i'm not trying to invent the wheel or
something
what i want to do is just discover
things
i started out taking uh sounds from old
vinyl and trying to give those sounds a
new musical environment i suppose mainly
because i really loved a lot of music
that i had no
real relationship with so sampling was a
way that i felt that i could make a sort
of an honest contribution or
investigation into music
now it's going on from that
i sound
the album the idea was to try and make a
record with
instruments that didn't physically exist
it's just an album that's for sure it's
it's a musical album uh first and
foremost
but it also it's a couple of other
things too because we've been trying to
figure out ways that it has a
relationship with with other art and
other
even a performance one aspect of it is
the
the whole project we're doing with tessa
pharma
where it's an exhibition which we're
hoping to tall and hoping to reach a
whole other group of people who are just
interested in the ideas behind the
record
and can see that reflected in what tessa
does
i just felt an immediate affinity with
the music i listened to the tracks and
created what i imagined so they they
formed images in my mind
tessa obviously is a really
well-established respected artist in
their own right so for me the
opportunity to collaborate with someone
like that is really quite an honor
to some extent she's doing a very
similar thing just with a different
medium she's imagining worlds and she's
building them out of things that already
exist in a different form and that's
very much
what i'm trying to do with music
i work with insects and animals and
bones to create sculptures and miniature
worlds
i'm obsessed with a species of skeleton
fairies who have existed since the late
90s a lot of people think i make the
skeleton fairies out of insects but
they're actually made from plant boots
but i combine them with insect wings and
i hang them in swarms with insects so
you'll get a battle between fairies and
insects
i really wanted it to be her
interpretation of the music that i'd
done
so i feel people work strongly like that
you know when they're allowed
freedom to do what they're expert at
the hope is that we can make a
an
immersive environment that's convincing
you know so you're not just sort of
looking through a window at something
but you're inside
what she's doing to some extent and
you're inside what i'm doing
the main piece is a response to the chat
kitty cats and
the fairies have made a piece of
architecture out of a mummified cat
and this is kind of their nest their hub
and from this point they they're um
infesting and existing in the space of
the gallery
i listened to ammon's music and
really responded to the energy of the
different tracks so the hanging battle
scene is inspired by the more frenetic
tracks where you have this build-up of
sound and energy and then clash
when it came to tessa i felt i didn't
want to be sticking my hand in there
they can understand or misunderstand
whatever you do
but in the end
their creative input is is their own and
that brings something that you would
never have brought to the project
often people that view my work perhaps
don't take the time to really engage
with it properly and ammon's music and
the sound design will make the
experience much more intense and
immersive
i hope that people who see this
exhibition
will leave with a sense of otherness and
had a glimpse of another world
i've always been able to get away with
djing at least some of my stuff before
but with this record it just wasn't
going to happen and that's led to a
collaboration with v-squared
the live show and the exhibition they're
completely different things but the
common ground obviously is
is the music which is trying to provide
different ways to experience it
i thought about projection mapping and
i'd seen that a few places and i just
thought that was really interesting he
had a pretty strong idea
of what type of effects he could have
and what types of things he really
wanted to stay away from
heather through some quite clever
engineering she made this whole cubic
structure which is quite awesome really
the concept came from listening to his
music and his
extra technical and
digital music and coming down into the
roots of that
the genesis of this collaboration was me
getting
a call from
ninja
and asking if i was interested in
designing a set for his tour at which
point i
started calling all my friends who
i knew would be right for the job i've
seen some very interesting things happen
but this project i think takes it above
and beyond to the next level of what
multimedia projection
will turn into in the future
so
velo was in charge of the creative
direction for the content we spent a lot
of time doing a storyboard
hammering out ideas of what would work
what wouldn't work
looking at visual references trying to
sort of compile an overall aesthetic for
the show they sat down and had
i think like a 36 hour brainstorming
session on you know how the whole visual
content for the show is going to be put
together we were looking at design we
were looking at some hr giger stuff we
were looking at
um
you know a vast array of creative
references i had this idea of all right
let's make the thing into some sort of
weird abstract
spaceship or you know some adolescent
fantasy of being in a spaceship he'd
taken this idea that he'd had and really
flushed it out into
completed
concepts we merged this into the cube of
the ship itself so that it had kind of a
digital cockpit structure and that's how
we were able to achieve the undocking i
was like well hey take this put in the
model make the cube bigger put them
together and then the ship could
actually go
the whole thing kind of it was very
carefully thought out in terms of the
pacing of the show the tracks themselves
what they would visually lend themselves
to
but also how these things would all
connect
for the show we're using quite a bit of
fun toys
uh
my forte in the in the whole show is
using a software called touch designer
that's the backbone of the whole live
video system
the projection mapping in itself is
always a technological thing and we're
utilizing a tool that is a sort of an
algorithmic computer vision technique
for choosing points and referencing a
computer model that's the same as the
real model if the virtual model was off
at all that we could actually go in and
pull points on the virtual model and
adjust it to any imperfections in the
actual design
other technological things are the
microsoft connect camera
where iman can interact
in real time
i know that each individual artist that
worked on on each individual track kind
of
really
got to the heart of the track and if it
is a really bassy
track there's like machines and and
parts that are
are moving in the sculpture that are
gritty and digital
i'm not used to
having other people necessarily working
on something i do so i was very
enthusiastic myself about
being part of the decisions because the
last thing i want is to be
in the middle of something that's
presenting my music which i don't
understand or has
nothing to do with me you know i want it
to be a personal
experience in the end i think that ammon
is a visionary especially getting to
know him more on this tour he's he's a
very interesting and forward-thinking
musician he's focused and discerning
about art but he's understanding and
sort of
willing to work
with people
everything's been done before but you
know the combination of things that
we're putting together is
is quite unique i think and
i'm hoping that people will get a new
experience out of it
so
you