📙 #021 - Trying to be too cute
Ill prepared, a presentation nest and a new pen plot.
# Oh Hi
Much to everyone’s relief this is going to be a short one this week/fortnight, because I’m writing it right now, with about 30 17 5 -3 -8 minutes to go until self-imposed publish time. Therefore all typos are totally intentional to add to the whole freestyle nature!
Today I knew I had a video to edit (more on that in a tick), and I knew I had a newsletter to write, and I knew I had a talk/presentation to give. But for some stupid reason I hadn’t connected all that together that there wasn’t actually enough time to finish all three, spoiler: the video is getting finished tomorrow.
The photo above shows the “presentation nest” I made so I could pick up the laptop to give a tour of the studio, grab all the stuff I wanted to show from the table on my left, and keep all my notecards in-front of me to keep myself on track.
I avoided screen-sharing a power point presentation (as lovely as they are), because I wanted to be more in-the-moment, and able to react to questions in the chat. I love using them when doing a presentation in person, but I still find being a postage size head in the corner floating over slide 5 of 87 a bit weird.
Not that any power points can top this…
Thanks Chris for the link.
# STRATA
As will be apparent to anyone following along the videos and social media, I’m going all in on this handwriting stuff. Sometimes there’s a tingling feeling you get when you know you’re onto something.
I have that now.
There’s so much I want to explore here, around letters, symbols, mark-making and textures. There’s a huge history of this kind of thing in art already to draw on, and generative code + robots is a fascinating area to explore, my brain is kinda exploding with all the directions I want to take it. There’s easily a couple of years of just exploration to be had.
This is called STRATA for super obvious reasons 🏔️
I tried to get a little too cute by having the layers spell out different types of rock and sediment…
GRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRANITEGRA
Neat huh!
However, because I was already playing with the sets of upper/lowercase, numbers and symbols and handwriting styles AND scale, when words were put in there too it just all fell apart.
So far my discovery is; text in blocks = good, random letters as texture = good, text as texture = bad, so far.
Clearly it can work, but I don’t want to suddenly get all concrete poetry I’d rather get a bit more Irma Blank.
# Video - fxhash
I have like 2 minutes left. So the very short version is, I’ve given myself even more video to do, lol. FXHASH, where I release some of my digital art is updating soon, which will bring in more artists. So I decided it’d be fun to make some videos about that. The one I’m editing now is an introduction to creating a new project on fxhash for artists arriving there for the first time.
It was supposed to be out tonight, but I guess tomorrow now, so if that’s your jam catch me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/revdancatt
Update: I finished the video, and it’s here if you’re interested in learning how to upload projects to fxhash (the easy way):
It’s funny because Alba is opening up shortly too, and ArtBlocks have just updated their artist dashboard, so I could easily make a series of videos about each one, the differences between them, and how to structure your art for each.
But that’s too much. For now I’m going to be counting down the weeks to fxhash v2 with some weekly-ish videos.
# Signing off
Right, I’m 5 minutes over the deadline, so I really need to go. Is there anything else I need to mention?
I guess, those Strata plots are going to head to the shop probably by next Newsletter (you’ll be first to know, again). I think I’ll make eight for a “mini drop”. Generative art is really weird, because those will kinda of be a first edition, of an open edition, with variable editions. Because while they’re not limited edition, they’re only going to be made in small batches, and each one is different anyway. 🤷♂️
7 minutes over, I love you all.
Dan ❤️