 I really like how small amounts of movement imply so much life. This is great!

biff_stallion

穴 The first time I saw this I could distinctly imagine birdsong in its atmosphere. Really cool motion!

antillese

I’ve contributed Purple Motown (part I) and now I’d like to share one of my favorite cocktails: the Aviation. It’s Purple (part II)

I learned about it from this dude on YouTube. I’ve made a minor tweak to it because I thought it was too sweet. Here’s my version. First, get your stuff:

2 oz. (60 ml) Gin (pick something you like)
½ oz. (7.5 ml) Rothman and Winter Crème de Violette
¼ oz. (7.5 ml) Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
½ oz. (15 ml) Fresh lemon juice
lemon zest for garnish

The recipe Anders teaches has less Crème de Violette, but I like the way it interacts with the gin, so I’ve upped that to ½ oz. I don’t like adding the cherry because it’s already plenty sweet. I also wasn’t able to find Luxardo easily and used a different brand but I really like Luxardo cherries; they are excellent. I suspect the Luxardo liqueur would be better.

Stir it, don’t shake it (see the video about technique) because it makes it cloudy and gray if you shake air into it.

Serve it up (no ice) in a chilled glass. My photography isn’t amazing here, but the drink is a striking purple.

kory

Life has sadly encroached on my precious IC time as of late, but I was determined to get something in under the wire. This is significantly less effort than my last purple submission (I’ve resurrected my cube avatar in honor of the occasion), but I took a walk with some (terrible) Lomography purple film and here’s some scans that took wayyyy too long to come back from the photo lab:

biff_stallion

kory The spectrum of purple in these photographs is lush. Though the composition is more minimal, it has maximum emotion.

recorder

I wrote a song for this month’s art jam. It’s inspired by a bush of lilacs (a purple flower) that I would hang out in when I was a child, and the feeling of visiting home last year during a severe drought and heat wave. Here it is.

antillese

recorder I love it. It’s a mood.

biff_stallion

recorder The groovy pick-up the beginning was a nice surprise. I grew up in northern Minnesota and definitely resonate with lilac blooming being a special time. For me it always means sure-fire spring is here.

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