[WINDOWS]
Windows is my concept album. At the beginning of the year, I told Dr. Preston I wanted to create a concept album. But the thing is, I'm very bad at making traditional music. I can't play guitar, nor sing, nor play drums. But one thing I do have is a wide variety of creative outputs under my belt. That said, I couldn't think of a specific thing to do it on for the longest time. My PC folders are full of emptied, burned out, bored ideas that I thought would be interesting until I did them and hated them so much I deleted them. That's when the idea struck me - Windows. Computers. It's something that has always been in our lives since this generation was born. The first generation to have this. There's something mystical and ominous about clean, clear, windows gliding across a screen, whether you're in a dirty desert trailerhouse or a giant beachfront mansion. Artificial serenity. So that's what my concept was. From then, I wondered how many thing I can relate to it. Of course, considering I've been interested mostly in clothing for the past 2 years or so, my first thought was to design a small capsule collection. I showed this off thanks to the fine help of Terry and Laike.
These 3 shirts were what I had to present physically to the class. The rest have yet to be made because I would need to get them all professionally done. As you can tell by the pictures, they are weird looking and stiff. That's because every printing shop in town was closed, and the only thing open was michaels - for Iron-ons and blank gildan shirts. But once I get them really done, I plan on opening a web store and allowing them to be bought online and in real life.
As you can see by the lookbook, there is a lot of very subdued, hidden messages of my central theme in there - a mixture of serene beauty, and the machine that lurks behind it. But these clothes were not all. Although the film I made was very early on in my process, and it doesn't fit the theme as closely as I like, I made this early on with a similar idea in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmRodX3EwI
So I had film down, I had clothes / graphic design down, but what else could there be? Well, since it is an "Album", I had to find a way to include this. Of course, much of the themes in this were inspired by working on these early in the morning listening to some of my favorite "internety" albums. So I teamed up with my friend Keagan, of Royal Suns, and he helped me make a 6 minute acoustic guitar piece. But guitar wasn't enough, it's a traditional instrument and the aesthetic doesn't really fit with mine. So I put it into Audacity, a free music editor, and created something totally different out of it. You might be listening to it right now, considering it's the first song on my Blog playlist and it autoplays. Just in case you aren't hearing it, or want to favorite / repost it on Soundcloud, HERE it is.
So that's it. I plan on continuing this as well, in the fall which I already have ideas for. But I really don't want to do what I am known to do sometimes, which is picking something up and then finding a cooler idea and leaving the last one unfinished, so I'm trying my hardest to only focus on this for now. I will update my blog with links and such once I get prices down, a shop up, and stock in. Maybe I'll do pre-orders. Not sure yet. But I am glad I finally narrowed down my ideas into one solid concept project! I would love to expand this into the physical realm as well and make some kind of popup shop, adding interior design and a little architecture into my tool belt.
On to the future! [windows]
