Digital gardening 02
"World-building" but somewhere you'd actually want to live
I have been off Instagram and Facebook for almost a month. I don't think about it at all! I'm still playing festivals and shows, selling merch, and working on my record. So far, no business decline.
Here's a pic from Full Circle festival, where I played on Friday with my awesome bandmates Daisy and Clare.
Last week I wrote about my digital gardening practice. This week I'd like to spark a conversation about what creating a digital garden— or other types of curated, personal digital spaces— can offer artists looking for alternatives to social media.
Is it possible that an audience can be a byproduct of our main pursuit— creating art? Think of all the artists that have gotten recognition by mistake. Vivian Meier comes to mind, as does Connie Converse (the latter may have been trying to find an audience for her work, but the music industry at the time didn't know how to sell her, so she remained unknown until 30 years after her disappearance). We all say that we're making art for ourselves, but do we mean it?
Now more than ever, we need to. Everywhere you look, sales pitches and advertisements are vying for your attention, and someone in a very dark room is optimizing an algorithm that processes your pupil dilation to better sell you things you want to need.
Participating in that space (social media) as an artist is devastating. The building blocks that make up our world (time, connection) dissolve as soon as they hit the vapour barrier of the grid. All of a sudden you're on a new plane, with vastly different values, and you can't figure out how to get people to stay on your reel longer than 0.8 seconds. Go write a song, not a TikTok hook.
If you are making art for yourself, writing blog posts that you like, pulling at threads of curiosity that make you light up, and developing depth and lore within your world, it will show. It's the difference between an artist you fall in love with, and one you forget about.
"Build a digital ecosystem that exists primarily for itself. A world that doesn’t need likes, traffic, subscribers, or clicks in order to validate its existence."
This is why websites are king. The format is totally up to you! It is a limitless canvas big enough to hold everything you dream up. Web 1.0 still exists in our hearts. My friend Jonny built his own site from scratch to hold all of his wild animations and installations, and I’m so inspired.
Upcoming Things
I'm opening for Mo Kenney this Thursday, June 26 at the Sanctuary Arts Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. As I'm writing this, tickets are very low! You might still be able to snag one at this link.
Coming soon: Open Chord Morning Club! Location TBD— somewhere in Halifax/Dartmouth. A weekly co-working space to work on your boring artist admin. We all have SOCAN notifications of live performance to submit, bookkeeping to catch up on, tours to advance, and websites to update. Let's do it together! Details coming soon. Let me know if you’re super keen, it’ll light a fire under my ass to get this going.
Okay if, you’ve gotten this far, I have a shameless favour to ask of you. Last tour, we used the house swap app Kindred to off-set accommodations costs, and it was hugely helpful. If you get an account and use my referral code, it will give me two free nights :) and it will give you five free nights! Wow! <3 I will be using this app for all future touring, if possible. It’s the best.