WHAT
The dreampop and electronic band Cravat asked for my collaboration to enhance the message of their song Bruno with the creation of some original visuals for this track.
This piece of music and lyrics + visuals were created as an original audiovisual work, sent to the Volumens Fest open call for musicians and visualists who wanted to be lined up in the roster for their 2023 year edition.
HOW
This work is the best take of five different recordings of the visuals for the song "Bruno", performed live over the played music. Its inception is grounded on serendipity, randomness, chance and poetry.
My statement for this project contains more info on the creative process behind these visuals.
STATEMENT
01. EVER FLOWING RANDOM POETRY
In a time of increasing AI poetic and narrative experimentation, I still rely extensively on its "Ars Antecessor": the analog cut-up technique based on pen, paper, scissors and randomness.
The poem flowing in the visuals for Cravat's track "Bruno" was written at random by joining together -in every grammatically correct conjunction and variation- the semantic units:
Unit 01
En este sueño | In this dream
Unit 02
En la curva de los ojos | In the curve of the eyes
Unit 03
Sueño que aparecen | I dream that [...] appear
Unit 04
Luces bailando | Dancing lights
Unit 05
Sombras cruzando | Shadows crossing
Thus, I set an ever flowing poem which synesthetically talks about the fleeting flashes of shadows and lights that some people experience at the curve of their eyes sometimes. Artifacts that are deemed as a vision defect (mild retinal detachment), the remnant of a light overprint (overexcited eye rods) or the glimpse of an entity from another existential plane (a ghost).
To complete this written and sounding stream, a poetic sound game is hidden in the background: the sequence
Bruno — Bruma — Umbra — Sombra
Bruno — Brume — Umbra — Shade
A loop of sounds built on the seamless fit of round vowels ("a", "o", "u") plus sweet sounds ("u", "eme", "ene" ), broken by soft punctuations ("be", "bru", "bra", "ía").
02. VISIONS OF MEMORY AND FONDNESS
Lights, colors, sounds, emotions. Names.
Live music and visuals reenact and redefine them all, partly: a stream of memory mutating in the continuous flow of the present when played live. The recreation of the moment in which they were created, when captured for its reproduction in "play", "pause" and "stop" mode - just frozen and indexed memory.
Loosely, music and visuals for this track are based on different stories and experiences within the same geographical space: the city and province of Granada — my years living in the Albayzín, in my case; the Granada Geopark Lights 2022, in the case of the guys from Cravat.
It is said that, being Granada so high (ergo, slightly detached from Earth's gravity), you weight less when you are there: in a way, your body escapes the influence of the Earth and floats a bit, thus getting a little closer to the free flow of time and space of Outer Space.
This is why in the background -under the text layers and the gradients described in .glsl- these visuals include a looped vista of one of the best places in the world: the view of El Sacromonte from the walk to the Fountain of Los Avellanos — a space halfway between city and nature, reality and paradise.
CREDITS
VIDEO*
Visual concept _ PrRmB!
Poem _ PrRmB!
Visuals _ Sacromonte vista by PrRmB! | Traité de Bave et d'Éternité by Isidore Isou | Assorted .glsl code snippets by Shadertoy Community
* In spite of having been cut, edited, modified, loosely translated and remixed, all sources (quotations, pictures and videos) appearing in this piece have been used with the utmost respect - despite the will to create something completely new upon them.
Poem and visuals dedicated to the memory of S. P. Bradley merrily singing at the end of Calle Elvira (Granada, Spain) on a late spring afternoon, back in 2018
PrRmB! (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 EN)
