Roll Your Own Artist Residency

I’m spending this week at The Scarehouse to focus on music, sound, video, and immersive environments. Sure, in this networked world, I could pretty much just phone it all in from my home in Baltimore, but there is a lot to be gained from being away from home and its many distractions to focus in on just one thing. Even though I’ve arranged my work week so I can be home a full three days every week, there are still many shiny things competing for my attention. Housework. Errands. PS3. Skyrim (yes, I just started playing it a couple weeks ago). Drinks with friends. I have no idea how those of you with kids in the mix get anything done at all!

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Photo: My little setup this week at ScareHouse.

In all that, I may at most get a few hours a week for the sort of “deep dive” that I require to create something of quality. Also, while my wife provides a great sounding board for ideas, it’s good to get feedback from others and give her ears a break. What I desperately needed was a significant chunk of time removed from my usual orbit to immerse myself in sound and the flow of creative process.

This all may seem obvious, but how often do we really do it? Take a week off just for our art!? Can’t we squeeze it in between all the other things? Sure, but we do that because we have to, not because it’s optimal. Far from it. 

This is roughly the third time I’ve done this and it’s always resulted in something worthwhile. I may not have ended up with single complete product, but I usually end up with a lot of little ideas that I can pick up later during less inspired moments and work to the finish. When I did this in 2010, I ended up with half the ideas and a lot of video footage for the FEVER BRAIN BATTERY album. This time, I’m chopping up and remixing recordings from the 1920’s, marrying them with new beats and sounds, and seeing what happens. It loosely relates to new (and currently secret) projects happening at The Scarehouse, so some of the output will end up there. As I’m working, I occasionally take off my headphones, crank up the monitors, and see how people react. Instant feedback! I’ve also been walking around the haunt, eyeing up the new spaces and getting a sense of what might play well in there. The ScareHouse set designers are pretty brilliant, so I’m not wanting for inspiration.

Okay, so you may not have access to a large haunted attraction–and even if you did, it might not be your ideal site for an artist residency. But try this: close your eyes and picture what, for you, would be the ideal mobile creative work environment. Decide what your most essential tools are for making your art, and picture them in this space. Maybe your tools are so large that you need a special studio, in which case your options are pretty well narrowed down for you. But maybe you have a friend or relative in another state with a really cool basement or back porch. And maybe they work all day and don’t mind giving you the run of the place. Or maybe they’re around just enough to check in and give you feedback. That doesn’t sound ideal? Scrap that plan and start over. Maybe you need to put aside the time and money to go to an actual workshop/retreat with an instructor and other students to inspire you. But I believe that it’s possible to create an atmosphere from whatever is at hand and whomever you know. (If you’re a creative person who does not know any creative friends, you definitely need to find some new friends!) Once you’re done visualizing your ideal temporary work space, surrounded by the right people (or no people at all) think about where and how to make that happen.

It’s not going to happen on its own. While I’m sure they’re happy to have me at ScareHouse, I invited myself for the week. They no longer think it strange that I may want to show up, occupy a large table with my stuff and pace around listening, tweaking, taking photos, shooting video, staring out the window, and asking all sorts of random questions. Whatever it is you need to do to create–you want that to be totally normal behavior during your retreat.

It’s also important to have some goals. And it’s just as important that you are able to abandon those goals if better, more urgent ones, come along. I have a long list of goals, some of which cannot be finished in a week. As long as I’ve made progress on any of them, and maybe even achieved one of them, then I’ll feel like I’ve achieved something. Usually it’s the new, surprising opportunities that come along during the retreat that you end up being glad for.

Do not expect everything to work out beautifully during your first DIY residency. In 2010, the space I chose for my impromptu “studio” turned out be less than optimal. I also brought way too much stuff, which bogged me down and made me feel sad that I was not using it all. Even still, I was able to readjust and lots of good things came out of that week. When I came home, I had a new perspective on how to improve my home studio as well. The work I started that week definitely would not have existed if I had not thrown myself into that new environment.

Even if the work you create ends up getting scrapped, it’s not so much about the product. It’s about getting the opportunity to focus on something you love doing and fanning the creative embers. That is never a bad thing.

One last tip: be careful about reentry. Returning to the day-to-day grind after being so unfettered can be downright painful. Be nice to yourself and others, and understand that whatever you’re doing is necessary so that you can eventually return to your creative space.  

I’m curious: have any of you done this? Let me know in comments or elsewhere on the social webs (see below) how you have made time and space to make your art.

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Sound Design Course on Coursera

Oh hi. I haven’t posted here in a while, but I won’t dwell upon it or riddle this page with apologies. I’ve been plenty busy elsewhere on the internets. I definitely need to learn that blogging is not the same as writing, say, an essay for a literary journal. I just need to pick a topic and go without over-thinking it.

So here goes.

I’d like to sing the praises of Coursera. It’s a completely free portal through which you can sign up and take college-level courses, tests and all. You get a certificate upon completion, but no college credit. These days, I’d rather just have the knowledge anyway.

A friend of mine talked me into taking a course on Sound Design and I initially resisted. My resistance was manifold. I felt like I was “too cool for school” at this point and have been engaged in completely self-directed learning for many years. Then there was the embarrassment of saying I was taking a course in something that I’ve already achieved some level of expertise and success in. Would I be bored?

And then there’s the fact that I hate tests. I’ve never enjoyed testing, but now that I’ve been away from them for a while, they seem increasingly antiquated. I’m talking about traditional tests (which are still 99% of them), which are all text and have you answer multiple choice or true/false questions. They are as much about linguistic trickery and mental regurgitation as they are about testing knowledge of a subject. If you’re good at language games, you’d be good at testing no matter what the subject, even if your functional knowledge is essentially zero. If you have perfect memory, you also should also do well. But shouldn’t tests in any subject do more than test memory and linguistic ability?

I’m not calling for radical, unimagined change. Certainly, in this day and age, someone can design test questions that combine sound and visuals (and maybe even some interactivity) to probe one’s true knowledge of a subject like Sound Design. Sure, it would take more effort to create than a written test, but it would also approximate an accurate assessment of knowledge. Do I sound bitter? Being dyslexic, I often do look back at the many years I was subjected to the Testing Industrial Complex and think about how much wasted time that was.

Okay, end rant. Where was I? Coursera. The course I took does not fix any of my issues about testing. It uses a very traditional test format. But the other aspects of the course were fabulous. I found it enriching despite the fact that I already knew a good deal of the material because it was organized so well. Steve Everett, the professor, walked us through the major aspects of sound and drew connections directly to modern music technology we can use right now. I did learn some new tidbits along the way, and I find it never hurts to go back over the basics. Having the fundamentals explained to you in a different way than you initially learned them can help you make new connections and a deeper understanding. It can also get you excited about a subject all over again. On those counts, the course was a total success for me. Especially when it comes to synthesizers–I’m using them with a new confidence and zeal. Thanks, Professor Everett!

Another thing I’m reminded about college-level courses is that they do, in fact, require work. If I was taking this course with little background (as I will with most other courses) I’m sure it would have not seemed at all simple or easy to learn all the concepts. I will have have to set aside some quality time if I expect to get the most out of the Game Theory course I’m eyeing up.

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