In a New York Times interview with David Lynch — when asked about his use of certain aural elements in Twin Peaks such as wind and electricity — he replied, “I always say that cinema is sound and picture, flowing together in time.” Motorico170 is a tribute to the music video; a raucous synthesis of kinetic imagery with rhythm and texture for a balanced audiovisual experience.
Photons passing through the synaptic gap. Youthful energy in focus. The exhilaration of running the yellow light at 170 kmh as a metaphor for the inspiration that seeps out from portals to the unified field/ collective unconscious during life’s transitions.
Beginning this project with passenger road-footage from a rental car, my intent was to compose a high-energy and rapid-tempo music score to accentuate the mood of a barreling and careening automotive transit. Continuing the post-punk mood of the album-in-progress by The Void — my solo music project — Motorico170 blazes forward with the use of the
motorik beat (German for motor-skill) that reemerged during the post-punk era circa-1980. In order to expand on the notion of this 170 bpm rhythm — as well as to indulge a creative urge — I inserted Drum & Bass/Jungle fills into the breaks of the rhythm.
motorico170 video still image
Music always plays a crucial role in my art and design process, and podcasts about music or radical politics often play during the more technical and/or tedious aspects of my work. On one inspired night, I played Synth Britannia — a documentary about the history of synthpop — while working on effects for this video. During an interview, vivid language from synthpunk pioneer Daniel Miller of The Normal, struck me as it seemed to detail the elements of this work in progress. I quickly switched my screen to replay the synchronistic scene — complete with uncanny visualizations. “The music was supposed to be visual, like driving along a highway with big buildings on either side and going into a tunnel … It wasn’t meant to be apocalyptic or dystopian,” Miller said.This method of constructing meaning by way of patterns of coincidences can be a slippery slope — however, I’ve found that if used in the creative process, practical action based on synchronicity can be rewarding. Thus began the formulation of the haiku verses that would eventually appear in Motorico170.
My relationship with motor vehicles is a complicated one. On the one hand, childhood roadtrips, motorcycle dreams, road movies, and the sense of freedom all warmly contribute to the characteristic style of Mototrico170. A nod to The Cars’ Moving in Stereo further drives the theme from a haiku verse, because a road trip isn’t complete without a soundtrack. On the other hand, is a city driving job as a young adult that turned me off to traffic and road-rage; from being in the Driver’s Seat and Behind the Wheel. (side note: the emission of sound waves from speakers and megaphones on the album art and promos for Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses echo in the imagery of Motorico170.) The result is a self-imposed exile. I am The Passenger.
Inspired by the Wim Crouwel’s New Alphabet, my Terminus 2017 typeface — a challenging, retro-futuristic machine type that calls back to the early days of post-punk/new wave album art and music videos — is applied to emphasize the verses and the effects-laden title sequences. The kinetic type represents the formulation of an idea, that is translated and copied through light and electricity, and creatively expressed in rhythm and transformation.
The logo was designed to imply a revolving motion, and represents the portal of inspiration that opens when we move from one phase to another. It is an access to a place between worlds where magick and artistic skill is accessed and driven.
The one-point perspective of coursing through man-made caverns and corridors seemed to be a theme in the music videos of the 1980s, and buried itself in my subconscious for decades. Teletunes — a public access music video program in Denver — and Postmodern MTV helped shape my aesthetics in my adolescence and teenage years. The visual patterns unconsciously emerged in my work over the last few years.
Video still from Motorico170
Additional inspiration came from Twin Peaks nerdsplainer Twin Perfect, who attempts to decipher symbols in a scene from Twin Peaks: The Return. Themes of coffee-fuel generating creative ideas, translation and copies of ideas onto the screen or the canvas, sound waves translated into electric signals, and “sawing logs” at the Packard Mill. Twin Perfect argues that Lynch’s disdain for television is the underlying meta-theme in Twin Peaks, resulting in his cinematic surrealist approach to creating a television show.
In pastiche and parody of Twin Perfect’s grand analysis (and possibly Lynch’s intent), Motorico170 — a music video about making a music video intended for smartphone viewing (*Lynch winces*) — transcieves motifs such a running filmstrip and an optical soundtrack. In the haiku, Motorico170 translates McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message to median — applied with several meanings, including the middle dividing line of two mirrored opposites expressed in frequencies, highways, and organisms, as well as the horizontal void that cuts across the Terminus typeface. The median is that Portal to the unified field. The “sawing logs” idiom becomes 170 winks — a dream of a virtually immersive and complete synthesis of sound and vision moving in time and stereo.
Video still from Motorico170
transit cinema
motor-skill optical sound
tracks of street type beats
transceive pulse signal
signpost modernem tv
median message
one seventy winks
of rehumanization
is the new normal
shift in stereo
hall and tunnel teletunes
drive through the pathways