about 'anatomy of a plastic girl'

17.11.2011

Anatomy of a Plastic Girl for me began with the electro rhythm of the synth and from there came looping and compositing video material that followed the music rather than concentrating on interpreting lyrics. Everyone will hear the words when Billie is on stage, her presence is more than enough. The musician, Roi improvises these wonderful synth parts, grinds and tones live in front of the audience so I tend to put the visuals closer to the original composition in terms of arrangement and flow.

The whole idea came after a day of sitting with Billie in front of the internet and comparing video styles and artists we like, to which we share many in common. The Opiates project is dark and moody yet refined and Billie's tastes in art raise the bar of expectation for originality quite high so there's a lot of freedom to work with. She said she wanted to see “me” in the pieces and not just some clips slapped together to appease a principal.

I chose to work on Anatomy of a Plastic Girl first because my heart felt that synth rhythm saying, "play with me". Jörn Hartmann had provided some nice source material and I wanted to see how it would work to sample from without looking like a rehashed version of the original music video. I sat staring into a blank black screen listening to the song over and over while looking for a set number of images – no more than 5 or 6 if possible to loop and play with. At this point it wasn't about making a show for the Opiates anymore but about sinking into the material and let it become subliminal and unconscious. There is an essay written by Christian Munthe that influenced an earlier work of mine: HINAUSGEHEN II - IMP,  about the nature of improvisation. A person who improvises best knows their instrument effortlessly; every sound, squeal, and squeak it can make and goes into a session with this knowledge and becomes free to choose on the fly where to go while listening to the environment of sounds simultaneously. The instrument is my collection of software and the band is everything the Opiates gave to work with, and that's how I made this video.