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#Ive noticed some people are more receptive to sounds some more to visuals
d1gnan · 4 months
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some thoughts abt aesthetics, the way people engage with my art so far and also stuff youll be seeing from me in the next year..
first off i wanna say im not actually educated on any of this and its all just coming from personal experience/ its kind of just a mad mans rambling
im the kind of person who is always curating, always putting like with like (on a consistently changing/personal/almost random metric that spans like any kind of media , things tangible and abstract, my memories, yadda yadda (everyone does this to some degree but as an artist and an introspective person, i find it hard to just let stuff go once i form a connection. (and im sure a lot of u guys reading this are like this too, tumblr is like The website for people like this) im hyper aware of everything that ever happens to me and im always trying to connect everything with everything else
(forgive me too in advance cause ive never been satisfied with my ability to explain myself and usually i just let everything i do speak for itself/dont bother trying. im really really visual and i usually think of things In pictures too so it just frustrates me to try and describe something thats worth a thousand words..
jewelry came pretty quickly to me as a favorite art form because its a way to convey some of what goes on in my head when i engage with the media i like , being able to turn all these pretty abstract feelings into colors shapes symbols.. a lot of times when i listen to something or watch something, i get almost itchy with the feeling of needing to get the way i percieved it out into the world in a visual and tangible way asap before it loses its original shape or before i forget how it made me feel. (dementia runs in my family so a lot of my art is trying to archive my feelings since i know i wont have them forever.. its almost a frantic need to be seen/known by others before its too late.
a lot of the jewelry ive custom made for people has been specifically music and film related, and thats been a great thing because i can both 1) make something that satisfies my own vision of the thing but 2) it is still easily readable by others as related 2 the source material because the design language usually is distinct enough to withstand being skewed too much by my own personal associations
moving forward tho, i have a TON of ideas for way more personal/abstract/highly conceptual projects, and have been slowly gathering pieces so that i can do full justice to my vision for them.
doing this has first and foremost always been an art form/way to express myself . i do it because of the ideas, i do it because i have to do it, and then im left with a bunch of stuff that i would like way more to be in the hands of someone who relates to it. and, i do it in a way thats not at all good for being a business owner. if i'm going to create a product, i would be going against my ideals if i didnt try to battle with all the things i hate about products. fast fashion and aliexpress craft supplies and mass production.. (to have a successful business you need a lot of the same product, it needs to be easy to make and you need to be able to get your materials cheap. all of which i can't and wouldn't do, so it's a very shit thing to attempt to make a living off of..
maybe this sounds a little funny too when you look at my work and then at what i have to say about it.that i think about it so seriously since it's something any one can do. my kid sister makes jewelry, it's a pretty accesible hobby. the idea of making jewelry based off of media is also the furthest thing from unique, which brings me thinking about the reception of my art online so far, and some weird stuff i've noticed.
when you're making anything that you mention is directly "inspired by" something else, you run into some pretty weird habits from others online, and a kind of unique way of engaging with "aesthetics" thats started in the past couple years. what im talking about now is less movies/music. its stuff that blurs the line between an existing body of work to reference and just a concept. ( y2k, fill in the blank-core, frutiger metro/aero).. i'm really into most eras of these fashion / design trends/aesthetics in a historian/archivist kind of way, and i really enjoy to do work inspired by things like this, but these are always way more personally influenced than anything made for a movie/music. i went semi-viral (feels so dumb to say seriously lol) on tiktok for a frutiger metro/sleepyhead by passion pit inspired bracelet.
i get hate on most posts on tiktok since its a gigantic platform(as well as praise) but the majority of comments always tend to be people correcting the authenticity to the aesthetic ive listed as an inspiration. people way smarter than me have way better things to say on this, and if i tried to go too into detail with it this post would be even crazy longer, but ive seen people call it "what aesthetic is this" culture, (some examples of this: " "this aesthetic is called this, not that" "this aesthetic is from this time frame only" xyz
i never know what to do, because i want to respond by explaining that i see these aesthetic names/labeling system solely as a tool. to help people find and connect like with like. labeling aesthetics is just recognizing a pattern. knowing the "name" of an aesthetic can help you find similar things, but there are no set time periods to any of this unless you are specifically making something that is an exact recreation of something else or making a period piece. everything comes back in some way over and over again. rigidly defining aesthetics is flawed/missing the point because aesthetics are completely individual/unmeasurable/skewed by experiences/memories/opinions. its a little different too when it comes to stuff thats actually like made For marketing cause that Will have an exact language that goes with it or whatever, but most of the time i see people arguing about an aesthetic thats not even applicable. there are genuinely no rules to what fits an aesthetic because anything you create, you add your own experiences to and are effectively continuing these patterns in a new way/ sometimes creating a whole new movement or sub category if you are really into labeling it as something directly. peoples personal art is definitely affected by their time/whatever the common design language was at the time, so thats where a lot of the names get born, but when you make it this rigid thing , "this needs to be more like this.. this needs to be more like that.." you'd be right- but only in the sense that yes, it IS that way, For You. in your mind you experience it that way, it is your personal relation to seeing these patterns. and you can use these aesthetic tools to expand on what was done before you, you can use these images to convey your own perspective so that i can try to understand it.
marketing vs personal aesthetics is a different thing that idk how to tackle with my like super limited language but for example, when someone is using a popular aesthetic to sell you something, you can tell. it's shallow and impersonal. looking back on ads that are dated and use a certain aesthetic usually tinges them with nostalgia that you can take and make into something that it wasn't because you have this priceless new angle to look at it with. if you believe in aesthetics as being this rigid thing, you dont get new ideas, you dont get new sub aesthetics, you dont get new movements, you get a copy of a copy, you get shein clothes. and! anyone can call anything they want an "aesthetic" ..any collection of things together influenced by anything in the world can be an entirely new aesthetic.. and im so sick of typing the word aesthetic
but i know that if theyre commenting something like this, they r so fundamentally different from me/ engage with the world in such a different way then i do that it would be a waste of time to try to explain..
i am a little scared when i launch some of the new projects i've been working on they'll be met with this kind of reaction. maybe ill try to write some kind of TLDR, some kind of zine to send along with any of my bracelets, some kind of manifesto about sustainability/personalization/mindful consumpution.. but it takes a long time for me to feel good about explaining myself, even this post ive deleted and restarted countless times.
ill post some more about some of the "aesthetics " (i gotta figure out better language for this shit i swear to god) ive found inspiring that have heavily influenced these upcoming projects, as well as scans from books ive collected that match the design language and i definitely want to release kind of a companion zine with the collections that include music/fashion/home photos etc...
if u have any thoughts or anything about any of this id love to hear it, or answer questions or expand on shit, this is kind of just like a word version of me throwing mac and cheese up at the ceiling and seeing if anything sticks.
thanks to anyone whos said anything nice about my stuff, i love u guys more than lyfe
and if you read all of this youre a g
💚
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