Like Ms. Sherman, my creative process involves being alone, thinking, devising, mentally-sketching, tweaking, re-tweaking, re-thinking; sharing for feedback, and then re-tweaking some more. It’s emblematic of the contemporary, technology-enabled artist, in a way. Creative types have so many resources available: so many mediums to muck around in, so many visual sandboxes (like Adobe CSx–Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier); audio playgrounds (like Reaktor, Ableton, FL Studio) and platforms for interdisciplinary / cross-medium work (like Max/MSP, etc).
…
When I applied to art colleges, I was so disheartened by the rampant insistence that I choose a medium. I didn’t like the feeling of being forced to create within an established “language” (medium) that could be critically evaluated (by critics who specialized in media). Then I found California Institute of the Arts, was accepted, and played and played and played and finally found my voice. A voice that was me, and not limited to choice of media, but one that used media to express the ideas I wanted to introduce to the world.
And that, I feel, is true contemporary artistry. Knowing that the clay of the world is yours to play with and yours to enjoy.
What really makes a music scene? You know–those certain reasons that make you put on a jacket and promptly head for the El or call a cab just to get there in time. That’s what Chicago Innovative Electronic Music (CIEM) and subVariant are asking via their Crowdsourced 1.0 event: What is it about electronic music that people want to see live?
It really is a heady question. But, CIEM & subVariant‘s preliminary answer seems to be: "That which is "crowdsourced."
To the unfamiliar, "crowdsourced" means that the content that is the most popular "rises to the top" via votes–as in, the crowd chooses what’s the most relevant. On Digg.com (a popular news and entertainment aggregator) the front page is filled with only the content that has been voted up through "diggs." Threadless is also a good example: only the designs that are voted hottest actually make it to production.
On April 10, CIEM will test their theory in the electronic music world. Electronic music fans and supporters were asked to vote on a number of the submissions from Chicago artists to determine the lineup for the night. After approximately 600 online-votes later, the results were in, and the top four will perform in order of the number of votes recieved.
It’s democracy in electronic music. Like, seriously, democracy. Not that "republic" stuff that’s been thrown around. These artists have been chosen by the people, for the people.
I put together a compilation of melodic IDM / deep techno called Robohustlin for my label, subVariant. I put out an open call for submissions in July and got an amazing collection of submissions. I decided to go with minimal techno / melodic IDM since that was submitted the most. Hope you enjoy!
Chaircrusher’s “Crow Beat” and Milipede’s “30,000″ take a somewhat dark, harder approach, while tracks like Diarmo’s “Details” and Matt Wolfe’s “4:09am” hover somewhere between hopefulness and melancholy, held together with intricate rhythmic programming.
In keeping with subVariant’s tongue-in-cheek, music-as-consumer-product design aesthetic (see Subvaritrax, Exception AM), Robohustlin‘s digital cover lists the individual artists as separate “cures” in a packaging style based on the popular cough & cold medication, Robitussin.
Last Thursday was beset by technical difficulties, so I’m re-doing the virtual release party tonight. Watch the post on the subVariant page in case I need to switch back to Stickam again: Robohustlin Virtual Release Party
I’ve put together an IDM compilation on my label, subVariant and I’ll be doing a virtual release party on Thursday.
…Robohustlin, is a curated collection of melodic IDM, ambient and glitch tracks from Chicago and beyond… All thirteen tracks were chosen from an open call for songs in July-August of 2010, and represent the highest quality and most discernable sonic dedication that fit with the general theme that organically emerged over the course of weeding through all the submissions.
Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 9pm CST
Robohustlin with be premiered in a live DJ set by Liz Revision on Ustream on at ustream.tv/channel/live-at-subvhq (embedded below).
Friday, September 24, 2010 at 10am CST
The compilation can be downloaded from www.subvariant.com
Here’s the .tsi file for the M-Audio X-Session Pro for Traktor Pro that I used on my latest mix: “The Consequences.” The photo shows how I set up the top knobs and the rest is pretty standard, with soft-takeovers on the faders and effect knob. The file is not backwards compatible for earlier versions of Traktor.
I put together a compilation of melodic IDM / deep techno called Robohustlin for my label, subVariant. I put out an open call for submissions in July and got an amazing collection of submissions. I decided to go with minimal techno / melodic IDM since that was submitted the most. Hope you enjoy!
I’ve put together an IDM compilation on my label, subVariant and I’ll be doing a virtual release party on Thursday. 
