Here comes the second part of fractal images that may look nice for themselves. As written before, no particular super secret weapon was used, just Gimp’s fractal explorer, some filters and a couple of layers. I’ve already mentioned what made me create those images, but there is yet another dimension: The use of colours.

Certain ranges for colours are representative of emotions that occupied my mind whilst creating the composition. For a near chaotic state like being happy and sad simultaneously, I used the “lunatic ranges” between a cold red and lilac. So it’s more like a short cut for me about what the initial reason was to spend some time for an image. There are more criteria like that, but they are meant to remain secrets, because those details would not help anyway. It’s merely a decision about what elements to use in which way, but the most important thing still is what the person looking at the image associates with it. The personal with all its hidden symbols and meanings seems rather uninteresting to me, except to those who have a reason to make a research on an artist.

As already threatened in the last post, here is a first selection of works that dived more deeply into fractals. The technique at a glance is to use Gimp’s Fractal Explorer and then proceed with further manipulations. The bulk of the magic is done by the combination of layer effects, only to a lesser degree come filters into play here (additionally a very small subset of those). There is one and the same story behind those images:

I was driven by the desire to express something that I couldn’t express in a poem. At a certain point, you just can’t put up with words any longer, so you try to find comfort in non-verbal communication. Like the unexpected departure of a beloved person and hopes that didn’t materialise. Or the famous blank stare into nothingness. I sometimes encounter persons with huge frightened eyes that don’t seem to recover anytime soon. When it is a young woman, it even has something of a tragedy and I’d love to learn the story behind.

In one way or another, arts are a sophisticated way of seeking attention. The problem is when you define yourself by what you create, then you will inevitably attract persons that just accept you so long as you keep up your creations. By the time you confuse interest in your work with interest in your person, you will run into trouble, because it makes you vulnerable to a certain breed of dishonest persons looking for a way to distract themselves from their empty lives.

So use the images with caution. Just see what you want them to display.

The last couple of weeks were difficult times with my private life drifting into a near chaotic state (those who are supposed to know more details, do so already). For this reason, René Muñoz Córdova latest work on Petcord which was supposed to be released in March, saw the light of day much later than anticipated. Concerning the artwork, this did not have much of an effect, as it was accomplished a couple of weeks ago.

This was one of the earliest work where my interest shifted to fractal distortions (and later entirely to fractals, but this will be dealt with in a separate blog post). This rather gloomy geometric structures had their origins in photos, which became increasingly deconstructed until they did no longer look like having any relationship to the outside world. One difficulty was to integrate the captions, because the image was created before there were any plans for the rest of the cover. I opted for the horizontal bar with the fonts picking up the signature colours.

As one can recognise by the complexity and gloomy mood, this was largely a creation of mine, and one of the very few where Marco did not object to anything ;-).

Several weeks have passed. There were not really much new entries, but that doesn’t mean we were on hiatus. In fact, we produced a huge pile of cover drafts and it even looks like they all will be used in one way or another. March kicked off with Djozr‘s first album on Petcord, an unusually warm and friendly album on Petcord, and the first that can be put into the Microsound/Minimalist Music drawer.

Glenn Bryce was rather hard to satisfy, but then again, challenges are what we are looking for, so it was fine with us ;-). After a couple of drafts, Marco had a very good idea with this one and it received the artist’s blessing, too. My contributions were rather modest at this time, just adding some additional captions and some minor additions. Most of it already fit to the music, so we left it that way.

Two weeks ago, we published quite a lavish, detail rich cover artwork. So there was the principal feeling that we should not give in to expectations but instead focus on aspects we haven’t tried before. Osoroshisa‘s latest album on Petcord, with its Japanese names, offered a good opportunity to us. The first thought I had was that the music sounds rather sad. Since in Japan, the mourning colour is white, I thought of turning that non-colour to a substantial part of the draft.

The motif is an Albizia Julibrissin, with its colours inverted and resulting in that fleecy pastel tones people usually associate with Japanese images. There were some discussions about adding Kanji characters like we did in June last year, but eventually we decided against it, since it would have resulted in an unnecessary complication. There aren’t that much areas where captions can be integrated here and less can help avoid a crammed cover. Also, for the third time, we experimented with a 2:1 ratio canvas on the front. The motif was an ideal choice for that, but Marco is probably right when he stated, that we should not make it a custom and focus on the sqare, which is usually seen first and most instead.

Sometimes, there are cover that are not that work intense, because they are based on another person’s artwork. Whilst the part of creating a scenery has already been accomplished, there is still the problem of how to integrate one’s own style into that of said person? How to arrange fonts in a work that wasn’t meant to carry any captions? These were interesting problems to investigate for us and in the end, none of the drafts we originally planned to use for Fabio Keiner’s Abstract Cello album survived.

The original artwork is by Czech rendering artist Eva Kmentova, who kindly permitted the usage of her image as a base for the cover. As you can easily recognise, this is a rather prominent motive that almost allows no further addition. That is, it just pushes them aside like they have never existed at all. So what we did in the end was to pick up an attractive section of the original image, use it as a 2:1 ratio canvas (following Marco’s approach he had used for the next Synflict album that hasn’t even been composed yet), and make sparse use of captions. As a novelty, I completely removed the Petcord logo and catalogue number from the front, since there was no way of integrating them without destroying the fragile balance of the two other captions.

The back was easier to accomplish though another rather tough problem to solve: As it needs to carry quite a lot information some space for text is needed, but hard to find on an image like Eva Kmentova’s. So I came up with an idea I lifted from old 4AD covers and gradually bleached out the colours. I think, it’s quite nice to look at, but of course I prefer works that I can determine from ground up. Fortunately, the next two covers in line are such completely free works. But it was a useful experience anyway.

Though the new decade is still rather young, we already secured two new commissions:
One is for Fabio Keiner’s forthcoming release on Petcord. I don’t want to give away too much details for now, except that this work is very dark and gloomy, but at the same time quite rewarding when it comes to creating cover art. Another one is for Greg Surges, who also is in the midst of preparing a release on Petcord. This release will focus on the electro-acoustic side of his oeuvre, and therefore its cover art will probably contain a lot of abstraction. As with Fabio Keiner’s release, I anticipate the cover work as a rewarding task where we shall take the opportunity to experiment with effects and colour/texture combinations.

And since we would like to create a follow up release for our first Synflict album, we took the liberty of thinking about its cover design even before the accompanying music has been composed ;-). This is a current draft showing how it could look like when it’s finished:

The idea is based on one of Marco’s experimentations and a very good example of how a small amount of elements in a composition can be used effectively if arranged in an attractive way. Design is sometimes not about just motifs or colour combinations, but much more about the management of space and textures. Therefore, there was little for me to add, except suggesting some minor details. Another good idea in my opinion is to use the entire canvas of the front cover, rather than using the fold as a barrier between two separate images. I think this is something we can incorporate into future cover drafts as well.

Is there such thing as a netaudio community, in the sense of a both progressively and altruistically orientated scene that solely exists for the benefits of future generations to come? Or a dialogue between musicians and their audience, tearing down the barriers and finally make listeners and musicians interchangable? The answer is: clearly not. The only binding elements are people who

• got tired of the offers of an old fashioned music industry and its restrictions put on them
• use Creative Commons licences to allow or be allowed to share music with others

Some may wonder about my omitting another commonly mentioned point:

• people who want to create or listen to music that exists for itself, without any market potential in mind

Because there are only some netlabels that work this way (Petcord being one of them). In fact, for the majority, neither freedom of expression nor altruism is particularly desired and thus, there are labels and artists that serve a commercial market with both mediocrity and triviality. They coloured themselves as representatives of something new, however use the same thought and behaviour patterns as their proprietary counterparts. So it’s not like there would have been some kind of revolution. The audience is still being treated like idiots by providing insignificant artists with the aura of geniuses or attributes of cultural importance. There is a Berlin based netlabel, which shall remain unnamed and habitually claims that netlabel artist x would be widely known or famous for release y and how they have been mentioned on site z. Or a Hungarian vapour-ware netradio, which claims to be thee Creative Commons netlabel station, but somehow fails to gather any listeners for its programmes despite having spent months of spamming MySpace profiles and announcement sites. It seems in most cases, netlabels and related projects are driven by attention seeking, dishonest persons looking for an easy way to compensate for their inadequacies. They spread lies about fame, uniqueness and genius, artificially inflate their importance and maintain barriers between artists and their audience.

So if you want to spread your music just because you like to create and share it and get in touch with like-minded people, some netlabels may show up a way. Talk to these people and see for yourself how they treat you. Whether they show genuine interest and actually understand your intentions. Do they treat you as a normal person? Do they grant you a right to have your say in the way your music is going to be presented to an audience? Look up their website, do you stumble across the dishonest claims you already know from commercially orientated traditional labels? But also look at yourself: Is music for you like some kind of science, where you present the results of your research from time to time? Do you choose freedom over fame? Are you open-minded to criticism? Is admiration and keeping up an image important to you? Do you feel your music would pass a blind test, without the help of flattering words and manipulative advertising campaigns? If your answer is yes, then you may find your freedom with the few like-minded netlabels.

The common thread in these images could be dubbed architexture: They somehow capture an urban scenery, but the close up view prevents the idea of proportions and relationships. Light and shadow as the only factors contributing to an intriguing sight, what otherwise might not be particularly showy nor worth one’s time. In photography as in design, there are two views on things: How we evaluate them and how they actually appear before our eyes. One is an abstraction, assignment to a category by its properties, whilst the other is the nameless impression, where we perceive textures and interactions.

What kind of music is ideal for cover artwork? I think it’s that which has a cyclic form and describes a moment like a frozen still. Something that at the same time brings up a stream of associations and comes along in distinct colours. If these requirements are met, the cover art can ideally be that frozen still for me. Whether it is the same for someone else is something I do not know. In fact, I may even create an image of something that would look differently to the listener if the cover did not exist. Concerning Kurt Nimmo, the person behind Fosel, the cover art for The Difference Engine perfectly match the music.

The draft for the cover was the result of my messing around with several photos using different kinds of overlay strategies. At some point, the original characteristics were lost and patches of light were left. There is an accidental similarity to Futurism, but this is the result of the patches influencing each other’s appearance. The glowing blue reminds me of Cherenkov radiation, which is emitted when particles exceed the speed of light for a medium. Also, to stretch the associations with space and relativity even further, the front image may be interpreted as a black hole with a bright accretion disc spiraling along the event horizon. The idea to arrange the album title in a circle around the centre disc, however, was inspired from an old Captain Beefheart cover. In the end it eventually became what I consider one of the best works as Synflict attracting a lot of attention.