I’m exploring different ways of defining the book - first with artworks and now with readings which can be found here and on YouTube. I love reading to people so this seemed an obvious choice but I soon got tangled in a world of technical complexity which was not fun but may be part of a learning curve. I was, however, surprised to find myself enjoying ‘clip farming’ these longer form videos, that is: selecting one or two lines of the audio and making 10-15 seconds shorts for social media (Instagram reels, tik tok, and YouTube Shorts). This had the effect of forcing me to come up with ideas for imagery, whether using my photos and video of the actual event, creating new illustrations or generating imagery with AI. It has caused me to approach the creation of illustrations for the book in a different way, causing me to come up with ideas on the fly and execute them rapidly. I end up with illustrations for a printed version of the book…but not in a way that I had anticipated - which makes me look at the relationship between words and images in a different manner to how I may have done it in the past.

You can watch it here on Substack or via my YouTube channel below. The ‘clip farmed shorts’ become their own ‘thing’ and can be found on my other platforms and in Substack Notes (if I remember to post them there) but this brings me to another realisation: Substack works as a repository for texts (entire books and essays), illustrations and video. No other platform (that I can think of) allows creators to do that… so it provides a means of archiving multi-media projects as they unfold. Thank you Substack !

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