The Geography is available now!

You can buy the app for Mac, Windows and Linux right here, on itch.io, at:
pawsmenu.itch.io/thegeography

The Geography is also available on iOS!

The Geography is also available on Android via Google Play!

For anyone curious what The Geography is, well, let me tell you. The Geography is, in essence, very much an Endless Album. That's the best way to think about it. It's like buying a new record, except my record, The Geography, is always going to be different, every time you play it. It's also exclusively an app, which means it's a piece of software. To do what The Geography does would be impossible on CD, for example. The software itself is primarily passive. It will show you pretty landscapes, rendered from terrain data from Svalbard, Norway, as light dances across them in various curated colour schemes.  For more background about the visual choices, and The Geography in genral, please read the previous blog post titled "The Geography of The Geography". There is also a little five-note instrument that you can play in the app, too, if you want to. There are all sorts of little touches in the app, but the experience is largely and primarily passive. As passive as listening to a song, and if you want to join in, you can too, with the minimal instrument. Personally, I love listening to The Geography at about 67% volume, during a meditation session, or to fall asleep to. Also, when cooking, or reading. But, however you like to listen is just as ideal. 

The Geography is also releasing on iOS and Android, and those versions are effective identical to the Desktop Versions. Desktop does have one extra colourscape, which will likely make its way to mobile eventually, however the compositional and musical aspects share the same content and parameters. On desktop, ie, the version from itch.io, is where I'll be updating more frequently, if updates are called for. This includes new colour schemes, new vistas, etc.  Also, like we have included with the launch, an Experimental VR Version of The Geography, so, other little experimental offshoots, if they eventuate, will be released via the itch.io page, and should bundle with your purchase.

It's been a wonderful journey, and a great privilege to be able to bring The Geography to you. 

Since announcing The Geography's release date on September 1st, I've had quite a nice couple of weeks.
The Geography was really done, and so, I just had a lot of time to get everything in order, send some emails, thanks some important people.

During the last week or so, Niki was telling me about her trip to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. As she was reading out the didacts and showing pictures of the art works, she got to American artist Robert Irwin's piece "Untitled 1968". She read a sentence that hit me like a beautiful brick. It was a sentence  that described Irwin's process and revelations; of the piece, it is said that "he (Irwin) adopted the circular shape because the traditionally rectilinear format of painting no longer made sense to him" and that the piece "more or less transcended painting". I feel the same about The Geography. It changed the way I thought about music, and more or less, transcends recorded music for the listener, as we think of recorded music. The Geography is much closer to live music; it is always live for the listener, always playing, always improvising. But there is also a solid state to the piece, it's not a band, or a composer, it's 1's and 0's. 1s and 0s playing with those compositions, and those pieces, but invariably, 1s and 0s.

Composing for something endless was, and is, revelatory. I adore traditional composition, and will continue to compose in a traditional way, but to think of a composition as endless feels true to the very special moment at the core of what it is to create a piece of music. There's always a moment where a song touches the endless, when you hear it, and hear the potentiality, and also hear it in the moment for what it is. To imagine ways in what facilitate that feeling toward a composition to go on, endlessly, is a wonderful thing. The fact I have my own way of doing so, thanks to Titouan, and to do so in a way that is highly custom and specific, is a great privilege. To be able to, in some way, bottle that act of creation in perpetuity, is incredibly special. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, at age 76, on the topic of his light installations, Robert Irwin is quoted as saying "Energy changes are going on, which doesn’t happen in painting" and that is the cherry on top for me, conceptually. The Geography is a composition, but there are energy changes going on, which doesn't happen in an audio file. To be fair, there's energy changes going on at all times, in all technology, in all of our bodies, as well as in all life, and the entire universe, so, really, in conclusion, it's pretty cool to be alive.

I've also been painting. I have wanted to 'unlock' the ability to paint again for some time, ages, really. However, digital brushes and digital pencils confused me, and never seemed to behave how I wanted them to. In a great fortune of experimenting at a high frequency over the last week, thanks in part to the inspirational work I am able to do elsewhere with my colleagues, I feel I have 'unlocked' the emotional and technical dexterity of a few select digital brushes. I wanted to share one of those piece with you here, because, well, I like them very much. I make this image expressly to soothe the process fo releasing The Geography, and process some of the emotions, let my muscles relax, let my body breathe. So, I made this little painting illustration for myself, and, I suppose, for you. Click the image to see some more, if you like.

Another thing about Irwin, the artist mentioned above, was that he used the energy and aesthetics of light, but also used the forms which hold light, in his art. The bulb, the casing, the orientation, the interplay between all these factors and the light itself is an element of his work that elevates it. I think therein is where you get to thinking about how games, or game engines, computers, phones, devices, are the artwork, too. Not just the software, not just the light, but the casing. The whole being greater than the sum of its parts. It's all part of it. 

The Geography is now available on phones, tablets and computers. If you want to learn more about the process and inspirations fo The Geography, please read "The Geography of The Geography" which is the previous blog post to the one we have here, where I go into greater detail about the project and the journey to The Geography.  In short, I hope you enjoy The Geography very much. I will leave you with a beautiful quote from Cartographer Rolm Sumner. Esther told me, that he told her, that these were the first words he spoke to his great love, reminiscing on the first time he lay eyes on her, after a long travelled journey. Of these following words, I feel the same way about The Geography when I think about that initial seed of an idea, and now, seeing The Geography take its first steps into the world, to be enjoyed by anyone and everyone, as a manifestation of that idea, made real, I feel a similar tenderness and love.

"I remember you in the sun, softly smiling, or rather, trying to smile, a little like sea legs, but for the light."
- Geographer Rolm Sumner.