Look up! I am no canopy- I am a Messenger, 2023
Cli-fi speculative choral CGI video
Duration: ~17min
Imagine a tree canopy – you in it, far above the ground. Sounds of leaves crunching from the wind surround you. It is hot and you have just come out from above the ground. After 17 years spent gathering impressions, sucking on tree roots. You are well rested. Ready to sing. And so you do…coming from the belly of the earth, you bring knowledge. An enchanting yet unknown frequency. You have heard the Earth move. You have inspected it. You bring riddles and speculative prophecies. You would have brought them if you hadn’t been M.I.A.
A heave! Long awaited to be heard.
Look up! I am no canopy – I am a Messenger is a work that takes particles of different eras, but also different disciplines. It looks into speculative Entomology, but predominantly the historical/biological attributes of Magicicada septendecim while in a parallel manner analyzing an Orthodox chant. The specific brood XI is believed to be extinct since 1954. There were speculations about the brood being found again in 1988- these speculations were never confirmed.
The work draws a strong reference from the book Insect Singers: A natural history of the Cicadas (1929). It creates its own new hybrid myth. An insect-morphic orthodox prophecy. A reincarnation of Brood XI who has come to seduce us into an act of courting the world with an act of the most romantic call- giving out the speculative prophecy. Translating a new hybrid myth, from these sentinel species, we bring news of climate-love in the era of scarcity.
Now, finally, we are able to understand the frequency.
Music and text for this experimental prophecy were written using references from the Orthodox chants but deconstructed towards a different context, riddle-like, abstract thoughts about climate change, famine, anxieties, etc. Behind every choral composition, there is a myth (5 stories written in a form of a myth book) of our time connected to each “calling/message”.
The work is a part of ongoing research that blurs the boundaries between visual arts, sci-fi
digital, and traditional Orthodox chants. It is envisaged as an experimental prophecy where
music, text, CGI elements are riddled together to entangle other-than-human
bodies, minds, places, and times.
The CGI prophetic speculative video is being developed in Unreal Engine and needs time and space to look into details of environment making and speculative animations.
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