When Sigur Rós announced they wanted video artists to create a video for tracks from their new album Valtari I began to plan my submission.
A few years ago I had the pleasure to go to one of their gigs in Barcelona and it occurred to me that my style of experimental video would work well with their stage performances… so I was chuffed when this opportunity came up.
On listening to the album what struck me was that they have returned to their soundscapes following a dalliance with immediately catchy melodies on the previous album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (2008); great news for me as my videos work well with ambient noises.
I wracked my brains to find something that had a connection with the music, not that straightforward. All I needed was a starting point, which I found on the inside cover of the Valtari CD cover: simplified forms of pine tress.
I nipped up the hill to the forest with Emilie and Louis and my video camera. I made a few video walks at varying speeds pointing the camera at the tops of the trees to the sound of “Can we go now?”… thankfully the audio would be scrubbed and replaced with the title track “Valtari”.
In the end I came up with something akin to my Path video. I timed the passing images to echo the melody of the music which proved troublesome as it did not keep to a rigid rhythm, so following much experimentation, I timed the frames to echo the music just most of the time and not all of the time.
I now have some extra footage which I plan to use for another finished piece, this time with some soundscapes of my own.
