Introducing AV Club

Welcome to the new website for Paloma Kop's AV Club! In this post, I'll write a bit about my intentions for this project, the context of its creation, and what to expect if you decide to come along for the ride.

First and foremost, I am an independent audio-visual artist, and my AV Club is a way that you can directly support my work. In exchange, you will receive digital and/or physical artifacts in your inbox at regular intervals. There are two types of artifacts you can receive:

Digital Snippets are sent every month via email. These can take many forms, such as:

Written and illustrated updates + bits of stuff I'm working on or thinking about
Small educational bits about media art history + technical things
Multimedia art works and details about how I made them
Deep dives on specific things I'm learning or researching
Signal processing explanations, diagrams, and, source files
Some example topics I think about a lot are:
- Audio-visual hardware (modular synthesizers, analog video mixers, oscilloscopes)
- Feedback loops
- Signal processing, especially in analog and digital image feeds, and how to create parallel effects in both analog and digital toolkits
- Realtime software tools such as Touch Designer, Resolume Arena, and Max

Physical Objects are sent every third month via snail mail. These can also take on various forms, and I try to make them diverse and surprising! Here are some examples:

Sticker sets
Art prints (digital, silkscreen, or experimental techniques)
Small art zines
Laser-cut objects
Any fun way I can think of to create art in a small physical form factor!

You can either subscribe to the Digital Snippets tier, which gets you the eponymous Digital Snippets, or you can join the Physical Objects tier, which gets you both!

Keep in mind that, although you are charged monthly for both kinds of tiers, the Physical Objects are still only sent out every third month. For simplicity on my end, I send out the Physical Objects to everyone at the same time (usually in March, June, September, and December). Shipping costs are included in the price of the tiers, and there are two different options for shipping within and outside the United States.

Now, you may have noticed that I am speaking as though I've already started this project, but this is a brand-new website. That's because AV Club is actually the spiritual successor of a project I've been running for the past two years, called Zine Club. I decided to shut down Zine Club and start something new for a few reasons:

I wanted to make more than just zines, and even though I was already doing that with Zine Club, I wanted a more open-ended name, and one that's more in line with the audio-visual nature of my art practice.
I wanted to adjust the cadence and pricing of the tiers and rewards to be more sustainable for me.
Managing everything manually through Stripe and email BCC was getting unwieldy, and I wanted to switch to a platform (Ghost) that handles the subscriptions, and hosts a public website/blog to boot.

The past two years of running Zine Club, and gathering over 40 members, has served as a proof of concept for the new AV Club. Not only does having a small supplementary income enable me to spend more time each month making weird art, but having regular deadlines also helps motivate me to create more than I would otherwise. The motto of AV Club will be the same as the one for Zine Club:

💡

This site uses the self-hosted version of Ghost. Beyond the costs of my personal web server and Stripe's payment processing fees, all proceeds go towards the time, energy, and materials for my art practice and the various artifacts you'll receive. I've tried to make the pricing accessible, while still being sustainable and supportive on my end. But I know that budgets can be tight, especially for fellow artists, and especially in the current era. If you want to join but find the cost too high, get in touch at: help@avclub.palomakop.tv

To expand my practice in audio-visual art, I also hope to create some custom midi-compatible controllers that are also art-objects in themselves. As I transition my art practice from primarily hardware-based to hybrid and software processes, these controllers will help me take agency over how I interact with the real-time systems and signal chains I design. I have some of the knowledge needed to create these, but it will require more research and testing over time. This is likely something I will write about more in some of the upcoming Digital Snippets, and perhaps some of the Physical Objects will come in the form of PCB (printed circuit-board) art.

Whether you're coming from Zine Club, or you're new here: Welcome! I hope you'll consider becoming a member of my AV Club, and joining me in this strange adventure. I don't know exactly where our path will lead, but I know it will be filled with many flavors of real-time synthesis, obscure technical knowledge, and — most importantly — Weird Art.