This spring I did some collaborative work with a couple of people online, but not much for this project. I did a duo with a classical violinist over voice call which was pretty fun, I went into it thinking that classical practice would actually make it applicable to this project since I am from a completely different background and I could then send the work over to a filmmaker/video collagist to work with (ideally themed around The Velvet Underground was my thought of relating the work to some “Rock Music” as usual), but the sound actually was not as disperate as I thought, it turned out to be a really nice psychedelic drone-fest spindizzy without our playing really being much different (even though I have no training at all), so I just released it on its own on my label site. As for the Band, it is not happening for this project. We did a couple of jams, but not everyone was in the same room at once, as predicted, funnily enough, so I guess I dodged a bullet not relying on them for this.

I also have been in touch with Theo H for a little while, who is one of my favourite artists from the 2010s Wall Noise sphere, and found that he was now spending most of his time exhibiting paintings with a similar aesthetic to his sound work, being that it is intentionally primitive but greatly evocative and confusingly grandiose art brut. I suggested the idea of us co-creating some work where I create Wall Noise reacting to some of his paintings (akin to his old Ushinawareta Tamashi project), but at the moment, he is busy with commissioned work, so it disappointingly will not be doable within the time frame I have.

So still at a brick wall really with what to do, but with the label I’m running at the moment being the primary outlet of what I’m doing, I floated the idea with friends of running a kind of URLfest for it (which is a live stream ‘festival’ with pre-recorded/live music and visuals), as we were running these compilation showcases of people around our ‘scene’ already, so doing something similar but facilitating video art and live performances in a classically ‘Internetty’ way (which is important to me to stick to as part of the ‘netlabel’ aesthetic I pledge allegiance to). I think this would create room for myself and others to platform sound and video work, and allow for me to reach out to some artists from netlabel/webart circles that I’d like to participate in the ‘fest’ or collaborate with. I pitched the idea to people who have been on our last couple compilations and was happy to see a lot of enthusiasm, so I organised a group chat for us to set this all up while keeping the rules vague out of trust.

So with this idea being my main thing at the moment, it feels better to have an idea I am passionate about that is doing something both out of personal interest and for University, so I’m excited! Today’s class was with Milo, which was nice as always. He talked about past collaborative experiences with a prior band and art collective, and what he had going on outside of the UK with this collective. I didn’t find much applicable to my own practices other than being kind of sad in seeing people drifting apart from each other, but that isn’t like a new revelation or anything.

The plan for next week is to hopefully reach out to more people to get on board (more Visual Artists is the idea) and confirm with a lecturer if this is suited to what is expected from us this term, as well as to set a deadline for the project so that everyone who wants to get something in for this has the opportunity to. I feel like for this I want to perform some drone ambient with projected film accompaniment, I will see how accomplishable this will be.