Category: Professional Futures

KMRU or his real name Joseph Kamaru is a sound artist and Ambient/music producer. He has received critical acclaim online, even collaborating with Ableton and Adam Audio in adverts and short documentaries about his work.

He mainly uses field recordings and manipulates them into lush ambient music. He is currently doing a master’s in sound arts in Berlin, originally coming from where he was born and raised in Kenya.

We had him as a visiting practitioner in our second year of studies and at the time I was listening and using his work as inspiration for my own projects, which ended up being similar to Peter Cusack and his work with sounds from dangerous places. I found his lecturer (KMRU) really interesting as he also spoke what Angus said about field notes sometimes instead of recording and using that as a way of field recording.

His career is being a touring musician, underground signed to indie labels, releasing records/vinyl and collaborating with other artists. I would love to do this as well, the real thing is that it is difficult, you have to be lucky and hardworking.

What also appeals to me about his career is that he has built something where he is known for being creative, rather than defined by one genre or ability. His artist name KMRU could be anything. I want to do that, my current “branding” is mainly hip hop and rap music but I have such a wide pallet of taste and work. I would really enjoy a career where I can release constant interesting pieces of work, and not be held back but what I think I should do or what people know me for.

So this is another potential development pathway, to be an artist, making records, ambient/other music and also studying at the same time, see what happens as you go along with it?

I’ve been lucky enough to have had Angus as my supervisor for my dissertation and furthermore preceding this I was really into his books. I felt his writing and work with Cathy Lane really interested me, specifically with field recordings and the interviews they conduct. I found myself for the first time really interested in soundscape ecology and research within it.

Angus had a lecture where he described his career and his early work with Zines, which he said began around 1988-1989, some of the projects were:

Explaining house music, HOUSE 2HOUSE, A Guy Called Gerald, the distance between time and space between ages, and world music,

He developed his writing through this practice, After that period of zine production, the use of constraints is something he imposes on his writing, limiting his work. Automatic translation engines and transcription software, google earth, limits on word length and limits on the number of words. 

Field Notes,

He finds field notes as a way of representing the environment he hears, he worked on a project with Simon James, translated by KYRIN Chen 2022, He has a stack of field notes, small black books, with silver Gaffa tapes, he also generates notes on his phone, he sues to remember what is happening. 

Field Notes as Voice (the Horror) He vocalises them, he took them too far he says, he started speaking his notes in the spaces that influenced them. The redevelopment of Stratford is an example.

Field notes as themselves, he believes that they can exist of themselves, such as the work for Fieldwork for Future Ecologies, Radical Practice of art. Field notes as the specific piece of their own things,

field notes against Sonic exceptionalism are something Angus kept saying.

As well as this lecture Angus is a professor within Crisap. Something I found out about during my research in my second year and also all the other PhD students that study there. It took me a while to understand what the appeal of academia is and it did eventually click for me, I really dedicated myself to my studies within my second year and found this passion of being a hermit, in a sense, I cut everything else out for a few months and became obsessed with reading, writing and researching for my work. Really was a blissful time. Someone like Angus or his role is a potential opportunity for me.

To travel, bring your knowledge and expertise to projects and come from an artistic sound arts perspective is important, academics within arts and humanities are dedicating their lives to thinking and asking questions, to me that is what I see it as. A group of humans all working together to discover more bout existence and our very way of being and interacting within this physical plane.

The reality of being a professor seems tough, even a lecturer or researcher within higher education. The funding from the government is decreasing, you are working project to project, expected to work overtime and not be paid for it. It really is difficult, similar to the previous article where artists are expected to do what they love, academia is also similar. This is a potential path for me, I do find myself wanting to take time out of university when I graduate to gain some financial stability. But eventually I would like to do an MA, the list I complied from the exercise has helped me massively in figuring out where I could go. Angus also recommend Europe for me when I asked. That is one option.

Something I’ve felt in recent years I want to do is eventually take a risk. Get a business loan and invest in a recording studio within central London. I have thought about how I will focus on more underground artists and offer free studio sessions when the studio is not being used. Try to integrate myself within the community and make the studio almost non-profit. Enough to pay my bills and keep the studio running. I’m interested in offering artists the opportunity to record with an engineer and at a high-quality studio that is not their bedroom.

The great thing that could happen is starting a record label, offering free recording/mixing/mastering with putting out unsigned artists and promoting music for those who cannot access facilities.

I already have access to Audio Active a Brighton-based charity that uses music as a way of connecting with young people and offering facilities for those who have no access to them. They helped me when I was younger and it was fundamental towards my development.

I have thought that there are potentially two ways to do this. Either get a two-bed flat/house on rent and convert one room entirely into a recording studio. The thing with this is that noise is an issue, and not being able to be loud 24/7 and also it being residential means the business could not be taken seriously. Rent is also very expensive in London and perhaps a commercial property would be better.

I’ve looked on a few websites, Miloco also being a great studio hire company to be part of as they also manage recording engineers and put them with artists signed to labels for work. On average it seems in the outskirts of London Manor House, West London, and Croydon studios are around 400pm for a room that I would need. More towards central which would be best is around 800pm which is a lot to take a risk in my opinion. I wonder if I could build clients with my current work, as the other day I recorded a client who sang and played guitar and we really got on. I also do freelance sound engineering work and plenty of artists ask if I can engineer music in a studio context as well. Can I bring these all into one space? Perhaps still do live sound in the evenings to help pay the bills?

Again this is just an option that I could do once I have saved some money after a few years of working with Pitch & Sync. I could also use the space for corporate work when creative work is not coming in, voice-overs for adverts and other pieces of work, and sound design/mixing?

I have thought about this. It’s important to share that you’ve finished university and are ready for work. Social media is really important and perhaps that is one way of doing it. At first glance, my initial reaction to this question would be. Update my LinkedIn. As this is an important part of networking nowadays, primarily since I now work in a company and all my colleagues have LinkedIn I can add my work there and see more opportunities if I decide to leave in the future.

As an artist, I believe in sharing my work and applying for other works through Instagram and emailing zines, small labels and radio stations etc. In attempts to get my work shared and wider public viewing.

So to consider how? I think I’ll do both. Through my Bandcamp/social media as a musical artist. My more professional portfolio work will be shared through my work website or LinkedIn or hotglue.

Follow-up tasks are to polish up my LinkedIn. And continue to update my Hotglue website and add my work on there.

After reading this text I felt slightly confused, and also lucky to have found a graduate audio post-production job. It seems most artists really don’t make any money and are struggling. Some of the quotes made me feel a bit hopeless but I think the positive out of it was the idea of what an artist is. This idea of an artist being alone making art that changes the world and they are seen as super unique is not a reality and is also a negative trait that society gives artists. I would also say this idea that predominantly artists were and are middle to upper class is also a disappointment but a reality I knew. Anyway here are some quotes.

However, Covid did not produce precarity, exploitation and inequality in the art world out of thin air. Rather, it exposed, amplified and accentuated a set of pervasive trends that have long characterised the labour conditions of artistic workers in the UK.

It’s interesting to see that it was already there, just covid amplified the problems society has with artists and the social economic system that exists that devalues their work.

this develops a picture of ‘what it is really like’ to work as an artist in the UK: from everyday concerns and worries, to the impact of national level policy.

This is the reality of artists in 2023 post covid. A harsh environment that does not support them financially.

But this level of ideological reverence can just as easily lead to workers being exploited in the name of what they love: their work. Often, this exploitation comes directly from an employer, but it also comes from social norms and expectations. Jaffe, for instance, takes the example of women’s unpaid labour in the home, particularly child-raising, which is often done by mothers in the name of love, and remains almost exclusively unpaid.1

I found this really on point. To believe that because someone loves it that they must want to do it for free. Or that artists are only passionate about their jobs and therefore will take less payment is super frustrating. Other artistic roles such as a carpenter or blacksmith. Are taken seriously, why is art not?

They are expected to love their work. Money, it is presumed, should not be their motivation: artists should feel grateful to be working at all, even if they’re unpaid or on very low rates. Just as the mother’s love for her child, or the activist’s devotion to their cause makes them vulnerable to exploitation in their names, so too does an artist’s creative passion

Again, this further pushes this agenda of working for low rates or being unpaid. It is expected for some reason in our society.

Before the 20th century, art was the almost exclusive preserve of the well-off — only those who could afford not to work to sustain themselves could be artists: i.e. wealthy aristocrats and those they chose to patronise.

It still is if I’m honest. Now you do have more access to be creative and for the working class to access facilities but it is very difficult. Almost impossible unless you get lucky to afford to get take time and risks to be able to fund your artistic endeavours.

Nevertheless, at the ‘top’ of the industry, there are a significant minority of artists who not only manage to support themselves through their work, but also make a good living from it, sometimes employing other artists in their studios to produce and manage their work. Artists who make a living from selling their works can be described as commercially successful, but many highly-acclaimed artists, whose work is exhibited at the likes of Tate (and internationally equivalent art museums and collections) are not necessarily commercially successful.

It is interesting to see the difference between financially successful artists and commercially successful artists. You can have exhibited in many places and gain a huge following and still not be able to pay your rent.

Individuals may make art that is materially difficult to sell (such as sculpture, installation, performance or video art, which appeals only to very limited numbers of collectors, and makes up only a fraction of the sales that paintings do), very expensive to make, politically provocative/ unpalatable or unfashionable, or because they simply reject the commercial art market as exploitative of artists.

You are either against the artist and scene that buy very high priced expensive art or you are part of it.

“Society at large does not value the things that I, as an individual, value, therefore I am pressured to betray my own values in order to survive.”

A quote from an artist from the article is something I believe a lot of artists do and have to do. Something I myself will do when I graduate, is give up my sound artist passion in a way to use the same skills for something society values more. Doing post-production sound design for adverts.

The lack of a collective voice can also be ascribed to the stubborn endurance of the hyper-individualised, romantic ideal of the artist as individual genius, who needs no one but his own talent to survive and thrive.

Lastly this interested me, the article mentioned that the UK has the least people in art unions and this comes down to a hyper-individualised, romantic idea of an artist doing everything themselves. A shame that this mentality is real.

I looked online at artist CV templates and drafts and ended up just making one myself influenced by what I saw online. I decided to change a few bits from the previous CV I had, the bio, the skills, and updated work experience and make the CV only two pages. I think I still need to work on the presentation side, perhaps even change my skills a bit? Include them in the work experience. I’m stuck in the middle of whether to put my projects, artistic ones that are as work experience? As in say what I’ve worked on. At the moment my CV is more orientated towards getting a job or working as an engineer or sound recordist at a studio.

I made the first homepage of my website, I decided to go with hot glue as it is relatively easy. It does not look the most professional and it’s annoying to resize stuff but it’s intuitive.

I’ve identified a few different pages I want to have. Initially I want it to be artistic the website and not too professional as this is not who I am, I’m not a corporate person. I want to have a homepage, with some photos and links to socials. Based on what I read on the UAL page that advises students on creating websites, I thought that it was correct in saying that there are a few key pages you should have. About, Contact, Music, Sound Works, CV. These are the five pages I want to have.

Here is the current homepage of my website. I will work and add more pages as the weeks go along. It’s rough but I also like the design of it. Not being polished is my thing.

So I read the APG article discussing the group who wanted to create residencies or placements within larger companies for artists to get involved with and see if it changes anything or any other aspects that are learnt from interacting with these two different worlds, being corporate and artistic.

There were a few interesting reflections, one of the placements involved an artist going on a large shipping boat to japan over two months, to teach drawing and painting classes to help alleviate boredom with the crew. It ended up not totally working as the artist brought social issues into the ship.

Another artist worked with a steel manufacturer to try to think about steel products in a different way than just corporate building materials. The initial placement was to use or discover ideas around the material. Instead, the artist started looking and writing about the company in journals and claimed the company did very little for its workers.

The question of what the contribution of an artist in such a context could be, prompted him to write several concept papers that he discussed with representatives ofthe BSC. In the papers he argued that the BSC had failed to offer the employees a meaningful, enriching work experience.

So to answer the question “Consider how, where and who you aim to work with. Make notes in your blog.”

I think I consider myself to work perhaps in many scenarios, one being as an artistic engineer, helping others get their desired sonic qualities within their tracks, disregarding the standards of the popularised commercial music industry. Another is as an artist making music and other creative works for myself and others.

Where? I think perhaps abroad in Europe. I also have a Portuguese passport so I can live in Europe, Berlin maybe? I want to travel and take my knowledge and work experience to different cultures and enjoy different experiences that can nurture my creative outlook and skills.

Who? I’m not sure yet, whoever will take me. Or perhaps whoever will value my opinion or feel like I can bring them something, I know I’m capable of doing and bringing good work towards a creative company. A real goal I have is to work for myself and own my own music/recording studio. To give free sessions when the studio has time and be a place for the community to get realistic recording rates that are not extreme and try to make a profit off of others.

I read the section on the UAL website that was attached to the moodle page about how to write a CV and organise it. To start it made some interesting points and I’ll break down each section.

Firstly

Full name, I’ll make sure to attach this.

Telephone number, we discussed in class that this isn’t always appropriate but does not hurt if you are not shy.

Email should be a business email or an email that is efficient. Something such as your name and last name or the artist’s name. Nothing too crazy.

Website, again something that matches your full name or artist name and should host your portfolio or other information not shown on your CV.

Profile, 1-2 sentences explaining who you are and what role, Short description explaining who you are, the role you think you operate at and what you can offer the company?

Key Skills, Key skills that speak out before the experience section

Experience, jobs or other activities that showcase experience needed for the position at hand.

Education, college and university and above. Perhaps any other things, certificates, or Pro tools?

Achievements, awards or funding.

Interests, a small section on what you are personally in. help if it is similar to the interviewee or company goals/values.

References. either on request or two is usual on the CV.

Since I already have a CV and I’ve been hired I showed Dawn my CV. She said it was good but would change a few things around, perhaps not aspiring in my bio as I am a sound artist already. She also said to perhaps change the skills or key skills section and include them in the job experience section. and two make it two pages instead of three.

I’ve attached my old CV here for reference.

I think I will make a new CV that is mainly focused on being an artist/recording engineer/technician. A more broad one is that if I decide to leave this current job in the future I can rearrange my current CV and tailor it to certain Jobs. I like the current format. I think I will tweak a few sections, re-write my personal statement and make fewer skills in the bullet point section. Perhaps better organise the experience and make it fit into two pages.

I read through the link shared on moodle towards the UAL advice page. It was quite helpful in each of the sections, describing different websites to use, and how to showcase yourself professionally online. Create a website that helps push what you are trying to do. Look at other competitors’ websites to figure out how you want yours to be.

I have always wanted to create a website but have been confused between it being either a more professional portfolio-based website or a creative artist-based website.

This blog also discussed SEO which is also important, something I have no idea about though. Navigation on it being good, what content are we uploading, and is it on brand?

I think I will showcase my work on a website for the portfolio section of this handin’. Even though I already have a band camp I think it would be cool to have my own website with my work on there. Potentially link the Bandcamp into it as well.