Fake Radio

I remember the first time someone showed me a photo they had tweaked with Instagram… It was probably cheesy as hell and definitely had a dog ugly border around it, but I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.

As a designer and wannabe photographer, realising this app could instantly do things that took me hours on Photoshop was a paradigm shift and I was immediately hooked.

Here’s my very first post from December 2010, featuring my newborn nephew Rye.

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A post shared by Murray Galbraith (@murraydg)

Yet here we are, over a decade later… It’s become the biggest app on earth and I can barely open it.

Vapid, uninspiring ‘influencers’ screaming for attention and brands paying top dollar just to make my phone wake up feels pretty close to the opposite of why I signed up in the first place.

A quick flick through my older posts brings up dozens more reasons why it hurts to hang out here… Photos of failed friendships and broken projects make Meta owned social media platforms feel more like walking through a graveyard than skipping down memory lane.

Not to mention I feel a deep responsibility around my family’s privacy (I doubt whether my kids will ever care they were posted on the internet as babies, but still, it’s something I’m mindful of), which is why I stopped posting on Facebook / Insta etc more than a year ago.

But every now and then, I come across an artist or small business who only do business via Instagram.

A hashtag or @name pointing to someone or something so intriguing, I can’t help but think ‘geez, maybe I should make things and share them again’, because these guys clearly don’t let the garbage get them down.

So that’s why I decided to carve out an hour to start and share a new art project today, called #FakeRadio.

100% fake artists, playing 100% fake music.

I have no idea how often I’ll make these images or how long this idea will keep me interested, but I hope it brings a smile to some faces while it lasts.