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Wray Bowling

@wraybowling

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UX researcher & interactive designer.
@swampflux is my Eurorack synth company.

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Work on the new Wrave album continues…
It’s called Don’t Just Stand There.

2 tracks are on YouTube so far. Lately, recording sessions have not been ultimately fruitful. Performing, it turns out, takes time and effort. I gave up my DAW in favor of talent: a need to forever practice or else these tracks don’t exist. They can be reproduced but they can’t play themselves. I signed up for this on purpose. The balance board is just as much a part of the album’s theme as it is integral to how I control and express the sounds. The goal is to create a soundscape that is utterly impossible to produce by just standing there pressing play. I have to bob and bounce and wiggle my way towards the finish line. It’s also an extremely rigorous test of my product The @swampflux Biggest Foot which converts the balance board into a giant hands-free Kaos Pad. I’ve hit all sorts of odd bugs and usability snags along the way. A musician’s relationship with a tool is constantly improving, so obtuse UX can often get ignored with enough practice time, but here I have the agency to change my tool. It’s been 3 years of resisting quick changes in favor of the struggle instead. I am forcing myself to suffer the quirks to make art anyway, and only change the tool when it is truly broken. Updates can change behavior which undermines the artist’s practice and muscle memory, and thus the performance which in turn changes the sound. Updates change the art. We must be careful as designers to respect that not every interaction should be perfectly smooth right away or be iterated too often. Let them cook, as the kids would say. Let them cook. by @wraybowling

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14 days ago

🤠Old N Busted ◼️New Hotness
The business card I made in 2009 fell out of a college text book last week. It looks like I hurled every Illustrator feature at once at the screen without really thinking about what I was trying to offer. For comparison, here’s the new cards I got printed last week. taken in Lexington, South Carolina by @wraybowling

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2 months ago

Nailed it. 📷🤷‍♂️ by @wraybowling

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3 months ago

I’ve been shooting on film again. Check back in a month or two. Or never. Or maybe on my website some day. I decided photography is a hobby not a method of explaining myself or a documentary for what I’m doing or who I’m around. This 🫲whooole🫱 social media thing is opt-in surveillance. We’re now seeing the repercussions of that. Use it for art; art that the algorithm doesn’t think is worth stealing. Bad art, disobedient art, ugly art. Remember that 99.9% of everyone prompting an Image Model for slop has “best quality” tacked onto the front. That means there’s still a niche to fill. Show me your worst quality images. Let’s be bad again. Let’s be slow again. by @wraybowling

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9 months ago

Goodbye, Watch. by @wraybowling

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9 months ago

In 2025 I got my first 3D printer and it quickly dawned on me that in addition to learning how to print, it would come with a need to finally understand CAD. As a Blenderhead since 2003, CAD never made much sense to me, but now I get it. The need for a parametric shape instead of polygons is a lot like why we eventually have to give up pixels for vectors if we want crisp edges. Most of what I print is still practical and small. I’m learning how to print bigger things and design my own things and print organic stuff from Blender or whatever too, but mostly I’ve printed replacement broken plastic shit around the house. Here’s a globe I fixed today. 🌏

I still only use free open software:
- Linux Mint
- FreeCAD
- Orca Slicer
- Sovol SV08 (basically a Voron) on Klipper by @wraybowling

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9 months ago

Still cooking on that album…! This take has an EXCELLENT example of WHY I created the @swampflux Biggest Foot. I need lots of manual control constantly.

#eurorack #livemusic #techno #videosynth by @wraybowling

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a year ago

The same patch for 2 years.
I wanted to force myself to stick with it and make a new Wrave album. It’s still not ready, but it feels much closer than last year. Posting bc I don’t know if or when I’ll ever release it. idk. The weight of the world crushes my spirits daily. It’s hard enough just to be in the studio at all making stuff, but recently I got more of the video stuff working and I play until the lava lamp is flowing. Usually by then I don’t feel like I suck anymore. by @wraybowling

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a year ago

Last week I stayed off these digital things and figured out how to restore my 1986 Bell & Howell Micro Design 925 microfiche viewer. It was some of the most freeing hours I’ve experienced in all of 2025. I felt alive. It’s so nice to see it glow.

I shot roughly 30 minutes of video footage of the process. Perhaps I’ll edit it together for YouTube or something. I doubt many people would care, but I do. taken in Lexington, South Carolina by @wraybowling

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a year ago

2024 happened. I did not Instagram much. In 2025 I may Instagram even less.

My opinion of the platform is firm: Instagram continues to be a digital junk food. It’s gas station quality. I am not going to waste time chasing the algorithm. What little time I spend here this year was for a few things:
- collecting recipes
- the art scene sometimes would pierce through the noise
- reposting mental health, self help, and informed posts about the toxic nature of spending too much time here.

Instead, I’m building my websites back up. The real web, meant to be looked at briefly.

In 2025, i hope you get off Insta too. 📱🔜🌲 by @wraybowling

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2 years ago

If you have #sumac, it’s probably your last chance to make sumac lemonade as Second Spring comes to a close. 🫠

Recipe:
- collect ~3 pods
- brush off the brown or moldy bits
- boil them
- i added some ginger slices to the boil. Totally optional

That’s it. I left the stems on and it was a little bitter so I did add a little sugar while still hot. After refrigeration it tastes better. It’s naturally sweet, probably a wild yeast but idk don’t quote me i’ve done zero research. taken in Lexington, South Carolina by @wraybowling

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2 years ago

PSA: you can wash bags.

I’ve made a post about this in the past, but it’s been years and yes I still do it. You can too. by @wraybowling

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2 years ago