Maybe it was because “M” favoured a weekend at home. Maybe it was my doing some handyman work around the house and effectively repairing a door that was coming off its hinges. Maybe it was hearing the news that a tree right behind our house that was forever blocking our gutters was going to be felled by the house’s new owners. Or, maybe it was the Bulldogs making it 2 wins in a row with another 9 point wing over Port Adelaide in Darwin.
All I know is that full of happiness, joy and bravado, I thought
I'd take on the challenge of jazzing up this very blog.
First I needed to come up with a visual representation of
myself given my wish to remain anonymous.
Easy one, I parted my collection of vinyl and inserted a bio of Otis
Redding and a copy of the Deluxe Edition of Sonic Youth’s Dirty alongside each
other adding a hastily scribbled biro dot. For some reason, I added my reading glasses. I should have added my trusty iPod.
Next, I went looking for a more dynamic presentation and
colour scheme. I tested a number of the
template models that Google has on offer and settled on the watermark
version. After arranging the format, I
took out my camera and spent a couple of hours composing the most magnificent
watermark image. I created a space and
into it placed a number of vinyl albums, visible by their spines. Next to this I organised a pile of my favourite
CDs with all of the titles visible. A
pile of some of my favourite music book titles spine out again was topped by a number
of DVDs, also spine out.
My goodness! The
amount of effort that went into composing that image was enormous. I wanted to have all my bases covered in
terms of what was readable. So in
choosing the various items I kept asking myself questions such as; do I have a
reggae album? What about a blues,
item? Jazz? A pile of Springsteen? Where Neil?
Patti Smith? ……….
Finally I was satisfied and I took the image. It was brilliant. Next I stuck the memory card into my computer
for uploading onto the template which promptly rejected it. The photograph was too big. Disgusted, for the first time in my life I
felt like an artist who had produced his finest work only for it to be spurned.
And so [il]logically, I deleted the image.
Stuff this, I thought. I’ll use
one of their images for now and settled for a black and white shot of an empty
stage taken from the back of a band venue.
Damn, it looks pretty good!
After doing all of this, I discovered these things called gadgets
and found one that allows you to set up images.
I inserted this as a page and then spent an hour going through the
images I took at the gigs I’ve attended this year. Then I uploaded them , placed them into a
logical sequence and annotated them. Mmm!
Not bad. That’s given me another idea
but I need to do a fair bit of work before I can pull that off.
But, by now “M” is complaining that I haven’t spent
enough time with her. I’m shocked into
shame and call a halt. After packing
everything away another realisation hits me.
I’d been so engrossed in my work, I’d forgotten to play any music!
And so after a weekend tinkering about on my computer in my
home studio, I use the internet to present top you, my “audience” the results
of my experimentation. It amounts to a change in image or, if you will, my reinvention.
Hope you like the new direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment