BT: Binary Universe
To BT, it’s all ones and zeros. “Music is just applied mathematics”, he says. “And so is visual art — it’s all related. You’re just dealing with colour instead of the audible spectrum”. For this musician-composer-sound artist, the universe is, simply put, binary. And his latest project is a pure expression of that philosophy, an artistic fusion of digital music and motion, wrought in surround sound and digital video. “This Binary Universe” isn’t exactly an album and it isn’t exactly a motion picture. It’s a new form of digital art.
“This Binary Universe” is a collection of seven ethereal surround-sound tracks and seven animated shorts woven together into a dazzling audiovisual display. “I didn’t really have a map for this”, says BT. “And it was one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my life”. He worked with animators and directors across the globe to produce the final DVD/audio CD combo. Everyone involved in the project — more than a dozen artists altogether — crafted their sequences with Apple hardware and software.
Sonic Stillness
BT’s binary universe didn’t start with a big bang. It started with a lullaby. “The first piece I wrote was Dynamic Symmetry”, he says. “It starts with something that’s almost a lullaby thrown over a clicky hip-hop beat, then moves into a crazy time signature and then this jazz groove. At that point I wasn’t planning on making a record, but it turned out so well that I decided to go for it”.
BT reached for the same sonic stillness that saturated his first albums, “Ima” and “ESCM”, ditching the dance beats that fuelled his pop chart ascent. The result is exacting and technical, yet emotionally charged. It’s the kind of music that feeds both halves of your brain, challenges the logical and titillates the emotional.
“This Binary Universe” is a full-circle return to BT’s early influences. The tracks were composed in the classical three-part form: a statement of the theme, a variation of the theme and a recapitulation of the theme. It’s a natural compositional form for the musician — he was trained as classical pianist and studied music theory throughout his formative years.
He also drew on some cutting-edge technology, composing with surround sound in Logic Pro. “It’s such an incredible environment to write in”, he says. “It’s the sort of thing that my heroes — Penderecki, Stravinsky, Stockhausen or John Cage — would write in today. You’re able to submerge the listener in a completely immersive sound field. It’s just so attractive to me as a composer”.
As the tracks coalesced, a concept emerged. “I’ve been scoring a lot of films and so the tracks had a cinematic feel”, says BT, who scored such films as “Go”, “Under Suspicion”, “The Fast and the Furious” and “Monster”. He would add visuals and even story lines to further submerge his audience. He would create something more than just another album. But to do it, he’d need help.
Visual Symmetry
In 2005, visual effects artist Scott Pagano received an MP3 and brief instructions: “Follow your inspiration”. “I was given that MP3 and told to run with it”, he says. “It was pretty amazing. The music had a cinematic arch, which brought me into directing a short film that really isn’t like most music videos”. BT had put out a call to visual artists — he was building a binary universe. The message flew through BT’s personal networks and even appeared on Craigslist.
“A year and a half ago I just put it out there”, says BT. “I was so blessed to find these artists and directors who listened to this music and said: ‘I will do anything to be involved with this’. They believed in it so much that they came to the table with the most amazing stuff”.
He gathered a diverse collection of artists that included a team of French filmmakers, a star visual arts student and major motion picture effects artists. Pagano had shaped, among other things, visual effects and bleeding-edge visual projects for electronic music producers like Funkstorung, Twerk, Richard Devine, Christopher Willits, Monolake, Deadbeat, Speedy J, Chris Liebing, Kid606, Joan Jeanrenaud and the Kronos Quartet. He was given two tracks to play with: “1.681” and “The Anhtkythera Mechanism”.
“I was given both tracks and few key words, a few key elements”, says Pagano. “We had this idea that ‘The Anhtkythera Mechanism’ was an ancient piece of technology. The story is about what happens when people find it. I spent a week or two storyboarding it, sitting there with the track on loop for days, doing sketching and mock-ups in Photoshop”.
