Artists Website Task

For this task we were assigned the objective of creating our own webpage for an existing artist, or our own artist that we wanted to create. I chose to create an artist, going by the name of 'Skrattches', using songs by the band 'Crystal Castles'.

We firstly began by choosing a theme that I felt symbolized the ideologies of my artist, in keeping with Dyer's Star Theory, I chose the theme 'Cubic' as I felt that the darker tones and atmosphere of the website, strengthened the symbolic conventions of my artist being a darker artist.

After deciding my theme I made my first post. As creating an artist from scratch, while it did not have to be in particular detail, I had to decide what kind of a relationship my audience and artist would have. For example, I chose to have this message accompany my first post.

I chose this type of message as I felt that my artist, as they were fairly unknown, would want to keep a positive relationship with the fans, as, according to Dyer's star theory paradoxes, an artist must be both present and absent, and I felt that using kindness would encourage a good relationship with their audience.

Furthermore, I feel that within the Experimental electro music, a common stereotype is that the music, and artists are constructed, corresponding with Dyer's theory, to be aggressive. However, I felt that subverting this stereotype offered a unique selling point for the band, and the audience could empathize more easily due to this.

I wanted to incorporate certain genre conventions into the band's webpage, as well as trying to subvert some as well. I tried to apply Dyer's star theory while creating this webpage, by considering his statements that 'stars are constructed' and 'stars are an ideology'. I felt that when creating the website, I wanted to include enough evidence of the band's ideology, which is the reason for the photo of the live performance, portraying passion and fan interaction, while the animal photo demonstrates the quirky ideology, which I wanted to incorporate within my band's ideology. While I feel that the photo of album artwork demonstrates an interaction with the fans, while also presenting a constructed creative ideology. 

I decided to compare my webpage to an existing artist of a similar genre and discuss how Dyer's theory can be applied to both websites, yet in different way. Above is the webpage for the experimental electro band 'The XX'. Although a very minimalist style was chosen for this website, the tabs above provide all the necessary information and links to delve deeper into the band and their ideologies and image. I feel that, using Dyer's theory, 'The XX' have used this minimalist style so as not to reveal much about their music, to encourage the audience to explore them and their work. Compared to my webpage where I focused on portraying my band's ideology as clear as possible. I feel like this webpage also applies to Dyer's paradox, that 'a star must be both present and absent'. Due to the very plain webpage the absence is already there, however, the extravagant 'X' in the middle of the webpage, which uses impressive effects, portrays the band's individuality.