In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: the music videos of Encyclopedia Pictura.
Recently the trailer for A24's The Legend of Ochi dropped online, and the filmmaker behind it might not ring a bell as it is his debut feature. Isaiah Saxon should be well known to fans of animated shorts and music videos though, as he is one part of the collective Encyclopedia Pictura. Allow me to introduce the collective to newcomers, as Encyclopedia Pictura well deserves to be a household name.
If three things are emblematic for Encyclopedia Pictura it is their ambition, their mixed-media approach and their love for nature. Let's tackle their ambition first: Encyclopedia Pictura is not only an art-collective, consisting of Isaiah Saxon, Sean Hellfritsch and Daren Rabinovitch (and in the past a lot of other people), but they also at a time had a self-sustaining community farm called Trout Gulch. Among their projects are an educational app to teach children how to approach DIY-projects, with one of the co-founders of Vimeo as a spearheading figure; a visual language that tries to break the boundaries of spoken language by using universal shapes and colors as a basis; an app that can tell you how a tree works from the inside and a fully illustrated mixed-media encyclopedia.
Their mixed-media approach you see in their use of apps, gamification and illustrative arts as a basis for some of their film work. They also tend to blend stop-motion, traditional animation, live-action and computer generated animation in their works. It all speaks to an anything-goes approach that is mostly focused on a colorful, fun outside, and an environmentally conscious, humanist and educational approach on the inside.
In short films like Earth Crisis and Hillbelly. the message and story are very matter-of-fact about nature and how we connect with it: death is as ever-present as life. Nature is cyclical; brutal yet beautiful; and it doesn't necessarily care about you, but you should care about it.
The same message is found in three music videos I want to highlight: Metronomy's The Upsetter, Dan Deacon's Sat by a Tree and Björks Wanderlust (all to be found below). To tackle the last one first, Björks Wanderlust shows the river as a living entity, and Björk as a character who is one with nature, be it grounded in clay or connected to buffalo. But the river gives and the river takes, not necessarily being a force for good nor evil. Just a force. The mixed-media approach is the star here, making great use of stop-motion, live-action and CGI, in a blend that seems natural yet hyperartificial at the same time. It's truly unique, stylistically.
The idea of a character being or becoming one with nature is more literal in Metronomy's The Upsetter, where a feral character makes a partner out of shrubs and moss, and then abandons them, before becoming more plantlike themselves. The Arcimboldo-like characteristics of personified nature show up in a lot of Encyclopedia Pictura works, like their music video for Grizzly Bear's Knife, where the human/nature-hybrid is made of rock and crystals instead of plant-life.
Last, but not least, I want to talk about the stunning music video for Dan Deacon's Sat By a Tree: it embodies the philosophies of Encyclopedia Pictura fully. In it, we see the process of decomposition of a corpse by literally becoming worm-food. But instead of a gross, harrowing video, it becomes something more profound. The still sentient corpse looks on with a bemusement that scans as both accepting and intrigued. After the bugs have taken her body fully, the place where she once laid down becomes the place where a plant grows. It is the cyclical nature of the circle of life represented in a beautiful way. The end of a human, or the beginning of a plant, it depends on how you look at it.
In his artist statement Dan Deacon talks about how decomposition by bugs is necessary to keep the world turning. Without bugs, rotting heaps of flesh would be everywhere. As he states (and I paraphrase): "a world without bugs would be a living hell. Heaven on the other hand must be filled with bugs". You can feel that sentiment in the video. Depicting that what is thought of as disgusting and abject in a natural, matter of fact way, makes this rumination on death, humanity and nature profound and heavenly, just by contrast.
Encyclopedia Pictura, and Isaiah Saxon with them, certainly deserve to be household names. If A24 can launch their feature-length careers I would be all for it. Especially if their longer form content will have the same power as their short films and music videos. Watch them, as they will be going places.
(Portrait picture taken from the Encyclopedia Pictura website)