Axiom Flux
This one started with the musical composition. I was initially going to work on a psytrance piece and was mucking around with all kinds of effects, when I realized that I was basically not adding anything new to the genre. So I tried taking all the stuff I was setting up for that higher intensity track and slowing it all down and it seemed to make the effects do a lot more with my senses.
So I started focusing on making this slow psychedelic voyage and got really into the vibe of it, without a clue how I would visualize it. Initially I tried to create a character around the vocals, but the piece went to so many different places, I felt the best way to connect it all together would be to create an overall texture and color palette and just mix in a lot of different visual subjects.
This got me thinking about the premise of the video and what I was doing and I realized the whole thing was about an altered or new perspective. A lot of my visual work is about transformation but this one in particular felt like it was kind of topically about transformation too. That led to the title “Axiom Flux” which I came up with as a way to express the idea of fundamental elements of reality changing.
I wanted the visuals to be softer and more playful, so I went for a lighter pastel palette with pinks and blues, and textures almost like claymation. I felt this was a generally comfortable veneer for a trippy video that wouldn’t conjure the same disgust factor that my more “realistic” flesh-and-blood transformations would. I felt this would help it appeal more to the psychedelic crowd who might normally not go for my darker stuff.
I started by taking some photos and videos of myself and manipulating them with geometric backgrounds and overlays. I generated some abstract landscapes and dynamic motion scenes. Then I just kind of went wild grabbing recognizable things from reality, like Charles Manson, a head exploding scene from Scanners, and Teletubbies (of course).