This was my first time participating in Genuary. Here are some reflections about the experience.
Scheduled Work Means Work Gets Done
My long-standing journal practice has taught me about the out-sized power of small, incremental work completed on a schedule. And the Genuary work provided similar benefits. The main benefit, of course, is simply finishing things–even if they’re small and feel inconsequential at the time.
More Ideas Come From More Work
Finishing work leads directly to more ideas for the next thing to try. The gallery above hints at some of these behind-the-scenes connections: ladder-like forms and loops recur, grids divide the space, we become “sensitized to difference through…repetition“
Not Too Precious
When making decisions in the moment, every choice can feel fraught. But a little time and distance is always helpful. Looking back on a month of work, it’s amazing to me how I had already forgotten about some of the pieces. There were a few disappointments, of course (I let that out of the studio?) but I also occasionally surprised myself (I made that?).
Grids
Almost every piece uses a grid template which takes care of the cell sizes automagically when I specify how many rows and columns to draw. (Some of the pieces wound up as a ‘grid’ of 1 cell wide by 1 cell high, just because it’s easier to change the variables than to separate the grid code from the rest!). I think I gravitate to grids often because they connect so well with my sound work, my modular scores, my interest in variation, etc.
Colors
I’ve been playing with colors more and more, inspired in part by Tom Sachs’ Colors video. Genuary provided a great time to go even deeper. I do most of my creative coding for pen plotters, so color comes later in the process when the pen actually hits the paper. For Genuary, I was able to think about color much earlier. One of the tools that I created was a simple list of my go-to colors and their hex codes, similar to
color prussianBlue = #003153;
color isabellene = #f4f0ec; //light beige. Works great as a background
color verdegris = #43b3ae;
color puce = #cc8899; //the color of fleas
color lemonYellow = #f7ef79;
color cadmiumRed = #f25364;
color alizarinCrimson = #AC1F25;
color yellowOchre = #C18F32; //good match
color burntUmber = #633C16; //good matchI’m sure I’ll keep adding to and refining this list.
Tweak Mode for Final Touches
I found Processing’s Tweak Mode to be a great way to make last-minute adjustments. I loved being able to try out different scaling, spacing, transparency, colors, etc. all on the fly.
