Dust Red Skies “Host”

As part of my continuing collaboration with Nonagon, I’ve produced a visualization for a track off his side project Dust Red Skies. This is the first track, “Host”. Producing the video was a bit of a process. I’ve taken photos of flowers, rented a macro lens and filmed overlays printed out on transparency with my friend Justin Metros, created geometry in Cinema 4D and made a live version with controls in Quartz Composer. All of this was then brought into VDMX and this track has been recorded live with MIDI control.

The real challenge wasn’t the technical hurdles, but producing a piece that felt appropriate for the track, and embracing my late 90’s early ‘00’s aesthetic. Mapping photos of Amaryllis Belladona flowers to a model of a bacteriophage, creating grime and crawling, deforming centipedes — some of the imagery reflects death and decay, some viral and microscopic, but mostly was about making a system which was a bit unpredictable. I recorded several takes and they all had a different feel to the imagery, something a bit out of  my control, which is the whole point of producing live graphics in the first place.

Check out this piece performed live with Nonagon in a museum! We will be collaborating and performing at The Tech Museum of Innovation REBOOT: music exhibit.