The 28-year-old R&B singer is an Internet-age icon obsessed with the analogue, tactile, and obsolete. His albums Nostalgia, Ultra and Channel Orange are sequenced and recorded to create a feeling of flipping through songs on a cassette tapes, or fiddling with a radio dial, or playing old video games. He’s long planned to release a paper-and-ink magazine and write a novel. And one of his best songs, “Novacane,” opens with an indictment of modern media’s numbing effects:

I think I started something, I got what I wanted

Did, didn't I can't feel nothing, superhuman

Even when I'm fucking, Viagra popping, every single record autotuning

Zero emotion, muted emotion, pitch corrected, computed emotion, uh-huh

A livestream of woodworking is a pretty on-the-nose way to communicate a desire to break from digital immediacy. It forces patience, it forces boredom, it forces true mystery (though if that’s the idea here, what’s Ocean doing checking his phone so much?). Many of the music snippets that played during the video featured non-electronic orchestration—aching and lovely woodwinds and strings—though there were also trip-hoppy beats and one mini-song with distorted, looping vocals. The speakers in the room, Pigeons and Planes observes, are actually an art installation by Tom Sachs, recently on display at the Brooklyn Museum’s Boombox Retrospective, 1999-2015.

Ocean has also made clear that his creative process is his own, not to be dictated by expectations, money, or record contracts. He signed to a major label early in his career and then publicly rebelled by releasing a free mixtape when, he says, the company let him languish. “I have no delusions about my likability, in every scenario,” he told The New York Times in 2013. “I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.”

That Times article represented one of the last times Ocean has done a major interview, and in it he talked about why he prefers to stay silent. “Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play,” he said. Speaking to GQ earlier, he said “I want to deflect as much as I can onto my work.” Now we’ve been asked to pay attention to his work, literally. Whatever eventually results—an object, an album, a pile of construction materials—a full and clear explanation for today’s labor seems unlikely.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.