📙 #075 - FALLiNGWATER MiXTAPE, Patreon Corner & Dithering

Cassette tapes and dots, who could ask for anything more.

Spotify can go get wrecked, obviously.

I mean it’s probably more nuanced than that; it’s great for listeners and AI warfare, but bad for artists and AI warfare, and so the reality is probably somewhere between those two points.

Back in ‘23 to go along with my Alba FALLiNGWATER project, I made a Spotify playlist of music I was listening to while developing it, and the type of music that created the type of album art I was inspired by.

For me music & art are very closely aligned, and I pretty much always have a “mixtape” in mind that goes along with a project, with FALLiNGWATER I took the extra (mild) step of publishing it.

[Pretend there’s an insightful paragraph here about how people are turning away from digital services & subscriptions and embracing physical media - etc. etc. you know the drill, it’s all over the place at the moment, certainly doesn’t need to be here too! Oh, add an extra bit about piracy 🏴‍☠️]

IKR, nailed it!!

In short, I started exfiltrating various playlists onto bootleg mixtapes.

FALLiNGWATER was almost perfect for this, 1h 25min fits nicely onto a C90.

I could go into the art of the car drive mixtape; you gotta know how long it’s going to take to get there and back.

18-22mins each way = 45min mix tape. Around 45min each way = C90. Any longer and you may have to burn two CD-Rs, one for going out, and the other for coming back.

Going out is your battle music, coming back is chill out.

Which is how the FALLiNGWATER playlist was built. Unfortunately when putting it onto tape I couldn’t quite split the tracks nicely and Offshore by Chicane had to tuck onto the end of side A, rather than at the start of side B where it belongs. Can’t have everything I guess.

A-Side runs at 43:46, B-Side is 41:29.

When the combination of inside temperature, outside temperature, number of plays, distance travelled, the moon & the mood is right the car will eat the tape, as it should; it is foretold.

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# PATREON CORNER

I opened up my Patreon kinda at the wrong time, the start of the month would have been better but we don’t always get to choose.

The idea behind it is two-fold; first it’s somewhere I can put the Drawing Machine 101 videos where YouTube doesn’t throw adverts on them. I have more thoughts about that, but I’ll save them for another time.

The second is having a good place to interact with people that isn’t just shouting into the void. I’ve heard the phrase “PATREON IS MY OFFICE HOURS” - which stuck with me; I can’t always reply on social media, or YouTube comments, or here, but I CAN always do that over at Patreon. But that’s also thoughts-for-another-time.

The main things it does is give me; a good way to send physical art out to people and a schedule! This is that schedule…

Basically, the first ⅔ of the month is making and documenting things, and the second ⅓ is Q&A stuff.

Around the 3rd Wednesday of the month the things get shipped out, and the day after we open the Q&A post for questions, with the answers getting posted in video form at the end of the month.

This month we jumped right into the middle with things getting shipped pretty much right away on the theme of DOTS.

At the start of the month I post the theme for the month and we go through the whole thing again, with the Drawing Machine 101 videos posted as and when I finish editing them.

Next month’s theme carries on with DOTS, but also DITHERING…

…on a hex grid, in multiple colours, ‘cause I’m an idiot…

I’ve already had a quick (failed) attempt. The failure was both the green pen running out and there being too much paint for the paper to handle.

More about dithering in colour here: https://obrhubr.org/dithering-in-colour

Meanwhile here’s a full sized A2 plot for Fibonacci Day, (23rd of November — I am planning on making it to 11/23/58), which is somewhat responsible for running out the green pen.

Anyway, the 1st of December is when Patreon starts “properly”, although it’s going pretty well so far.

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# THE END

Mainly everything is setup so I can; work and make the Drawing Machine 101 videos and do something different and fun each month and write these newsletters and send things out in the post, all without getting overwhelmed or burnt out.

Sometimes people ask me how I get everything done and the answer is pretty much; timeblocking/timeboxing, good sleep and a friendly AI assistant that can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with. Doesn’t feel pity! Or remorse or fear and absolutely will not stop!... ever... until I am dead!

Next newsletter should be with you (and with less Patreon stuff) on Thursday 11th December, ‘25.

Love you all
Dan
❤️

PS. Document ur shit, yo! Even if you don’t sort it out for another 25 years.