Until yesterday this had been a frustrating week creatively. I’m working pretty hard (fuel costs are currently 1/2 our rent!!! Plus children/university etc) and art wise - I’ve got a couple of short video projects on the go that are quite a way beyond my current skills and need a lot of learning. All of which is fine but doesn’t really provide any sense of accomplishment or even forward motion. And then yesterday evening the latest Disquiet Junto project dropped….
Disquiet Junto is a weekly prompt for making music. There is a superb community over on lines (one of the best I’ve come across online full of lovely generous people) and I find external creative prompts quite a rewarding way of learning and taking me out of my comfort zone for creative projects. I’ve not taken part that much recently just because I’ve had a lot on (and also 3d which is my current focus is ALL out of my comfort zone :-) )
However this weeks prompt is to make a piece of techno music at 10bpm. As it happens I already did a project like that (see the bottom of this post) and found it a fascinating challenge. 10 BPM is VERY VERY slow. Like NOTHING happens for seconds. Techno depends on quite a lot of repetition and forward momentum. And some how, especially after a tweet from Marc Weidenbaum that runs Disquiet, I found myself making another piece.
Last time I tackled this idea I filled the space with sound. This time I tried to do something I’m very poor at in my work - leave space. To try and let the music breathe. Once again I’ve been very influenced by Dylan Carlson and his astonishing guitar playing. It takes incredible skill and judgement to only play a few notes. The famous writing credit on Trio by King Crimson for Bill Bruford for choosing NOT to play the drums on the piece being a case in point.
The art work follows the same principle - there are only the 5 elements - the landscape, the bone (a wonderful 3d scan by Brad Short, the moon, the light.
The title continues on from the original 10bpm piece I made 4 years ago. That references the writer Charles Stross’s take on H P Lovecrafts imagery. Lovecraft invented a whole world of inter dimensional horror that resonates with a lot of people but was also a horrible old racist so I tend to find the re-interpretations of his work far more interesting (and my favourite take on these particular elements is The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson). Here we visit the Plateau of Leng
Play this piece so loud your room shakes, play it really quietly - it seems to work really well as both. Anyway I had a lot of fun making both the music and the picture and I got that sense of satisfaction after all……