JOURNALS

Monday's diary entry. What a day, what a day. Woke up this morning with a plan. Not just any plan but a *musical* one. It involved taking my Komplete Kontrol S25 keyboard and in true Frankenstein's lab style, wiring it up to the laptop to see if we could breathe life into pen plotter designs. The whole setup felt less like an art studio and more like a scene from a sci-fi movie, with me as the mad scientist at the helm.

Started off a bit rocky, though. Spent the better part of the morning wrestling with the Native Instruments software. For some reason, it recognised my keyboard as just a bog-standard midi controller, stripping it of all its superpowers. All I wanted was for it to sing with the plotter but alas, technology has its tantrums.

By 11ish, my focus shifted to taming the beast that is midi setup in the browser. Imagine trying to convince a cat to go for a swim – that was me, trying to get the keyboard to play nice with the pen plotter. It was a test of patience, fiddling with code and more code until something clicked.

The Eureka moment arrived around 14:44. Finally, the midi connected to some code that'd create the SVG for the pen plotter. It felt like hitting a home run, if I knew anything about sports that is. But in my world, it was a major breakthrough.

Finished the day feeling like a conductor who'd managed to harmonise an orchestra of tech into creating something beautiful. Having the midi working in the browser opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Honestly, the potential feels both exhilarating and a bit daunting.

One thing that struck me today was the limitation isn't in the technology; it's in my imagination. Now, armed with a few more ideas, the challenge is to see how far I can push this new tool in my artistic journey. The journey from complex technical setup to creative application has been a bit of a rollercoaster.

Had a little unexpected hiccup with the keyboard not wanting to cooperate. Turns out, the latest version of the software wasn’t playing nice with my older model. Took a dive into forums and user manuals, piecing together a digital treasure map that eventually led me to rolling back to an older version. Voilà, we’re in business.

Reflecting on the day, it’s a mix of triumph over tech, diving deep into the intricacies of midi controllers, and the reminder that art and technology are strange bedfellows. They argue, they make up, and when they get it right, it’s magic.

Here’s to more experiments with sounds, lines, and the joy of creating something uniquely me. Sometimes, it pays to play the mad scientist, even if it's just in your own art studio.