Industrial Darkness and Chain of Light
Licensing is the New Sharing
Mark Rushton’s Perseverance in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
This week’s topics:
Film Music
Licensed Paintings
DMU Metal Print
Chain of Light
Film Music
I’ve been saying that I make film music as a way to describe what I’ve been doing.
Here’s a recent example at my DISCO account, the track “Abandoned Warehouse”, which is part of a new collection of recordings titled Industrial Darkness.
If you click through to listen to Abandoned Warehouse, you can continue on and take a deep dive. As of Sunday, September 29, 2024, I have almost 300 tracks in there. The count will be going much higher.
I used to make ambient and electronic music for listeners on streaming and download services, but I stopped doing that a few months ago.
Today, anything I make is going into my DISCO account and is being pitched to the film/tv world. I think that’s a more appropriate use of what I create. There’s nothing wrong with releasing music to streaming services, but I’d like to try something else.
Some of my sounds are going into Pond5 for stock music and sound effects licensing, which is a different audience from film/tv. Here’s a link to my portfolio at Pond5.
Licensed Paintings
Speaking of Pond5, I knew they licensed “illustrations”, but I didn’t think any of my weird paintings or collages or processed photos would count.
They do.
As an experiment, I submitted some edited visual works to Pond5 for consideration, including the “Green Cat” pictured above, and got them in. With Pond5, it’s more about following their technical specifications rather than dealing with a subjective decision.
I’ve sold music and sound fx on Pond5 in the past couple of years, so why not licensed paintings? I’m probably not going to put all my visual works out on Pond5, but some of the more abstract parts of my visual works might be just what other creatives are looking for to use in their projects.
DMU Metal Print
This week, I created a new image for the Mark Rushton Gallery, a metal print of an image of the Des Moines University campus, which is near where I live in West Des Moines, Iowa.
I walk at “DMU” often, and one day I took a photo of a couple of the buildings at this angle. My wife calls it the “airport terminal”. I think the campus looks even better at night when the glass buildings are all lit up from the inside.
The photo I took was processed in software, printed on synthetic paper with a thermal ribbon, and then acrylic ink was applied. The image was scanned at a high resolution, cropped, and added to the Gallery. A metal print is available in a variety of sizes.
I thought this image turned out great. There’s the low-fi nature of the printed photo combined with the limited colors, along with the electrifying texture I get out of the synthetic paper.
Chain of Light
This week’s music recommendation is the track Aaj Sik Mitran Di by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and can be streamed everywhere, but it sounds best on Qobuz.
I've been playing the new "lost" Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan album, Chain of Light, this past week. I was into him in the early 90s and owned "Mustt Mustt" when it was released.
It's hard to comprehend how these recordings got "lost" for over 30 years.
This track is wild. Like a Pakistani Ronnie James Dio with a little Cab Calloway here and there. Amazing.
Hey Mark, I’m really intrigued by this idea of “releasing” on DISCO. Are you personally cold pitching, or maybe a mixture of that with established contacts you’ve made in sync?
I’ve hardly ever heard of artists finding success independently with this but you’ve caught my attention. Thanks!