Creative Review- 'Vinyl frontier'

An article I read recently that I thought to be interesting was one on BBC News, linked from another page, under the tagline 'Vinyl Frontier'. The article was written in correlation with the recent event "Record Store day"- 'a celebration of popular music culture with particular appeal for those who collect rare vinyl releases'. The event is international, and sees a vast array of limited edition vinyl records by a plethora of artists released all on one day, at independant record stores. I attended a participating store in Manchester on the day to pick up a record; my four-hour wait in a line, wrapping around the block attests to the event's massive popularity, which is the topic the article addresses. Vinyl has been seen to be an archaic format in decline, 'doomed to extinction' along with even CDs and all physical formats- as indicated by the collapse of HMV... however, things appear to have been changing recently. The story reports a large increase in vinyl album sales since 2008, and the massive popularity of Record Store Day served to kill any doubt of this. I find this trend to be interesting, because it seems to defy the widespread fears of a kind of 'digital revolution'... the death of the physical, and rise of the digital- with both music and art. As a collector in general, I love to own physical copies of the music I like, and I feel the vinyl record is the greatest format- the album artwork on a satisfying 12"x12" scale, and the record itself as an object of interest and ceremony, as opposed to a disposable digital file. Perhaps this rise in popularity is a reflection of a general resurgance in the value placed on physically owning art, which is surely great news for most.

Memory

For the latest project. the title given was 'Mood and Memory'- A competition brief. After some consideration, I decided to depart from the original brief in order produce something I felt worked, rather than attempt to enter the competition with some kind of compromise. It asked us to produce work reflecting the music of Gustav Holst's 'The Planets', while relating to memory- which I found to be seperately viable concepts, but too disparate to combine in a way that worked. I decided instead to simply focus on the memory aspect, a theme I have worked with for the previous two briefs and have found to be interesting

My first idea was to work with the concept of 'Biological Memory', how the Earth 'remembers' its past through such means as fossils, or how a creature's anatomy retains similarities to long-gone ancestors. To start with, I created this piece:

This piece of course reflects the evolutionary origins of modern birds. The dinosaur was painted in ink, and applied to a photo of mine. I had hoped to continue this theme with further photogrphy-illustration hybrids, but I realised this route became very limited due to my lack of relevant photo resources.

After reaching a logistical dead-end, it become obvious I had to once again alter plans. Instead of this idea, I thought about reflecting the memory of people, and how it may live on through creative legacies; art, music and literature. Each time a book is read for example, the memories, thoughts and feelings of an individual are relived by another. In this sense, a mortal may become eternal. As a subject, I chose to depict American poet and author Edgar Allan Poe. I felt he was a good choice for the emotive potency of many of his works, with their dark themes appealing personally- Additionally, I feel his portraits reflect a melancholic and tortured man, almost as if he was a character invented around his works. The portrait-photo is dated from 1848-

http://literature.wikia.com/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

The following are the pieces i created-

I decided to paint with ink again, rather than draw with pen or pencil, as I felt this would yield the most appropriate, dark and grungey aesthetic- and of course, the connotations of flowing, Raven-black ink. I started with his portrait, attempting an expressive and free style, painting water over the ink while wet to allow bleed. 

From this I deccided i could create individual elements that could be combined, in the style of my Age UK work. The next pieces reflect this-

And then Poe once more:

I then proceeded to combine and arrange the paintings digitally. Here are the results:

 

With each piece, I wanted to portray the idea of the man behind the words manifesting- a living memory, each time they are heard and read. The textured paper and sepia tones helped to give the appropriate aged feel, while the ink marks contributed a sense of darkness and mood.  I was pleased with the resulting images, particularly the last. Given more time, i feel the project could be greatly explored using this format, with a range of authors, musicians, artists...etc.