It
be
came
increa-
singly
clear
how I
was lo-
sing my
my artis-
tic drive.
This was a
huge part
of my char-
acter. Ever
since I could
remember I have
always been making
stuff. When I re-
turned to my par-
ents house for Christ-
mas, my mom had up a
drawing I did of my be-
side a Christmas tree. I
must have been pre-school
age. I had a chance to go
through to some of my old
school things during Thanks-
giving. My most significant
doodles (drawn on the backs
of study guides, or photo-
copied text-book chapters)
were saved. Throughout the
years my mediums had shift-
ed. Drawing saw me through
puberty, then music and
songwriting in high
school, the last five
years I've focused
on the digital arts:
vector graphics,
visual programming,
ASCII text art.
2007 was the
low watermark
in terms
of my art-
istic
out
put.
I
recorded
a couple
small songs,
a few doodles
in a moleskine,
and a visualization
preset. There was, of
course, my photo every-day
project. While I did have the
best of intentions (go out and
shoot!!! See the world through
the eye of the camera lens!),
this project ended up being
another chore. I wasn't
really making
anything.
Just do-
cumen-
ting.
This
pre-
dica-
ment
was odd,
considering
how much time
I had on my hands.
I found myself just
consuming content. Podcasts,
Sunday Matinees, blogs, literature,
graphic design, video streams, digital
art, audiobooks. I was taking everything
in, and in turn producing next to nothing.
I needed a jumpstart. I had reduced myself
to the world of the readily-apparent and im-
mediate. My job, my girlfriend, my friends.
The next party, the next paycheck, the
next load of laundry. My universe
of imagination and creat-
ivity was a dusty
attic I
rarely
peered
into.
After
comple-
ting one
year of a-
pic-every-day,
a new projected
needed to be imple-
mented. At least the
daily project kept me
to a routine. Some sort
of discipline was involv-
ed. I liked that. But what
medium? Instead of painting
myself into a corner with a
single artform, I decided to
open it up to every avenue avail-
able. There were a couple mediums
I wanted to explore (programming and
creative writing) and some others that
needed to be experienced (video). Hell,
might as well try all of them. Using
the lunar cycle for my schedule is ano-
ther decision to shake things up, get
out of a weekly routine. Following
the moon helps remove my artis-
tic endeavors from the cycle
of the work-week. This
schedule also comes
with the nuance
of paganism,
which is
so hard
to come
by in
this
day
and
age.
Here
is the
first
foray
for 2008.
A work
of word-
art. After
getting the
hang of CSS,
I realized
how powerful
the rendering
engine of a
web browser
could be. With
the right vis-
ion and some
patience, one
could achieve
some interes-
ting results.
The downfall
being the per-
ils of cross-
browser consis-
tency. The
finished
product
may
be
a
lit-
tle
under
whelming
considering
all the work
that went in-
to it. Editing
all of this
in CSS requires
20 times the
labor to get
the same result
in any image
editor or word
processor. But
if I did do
this in I would
be sidestep-
ping the
whole
purpose
of the
project,
to ex-
plore
the
med-
iu-
m
.