The fake band project has been seen to completion. In the end, I was not able to produce photos of the fake band playing a fake show at a fake bar (FauxBar, hurr hurr), but I still had a good amount of material to present.
Exhibit A is the myspace page, of course. This page has access to nearly all the material I created for the project, most of it simply being backstory and bogus information. The info names the band members as Malik Vasquez, Vlad Dragos, and Kurt Jaegger, the bio has a blurb about supporting live music, and the show listing has a set of tour dates in fake bars all over the region.
The only thing missing from the page is, of course, music. Myspace allows you put your own music tracks up on your page if you are a band, but Skinny Factory has none. The reason for this is that producing music would actual constitute real content from the band, in which case it would cease to be fake. Bands like the Gorillaz have “virtual” band members who don’t necessarily correspond with real-life counterparts, but they produce albums and even tour. So, conceptually speaking, in order for Skinny Factory to stay a “fake” band, it can’t make any real music. Also, making music is hard and I didn’t have time.
The myspace account also features a blog. Because the list of show dates updates itself according to real dates, the past shows dissappear as their date passes; only upcoming shows are visible to others. Therefore, the only means of creating the evidence of performances like I intended is through bogus pictures (unable to attain thus far), bogus comments from other myspace users (several friends have been very helpful in this regard) blog entries. To this end, after certain “big” shows, I will post a Skinny Parade blog chronicling their experience and how they felt about the show, and what they are looking forward to it. The blogs are written from a group perspective, occassionally mentioning individual members in third person. One would have to assume that one of the band members drags his laptop along with him and speaks on behalf of the band as a whole. It might be rewarding to explore whose voice it is behind the blog and his relationship to the whole.
Another component to Skinny Factory’s fake existence is the groups of photos available through the myspace account. I used an afternoon at work to get photos of my coworkers hanging out in the alley next the building, in the back hallway, and exit stairs. The three are naturally photogenic and a little staging and directing were all it took to make them look like a band. The picture I chose for the main band image is one of the guys standing in the stairwell. I played with the light levels a bit to make it more dramatic, here are the results:
Left to Right: Malik, Vlad and Kurt
Stairway to heaven?
I chose to use one of the other pictures of the band in a hallway for the flier image. The inspiration/guiding principles for the flier came from the copious amount of low quality xeroxed band adverts posted on kiosks and left on countertops all over the city. I took inspiration from Kris Straub’s work on F Chords, a webcomic about a fictional Austin band. Straub invited fans to download and print out his phony flier in whatever town they live in. The Skinny Factory website encourages fans to do the same. Below is the original image, my color manipulation of it, and the final version of the flier:
Original photo
Hideous 90's Alternative Rock coloration
Flier with logo and vague show information
The flier lacks any information about specific chows, serving instead as a sort of advertisement for the website. This is so that the same flier can be put up at any time, anywhere, and not seem out of date or out of place. I gave a number of copies to the band members to circulate downtown, and few went up on campus. Hopefully a few fans out of town will distribute these as well.
That concludes the content created for this project. It was moderately successful, even if it didn’t quite reach my ambitions. I don’t know if I was able to fool anybody in class when I introduced the band as legitimate, since I quickly revealed the scam. Most people who I have shown the site to are in on the project, but there are several friends on myspace who don’t know the band is fake and added them just to be friends. For me, that’s a sign that this project is a success.
I have given the password for the account to the members, and a couple are interested in actually creating music for the myspace page. While this clashes with the conceptual founding of Skinny Factory as a fake band, I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.
Acknowledgments: Band members Ted Powers, Julio Fernandez, and Benjamin Haskil, photos by Donovan Gentry
