Dezeen Music Project: sound artist Holly Herndon collaborated with digital designer Akihiko Taniguchi to create the music video for her latest track, Chorus, which sets out to explore our relationship with the internet through a series of distorted 3D renders of her friends' messy desks.
Chorus, the title track of Herndon's latest EP, is built up from audio samples recorded over weeks of daily internet browsing in an attempt to convey a sense of the sheer volume and variety of content we consume through the web.
"This piece is very much tied to my process of using the internet," Herndon told Dezeen. "I wanted the track to try to honestly portray the competing narratives going on in my browser and head. I think that a new coherence forms out of receiving all of these different influences, histories, sounds and images in one space and at speed. I wanted to try to capture that."
To create the video, Herndon and Taniguchi asked their friends to take panoramic photographs of their cluttered desks, which Taniguchi then converted into crude 3D models.
"Akihiko [Taniguchi] and I had been working together on visuals for my live show for some time," Herndon said. "He developed this system to allow you to investigate 3D renders of rooms, and insert floating objects in them, almost as a live instrument."
She continued: "It is kind of a celebration of these intimate human spaces that almost always begin with the laptop. Seeing the surroundings around these devices is something really interesting and expressive; it is clear from all of these workspaces that we nest and make ourselves at home around our laptops - and I think that is worth acknowledging and aestheticizing."
The distortions and irregularities in the 3D renders are designed to create a sense of unease.
"The more comfortable we get with these devices, the more vulnerable we are," Herndon said. "We are learning more and more about the NSA revelations; I think it is really interesting that we have never been more intimate with these machines, and at the same time have never had such cause to be suspicious of them. We wanted to capture both of those sides."
Herndon's Chorus EP was released on RNVG earlier this year.
