Music: director Matteo Zamagni – also known as øøøø – created landscapes of imagined planets by manipulating photographs of cabbage, plastic bags and broccoli in his video for TSVI’s song Malfunction (+ movie).
Zamagni’s video for Italian artist TSVI is based on a narrative about a group of planets decaying in the wake of a passing asteroid breaking apart and releasing a destructive organism.
"Although it has a story, the sequence of events isn't strictly linear," Zamagni told Dezeen.
The director created the topographic images by using a technique that involves photographing an object from multiple angles and feeding the images into software that then creates a 3D computer model. This model can then be manipulated, shaped and edited.
Zamagni used this method with images he shot of cabbage, broccoli and plastic bags laid out on a table – the uneven surfaces of these objects suiting the kinds of textures and terrains he had in mind for the planets.
The video for the experimental electronica track begins with footage of what looks like old computer software booting up.
To create this, as with subsequent parts of the film, the director used material he made with software alongside found footage.
The video then cuts to imagery of planets orbiting a star. Zamagni generated these graphics by using 3D modelling software, again incorporating this original material with a found footage background.
"Visually I wanted to create a seamless blend between an analogue and digital look," he told Dezeen. The director applied slight distortions to this footage via software.
"I achieved this by adding Super 8-like ratio, VHS and digital glitches as well as using a colour palette that took inspiration from vintage computer game graphics and ‘80s video tapes," said Zamagni.
The video cuts to the various landscapes of the planets for the first time during this section of the film.
Throughout the video, these shots are interspersed with microscopic footage representing the organism carried on the asteroid.
The director created the various fractals – the 3D forms with infinitely repeating patterns – that are featured in the video by using separate specialist software. He then had to render them into the already made 3D modelled planet landscapes. The fractals, according to Zamagni, are symbolic representations of each planet’s environment.
The destruction of the planets is represented in the second half of the video by various distorted and overlaid computer error screens quickly cutting in and out of the frame.
The destruction is highlighted further in parts of the video that the director calls ‘particle scenes’. These sections show imagery that represent the planets’ landscapes as numerous rapidly moving points against a black background.
Zamagni went to lengths to ensure that the flexing and shifting of the particles responded to certain frequencies in the song. Imagery from preceding sections of the video is interlinked with this footage.
Rendering for the film – the process undertaken to composite the imagery – was a time-consuming process that required the use of four computers.
"For a whole week the machines were sweating all day and night to render the frames," Zamagni told Dezeen.
"The process behind the video has been both tedious and exciting," he continued. "As the brief was totally open, I pushed myself a lot and learned much in the process of development."
Malfunction is taken from TSVI's EP of the same name, and is released by B.YRSELF