Composer and producer Sonarpilot transports listeners to alternate dimensions via his latest single/music video, “Strange Flowers,” exploring breathtaking visual dreamscapes and uncharted territory in sound.
Sonarpilot explains, “This ‘Mirage’ explores a world where nature and biomorphic technology are about to converge. Highly advanced machines embrace the beauty of the natural world in an elegant, post-technological dance, somewhere in the distant future. In the end, however, nature will always surpass artificial structures in its ingenuity and beauty.”
“Strange Flowers” is the fourth episode in The Mirage Project, Season 2: The sonic atmosphere introduces itself as a choir of seductive angels over digital Tron-like trills, setting the tone of this latest journey into the wondrous Mirage cosmos.
Strings layer in, increasing the magnanimity of our odyssey. Woodwinds and bells remind us of neo-classical composers such as Philip Glass. The arrangement sifts in a sense of innocence and enchantment; our trip turns to awe before winding back towards intense fascination.
The video, created by Roger Maeder, provides a magical sense of synaesthesia, matching colors to the moods of the song and creating structures that reflect the intensity, wonder, and majesty of the music. Adding layers of time-lapsed blooming flowers, the visual journey juxtaposes the stunning beauty of our natural world with strange mathematical creations of an artificial, alien universe.
CelebMix spoke with Sonarpilot to discover the inspiration for “Strange Flowers,” his creative process, and how The Mirage Project began.
What inspired your new single/music video, “Strange Flowers?”
“Strange Flowers” explores a world where Artificial Intelligence, cutting-edge bio-sciences, and robotic technology converge to create authentic synthetic lifeforms.
That topic might not be obvious when you watch the video for the first time. The visuals are very beautiful, the music is serene. Everything seems peaceful. However, something is strange – the lifeforms in this world are definitely weird. Something unsettling has happened.
You see, our Mirages, as we call them, usually have two aspects: on the one hand, there are these amazing machine-generated visuals that we arrange and combine with a soundtrack that creates an interesting and inspiring aesthetic experience. The result is beautiful to look at.
But usually, there is an underlying theme. Our previous video “Gorgon” was inspired by the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence and its potential dangers. In “Strange Flowers” we take a closer look at one aspect of that issue: We are quickly approaching a future where synthetic life forms will possess high intelligence or even consciousness. This development comes with a lot of fundamental questions: How we will interact with these life forms and how they will interact with us?
Soon we might find ourselves in a world where synthetic life forms are more intelligent and physically superior to us. Just imagine what this means: reverse the roles. Assume that we would discover that we were created by a race of relatively stupid and weak aliens. How would we respond to that scenario? It’s likely that the outcome for the aliens would not be favorable.
Your videos are elegant and gloriously wrought. How did you come to connect with fractal artist Roger Maeder?
Thanks for the compliment! I have known Roger for a very long time. We started to work together back in the early ‘90s on some multimedia projects. This led to the foundation of our own company which kept me busy for the next 15 years. Roger left the company in the early 2000s to focus on a series of movie projects. We stayed in touch and when I was looking for someone who could help me with the technicalities of computer-generated visuals, he was my obvious choice.
We know each other really well. I very much enjoy working with Roger, he’s a great professional with many years of experience in the industry and a lovely friend. I couldn’t have started The Mirage Project without him.
Is the music recorded and then given to Maeder to create the visuals, or is the process integrated, with both music and visuals occurring simultaneously?
Great question – it is the latter. When we start a new Mirage, Roger and I discuss the general visual ideas that we want to explore. The visuals that we use in The Mirage Project are based on mathematical formulas, called fractals. Fractals are a ubiquitous concept in nature. They are the underlying principle of spiral galaxies to meandering rivers and even the shapes of produce at your local supermarket. We work with fractal formulas to generate new, innovative worlds that are completely synthetic, yet have an eerie feel of elements that might exist in a natural environment.
When we start with a new Mirage, Roger and I look at hundreds of formulas and make a first selection. Roger feeds the formulas into a small farm of laptops, and after a few days, we have a batch of samples to work with.
Once we have the basic animations, I take over and begin to manipulate and adjust the visuals to create a new world that fits the narrative frame we’re working towards. Our goal is not just about showcasing pretty visuals or special effects. We want to create a context and flow that invites the audience on a journey.
During the editing process, I begin developing the soundtrack. I start with a rough draft and continue refining it as the Mirage takes shape. It’s crucial that the visuals and sound work together seamlessly to create an immersive experience. I go back and forth between the soundtrack and the video until both embrace each other seamlessly.
This process takes a lot of work. We spend about two months of total production time to create a Mirage of 8 minutes.
Please tell us more about the genesis of The Mirage Project.
About 5 years ago, I began to add visuals to some of my tracks. At that time the music industry had entered a perfect storm: It had migrated from selling CDs to downloads to the current streaming model. The average consumer wasn’t paying anything for their music consumption. At the same time, the amount of music that was published each year skyrocketed because the tools to make music had become incredibly cheap and everybody could distribute their tracks globally over the internet.
As an artist, you had to find ways to survive that in that storm. It was no longer sufficient to write and publish good music. That’s why I began to add visuals to my music. It was a very steep learning curve. But I discovered that I really like that kind of work. In the beginning, I tried a whole range of techniques, always looking for ways to generate visuals that reflect the futuristic, spacey character of my tracks. Ultimately, that search brought me to the world of fractals. I teamed up with Roger and pretty soon it was clear that we had a real treasure trove that we could explore.
We did a first video with those fractals and my soundtrack and the result was amazing. So, we decided to produce a whole series of these audio-visual journeys. And that was the beginning of The Mirage Project. I realized that with those visuals and innovative video editing technologies I could create these amazing worlds that no one had seen before – worlds that were visually appealing, but at the same time could tell a deeper story with themes that I care for – covering a wide arc, ranging from questions about the nature of the cosmos, or our place in the universe to the latest developments in science such as Artificial Intelligence.
Do you use any special techniques while recording?
These days, I do all my work on a computer. I used to do a lot of studio work, so I am very familiar with the world of live recording. I always loved to work with other musicians in the studio. But currently, I am very happy if I can do everything myself. It gives me more flexibility.
I play most parts of my music myself, on a keyboard or pads, sometimes there’s a guitar in the background. I take these initial ideas and refine them; I add samples and experiment with different sounds until I have a selection of musical scenes. At that stage, I begin to work on the arrangement, the flow of the track that goes from one scene to the next.
I love that process. The technology we have today makes this work so much easier. When I started to make music in the 1980s, there was this constant fight against noise that piled up with each track that we added. And once the individual tracks were recorded it was very difficult to rearrange them. Today, a lot of younger artists have the idea that analog technology has a richer, more authentic sound. Back in the day, we were dreaming of a world where everything was digital. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
Digital technology is giving us a lot of freedom and flexibility. I can always add a track, or change the arrangement, and the sound stays crisp and transparent. The flip side of this freedom is the danger to complicate things, to “overproduce” a track. It’s a fine line, I am always looking for the right balance between a clearly structured musical idea that is not overburdened and enough details and colors to make the music interesting.
What can you share about your writing process?
When I work on the soundtrack for a new Mirage, I begin with an initial selection of fractals. These are like the first glimpses at a new world that we are about to create. I look for the right musical mood or a specific sound to make that will be the nucleus of the soundtrack and give this new world its character.
I play around with this idea and add other elements until I have a whole collection of different combinations that sound diverse and interesting. Then, I begin to arrange these ideas and try to find the right path to build a rich musical journey.
And then the work with the next iteration of visuals begins. As discussed, I go back and forth between video and music, doing my best to create a compelling audio-visual experience.
How did you get started in music?
Well, that takes us back to the late 1970s. I was in school and working in a record shop. I was listening to music all the time, but I never thought that I might make music myself. One day, a friend of mine asked me if I’d tag along to take a guitar lesson. And that was it. I was hooked. Those were exciting times, with punk and new wave and everybody started a band and so did I. We never made it far, but I discovered that I really love to work in a studio. But back then, studio time was expensive. So, I bought a 4-track cassette tape, a small drum machine, and a simple mono synth and began to work on my own.
Pretty soon, I had outgrown the possibilities of that setup and – together with a friend – we scratched together the little money we had, got some loans from friends and family, and opened our own, professional recording studio. In the mid-eighties, there were a lot of new, fresh bands that wanted to produce a good demo or their own album. We were perfect for that. We worked a lot, day and night and in the hours that the studio wasn’t booked, we did our own thing. That’s how my musical journey started.
Did your sound evolve naturally, or did you deliberately push it in a certain direction?
I want to have an open mind when I write music. I am not trying to sound like someone else or follow a specific trend. I am curious to see where the creative process will take me. I navigate in no man’s land when I start a new track. I made music for a long time and hope that I have developed my own specific musical DNA that helps me on these journeys. When things go well, I am often surprised about the result when I listen to the final track.
But of course, I do not live in a bubble. I listen to a lot of music and I integrate sounds or musical elements that I like or find interesting. I was always interested in electronic music, ranging from the early synth bands to very experimental stuff. I listen to jazz and classical music and I like contemporary composers such as Philip Glass, Max Richter, and Ludovico Enaudi. I soak up all these influences and try to integrate them into what I do.
Of course, I can influence this process. In season 2 of The Mirage Project, I tried to push the envelope and create soundtracks that go beyond the sonic landscapes that I created in Season 1. I used more orchestral instruments and combined those with synth elements. The latest release “Strange Flowers” is an excellent example of such a track.
What can your fans look forward to over the next six months? Music videos? Live gigs?
Season 2 of The Mirage Project remains the focus of my activities in 2023. We have four more great Mirages that we will release this year. They are pretty wild; I am sure we will have a lot of fun with them. In parallel, we are exploring ways to expand the project’s reach. One idea is to showcase the Mirages in immersive environments like cinemas or galleries. We also consider doing a series of remixes, as we did in the past, working with electronic artists from around the world to showcase the rich soundscapes of the project.
Looking to the future, we’re already thinking about Season 3 and how to create even bolder and more abstract worlds. One avenue to achieve this is the use of Artificial Intelligence to generate new elements.
We have no idea how vast the Mirage cosmos really is, but we are sure that there are plenty of interesting things to discover and we look forward to sharing our journeys with our audience.
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