In the first week, we were introduced to this unit and what the outcome would be by the end of it, which would be a digital space that showcases our work, demonstrating the importance of an online presence within the art world in its current climate, as to making our work accessible for possibly interested collaborators/employers. I do have qualms with this reliance, but it is not so much that can be argued with as much as it is the facts, as a lot of the underground circles I enjoy have been built from scenes specific to places and niches, and a lot of what is exciting to me about this is the need to seek people out and hunt down work, which gives the work more value to me personally is this removal of formality and encouragement for engagement on a personal level, but if the intent of the work is to actually be profitable and to be visable for employers, then this approach I like is very counterintuitive, obviously.

An inspiration for my approach to an online showcase portfolio would be to maybe do something like Lucy Johnson, who has created a space for her composition and soundtrack work on Bandcamp (https://lucyjohnson.bandcamp.com/music), separate from her more unfriendly Noise endeavours released through esoteric cassette labels, for example, her work as Smut or with Witchblood is released through Matching Head or Turgid Animal, which would not be findable next to these “professional” works. This is useful as it directs possible employers in one direction while still giving artistic freedom to create anything elsewhere, which is one of the many advantages of delegating aliases; it kind of filters out those not seeking out what you’re serving.

I do have an online presence already, on Instagram as @lamo.noise, which I use both to advertise my own work (mainly work as Silver Dove) and engage with other artists, but something I don’t have is a concise portfolio Website, which would be really useful since I do like to distribute a lot of music in a lot of different places, and I would like ideally to make my practice into my job, so a home base for these things would be great to get what I’m doing in one spot and easily visible for any collaborator/employer. My Instagram is already a bit like the type of presence I mentioned before; it is not presenting everything I’m doing, only things I deem to be bigger projects that I would like a new visitor to see, still allowing me to make things that hide off elsewhere when I’d like it to.

I don’t think I will have much difficulty with the website since I already run a website for my netlabel, which I code in HTML and host on the free platform Neocities (https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/), and I think for my portfolio, I will do the same, since Neocities ties me back to the netlabel roots and I admire the free ethic of the service. I still obviously have a lot to learn, mind you, my knowledge of HTML is extremely basic, but I would rather make something from scratch than use any of these template-based drag and drop services, just so I am learning something during the construction of the site and not just feeding it information, I want to learn how to make a site that looks professional, which my label site does not really adhere to, hence the URL.

We were shown some of the past students’ sites this session, and some of them were quite abstract for what I expect a portfolio site to be, which I think is probably good for an art portfolio to be, showing creativity for the design. A lot of them were quite barebones information-wise, I guess as a way to present the work without intervening much and keep the information compartmentalised to a different section. We were not told the grades given to the sites, mind you, so I’m not sure if this is the way to go or not, but it is something to definitely think about – how much needs explaining? And how much should I present? I have a ridiculous amount of output online, so I should figure out if I want this site to be a portal leading to all of them or to go with the approach I mentioned prior like Lucy Johnson, make this site just lead to work I would like employers to see, which gives the best first impression, but then the site is redundant if it is displaying the same information as my Instagram, but how much redundancy matters in the online landscape is a bit trivial also.