Shaun has been a longtime supporter of the footwork, jungle, and experimental bass music scene. He's also the founder of the legendary “Footwork Jungle” blog which has brought so many people (myself included) into the scene with their amazing mix series and premiering tracks from around the world.

Here’s a small insight into his processes when making this piece.

So I’m guessing this is themed around the lockdown we are all living in due to covid-19... Does that link in with the video imagery? The endless padded cell tunnel (Our never-ending safe space bubble we are all stuck in) The office corridor covered in mattresses (The chaos of working from home)

The theme was hatched from the concept of liminal space, the eerie feeling you get in empty spaces - especially those that are designed to be full of people: an empty club, the cavernous halls of a hotel at 4 am, the empty maintenance halls of a building. The concept took on an implication of its own since the 2020 pandemic and while I put a lot of thought into what the themes mean to me, I'd prefer not to taint the piece with my explanation and let the viewer discover their own.

Why did you decide to use  "Machine Learning" to make your videos, such intense and disconcerting vibes

Machine learning (ML) is finally coming to the area of accessibility where it's actively expanding past the tech industry into the arts. Organizations like The Magenta Project and NVIDIA are publishing open-source resources to be used by the public at large and I believe the technology's implication for artwork is far from realized. After dipping into ML stuff with FAKE I wanted to tackle a project that uses ML on both the audio and video production to share the elements of the tech I am most excited about.

Did you choose the base imagery and then allow the machine to explore that concept?

Most of the generative imagery was pure experimentation of making datasets of imagery scraped off Wikipedia/google and for one section I even just took ~4000 photos of my hand and trained a neural network to generate its own hand photos (a result you can see at the end of the 'Arena' sequence in the tape). Many of the text elements including lyrics, signage and logos throughout the project were generated using GPT-3, Open AI's insanely concise natural language network. Other signage/text was generated not by a text-based model but an image network trained on ~20k corporate logos resulting in the familiar but completely indecipherable insignia you can see throughout the project.

Did you write the music in full and then make videos to it, or the other way around? I was completely boggled when I listened to it all by the pure synergy between video and sound, a wild experience.

The whole project started with the visuals hovering through those claustrophobic spaces to which the music was scored taking inspiration from late 70s industrial records and my favourite Drexciya electro tapes. I took a kind of filmic approach to the music but made sure to keep the tracks inside of a DJ-tool format.

What’s next on the horizon for HomeSick, I’ve seen you have started working with critical music on their release art!

Yeah I've been keeping busy making art for clients and working on some upcoming HomeSick releases

ISOLATION TAPE is on Bandcamp here.