YOVOZOL

Spoken and written language as we know it is imprisonment of the mind and its potential. People are becoming more and more reliant on language-learning-models - A.I. programs which can only regurgitate combinations from forever limited and always incomplete training data sets. A self-driving steamroller, the size of which the human mind has never encountered, is rolling right over us. It is making us culturally flattened, illiterate, and predictable in our behavior and thoughts. Even worse, nobody seems to realize that the emphasis in "Artificial Intelligence" will always be on Artificial rather than Intelligence. And so to protest all of this, I'm drawing deceptively simple images intended to express ideas far too complicated for LLM robots to comprehend. Unfortunately, it seems we've already entered a stage where humans struggle to comprehend them as well.
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Fun fact: Helen Keller, a blind and deaf woman who lived 1880 - 1968, had her own signature. Can you believe that? A hand-drawn signature... from a woman who couldn't see or hear anything since before she learned to stand on two legs. Think about it...

At some pointed I realized the value in saying nothing. Yet impactful artists tend to say something in their work. Then I realized saying nothing, deliberately and consciously, is a step towards mastering the skill of saying something. So I sought to try that with symbolism. Don't try to interpret these:
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I don't know how it happened, but one day I woke up. I must have heard the magic words somewhere. I always imagined that becoming activated as a sleeper agent must mean there will be some instant and total change within me. Instead, the awareness of my mission has come only gradually. And still I have to operate with secrecy and subtlety. Playing both sides until the opportunity comes to make the final choice. Or maybe I'll end up pleasing neither. It's a dangerous world out there.
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Gone are the days of childhood and the promise of an end to history. For as long there exists even the possibility of violence in our nature, there will never be a true day of peace. And to change the world, more and more say, blood is needed. All those who lament the vanishing of peace while in calm quarters will eventually be faced with such a choice: to run in perpetuity or to join the battle. How many miles are you prepared to run? How much blood are you prepared to spill?
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"And then, without fail, there appears among us a man like the rest of us in every way, but who conceals within himself the secret, inborn power of ‘vision’. He sees and points. Sometimes he would gladly be rid of this higher gift, which is often a heavy cross for him to bear. But he cannot. Through mockery and hatred, he continues to drag the heavy cartload of struggling humanity, getting stuck amidst the stones, ever onward and upward." - Kandinsky

Purplenoia was an audiovisual project and "shoegaze" band I started in early 2022. Without having much experience playing guitar, in a matter of a few months I wrote an album's worth of songs and assembled a 5-piece band with four friends I met in my hometown music scene. We ended up playing several gigs at local venues until our abrupt halt in performing that summer of '22. Recording-wise I only made a handful of instrumental and acoustic mixes, some of which are on this YouTube playlist.

All the while I had a visual universe in mind, and in a feverish way I made my own gig posters, prints, merch, and even a mural (which I later ceremoniously burned before moving abroad).
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But the aspect of the project I am most proud of is the 10-minute hand-drawn animation I created frame-by-frame from late 2022 - early 2023, almost entirely on an iPad.

Since the start, the impetus for this project was always to externalize my internal troubles and move on from them. The years 2020 through 2022 were a difficult time for me mentally, so naturally there was a lot that needed to get out. The animation especially represents my triumph over one of the worst negative thought patterns that took hold of me during that time. The project as a whole, more fortunately than not, is now deep in the past.
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