To round off the release of his new EP Street Talk on Timetable Records, LA-based producer Holodec has worked with design studio Bureau Cool on a digital experience exploring the tension between destruction and rebirth.

The visuals are designed to evoke Holodec’s own personal upheaval as well as where wider society is at today, building a connection between human and natural conflicts.

Viewers can immerse themselves in a journey through both natural and urban static scenes, which have transformed into a moving sequence. It plays out like a contemporary, collaged interpretation of Kubrick’s Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The visuals were in fact inspired by films, or rather Holodec’s viewing habits, reflecting his tendency to skip to transitions between scenes in movies and watch them in slow motion.

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“Street Talk” out everywhere next week. Thank u @kelman.duran for the remix, glad we finally got to work on something together. @bureau___cool for always crafting new visions/experiences w me & of course the crew at @timetablerecords for believing since day1. I know it’s just 3 songs to some but the entire world to me

A post shared by HOLODEC (@holodec_) on May 21, 2020 at 10:13am PDT

Holodec sourced the images through Flickr, Creative Commons and free stock libraries, and tailored the search to locations that feel significant to him, including Taiwan, “where my heart will always be”, he tells CR.

“There are numerous images of both urban and natural scenes of cities and jungles on the little known, little acknowledged tropical island in the Pacific, where my parents were born and raised, where my grandparents have been laid to rest. This is one of the most visually stimulating places on earth in my opinion. A civilization was built in the midst of rugged terrain, on a volcanic island located on top of one of the deadliest tectonic faults in the world.”

Other locations featured in the clips include Seoul and Warsaw, which are both special cities to him. The visuals take viewers through east Asian scenes like the Gobi Desert, the Yellow River and the Taklamakan Desert, while also referencing the Silk Road, which, according to Holodec, “has historically represented the breaking, the combining, the creation and destruction of cultures, identities, peoples, norms”.

The final element of his image search was “the American heartland” – Monument Valley, Zion, Wyoming. “Being born and raised in America, those areas still feel so foreign, distant, exotic to me. I live so near yet understand so little about those places,” he says.

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Me & @kelman.duran met crossing paths at the @nts_radio studio a while back now. We been meaning to work together & I’m grateful this remix is how it finally happened. Street talk remix out now everywhere, djs cop direct at holodec.bandcamp.com

A post shared by HOLODEC (@holodec_) on May 28, 2020 at 10:02am PDT

Based on Holodec’s concept for the experience, Bureau Cool’s Ben Wegscheider worked on creating a seemingly endless tunnel visualisation – an “ever-changing dynamic collage” that is at once hazy, blurry and futuristic.

Wegscheider drew on technology to shape the striking construction of the visuals, and transitions between them. “I wanted to create a dynamic and interesting way to cut out certain areas of the images and arrange them in space,” Wegscheider explains. “I used a machine-learning program that actually classifies image areas: building, plant, car, river. Then I used this information to randomly cut out certain areas.”

Holodec praises Wegscheider’s thorough understanding of ‘the Holodec concept’, one that evokes ideas around infinite space and channels the human senses. It’s a “space that can connect dreams, ideas, and reality,” the producer says. “Ben understood this in a personal way because I think this is what Ben does. He creates these realities, just as he did with holodec.world.”

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