Matei

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A comprehensive approach towards digital marketing as a tool for artist’s growth. Demonstrated through a lecture-style presentation.

This lecture will be composed from my vast experience in the domain of digital marketing. This experience is from employment, organizations, and from my personal brands.

As I have reached millions of users, I will use the data from how users interacted with my content as a footprint for this lecture. As 10 million+ users is a solid market share. I will also relate Mr. Beasts methodologies in cracking the code for digital marketing and correlate the content with successful artists that have used this tool to make a name for themselves.

In today’s day and age, if you aren’t online, you are behind.

Digital marketing is a strong tool to grow your audience and career. You may be a painter (non digital artist) but posting your process online can help you grow your artistic brand. Potential co-collaborators, clients, or businesses won’t work with you unless you have X amount of followers. Having a large platform is sought after more than basic skills or even talent. Posting your content can showcase your skills like a portfolio. The difference is by doing it through digital marketing it reaches mainstream media where anyone can interact with it. This means that if what you post is attractive, you will gain attention and furthermore grow your identity.

My lecture on digital marketing will include statistics/algorithms, current trends, and ways you can start or continue to grow your image, brand, and artist identity. My goal is to hopefully embed a structured mentality on how to approach digital marketing correctly and create viral content.

Digital marketing is highly important. It allows you to communicate with people in real time from around the world. Instead of trying to breakthrough locally, you can gain attention and support internationally. Digital marketing allows you to reach more of your target audience then ever before. Digital marketing is something to care about because it makes growth and connection easier and it can help you become a self sustained artist.

The research methodologies will be done via my experimentations in the domain of digital marketing and from research through trusted sources. Digital marketing is a field that constantly changes but there is a story it can tell.

Moments of Magic

Live Art Ritual

Concept

Experimenting with probability and how we react to 4 options as tasks. A scientific and psychological approach to experimental art rituals. A task is given. Nothing is planned, everything occurs naturally.

Our project draws inspiration from Rirkrit Tiravanija. An artist which created experimental and live art ritual pieces which included cooking meals. His works, Untitled 1990 (pad thai) and Cafe Deutschland (1993) allow for unplanned environments based on specific tasks, repetitive in nature, surrounding specific locations/subjects (Food). We took on the subject of the classroom and offered repetitive and natural tasks to complete from that given subject.

Food/Kitchen/Cafe -> Cooking, interacting, enjoying meals.

Classroom -> Interacting, contributing, learning

Additionally, ‘Walking Each Other Home’ (2025-), Artist, Stacy Makishi provides breaks within her art, a moment to recoup, a moment that separates moments. The spinning of the wheel acts as a separator, similarly to Makishi’s breaks in her pieces. The wheel and its spinning aren’t separate from the piece but provides time to reflect.

We offered to include a wildcard option. As red is the rarest colour on the board. When given to perform it, it allowed us to recreate unique scenes that opened up memory portals. Separate from the other usual tasks which correlate with the colours being more common. Red is random and the task can be anything, the rest represent the basic activities done in each classroom.

Artist Statement

This live art ritual we’ve created is a reflection on past classroom experiences. What we’ve experienced consciously decides how we react when given tasks at random times.

Through experimentation, symbolism was created when we considered the colour wheel as a random numerator that offers a cycle in repetitive activities. The wheel itself is round and circular, offering an equal cycle.

Although tasks were done at random and through different ways when we each considered how to approach the task(s) given. It offered a lens into our lives as we considered past experiences to create the visible. Such scenes and tasks can be considered relatable and offers the viewer to partake and offer their version of how they would perform their own ritual.

We’ve performed these tasks daily since we were in pre-school without fully considering why we do what we do. We’re almost robotic in the sense that we constantly operate like this. We always use the laptop for writing notes/Google, we always ask questions to understand the material further. It is embedded into our way of life. By completing these tasks at random we take this daily and robotic ritual and create an experimental form out of it when we perform such tasks at unexpected times and without real reason.

Improv Ritual: Classroom Experiences is psychological. It makes us human. It is a test. Every time when a task is given, it is done different.

Score

Sound Object

CONCEPT

For my sound object, I was experimenting with potentially making a guitar out cardboard but it was too simple wasn’t experimental enough for me since it was a basic kitsch style object has been replicated many times from kindergarten to now. I still took cardboard into consideration. I had packaging from a monitor I bought and I thought that I could make something that is boxed within foam that offers an interesting sound which comes out of a designed area.

I remembered that I had a small electric guitar amp and a microphone. I plugged the mic into the amp. It offered a weird sound that was interesting because it was always different depending on the strength of the electricity coming out of a wall electrical outlet. The strength of the power coming from the outlet let the amp and microphone operate at various levels, almost like there wasn’t enough power. Additionally, since normal microphones do not work well with amps, this mix of using a microphone at lowest operational level on a loud amp offered the sound to be deduced to simplest level. Almost like putting sound waves that normally are smooth and operational in slow-mo and allowing the viewer to hear individual beats which are the various components in the devices communicating with each other to create sound. With the microphone not being as operational and old, when messing with the wire from it and the white wire it allowed for the sound to be altered into a different dimension or it allowed the sound to be playable, muting it-creating beats-creating breaks-creating experimental sound.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The sound object is a combination of craft and technology. A mixture that uses old sound equipment which is normally used in a band setting or a musical setting and allows it to resonate within a box and controlled by strings and held together by positional black sticks. A metal bowl covers the area in which sounds come from, allowing for sound to escape in a equal and circular manner as well as allowing altering the sound to make it more robotic, more metallic. A natural, a physical sound modifier which normally would be altered by a guitar pedal or choice on a digital software like within the GarageBand app. I enjoyed using guitar amp’s natural “plexi sound” and curving it and stretching it across to make it sound like an arcade arena with varying aspects within the sound. It isn’t just the same sound over and over, it is multi-layered. This sound object offers a lens into the basic resonances of devices which amplify sound and can be used like a boom box or a DJ board to alter and make varying noises whilst sticking to its basis.

Symposium Bibliography Draft

Digital Marketing for Artists

Appel, Gil, et al. “The Future of Social Media in Marketing.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 48, no. 1, Oct. 2019, pp. 79–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1.

Gabler, Matt. “Leveraging Social Media for Art Marketing: Tips and Tricks for Artists.” Matt Gabler Studios, 30 June 2024, www.mattgablerart.com/post/leveraging-social-media-for-art-marketing-tips-and-tricks-for-artists. Accessed 26 Oct. 2025.

“Effective Social Media Strategies for Artists: Branding, Content, and Ads.” ArtRewards, 24 Oct. 2024, www.artrewards.net/editorial/promoting-yourself-as-an-artist-on-social-media. Accessed 27 Oct. 2025.

Speculative Video

What is Reality?

Concept and Artist Statement

My speculative video, What is Reality?, focuses on our life as a simulator. What if the life that we are living is actually a lie, what if we are robots. What if we are just programmed beings. Touch, smell, feeling – all reduced when we consider that we are in fact just a civilization on a spec in the large galaxy. What is the afterlife? What is life? What is the reality? We each go through 80 years of life, more or less. Good lives, bad ones, early ones or long ones. Lives with change or simple basic lives. Why are we here and why are we different. What is our purpose here. We discover new things but we don’t go farther than our earth to discover what is reality. Some individuals get rich, others live on the streets. Some are able to travel a lot but that is just called being a tourist. What is the purpose. This is a video on speculation with ideas on a topic that hasn’t been justified yet. On a topic that is being studied. Why are we here, were we put here or did we create this system ourselves. We can’t remember our early days as a baby, did we think then? Why is there no memories from then. Who created this cycle?

I created this video to show a perspective on what I think about. Some part of this is true to speculate. Some parts are influenced by movies, social factors and more. The lady turning ending up being a cyborg/ a hidden creature in disguise, influenced by the movie They Live. The ironic thought that we could be playing racing games on a simulator, simulating real racing while we ourselves are simulating this “life”. Is life really life or was it given to us, did we earn it or are we in a loop through time until we reach specific goals. I went for a serious but maybe funny approach. A surreal approach that immerses you in my POV. Potentially relatable or potentially mental. I used found footage from online and my own video. Some additional editing and text when working with green screen backgrounded items like the TV on a pedestal. Additional text and coding is imbedded near the end of the video and within the TV on the pedestal.

The following text/image is visually given for a few seconds within the video. Hidden within a green screened object and around a bustling city, it is a nod to the famous quote by Jim Carey, “Good afternoon, good evening, and good night” in the Truman Show. A movie about my ideas and my concept which could also be heavily influenced by this movie too! We don’t know what is reality both from few facts on what life is really about; before, during after. Additionally, the media we consume visually and by hearing about such influences our thoughts. We could also say that these influences may have been on purpose to remove our thoughts on this concept of reality since it could be a sensitive topic or top secret. To remove us from reality and the unknown. People demand answers but there aren’t any. So removing us from thinking about it is a good way to control but again this topic on who we are, if there are others, are we living in a loop or are we copying other civilizations light years away are still crazy questions and the answers are yet to be discovered.

Ghost in the Shell (2017) – Plot – IMDb: Matei

A human being is part of the whole — called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature.

– Albert Einstein

The answer is not known. It is up to speculate. Some rely on the government, some on religion, some on their own thoughts as to who we are and what is our reality. Some go so low as to believe the Earth is flat and many don’t agree with each other on all of that.

Found Footage (Owned and Internet), Green Screen, Found Music/Audio (Internet), Premiere Pro Editing.

Marketing For Artists – Symposium

The final bibliography is on the last slide of the presentation above.

This symposium piece concludes a semester long research point on how artists should and could market themselves towards potential clients and viewers within the digital world. An understanding of what marketing and furthermore digital marketing means. How you can apply it towards developing your image or brand as an artist in 2025. The importance of marketing yourself or your work digitally. An outline of various mediums of platforms you can use to expand your reach and ways to best optimize these accounts/platforms to succeed (public creator accounts and marketing tools).

Not having some sort of representation online in 2025 as an artist is a huge step back compared to others in your field. If you do not like social media at least you can go down the path of creating a website through Canva or fully programmed by you for a small fee.

This presentation was a lecture, to be used as a tool of knowledge, on how to get started and how to grow. Examples included not focusing on hashtags as AI scanners from Meta already understand what your posting and will push it towards your followers, those similar to you or those involved in a familiar topic. A focus on adding music posts from Instagram’s music option increases viewership by engaging your work with trending sounds and by making your post more attractive as it has a further sound theme tied to its meaning. The sound itself can also act like an alarm when people scroll on their feed and are alerted to your post with the sound appearing as they forgot their volume was on high. When creating or using a current account for art, make sure it is a pro creator account (not business to avoid any copyright claims or limitations that business accounts have). If possible, turning on or signing up for beta versions of accounts or apps to get the latest updates to stay ahead of the competition. Facts and data like these shaped what this presentation could offer and hopefully created a better understanding of how to use the platforms professionally, accessibly, and fully.