DRIFTVISION
In August of 2022, I was approached by visual artist Chris Shier to host / network a visual tool he had made for UK-based musican George FitzGerald. The tool was created with THREE.js and TweakPane and had been used by Art Director David Rudnick to create the visuals (cover / promotional artwork, music video, etc) for the album Stellar Drifting. After seeing the trippy visuals and customizeable parameters, Domino Records wanted to create a micro-social media site that empowered users to create their own versions of the album's workwork.
To achieve this, I used a stack consisting of MongoDB, ExpressJS (proxied through Nginx), and vanilla JavaScript on the front-end. Images were hosted on a BackBlaze B2 instance, while the MongoDB instance was hosted on Mongo's Atlas platform. Additionally, I used a JavaScript library called, "Unique-Names-Generator" to create unique-but-legible URLs that users could share on social media. The names of tracks the artist has produced were combined libraries of colors and names to create a cohesive branding across the shared pages. The URLs are used as an index within MongoDB, which speeds up the search process.
To avoid server load issues that commonly occur with user image uploads, I opted to pass signed URLs from our server to the client, which allows them to directly upload images instead of passing it through the server.
Future development will include a custom GUI that the label can use to look at user submissions and download hi-res versions to use as visuals for live shows.
