Flicker
Images that flicker, fracture, and reassemble—light, time and tech as material.
SPOORCLOUD
SPOORCLOUD
Lantana Starr | Flicker | Oolooolio
My aunt had this fish tank she never cleaned. Not neglect exactly — she had a theory about it. Said the whole point of a tank was to let it become its own thing, and if you kept interfering you were just making it about you.
SPOORCLOUD
Lantana Starr | Flicker | Oolooolio
My aunt had this fish tank she never cleaned. Not neglect exactly — she had a theory about it. Said the whole point of a tank was to let it become its own thing, and if you kept interfering you were just making it about you. By the time I was twelve that tank had an entire civilization in it. Things growing on things. Snails moving with the slow confidence of something that has never once been late. The tank had become its own ecosystem, fish included.
I thought about that tank a lot while I was making Spoorcloud.
The animation runs slow. Slower than I usually work, slower than feels comfortable, slow enough that you might think something is wrong with the file. Nothing is wrong with the file. The plant forms rise. Spores move through the air the way spores actually move, which is not dramatically. Beetles proceed with beetle priorities. Bees work the flowers the way bees work flowers, which is without ceremony and with total commitment.
Fescennine scored it, and he did what I did, which was resist. The music builds — there is a build, I promise — but mildly, the way pressure builds in a room where nothing has happened yet.
Then the creature shows up. Pink, purple, furred in a way that suggests it has never been cold a day in its life. It catches spores out of the air, one at a time, patient as a heron. An insect intervenes. Sternly. The creature leaves. The beetles and bees come back and resume their business, because they were always the ones this place belonged to.
My aunt's tank eventually cracked and had to go. She was sad about it for weeks. I asked if she wished she'd cleaned it more, taken better care. She said she didn't know what I was talking about, that tank was perfect.
Watch Spoorcloud on the Oolooolio YouTube channel HERE.
CENOE UNDULANT
CENOE UNDULANT
by Lantana Starr
I want to talk about glamour and disgust, and how close together they actually live.
When I was building CENOE UNDULANT I kept asking myself what it would look like if a slug knew it was beautiful. Not in a compensatory way — not despite anything — but with full confidence, the way a woman in a great coat walks into a room. The answer, it turns out, is that it looks exactly like this.
CENOE UNDULANT
by Lantana Starr
I want to talk about glamour and disgust, and how close together they actually live.
When I was building CENOE UNDULANT I kept asking myself what it would look like if a slug knew it was beautiful. Not in a compensatory way — not despite anything — but with full confidence, the way a woman in a great coat walks into a room. The answer, it turns out, is that it looks exactly like this.
The environments are pure 1980s excess — reflective surfaces, neon geometry, the kind of light that makes everything look like it costs more than it does. I put soft, glistening bodies into that world — slugs, snails, and creatures that don't exist anywhere in any field guide — and let them move at their own pace. Or not at their own pace. One of my favorite things to do is get something to do the opposite of what it's known for. The slow thing launches itself across the frame. The earthbound thing lifts off. A creature built entirely for contact with the ground suddenly has no interest in the ground at all. It works because the glamour holds — they do it with complete conviction.
Everything glistens. Everything clings a little. The morphing forms stretch into shapes that have no biological precedent and don't need one.
Fescennine's score starts spare and keeps adding to itself, layer by layer, until by the end it is almost too much — which is exactly right, because that is what the visuals are doing too.
The piece ends with a perfume advertisement. Because of course it does. If you have been watching closely, you already know why.
CENOE UNDULANT by oolooolio
A constructed fragrance exploring moisture, surface, and motion. Glossed bioforms. Mineral warmth. Synthetic sheen.Designed to cling. Designed to remain.NOTES: Mucus accord / Mineral salt / Green aldehydes / Synthetic amber / Ozone trace
Full video here: