I recently had to think about this as I had my first gig doing live visuals at the end of last month. I’ve been playing live music for the last few years under the name RBMK - which is a type of nuclear reactor but, as has been suggested previously, I liked the idea that to most it would be a meaningless and seemingly unconnected collection of letters that would derive their own association with my music over time. I hadn’t thought about what name I’d perform under until I was asked for the purposes of a poster. I have a practice as an artist so using my own name was an option that I considered, but the name RBMK_TV was mentioned and I thought that was great so went with that!
Its interesting that several people like the abstract letters and numbers based names. One of my first ideas was RGBAT (AT being my initials) but I thought it was too vague and generic but maybe that is a strength?
I’m thinking of using RGBS - definitely a common theme here
Some of the best advice I ever took was to use my actual name. The advice came from an older experimental music curator. He said that through the years, he’d seen lots of people change the names of their projects and then confused people and lost fans. Since then, I’ve been involved in countless projects and media accounts, all under my actual name. A big issue with naming yourself after a noun is that you then need to become more popular than the noun in order for someone to successfully google you. Google search results for my name are pages and pages of projects I’ve done, articles I’ve been mentioned in, and all of my social media accounts.
My screen name is dope but I’m not performing under it because it’s more of a track or album title. As far as your performers name I’d say use your first name but change the y to an I then change the last name. IDK something like Andi Caster aka RasterCaster whatever just have fun with it. Just stay away from obscure 17th century French terms unless you hate your audience or don’t care. Which are both legit
I’m beginning to wonder if I should use a pseudonym… the weirdness, aggression, and psychedelia of my video work may be scaring off job and dating prospects. But then, if people can’t handle me at my most extreme level of creative deconstruction, maybe they can’t handle me at my most sublime level of enlightenment.