Being An Incremental Artist

I have published a lot of work this month; a new album launch, several Live Takes Remixes and updates to my games. This is the sort of life I want to lead, being a prolific incremental artist. This is the modern approach I take to sustainably be able to make art, have a full time job, and keep up with the rest of my life. It also is a win for the modern artist. With many distractions from social media, technology, and multi tasking work mindsets; having an incremental method of constant work is the better approach to get that continues small dopamine hit in my brain and make meaningful progress towards my activities. This is a blog post that discusses how I do it. In order to hopefully help you!

Contextual Creation

Why and What

First off, I have put a lot of time into thinking about my work as a piece of self help. I have already spent a lot of time reflecting on what I want to achieve and how I want to achieve it. That has been written about in great lengths on my blog and in my Newsletters, so I won’t go into that here. However, in knowing why I want to create art, helps me to define my goals and what art I create. This is the medium of creation, the outlets in which to publish and the other contextual elements of creation. It has helped me define the projects I want to work on and help limit the scope of creation. In the past I have tried so many different creative outlets, this has been great as I have gotten to try new media technologies, have great experiences and meet inspiring people. However, there is still the obvious downside in being stretched too thin. I have now opted, in my incremental artist approach, to do only a few things at once and then cycle/move to new things as I do it. You can see this a lot in my Live Takes, as I move to different modes and tools of music creation for a few weeks at a time. What is also defined by energy and creation ideas for that medium. I go into that a bit later, but knowing to jump and take hold of the muse while you have it, is vital to the continuous aspect of the incremental artist approach.

Who and Where

This recently came up in conversation with some film maker collaborators of mine that told me they were sick of posting “into the void” on social media, and to actually submit their work to festivals to have launches. This is something I had been considering and grappling with for a while. My annoyance with social media made me set up this website, have great archive tool such as Vimeo (instead of free ones like Youtube) and create my newsletter. These made me actually focus on curating how the experience of my art was enjoyed, and formed a community around my art, instead of shouting into the social media black hole. The evils of data collection, AI scraping and other downsides of social media, do not outweigh them being free or having large audience bases anymore. Of course these tools still have use, such as reaching some new audience, but the curated tools allow me to be the artist I want to be. That is the goal setting part. Thinking about who I want to spend time with, helps free up time to create by leaving out the people who do no bring me joy. This sort of reflection, helps me guide towards time with people who creatively or emotionally support or fill my soul. Even if there is “must sees” from time to time, I know these folks are ones I will need to create ‘space’ for wellness activities before and after seeing them, to create a cushion or buffer of joy.

When and How

When to create is a part of the what. The time and space I set for my art has been broken into two groups; gaps and slots. Gaps are the times in the day where I jot down an idea, or play test a mechanic. This can be a lunch break at work, between life admin tasks on the weekend, or any other small gap to incrementally achieve small tasks towards a great goal. Slots are defined as set aside purposeful blocks of time, to work on art and make bigger project steps. These are the creative retreats, holidays or whole weekend days. I have been refining the how of this, for a long time. While I know it shifts over time, I have settled on, long form written notes and to do lists on my iPad; and the short fleshed out thoughts on in my physical note book. Both have the joy of hand writing the ideas, either digitally or in the analogue, but this combined approach gives me the organisational and accessibility powers of Apple Notes/Reminders and the distraction free, archivists approach to a pencil notebook. It can be said that of course the How is encompassed in this and then other parts of the formula of Contextal Creation. All of it together is what makes up my process. There are other tools I have done to define goals and set them.

The Pursuit Map

This has applied in my creative life, personal life and work life. I suggest that you do the same, in order to set meaningful goals. This idea came from Sahil Bloom.

The Pursuit Map is a blank 2x2 matrix, with the X-axis representing Competency Level (from low to high competency) and the Y-axis representing Energy (from energy draining to energy creating).

I decided to write one of these for work and art. As you can see from the shared “art” map, it is interesting to layout exactly what gives you energy. I originally thought a Z axis for this could be one for “enjoyment” but I figure I would only write things I enjoy on here. This is of course a snapshot in time, in the sense that the discrete items elected, and their placement on the graph might and will change over time. But it is a great tool to show what I might consider some tasks I want to allow more time for, if they are energy draining, or ones that U should put more effort towards if they are energy giving. In terms of competency, it is more for alignment on things you need to work on as an artist, because eventually most things will move towards high competency. This was one thing I found for the “work” map I did, most tasks were high competency as I have had a fairly stable career progression so far, even if I have been in many different jobs. Give it a go for yourself and see what comes from it.

Creative Output Tracker 14

This month, I started my Creative Output Tracker 14. I have spoken about them before a few times, and I started this all the way back on January 2 2022! It is the tracker that allows me to keep account of the activities that I do in the week, in order to encourage doing them! Accountability and consistency are the purposes. Each one is a 12 week tracker that shows if I have posted a blog post, made a Live Takes, continued an existing project and posted something to social media about Max Msp. It has been the biggest encouragement tool that I have used for a long time to help myself work. It is sustainable as it is only a few minor works a week, and it enables me to actually see what I have done at a glance. Try it if you have not already, it really helps! It can take many different forms. I have seen friends do this with sticker charts and have used apps, journals and more. Speaking of apps…

Habitica

At the beginning of the year, I was recommended the Habitica App. It lets you make a character to encourage yourself to achieve things. Your character unlocks new things and levels up with new abilities, based on your class. I created a Warrior there to track goals, habits and tasks that are across the various aspects of my life. This has been an excellent tool to help be develop basic habits and goals, like going for walks and drinking water; to tracking big tasks like doing my taxes and major creative projects. It has helped me create new goals and habits, and reinforce ones I wanted to get better at. I and my partner are in a party that go on quests together and take on challenges, to unlock new gear, unlock new pets and mystical items. I have logged into this app everyday since January 1st this year. I have never had consistency like that in anything before. I highly recommend that you do it, so that you can embitter yourself. Join me there if you want!

The Mantra

Forever ago, on my old blog, I wrote a mantra. That letter was transferred over to my new site here. This post is really just a continuation of the mantra, in one aspect at least. Thank you all for reading this, and I hope it helps. The community I have begun to build with you all has brought me so much joy, and it makes me want to keep creating. It is the want to share my work with you for your benefit, and the archives to creativity in general, is part of the reason why I continue to do this. As a thank you for you all, I wish to repeat it so that you can form it and keep it in your mind. Keep up the work, keep up the work, keep up the work!