The idea was to design an exhibition on the "Minimal", minimal techno music genre. I wanted to create somewhat of a basic reference page for people who had little to no idea of what minimal music was under the disguise of an exhibition, thus using the exhibition to build on their knowledge of the genre and music in general.
I tried to keep the exhibition as simple as possible, attempting to maintain the minimalist feel of the genre. The idea was to keep vast open spaces and a sparse look.
I chose to use a blog format for my exhibition, due to simplicity and functionality.
The initial layout of the blog pages did not suit what I was looking for so i made it a point to strip the blog's html down to its core elements, again to maintain the general aesthetic of the movement. In order to get the simple text, nav bar layout there was a fair bit of chopping and changing involved, however, i think the end product shows how much i have learnt about blogs in general and the concept of html manipulation.
I tried to maintain a very block revolved design, with minimal flair. At one point i showed the exhibition to a friend who asked why i had kept the default heading style and simplicity in colour as opposed to doing something like my main blog heading. Personally, think the default heading style really suits the idea of the minimal genre and the basis of a tradtional exhibition aesthetic. the back contrasts well with the white, again achieving my design solution.
I had an in-depth look at variety of ways in which i could format my music into an exhibit able medium. There are a whole lot of licensing issues with the distribution and bootlegging of music in an online forum, this made the process a little more difficult than i had originally counted on.
I found two great ways in which i could easily access and display my exhibition pieces without infringing on licensing regulations.
The first was reverbnation, an excellent platform for organisation and display of music. Reverbnation offers an online player that creates a visual playlist for the user in a format where they can see what music is in the playlist in what order. This was an excellent option however; there were two main problems with reverbnation. For my exhibition i was looking for of a shuffled playlist where the music sorted itself out for the user as the target audience would have no idea what to look for in an ordered playlist.
And reverbnation is designed more for users to upload their own music not that of other artists, what i wanted would have been in breach of their licensing.
The other option and the one that I choose to use was last.fm. Not only can you create your own playlist from music of other artists in a legitimate way, but you can also generate a widget from that music library and direct it through to your blog.
There were issues with the size of the collections. Last.fm does not create a playlist without considerable content in the user’s library. This did work in favour though as it pushed me to add more than i had originally decided, which increased the depth of my exhibition piece.
I had a detailed look at the licensing arrangement for Last.fm had a detailed read of their main user guidelines and widget usage rules.
The regulations are very basic: ‘(a) must not frame, surround, obfuscate or create a browser or border environment around any of the Content of the Website; (b) may link to, but not replicate, the Content; (c) must not imply that Last.fm or the Website or any artist or performer are endorsing or sponsoring it or its products’. The ideas of the widgets are to ‘enable our users to share Last.fm with their friends. It is not provided for commercial use, distribution or exploitation’. On this basis last.fm provided a very simple option for sharing of music through the exhibition.
The pictures used were also used in accordance with licensing through creative commons. All the photos had full usage, and only needed to be attributed to the photographers. refer to references page for more details.
From research point of view i have trawled through the internet in search of information, i have looked a huge number of sites relating to the music genre. To this point i have not really found anything, that directly replicates my exhibition.
There are individual resources for and playlists on the music genre. However nothing really stand alone as a collaboration. There is wikipedia that has a huge level of text based information on minimal but no media. Then you have platforms such as reverbnation that have all the media but no information.
Of course there is last.fm’s minimal resource, however, again it is not really a standalone independent page that covers the same information that i do, in as simple a format that caters for the users i do.
In fact i got an email from this music company/music channel(?) http://www.mangarepublic.com/ based out of Hong Kong, wanting to know if i could develop a few more online reference exhibitions for their new website using their playlist streaming.... enough said? ha ha.
All the images used in this project are licensed appropriately and attributed accordingly.
My Exhibition can be reached at minimalexhibition.blogspot.com
Regards
