Creature from the Black and the Anagramma project: how to enjoy music more interactively

Filippo Corradin, aka Creature from the Black, is a musician and DJ from Venice with more than twenty years of experience, who ranges from Techno to Experimental Electronic to Ambient music. He told us about his passion for Digital Art and how it changed his way to approach music and the relationship with augmented realities.

Tell us about yourself, how your interest in music was born and what kind of genre you prefer both regarding listening and production.

Hi, my name is Filippo and I live near Venice. I am a musician and DJ active in the underground scene since about 20 years. The main projects I play in are Bahntier (Industrial Punk), Ketvector (Experimental Electronic), Askew (Ambient Noise), and Motion Kapture (Ambient). These are all projects I realized with my friends. As Creature from the Black, I produce techno.

In both, production and listening, I like a bit of everything, but I don't particularly like pop. I hate hearing the same sounds and melodies repeated endlessly. I love those artists, instead, who can create sounds and atmospheres that I have never heard before. I don't have a favorite genre, if I'm reading a book I like to listen to the doom jazz of Bohren and der Club of Gore, if I'm driving I like to listen to the Misfits. I really like movie soundtracks but also the Japanese noise scene. Basically, I like all music that can transmit unusual emotions. The same goes for production: there are times I want to produce techno and times I am more introspective and got lost in the spaces of ambient.

You also deal with digital art, how did this passion come about?

It was born about three years ago, I was supposed to go on tour with the Motion Kapture project, but the pandemic started, and I found myself at home with a lot of free time. I started seeing these digital NFT works, and I was immediately captured by them... I immediately understood the infinite possibilities of this thing, every work I saw maybe had some cool 3D programming or was a complicated Java application: I saw such a beautiful evolution of the artistic technique through technology that I absolutely wanted to be part of it.

Maybe someone who looks at digital art superficially sees only simple images but those who look a little deeper see beautiful python strings, wonderful P5 applications, clouds of points managed in a poetic way, maybe with procedural programs like Houdini, state-of-the-art 3D animations with rigging, perfect texturing of models, glitch data moshing, artificial intelligence.

Basically, this combination of art and mathematics enchanted me. I have produced works of all kind; even physical ones printed in 3D. The gallery where I have done most of the experiments is called Nftshowroom, on the Hive blockchain, part of the social Hive.io. I ended up there because I found a nice community that supported me from the beginning, and the project itself is ethical, decentralized and really dedicated to users.

Is there a link between the two artistic fields of your competence? And if so, what do you think they have in common?

Absolutely, since the early 2000s I have always managed the projections of our live performances or DJ sets... First, I started with two video recorders, a huge Panasonic video mixer, and a suitcase full of crazy VHS edits that I made myself; then it came mapping, 3D, etc. I experienced the technological evolution, and the combination of images and music is always beautiful, it's a shame not to do it.

Let’s talk about Anagramma, the album you produced with Edward Ka-Spel and Stefano Rossello. The music is ambient and the scenario in which it projects us both ethereal and despotic: did you want to convey a precise message by elaborating this sort of sound journey?

We didn't want to communicate any specific message, but rather try to create small musical experiences that accompanied Edward's poems... he is very shamanic, those who have seen him live, with his legendary pink dots, know what I mean. So we let the flow guide us. In my opinion, the result well represents the period in which it was composed, that is the pandemic one mixed with technology experimentation, ending up realizing an extremely dystopian scenery.

It is interesting that you have decided to add to the composition some psychedelic visuals that can be seen through viewer: what contribution does the visual part give to album listening?

I really wanted to add them, and both Stefano and Edward gladly accepted. It is an experiment, an attempt to see what an immersive experience along with music can do, also an attempt to serve to all the people who follow us a small psychedelic trip without drugs. I don't know if it has been understood, but the important thing, according to me, is always to experiment, understanding the possibilities offered by the tools available.

Do you think that in general the future of music, in the light of the birth of all these new augmented reality technologies, will be that of enjoying it in 4D, always accompanied by a visual and active dimension in which to be experienced?

Well, everything today shows this pattern; we don’t know how much we’ll have to wait, but it will certainly be like this. For me,that I started with VHS tapes, imaging I can transport listeners on immersive journeys is amazing. In the future there will be for sure always more interaction, maybe it will take more time but it will be another incredible turning point.

@creaturefromtheblack

@stefano_bahntier

@edwardkaspel/

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