fly

This month, I found a PlayStation 2 Eyetoy Webcam at CEX for a grand total of £1. It made me so happy to see it because I thought it was the most beautiful piece of garbage I'd ever seen. A camera from 2002 with a resolution of 480p at best, for less than a sausage roll... It was beautiful in a way that was going to be difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't trained themselves to see that kind of beauty. Inspiring. When I took it home, I found out it was completely unable to interface with my modern windows 11 PC, so I went to extreme lengths to set up a virtual environment for it, get the drivers working, and unearth old versions of proprietary software in order to get a functioning webcam. It took a few days, but it worked! And I THEN discovered it had the worst microphone I'd ever heard, so I decided to write a song about it and then record parts of it using my new PS2 eyetoy camera. In order to do this, I needed to download the drivers onto a virtual installation of Windows XP, then track it using a version of Audacity from 2005 while simultaneously tracking in my modern DAW. I would then send the file back to the host computer, bring it into the DAW, stretch it out by 50% and pitch it down an octave in order to not sound like a chipmunk. Lyrics: When you awoke You were in a home, created just for you A dream of ones and zeroes, all to get a better view For 20 years You were locked away, till one bright day came by Cathedrals built by no one, that anyone can find When I call up To the sunbeams, "Pray let down your golden hair" Let it fall over the mountains in a tousle we can share And water melts Into rivers, slow and hazy, through the pines Cathedrals built by no one, that anyone can find You untold life of me, Murmured throughout your leaves The cyclic chemistry Our term has come And in the saline air Of unknown time Cathedrals built by no one, that anyone can find The slated cliffs Don't mistake me, don't pretend that there won't be The outline of her lips carved into rocks by waves at sea Along the beach Something's out there, if we trace a gentle line Cathedrals built by no one, that anyone can find L'inconnu de ma vie Chuchotant sous tes racines La chimie qui nous lie Notre heure sonne Et dans l'air salin, Temps qui décline, Cathedrals built by no one, that anyone can find

portrait on a stone

A message about something seen at an airport

An experiment with using reflective fabric on a simple flapping bird puppet. Made by Saskia Tomlinson, Music by Luke Tomlinson and Filming by Ana Clark.

I've always enjoyed how fabric and textiles float in the air. Sometimes you can even see bird like figures.

Yeah...

My first IAM. A little experiment combining digital and physical techniques to explore basic animation.

my friend laura made a zine for inamonth in march and i liked it a lot so then i asked her how i might make one myself and then she showed me how and now this exists luckily managed to get a theme about flight in the exact month i travelled to barcelona, so this is the product of every brain cell i could find and smush together while shuffling my way through barcelona airport

My inspiration with this piece was a field recording of birdsong in Beckenham Place Park, which runs throughout the track (you can also hear a plane flying overhead). The field recording and my treatment of it was taken directly from track 4 of my EP, 'Archaic Remnants', which is out 1st May. I thought it was apt to borrow this from the EP considering this month's submissions will go out on the EP's release day. I was recently in Northumberland, where I visited the Farne Islands. There, the Atlantic Puffins had arrived, and I captured some recordings of their loud calls. I processed these recordings with granular synthesis and resampling to make textured pads and the more melodic elements of the piece. The result is a piece of music made entirely from the sounds of things that fly.

'Fly' was a nice excuse to finally flesh out some thoughts that have been knocking around my head since about 2019 and things got weird and personal very quickly. Bonus pic of how the sausage gets made (SLOPPILY!) Will I revisit this? Absolutely, in future. Did I learn/experiment with new things I otherwise wouldn't have in the process of forcing myself to do it right now to a set deadline? Also yes. (Everything I am and everything I've ever made has a thread of Horne and Comeau's A Softer World running through it, but page 2 especially so, so it feels appropriate to acknowledge.)