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We create supplementary reading lists as a way to give you an insight into the inspirations and thinking behind our monthly stories. These reading lists take you behind the story, revealing the process of its making.
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Archetype → Magician
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June 2023
We’ve decided to dig into our collection of archetype playlists. We use these to help us rapidly “get into” a brand persona. Over the years we’ve slowly accumulated and collected these sounds to help us work effectively. Here are a few selections from the Magician playlist.
The evocative emotional power of music is magical. London-based Caribbean-Belgian composer, producer, and musician Nala Sinephro described the making of the album: “I became more focused on the inner workings of the body and created a sonic world that helped me heal.” This kind of music seems to be a sort of soundtrack to memories. It evokes a sense of wonder. 2021, Space 1.8. Nala Sinephro, Warp Records
Another way of looking at narratives found in music, particularly in terms of rhythm and time. In the trance-like state of a repetitive track, someone can be swept away into a fantastical realm. Terry Riley. American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition is an ideal example of this altered state of mind. 1964, Composition In C. Terry Riley, A Rainbow in Curved Air
The ability to conjure a narrative through space is another interesting aspect of sound, particularly in terms of vibrations and echo. Hiroshi Yoshimura was a Japanese musician and composer whose music lies mostly in the He is considered a pioneer of ambient music in Japan. His music lies mostly in the genre of Japanese environmental music characterized by soft electronic melodies infused with the sounds of nature. He is considered a pioneer of ambient music in Japan. 1986, Time after time. Hiroshi Yoshimura, Soundscape 1: Surround, MISAWA Home
Christopher Nolan’s 2006 award-winning film The Prestige, makes a good point of positioning the wonder of magic as an obsession with deception. It also seems appropriate to us for this MS. As the movie starts with the three steps to a magic trick; also a preface to the structure of the story told in the movie
Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa (16 December 1875, British Ceylon – 18 June 1953, United States) was a Sri Lankan author, occultist, freemason and theosophist. The fourth president of the Theosophical Society, Jinarajadasa was one of the world's foremost Theosophical authors, having published more than 50 books and more than 1600 articles in periodicals during his life. His interests and writings included religion, philosophy, literature, art, science and occult chemistry. He was also a rare linguist, who had the ability to work in many European languages;
The Magician’s connection to experiences of synchronicity, flow and oneness, with a curiosity about the hidden workings of the universe can also be illustrated through body language or body movement. The dance performance can be another aspect of the magician's personality which is interesting to investigate.
Weaving dreams, walking on air, trying to fly… Gratte Ciel performances are known to be enchantingly beautiful, astonishing and breathtaking spectacles. Part dance, but mostly acrobatics these performing artists move through the air, magically suspended above the crowd below. The Gratte Ciel company’s work tends to live within the relationship between the infinitely large and the deeply intimate; they are masters of the rope, its nature, possibilities, and limits. Like the magician archetype whose state of mind and expertise are vectors of innovation at the service of major aerial projects and the artistic teams that it accompanies in surpassing themselves.
In Ben Mendelsohn’s 2012 documentary, Stephen Graham (Professor of Cities and Societies at Newcastle University says “Contrary to the rhetoric that the “Cyber Space” suggests that the internet is some non-physical realm that exists “out there” on its own; it is in fact, very much physical.” This short documentary peeks inside one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity; illustrating the physicality and scale of the internet. The narration takes on the role of the magician offering us a glimpse of the massive material infrastructure that makes the Internet possible. Hundreds of telecommunications companies interconnect their respective internet networks (known as peering) as well as conventional TDM traffic through numerous meet-me rooms and optical and electrical lines placed throughout the building.
Tom Sachs and Van Neistat cor wrote The Paradox Bullets, a film that attempts to help people come to terms with the irrational and to realize that things don't always make sense. The film narrative is mysterious and wondrous; it demonstrates strong perceptional strength, awe-inspiring intuition, charisma and cleverness. In an interview with Cultured Magazine, Tome Sachs said “In school, we learn one plus one equals two, but in the Studio we learn one plus one equals a million. And you can only get that equation of equaling a million when you put the right two wrong elements that combine to make an exponential expansion of energy.”
Magician film directors have the ability to frame the world and show us a different side to a story.
Feist’s 2023 music video for Hiding Out in the Open, is clever. What at first seems like just a little fun with a green screen ultimately forces the viewer to ask, which one is the real Feist and which ones are overlays? And that’s what the song is about. Who’s the real you? Which version of yourself are you putting out into the world vs. what are you trying to hide?
Art and film come together easily in the vividly imaginative mind of Michel Gondry. His sets become sculptures—melding art forms to accommodate the vast world of his dreams. Michel Gondry's films, from his music videos to his feature films, employ technical wizardry involving various kinds of special effects, animation and intricate narrative set-ups. He leaves plenty of room for his playfulness and irreverent satire. In this 120min interview at the Walker Art Center; Michel Gondry: unpacks his 2006 film, The Science of Dreams
Dead Man is a 1995 American acid western film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. The movie, set in the late 1800s, follows William Blake, a meek accountant on the run after murdering a man. He has a chance encounter with the enigmatic Native American spirit guide "Nobody", who believes Blake is the reincarnation of the visionary English poet William Blake.
Tim Burton; Big Fish. The film tells the story of a frustrated son who tries to distinguish fact from fiction in the life of his father, a teller of tall tales. Big Fish was shot on location in Alabama in a series of fairy tale vignettes evoking the tone of a Southern Gothic fantasy.
In My Collected Silences, Doron Solomons combine’s excerpts featuring dozens of interviewees in the pause before the beginning of a television broadcast, from which he edits four intense minutes. The video excerpts are the redundant raw materials cut from the broadcast, which usually remain unavailable for viewing. Solomons choose to focus on those idle, marginal moments contrary to common practice – to put them in the limelight and at the work’s very core. Observation of the changing photographed subjects, some familiar and others unfamiliar, introduces a new gaze which had heretofore been absent. Surprisingly, they appear silent and uneasy. Some take a breath in anticipation of the broadcast; others await their turn indifferently and impatiently. Solomons render’s chaff into wheat, refining a new meaning. It is precisely in these moments of wait that the more human aspects of the interviewees seem to be revealed, eliciting identification. These are, in fact, the true moments, the reality behind the pretense and other games underlying the interview situation.
2023, Making the impossible real; understanding the Magician archetype: As we get to know this world with more and more access to information, instances where we can return to childlike wonder are rare. The Magician archetype can fill this void, and help people find wonder in stories, against the everyday drear.