An Introduction.
One need not visit the Library of Congress nor the cave paintings of Chauvet to realize we humans are content secreting creatures. We are well past the cusp of the information age and the window into the human imagination has blown open in pixelated, retina burning glow.
In the wee distant age of the 90s, the interwebs were still in a state of free frontier. The plots had not been subdivided. The horses of individual creativity remained un-corralled. In many ways, this was most exemplified by ‘Vanity Sites’; those lone outpost of personal journals and meandering diaries that were the evolutionary ancestor to the blog.
It has often seemed to me, the whole term “Vanity Site” has been tacked on to these early pioneering sites as corporate spin. In many ways they were way less vain and narcissistic than what passes on the endless feeds of todays social media. More personal and universal at the same time; like good art and content should be.
At some point, gradually, enterprise caught wind that we humans would willingly, hand over fist, give our scribblings and scrawlings out wholesale. It took a few iterations to get the golden ratio of formatting and feature sets just right. But once in place, we gladly trusted the content of our minds and lives to the new ministers of content. It’s not that I do not see the worth of Facebook, Twitter, etc; it’s just that these sites work best as aggregators of information and not the hub of the wheel.
In many ways, this has become a motivation for creating this blogspace. To move the center point of my own content back to where it rightfully belongs. It’s been a long time in the works and I’ve really enjoyed the process of creating and destroying and creating it.
No doubt, a lot of the content here will revolve around music that I create. But now that I have a place to call my own, be not surprised if you see the occasional post on film, books, food and whatever else I feel inspired by.
Some notes on it’s creation:
The site was built off of a very striped down WordPress theme. No flash was used for any of it’s animated parts or otherwise, just HTML5. Getting mouseover images to work in wordpress nav_menu is not very obvious or intuitive and requires a bit of hackery. Google web fonts are awesome.
I spent a fair bit of time debating on whether to use sound on the website. There seems to be quite a bit of opinion against the use of sound in designing a site out there in forumlandia. In the end, I decided to use some sound design in the mouseover events. I work a lot in sound and showcasing sound design is another key motivation for creating the site.