Soldier Online

Official music video for Old Robes (Subtle Soup Records) "Soldier Online" from the album The Spider and the Spectator. Software Art / Realtime Cinema: generative, audio-responsive animation. Who is the Soldier Online? A gamer, lost in their own exciting but unreal world? A drone pilot, far removed from the too-real destruction they are causing? A troll, wielding heavy words at a distance? Just a persistent brute, pushing forward despite desperate odds? Or perhaps, quite literally, a dog in heat? (On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog…) It’s this mystery character that I animated, always running, but always fragmenting and re-forming, in a world alternately collapsing and exploding around them. The animation is generative and audio-responsive, meaning that it is not “edited” in a conventional, linear way: rather it is a piece of software that responds to the changes in the music to create an evolving visual narrative. Although you are seeing one recording of the video, in its native form it turns out differently each time it is played, influencing the narrative implications. The look of the piece takes its playful inspiration from motifs in 17th-century Chinese classical painting.

Year

2018

Director

John J.A. Jannone

Duration

5 min

Country

United States