A Space Pilgrim
Idea Portfolio
Introduction
The conception of this project started about two years ago. For a while, I was pondering the possibility of an album crossing over with digital art and written content to create some kind of visual and auditory narrative. This idea was cemented for me in the realm of possibility when I started researching concept albums for my research paper. What fascinated me was the various ways that musicians have used to build on the narrative of their album. Like Coldplay creating a comic series and animations about the adventures of Mylo Xyloto, or like Gorillaz bringing the virtual band to life with holographic projections and animated overlays.
As a multidisciplinary artist, I have the drive to learn many different art forms and I often envisioned how I would pair them together. Specifically, when creating a project where music would be the primary art form, I always visualised it as a website with animated art as you scroll and text giving context to the project, with all the different parts of the website functioning like chapters. Unfortunately, I was not able to find the website that first gave me the inspiration for this idea. It was a website for an upcoming video game where, as you scrolled, you revealed the main character standing in front of a beautiful landscape with birds flying out of tries and sound effects of nature. All I remember was the feeling that website left me with and a thought, just me asking "What if this website, as an experience, was by itself the product?". Of course, there are ways to monetise that which even makes it financially viable. At the start of this year, learning about concept albums and how technology has affected them, I finally saw how I can bring my idea to life.
Process
I tend to have a risky strategy for the completion of creative work. My process, I have noticed, tends to break down into three distinct phases: observation, experimentation and production. During the observation phase, I initially have an idea for which I spend a good amount of time doing what seems like nothing. On the surface, it seems like I am procrastinating but what my brain is excellent at doing is observing my surrounding, all the music, art, philosophical ideas or other concepts I come in contact with and organising them in the context of my project. What I end up with is a bunch of ideas that I can experiment with and grow into the many parts of the creative work. The experimentation phase, often time blends into the observation phase in terms of timeline, but closer to the deadline it starts to solidify the ideas and concepts of the project leading up to the production. The final phase is simply creating the product.
How long these three phases take, seem to be controlled by a phenomenon called Parkinson's Law. The Merriam-Webster definition explains: "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". In other words, the amount of time it will take for my project to be completed depends on how much time there is between when I start and the deadline. Admittedly, I tend to do most of it closer to the deadline, a habit that I am trying to break. The amount of work necessary for the completion of the project is static, therefore the less amount of time I have for its completion, the less time it will take. I have observed the same phenomenon in many aspects of my life.
In addition to that, according to Paul Kleiman's paper on Learning at the Edge of Chaos, I tend to operate closer to the edge of chaos for the majority of my project. What that means is that I use a chaotic approach which is rewarding in the amount of creativity it fosters, but also risky due to how easy it is to completely fall into chaos and lack the structure necessary for the completion of the project. In retrospect, the amount of risk I took for this specific project was too high and if I wasn't as prepared as I ended up being for the production of the album, I wouldn't have completed it in time. With that said, here is how I created A Space Pilgrim.
Phase One: Conception and Observation
After I started researching concept albums, I recognised the possibility to create an album as part of the requirements for my university degree. I started this academic year one month later than normal, therefore the first phase of my project took place from October until the end of December.
The Story and its Message
Firstly, I started considering the concept of my album holistically and the kind of story I wished to tell. I decided to create a story about a pilgrim, with inspiration from my music that I created for the completion of my BA2 (themed around space) and my journey through university. The protagonist goes on an adventure with the exclusive goal to find a hidden treasure of their civilisation but realises that the journey and the beautiful things you can find on your way are way more meaningful. I also wanted to convey that when turning your attention within yourself, you can find answers that are not apparent in the external world. I will, later on, explain the story as it developed through my process.
Revisiting Greek Music
When I started this project, it happened that I had a newfound fascination with a couple of different things that ended up playing a big role in the final project. One of them was my musical heritage as a person of Cypriot nationality. I found myself in a situation where I started falling in love with Cypriot and Greek music, but with a new kind of curiosity to explore it using the skills I developed as a university student. I revisited the old classics I loved but ventured deeper into Spotify playlists and gave songs I was not familiar with a fair chance.
One of the songs that are very significant to me is The Pilgrim (O Proskynitis) by Alkinoos Ioannidis from his album The Adventures of a Pilgrim (from the context of the lyrics I heard and the title, I think this album might be a concept album as well). It is very popular amongst Greek music listeners and it inspired the title of this project. I imagined myself in the place of this space pilgrim and the parallels of his adventure with my journey moving to Scotland, the expectations I had, and how the things I am now leaving Scotland with are experiences and lessons that I could never predict I would have. This gave me the idea of using Greek music to represent the unknown but beautiful things we find in our journey, the ones that are so easy to miss if we are too focused on the destination. In my mind, it also makes sense, since my markers and external examiners for this project are not from Cyprus or Greece and for them, it would be to some extend unknown. When I lived in Cyprus, I also ignored the beauty in my surroundings and the opportunities I had, but through my experiences in Scotland, I have now learned to appreciate it and am excited to go back to explore what I missed. This brings strong personal intent to the story through the way it aligns with my experiences. Each song in this album is inspired by one or more pieces of music and I will later present how and why.
There is a famous poem by C. P. Cavafy, with which I had a lot of friction in high school. It says “When you set sail for Ithaca, wish for the road to be long, full of adventures, full of knowledge.” This poem is a different view on Homer's Odyssey, presenting Odysseus' journey back to his home in Ithaki as a blessing, an opportunity for growth and adventure. In retrospect, I believe that I am in some ways inspired by this poem for the message of my album, though I was not aware of it during its creation.
3D Audio
Another thing I was at the time fascinated with was 3D Audio. My exploration of that concept led me to the discovery of Ambeo Orbit, now replaced by dearVR Micro, a plugin that I used for the production of my album. This plugin allows stereo tracks to be transformed into 3D surround sound, emulating the sensation that instruments or sound are moving in the space around you, building some kind of virtual auditory stage. I found that this has been used with narration and sound effects to create 3D audio stories that immerse the listeners into their world, giving them a physical space within the story and interacting with them. On the other hand, I failed to find much evidence of it being used in music, and especially not taking advantage of how immersive it can be for storytelling purposes. I tried experimenting with this effect, which gave me some important insight on how it works and what it works the best for. I learned that It can only work on stereo tracks and also that the width knob is very important, especially for elements that are static on the sound stage. Unfortunately, the stems I downloaded for my experiment were part of an online remix competition and I do not have the rights to publish it, but you can find a demo of Ambeo Orbit here. ...
Character Ark
The structure of my story was modelled using the Hero's Journey. This storytelling device, popularised by Joseph Campbell, is a very common technique for the creation of a character arks and I first learned about it by watching various video essays explaining it and how it applies to popular franchises such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. It shows the character having a call for adventure, venturing away from their comfort zone and the realm of what is known to them, entering a situation where they are challenged, with the result of some form of realisation and transformation before the hero returns home and the cycle starts anew, but this time with the insight of the previous adventure.
My original idea started after the character has left their known world behind and were already in the uncertain part of their journey. The storyline included 6-7 pieces, illustrated in this rough sketch of the journey. Later on in the process, I made a lot of changes but this is the first tangible step I took towards the creation of my project.
Phase two: Experimentation
After processing all of the videos, music and reading I've interacted with, I was able to start materialising the ideas and experiment. This phase took place between January and March. During this period, the story had already matured in my mind and the majority of the experimentation was for the execution of the project.
Songwriting
For many years, I called myself out for being a terrible songwriter. Whether it was due to my perception of my songs or them actually being horrible, I never used to like what I made. This, and the fact that I love the lyrics in Greek music, is why I decided to challenge myself and attempt writing lyrics for my album. One of the first things I tried was to start writing the lyrics by themselves to no effect. For about a month I thought that my mistake was my process and I kept switching approaches. At first, I tried writing lyrics based on my ideas for the story but found it hard to do so without any music. Next, I tried writing a few chord and melodies to help me write the lyrics but it led to nothing as the chords were not yet connected to the concept in any way and didn't help me narratively. I was disappointed about it but I ended up only writing the lyrics during the production of the project months later. This showed me that it's easier for me to write lyrics not when I have the chords and melody, but when I have a concrete understanding of the song I am trying to write, its purpose and its meaning.
Soundscape
What I settled with was playing with sounds to get myself in the right mindset. To start, I found VST instruments that inspired and interested me. I took an approach in which I tried to first create the soundscape that the world exists in, building an image in my mind through the sounds, and then compose with the emotional/ sonic impact I wish to create. After finding or creating a list of sounds I wanted to include, I started planning out musical ideas and dividing them into the different parts/ pieces of the project. As I mentioned earlier, sonically this project was inspired by my second year project, which in some ways was a proof of concept for my album. Here is a very short extract of the kind of sounds I was experimenting with, all of which are in the final product in some way.
Song Analysis & Practice
Other than experimenting with sounds, I found helpful the process of listening to musical pieces, especially Greek songs, and practising my ear training by finding the chord progression, melody and harmony by ear. This process served two functions. Firstly, it helped me practice my piano skills which were important for the project due to how many virtual instruments I was thinking of using, played on a midi keyboard, as well as training my ear and compositional instinct. Warming up to the production of the music, these skills played a massive role both in the composition and recording of the songs. More importantly, the other function was analysing and deconstructing Greek songs that I was planning to use as my inspiration for my music.
These songs included the following: To Yasemi, an old Cypriot folk song which I took a lot of inspiration from for the creation of my piece The Journey in addition to the vocal performance from the song Avgoustos, To Domatio which is very close to my heart and used in Expectation, Stin Agora tou Al Chalili serving as inspiration for The Market and Yperastiko which in addition to the piece Hokage's Funeral from Naruto, primarily helped me get better at playing chords and melody simultaneously on the piano. I found that at some level all of these pieces also helped me understand how a melody can be structured based on the chords and was very useful when I was writing my songs. In the many times I listened to these songs, I also ended up picking up aspects of their product and mixing even though it was not as relevant to my project, but was very interesting for understanding the music itself, as well as the effect it has my phycology.
Concept Art
Another way I immersed myself in the world of this album was trying to create concept art. Once again this was both a way to practice and test my art skills, but also a way to find different art styles and narrow down my option for the final product.
First Drafts
Throughout these few months, I kept trying to write the songs I would use in the album, but that only ended up happening at the start of the production phase. Periodically I would write down an idea that I found interesting for the album using StaffPad, an application that transforms handwritten notation input to a score with real time midi playback. Here is an extract of my notes.
Phase three: Production
On the first of April, with 30 days left until submission, I started working on the third phase of the project. I dedicated two weeks to the composition of the music and two weeks to the recording and production of the final product.
Music Composition
Story alterations
First I made a few alterations to the story. I realised that I didn't need a whole song to show that the expectations of the characters have been subverted. I spent a good amount of time at the start of my composition finalising the story. A space pilgrim lands on a planet, he is greeted with a local marketplace where people are playing music and having fun. The temptation to fool around is strong but not as strong as his desire to find the treasure he seeks. He continues through the market and into the dense forest where he finds a temple. Exited he runs up the stairs, bursting into song from happiness, only to get disappointed. Opening the chest he doesn't find treasure, he finds wisdom. His immeasurable disappointment brings him to tear where he starts singing once again, expressing his disbelief. Through that expression, he slowly processes that wisdom and makes the realisation that the best treasure is the journey itself and with newfound confidence, he flies off into space, onwards to a new adventure. The reason I refer to the main character as the character or the protagonist is because I believe we all find ourselves in this kind of transformative journeys and even though this one is inspired by my own experiences, the protagonist could be anyone.
The Journey
I started with The Journey. I had momentum from analysing Greek music and found it easy to start with that song as it holds the most significant role in the album. The chords were inspired by To Yiasemi, as explained earlier, but the melody was vaguely inspired by Princess Leia's Theme from Star Wars. The D - Gm chords at the start reminds me of space, but also being the chord progression from To Yiasemi it had a double meaning, both representing the space adventure (Space theme) and the wonders you find on the way (Greek Music Theme). The chord progression on the verse alternates from the D - Gm motif to C - G which I believe changes the emotion from uncertainty to familiarity, representing musically what happens in the character, when he is starting to reach the realisation that will help him complete the hero's journey. The first and second chorus builds on a Fmaj7, G7, D7 progression, deliberately not playing any triads and using upper extensions to show that there is still uncertainty in the character and that the journey is still not done. Ultimately the first two choruses are building up for the last chorus which is a Bb7 - C/A - D7 progression (Bb7 and C/A sharing notes with Fmaj7 and G7) creating a climax inspired by the Super Mario victory sound effect. The chords are once again using extensions until the last repetition which is the triads of the chords representing the completion of the journey. The lyrics for this song came after the music and are very straight forward. I found that if I have strong intent with the music and its narrative, writing lyrics is not as difficult as I thought, though I still think that writing lyrics without that intent would be challenging for me.
Expectations
The second piece I worked on was Expectations. The chords and melody are inspired by To Domatio, as that song evokes for me the feeling of longing, the exact emotion that I wanted the character to have in this song. The chord progression developed with the lyrics (which are also very simple) so it was an intuitive process. I didn't put much thought into it as I wanted the song to be driven by emotion, causing me to note down any chord combination I felt was conveying the emotion of the part. The B7 at the end was inspired by Leave the door open, Bruno Mars new song, for no other reason than I liked it and I wanted to include it somewhere in the song. I think it ended up working well with the chord progression.
Space
The first piece was directly inspired by my old music, which meant highly chaotic and improvisational. The only thing I had to write down was the notes D F# G Bb. I also wrote a reminder to use Gm at some point as a musical foreshadowing for The Journey.
Anywhere
The ending of The Journey was what inspired the last track of the project. After I finished writing all the pieces, I realised that I used the key of D for all of them so I decided to represent this adventure with the tonality of this key. All pieces are in D, except The Market which is in Bm, D's relative minor. I thought that the best way to represent the start of a new journey for the character was to change the key right at the end. When I was experimenting with sounds for this piece I came across the sound used for the start and end of the album, which to me sounds like a spaceship taking off or zooming past the listener (depending on the mixing). I wrote down "use circle of fifths to modulate to other adventure". The chords I used are Bb - C - Gb and with that, I musically hint that the character is already setting a course for a new adventure.
Narration
After writing these four pieces I started thinking about how I was going to connect them. Having spoken narrative in the project was an idea I had in the back of my mind for months and when I reached this point it was an easy decision to make. I started writing the narrative for Space and everything fell into place. I didn't take more than 10 minutes to write all three spoken parts and rehears them a couple of times out loud to see what they sounded like.
The Market (Misirlou)
I left this piece for last because, from the start of the project, I intended to create an instrumental piece inspired by Stin Agora tou Al Chalili. It was only after I composed all the music that I had the idea to use Misirlou for The Market, after watching this video about fan fiction and the public domain. If you are not aware, Misirlou is an old folk song dated back to the Ottoman empire. The first known recording of the song is by Tetos Dimitriadis in 1927. Due to its age, it is now in the public domain, meaning I can record and release my own version without worrying about copyright. The song narratively worked with my story because it is talking about a beautiful Egyptian girl, acting as destruction to our character from reaching his destination. The Greek song it was meant to be inspired by, still played a big role in the arrangement and production decisions I made but I wanted to capture the essence of the original Misirlou as much as I could while keeping it original.
Music Production
The production of the music was a very time-consuming process, but a very enjoyable one too. Many decisions about the sonic properties of the music as well as its composition and structure were made during the production process so I will go through it in chronological order.
Set-Up
I first created the structure of the project using markers and figured out the tempo and time signature for each piece. Then I set up all my tracks, five vocals tracks, four guitar tracks with various effects, three synth bass tracks and a guitar with an octaver effect (my bass is currently broken), fourteen tracks I named space orchestra that included the sounds I showcased earlier in addition to string section variations and Turkish tambur, and finally a drum section with a Latin percussion and a drum set.
Narrator Part One
I tried to record the songs as linear as possible. Starting with the first narration, I envisioned the narrator in front of a campfire, introducing us to the story and as soon as he finishes we hear a space ship zooming by and are immediately transported into space. For the campfire and later on the footsteps, I found a royalty-free sound effects library and downloaded a couple of different versions. I recorded the voice of the narrator and I proceeded to experiment with different effects to make it harder to recognise my voice. I then remembered that the intention was for the pilgrim's journey to parallel mine, therefore I decided to gradually decloak the voice of the narrator throughout the album, revealing that the person narrating the story is the protagonist himself.
Space
To sell the illusion that the listener was transported in the middle of space, I started this composition with a rising sound called outer space, which I perceived to sound like a spaceship. I recorded the sound and reversed it, connecting it at the peak to have it played backwords(sped up) and then forwards, releasing a high amount of energy with the entry of seven more sounds, including three different bass variation. After the sound energy dissipates a little, different sounds are fading in and out of the composition. Not long after, an instrument comes in arpeggiating my D - F# - A - Bb motif I mentioned earlier, which not only represents the theme of space but is also a reference to my original piece from BA2. For a brief moment, the chord changes to Gm to foreshadow the chord progression from later and then stops arpeggiating, staying on D until it fades. Meanwhile, there is a melodic instrument on top playing what feels like random notes from the motif and is later replaced by a different sound that slowly leads us towards the next piece. While representing the unpredictability of the world and space, at the end it chromatically leads down from D to Bm which is the key of the next song. This can also be interpreted as the descend to the planet that most of the album takes place.
The Market (Misirlou)
This piece starts and finished with footsteps. The reason is that I wanted to make it feel like the protagonist(listeners perspective) is walking towards the market, gets immersed in it for the duration of the song but ultimately decides to keep walking towards his goal without even waiting for the song to finish, showing that he was no destructed by the temptations of the market. The instrumentation of the song is a combination of Stin Agora tou Al Chalili and Misirlou. Both songs are very exotic and tempting. the song starts explosively once more, immersing the listener into the sound world of the market. At the start of the song, there are still elements of space, showing that the character is not allowing himself to be fully immersed in his surrounding. A Turkish tambur plays a solo before the vocals come in. Pizzicato strings are playing, referencing the original instrumentation from 1927. After the first repetition of the chorus, there is a vocal solo that also features space sounds, keeping the character from completely giving in to the temptation. Through my vocal delivery, I wanted to make this song feel like the singer is directly singing to the character, urging him to give in. On the chorus, there are three more voices that I tried to emulate the feel of other people joining in by using different vocal registers and embouchures. The second chorus is repeated twice but the second repetition slowly fades as the protagonist starts walking away from the market to the next part of his adventure.
Expectations
There is a very simple build-up happening throughout this song. The goal was for the song to emotionally climax at the end so that it makes the disappointment appear even more extreme. Starting with just one note, then an octave and then three octaves, the music builds up to a string section, a couple of space-themed sounds, guitars and backing vocals. I find my guitar compositions to be more empowering while piano tends to be more mellow. In this case, the guitar helps to build up energy. After producing the song, I realised that it might be vaguely inspired by Chariots of fire. Vangelis, as a Greek composer, is always an important influence for me and my compositions. The melody for this song was not composed beforehand. It was improvised according to how I felt at that moment. I hoped that this would have made it more authentic to the emotion and I believe that it was successful. At the end of this piece, the chords lead to the next narrated section. The B7 I mentioned earlier become a G, Gm and then instead of returning home to D the song changes to Dm, changing from what was expected, just like the narrative.
Narrator Part Two
The narrator returns with his campfire but this time there is music playing in the background which links Expectations to The Journey. The chords are Dm - G repeated twice and then changes to Dm - G - A, a progression that I felt leads easily back home to D. The narrators voice in this part is crossfading with the clear voice of the protagonist, revealing for the first time that the person narrating the story is the protagonist.
The Journey
In this song, you can see the contrast between piano and guitar that I explained earlier. The piano at the start of the piece is mellow and melancholic while the guitar, later on, is powerful and motivating. The vocal performance for this song took elements from both Avgoustos which was mentioned earlier, and Hadestown, a concept album by Anaïs Mitchell. Avgoustos is a very emotional song that helped me develop ways to present my emotion in my voice. I believe that Hadestown does a good job at blending pop and musical theatre singing styles from which I drew a lot of inspiration for my performance. After the protagonist whispers "That's it!", there is once again the spaceship sound from the start, lifting the song and bringing once again an explosion of sounds. Guitars, and for the first time a drum kit, play an empowering role as the protagonist embraces his newfound wisdom. Some of the vocal melodies in this song were also improvised to increase the authenticity of the emotion in the performance. At the end of the song, the instruments fade out and you hear the ambience of a spaceship.
Anywhere
The artificial intelligence voice you hear in this piece was created using an online tool called Replica. It is an application where you can submit data of your voice and create an artificial intelligence version of it. I used one of their voice actors' voice where you can type the sentence you want it to say and then download the generated audio. The idea to add a conversation at the end came to me during the composition process but I was not sure if I would find the means to create it until it was time to create it. After the computer says destination confirmed, you hear the spaceship sound for one last time, playing the same chords as the last chorus in The Journey, affirming the completion of the journey, but ending on the Gb to show the start of a new adventure.
Narrator Part Three
The final narration closes the story with the campfire and the normal voice of the protagonist. The final words are "Enjoy my traveller, enjoy.", expressing that this whole story was for the listener, it was their call for action and an opportunity to start their own journey. This gesture was inspired in part by Kemal. The final words of that song are directed to the protagonist of the song, translating to "Goodnight Kemal, this world will never change, goodnight."
Mixing
Due to the nature of my project, the majority of my mixing was regarding Ambeo Orbit. Other than a slight amount of reverb, EQ, compression and distortion where necessary, every stereo track had an instance of Ambeo orbit and instead of panning everything left or right. I gave them a physical location in the space around the listener. In cases such as the Turkish tambur, I automated the location of the instrument to sound as if the source of the audio is moving in the physical space around you. Due to my lack of experience with 3D sound, getting the levels right was harder than usual. To finalise it, I tested the final mix on three different devices and made six iterations before I settled with the final result. In retrospect, I now had the time to listen to the whole thing back and I can see that I would still make changes to the mix, though I still believe it is presentable as is.
Art
The art I originally had in mind was very complicated, and possibly beyond my skill level (example). Coming up to two days before the submission, I still hadn't decided on the art style I wanted to draw, but I had a backup plan. One of the options I gave myself was a very simple line art, black and white outlines traced from photographs of real-life items. Inspired by this interactive website, I started tracing items that I knew I wanted in the different sections using my drawing tablet. I planned to figure out how the artworks and the sections would interact during the website development.
I initially made the planet, spaceship, food stall, tree, pyramid and chest. The process was simple and fast which allowed me to create multiple iterations and choose my favourites while I was building the website. The rest of the art such as the tunnel and the different versions of the chest for the chest opening effect, came as ideas while I was developing the website but it was so easy and simple to draw that I allowed myself to come up with the compositions on the spot.
One of the most fun ideas to create was the background stars. There are four separate layers, a background layer and three star layers, each with a different size of stars. When the star layers move at different speeds it creates a parallax effect that makes the smaller starts appear further and the bigger stars appear closer.
Website
I originally intended to build my website on Wix. I could not have been any more unprepared. Not only did Wix lack the features necessary to create the website that I was envisioning, but it also lacked the basic structure I would need to get everything done in time. When I realised this, I franticly searched the internet for an alternative (another thing I could have avoided had I not left it so late). Suddenly I remembered Webflow. I used Webflow to build a website in the past and after a couple more searches I realised that not only did Webflow have all the necessary tool, they also have a free online course explaining how to use them without any coding involved. The perfect solution. On the other hand, it doesn't let you upload music. This is where my mind started thinking like a developer. Instead of trying to fix the process, I bypassed it by using YouTube embedded videos instead of music.
The start of the website development process is tedious, slowly but surely building up the structure of the website. One of the things I learned through this process is that I tend to create things and edit them at the same time. Whether writing, website development or music, I need to start separating the creation from the editing, which will save me both time and energy.
After the basic structure was created, I started importing the different art pieces and setting up each scene. My decisions, in this case, were informed both from the limitation of my knowledge and the amount of time I had left. When everything was structured and set in the best way I could place them, I started animating the elements. This process is called animation because it functions very similarly to a traditional animation. For example, you give a command to an element, when you have scrolled 0% of the page to stay in its starting position and when it's 10% scrolled to move 500 pixels to the right. That element then will be animated using interpolation and as you scroll the page it is updating its position in real-time. Another example could be, when the mouse is at the top of the screen, move the large start 20 pixels and move the small start 5 pixels. This animation would then move the large start a longer distance than the small stars in the same amount of time, creating the star parallax effect I mentioned earlier. The last example, when you hover over the chest, hide the image of the chest and show the other image with it slightly open, when you click on the chest it hides both versions of the chests and shows the third one with it open as well as everything around it.
This is an oversimplification of the process and in reality, it takes a lot of time and a lot of troubleshooting to get it right, especially when you factor in that, not every screen has the same dimensions and you need the animation to respond to the screen size of the user.
I was constantly adjusting things and coming up with new ideas that I tried spending as little time possible implementing them as well as I can. For example, the idea of the chest opening came from this website where it asks you to click an arrow three times before it breaks a barrier and allows you to the rest of the site. Also, the screen switching from white to black and then back when you move through the tunnel was inspired by this website which changes colours from section to section, telling a story through the scroll of a page.
Written Content
The website itself and the way the artwork interacted with the viewer was my inspiration for the written content I used. It looked like you were embarking on the journey with the protagonist, therefore I thought it would work best to bring more insight to the story and the character's life if I have him express his though and interact with artificial intelligence in conversation. The conversation with the computer in the last piece was also a big part of how I came up with this idea. The way the written content is structured is purely what felt natural to me and how I would have interacted with the artificial intelligence in the position of the protagonist. I wanted the text to have at some parts its own message, such as the way it criticizes environmental destruction in the second piece. I found that as easy as it was to write the text, it had a big effect on the overall presentation of the project.
When the page was finished and optimised with all the artwork, written content and animation, I uploaded the music to YouTube, embedded it in the website and created an uninterrupted cut for SoundCloud found at the bottom of the project, showing how the songs interact with each other when played continuously. With that the project was complete.
Reflection
Life doesn't give you what you want, it gives you what you need. This is the premise of this project and this is the lesson I learned from making it. Coming to university, I had expectations about every aspect of my life and I was met with disappointment every time I or someone else failed to meet them. Four years later, I am amazed at how many things I've learned and how much I've grown in ways that I never expected.
This project though me far more than I expected. Firstly, I realised that my chaotic approach, even though it is effective under specific circumstances, can very easily cause me to fail. I never felt that before because of how easy I found everything I did. This year I decided to challenge myself and I will admit that it was too close for comfort. From now on I am going to continue pushing myself to grow and get better at my craft but make sure that I do plenty of work upfront. Listening to the album after the submission helped me realised that many of the mistakes I did, and the corners I had to cut to meet the deadline, would not be necessary if I had done the work earlier. In fact, I did not submit my idea portfolio in time because I underestimated the amount of time and effort it would take to write it. This will result in a 5% penalty on my mark. I recently read The 10X Rule, a book about how you should have ten times the ambition for your goals and do ten times the action that you think it's necessary to complete the goal. The book says that we severely underestimate how much it takes us to get something done and I proved it right.
I also learned that I do operate according to Parkinson's Law. If I had an unlimited amount of time, I would make an unlimited amount of changes, iterations and adjustments to the project. Setting time limits and deadlines is an important part for me and doing that when I start freelancing will be crucial. This forces me to change my perspective toward my work. For a long time, I refused to create anything because I didn't believe I could make it good enough. Regardless of the mark I get for this project, I am very proud of my work. I have proven to myself that I can troubleshoot and find solutions for any problem I find in my way so I have no excuses to not try. Skill comes with practice and the more I create, the more I practice my craft. I was recently thinking that the only times I ever failed something was because I didn't put enough effort into it, or I didn't bother to try. Both of those variables are my responsibility and I have to start responding to them.
Regarding my dreams of being a multidisciplinary artist, this project has proven to me that it is not only viable but also a lot of fun. Following the completion of my course, I want to challenge myself in this way to create projects of this or even larger sizes and learn from them. I noticed that during this project I learned more about 3D sound mixing, songwriting, website development and design, digital art and multimedia project design than I have learned in the last five year of my life combined. This form of accelerated growth can be a very effective tool for building up my skills and finding my position in the creative industries.
It is very ironic when you realise that you have the answers, but you just don't listen to yourself. My story was meant to inspire people to look within and find the answers they are looking for, yet I haven't done the same. I think it's about time I take my own advice.