In July of 2025, I made a successful funding application to Arts Council England. Their Developing Your Creative Practice fund allows creative and cultural practitioners to take time to focus on their development, offering the possibility and freedom to explore avenues that wouldnāt otherwise be possible.
In recent years, I have tried to develop a rich visual language to accompany my musical output; this spans all Workforce output and the visual identity of my label, Must Make Music.
With a background in graphic design, and having taught myself how to produce motion graphics over the Covid lockdown period, my interest and curiosity has grown - wondering about the possibilities of shifting to a multidisciplinary creative output, and the potential richness of a unifying project which combines all of it under one banner.
So, a few months later than hoped, I have begun explorations into a real-time, reactive system - one which can respond to multiple sensory inputs to produce a real time reproduction of my visual language - with a hope that, in the later part of this year, I will be able to put some one-off and unique shows together. As you can see, my touchdesigner explorations are extremely primitive!
Many of the themes I have publicly discussed, as well as some of the theoretical underpinnings of my output in the last few years, will continue to drive this project. Making visuals just for the sake of visuals feels trivial to me - particularly in the current context of global and UK events. I want to explore meaning, I want to consider the new landscape of live music experiences - what the future could or should look like, and, most importantly, how the visual outputs could enhance or change the live music experience for attendees.
If you would like to read the application in full, drop me a comment below and Iāll DM you a link to a PDF.
For now, though, stay tuned. I plan to try and be transparent about the process, and I welcome feedback and advice.
@touchdesigner
@aceagrams
#touchdesigner #artscouncilengland #DYCP #audiovisual
