Rattle approached me to make something for their latest album that used the bright colours and geometric patterns of the gorgeous artwork by Martha Glazzard.

So I listened to their rough masters and was really struck by Your Move - the first part switches between these two rhythms that contrast so sharply with each other and seem to pull time around and the second part which is a breakdown that builds in slowmotion to this enormous crescendo.

I proposed this idea of using building blocks, or colourful wooden objects and playing around with their geometry and ambiguities of change, motion and scale. And I wanted to expand on some of the work I had been doing with stop-motion-ish stuff for This Is The Kit. Taking small video clips to use instead of individual frames - so filming a full rotation of multiple objects and replacing the objects in the edit to make this sort of meta-animation that has more dimensions of freedom - you can traverse backwards and forwards through a time line or hop between neighbouring timelines to create another type of change/motion.

So I found a website that only sold 9cm pieces of dowel (wtf?) and set about painting them in different patterns, thinking about how they might make equalateral triangles in the edit to match the weavings of the artwork.

Then it sort of all took shape from there - backwards and forwards between different tests and attempts. I'm really pleased with the trippy/tripletty bits the form that appears with these two mirrored halves of the rods spinning both suggests a solid form and a more etherial translucent shape. I really like how Rattle's music creates something quite transcendent out of the "simple" physics of drumming - hitting one cylinder with another - but that that action in the right rhythmic framework woven correctly can elicit moods, spaces, drama and maybe something that appears metaphysical.

The final act was maybe my third attempt at making something for this what I settled on was a sort of faux 3d - using billboards of the images of the spinning cylinders and moving them around paths in 3d space weaving them between each other to build up this mandala that sort of cracks open when the toms come thundering in at the end. It's quite fun building these scripts and geometry-node setups in blender to do something quite rustic - but I must admit I'm frustrated that I couldn't find a satisfying way to do something to that effect in camera in the time I had. I think for the next project I really have to figure out some primative motion control...

Thanks to Katy and Theresa, and Chris at Upset the Rhythm - such a fun project to work on!