Actress – Maze [feature length version]

Last summer Luke Alexander and Jamie Thompson, long-time visual collaborators with Actress and affiliates of his new WERKHAUS creative group (peep the launch night photos over here), made a feature-length version of their Maze video for the London producer’s live set at Sonar. Minus the music, this extended film plays out like flashlight semaphore and, even with no sound to guide your expectations, the rhythm and pace of this stark visual landscape holds an absorbing magic of its own. Here Luke and Jamie reveal the making of it, as well as what exciting new projects they have on the go.

Could you tell me a bit about your backgrounds?

We both come from art and design backgrounds. We started working together at a design agency and met Darren through a mutual friend, Davin, who was also working there.

How do you approach the visual interpretation of music?

We try and keep continuity with previous work to build up an identity for the musicians. The initial visual language is always concept driven, but this can be influenced by a number of factors, such as the feel of the track, the artist’s personality, talking to the artists about how they see and feel the track and how they felt while making it. It starts with a concept but it can change in the process of making it and stumbling upon interesting and unexpected results.

What sparked the idea for this feature length video of Maze?

We chose the track Maze from the album we felt it encapsulated the aesthetic of the album. The sounds were reminiscent of 80s computer games and this combined with the choice of title for the track and the hexagonal Splazsh album cover (designed by TTT) gave us a starting point for the concept. We wanted to create a world that made the album cover come to life and an aesthetic that felt like early video games. We were interested in the feeling you used to get when playing a computer game and getting lost inside a level. We liked the idea that the purpose of the journey wasn’t clear. After discussing it with Darren, we didn’t want it to have a narrative like a traditional music video as this added to the feeling of being lost. Instead we aimed to create an ambient environment.

The long version came out of a logistical need for Actress to have visuals that would last the duration of his set at Sonar this year. We wanted people to feel lost in the visuals and create an environment that felt like Actress’s world and how he described his feelings when making the track. We felt that reactive repeating visuals, or a faster paced choppier approach to editing would create a less immersive feel. It was partly inspired by having seen Actress play and his journey approach to live sets. It can be very eclectic and surprising. Sometimes hard and difficult and then at other times playful and free which is always really rewarding to experience.

Could you tell me about the making of it?

The environment was created in a 3D program called Cinema 4D, although at the start we tried out different software including after effects and processing to test out generative approaches to creating an ever changing maze. C4D allowed us the ability to create worlds that you can then explore with cameras easily. The visual language of the video was decided in early stages of exploration. But from then on it was really free and exciting experience in creating different parts of this world. You could put yourself into the journey so far and think what would work next, would it be surprising, would it be an anti-climax or would the world change unexpectedly without any reason. There was a foreboding/dark/lost feeling that we felt that the viewer exploring the maze would be feeling and we worked from that. We wanted to try and convey some apprehension in the movements of viewer and changes of pace, with the simple/primitive/mechanical 80’s computer game movements.

What are you working on at the moment?

We are in the process of creating a new piece for the next album that has a link from this. We’ve just finished the Lukid Chord sound reactive and the recent Werkhaus launch exhibition. The Werkhaus website is coming up. We’ve been experimenting with some other work for Werkhaus artists, some involving film, some interactive (for example an installation in which the people in the space can remix Lukid’s tracks with movements in the space). Other than that we work together in the same agency so it keeps us busy.