TRACK a week IS going STRONG!

Yep another Wednesday's end and another track on music.feillafe.com. I was just listening to the new track I uploaded and hit play on another track at the same time. It sounds pretty good, well you can try it for yourself.

Making a Track a week or at least posting a new track every week is an interesting project to undergo. There's no doubt that its a kind of falseness that means a track can go up even if it is not "complete". What is gained by this definitely out weighs the negatives, and that is a connection to the making or process without excessive and sometimes counter productive reflection, and a way of seeing a Narrative or "Greater Picture" of the work; Perspective. This may sound as though I am talking about just myself, but it is not the intention, this format of publishing a track every week is also being done to share with others.

Maybe no one listens to these tracks but it is the act of "putting it out there" that has significance. This topic is something that should be discussed. "Putting it Out There" means so many things to the person revealing themselves to the world. It can be; scary, fun, intimidating, satisfying, and even enlightening. Just having the courage to have a voice, even if you need to do it in the dark like this is, makes the work have meaning and value outside of whatever you think about yourself.

The Hunt for the Perfect Image Gallery Code

Yes that’s right, I am hunting for the holy grail. My previous attempts at web work have revolved around learning one code after another; HTML, CSS, JAVA script, PHP, XML, flash, etc etc etc. Although I am very interested in learning new languages it does not really serve a purpose, which is to make a functioning website in my case. So, keen to have something up and going'ish, I have begun finding templates and apps that I can insert into the site. Of course the languages have helped, I'm no wizard, but it does mean I'm not fighting a battle and can generally find what I want.

So it’s an art website; what should it look like, what is its purpose, who's going to look at it, and who do I want to look at it? These are the standard kind of design questions I find myself asking. It is not purely about indulging myself, although that’s important to. Some of my previous plans have gone in the direction of satisfying my geekier inclinations with a classic "dos" look, (I still think this is a pretty good idea), or maybe it should appeal to my interest in Formalism and Abstraction?

This does bring an interesting point about creating and inspiration. It’s the moment just before you begin to make something and you find yourself thinking, I feel inspired to make something but what? from which pool of interests do I swim?

You can work on many different things, but would it be satisfying? I want to good at what I do. It’s like you've got this decision to make whether you want to be a Jack of all trades or a Master. Well that’s what has always been presented to me. I don’t agree with this but it seems to be how a lot of people think. I could be wrong, but pursuing all of my interests seems to not only be gratifying but the bigger image starts to come into focus. Looking at the connections between my interests and what attracts, me will hopefully enlighten and reveal something about myself. This seems like the thing to master rather than an aspect of me.

What does this all have to do with my search for a pretty image gallery to use in my website? Well this is a discussion about making decisions about what’s important, and the image gallery will be important as it is a website to share what I do, which to a large extent is visual.

Ocular Lab Show

So I guess it's time I actually show some pictures from my Ocular Lab Show I had in November. It was my first solo exhibition, and without further ado:

Music on Feillafe.com

Ok so I will start uploading one track a week onto music.feillafe.com, or at least attempt to. I already have one track on there, its called BrownNoise. You can stream it directly off the website. It is a track I made using my MPC 2000 classic. The way I make the sounds is by using a tone generator to sample "pure" tones like square waves or sign waves. The samples are then manipulated using the MPC to change the resonance and the tone. The moments when two sounds go in and out of phase creating waves, or oscillations create moments of tension and penetrate your awareness. The "movements" are fluid and do not follow a traditional format where there is a transition from one to another. The intention is to create a textured experience.

Infant Website

I know this is getting repetitive, but the website is all consuming at the moment. So just an update. You can see that I have those fairly ugly buttons at the top of the blog, they will navigate you around the rest of my website. Although at this stage it is very much a skeleton of a site, you will begin to see more media being uploaded and it becoming more usable. One thing I'm looking forward to is working out how to implement the search button as it does nothing at the moment.

So to save time and get the ball rolling I have used a free CSS template from Free CSS Templates. I have modified the code a little but not to much at this stage. Its a great way to work as it lays down the structure for you. I will continue working on my own design as well but only use it once its a bit more developed.

Oh, and of course this is a link to the home page just in case those buttons disappear or stop working.

Some Music Talk

I am in the process of making a dedicated music website to house my music and perhaps promote it. The music I have been working on lately would be described as ambient and maybe minimal electronic. Like the rest of my practice it has a quality I would describe as meditative, it does not prescribe an image to the viewer, but encourages there own images and thought (hopefully).

This is an image of the mini CD containing a new track I'm working on called BrownNoise

This is my new track BrownNoise. It is very much a "ruff cut", what I have done is recorded a performance of the track rather than a composition.

Website Development

Ok, so here is the break down of the plan so far regarding my domain, http://www.feillafe.com/. This has been a slow project that has had many incarnations over the years. I'll start with the dot TK domain (not the first just an interesting departure). You may have encountered it. It is a free service to register domain names with the extension TK. So you could get a simple url like www.me.tk instead of a .com, .org, .net, etc, free and not have a url the length of your arm. Basically Dot TK is a program set up in Tokelau, a country in the South Pacific, and is designed to bring money into the island community. If your interested, this is a link to the dot TK mission statement and other general information. That website no longer exists, or is so embarrassing I wont share it here. Basic idea was to make a share house website that chronicled all of the shenanigans that occurred. It was tentatively called "3 Gingers and a Ninja".

Next; not much, the onslaught of Facebook and Uni etc. Well not to be too general, I had a fling with Secondlife and made some creative work or attempted to by mashing images from Secondlife, WOW, and "real life".

Luckily a very good friend of mine hooked up the domain name for me and some server space, which I have played around with for about a year now.

So you may wander what I will do with this gift. Maybe not, but I do wander. So Here it is. I will have several sub domains for separate projects such as:

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  blog.feillafe.com
  
  
  
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  art.feilalfe.com
  
  
  
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  music.feilalfe.com
  
  
  
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  shop.feillafe.com
  
  
  
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  forum.feilalfe.com
  
  
  
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  vinyl.feillafe.com
  
  
  
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  and of course the hub site http://www.feillafe.com/
  
  
  

So as you can see each individual sub domain will have it's own purpose and content but hopefully give some kind of continuity.

First Post

This site is going to be as a way to keep up to date with the projects I'm working on and archive them. It will contain Images and Video's and small pieces of Text. It will be placed within a Sub domain as part of my main site, which has a slightly different purpose, to act as an online CV. This section will be accessible to people from my website, but is more to generate discussion and a space to comment on works. The kind of content you will vary from, Visual Arts to Experimental Music. So perhaps you could think of this as a space for creative peers.