When International Psychedelic Rock Meets VR

On|Off|Man is an Italian band formed in 2011 with four members: Stefano Diso (Piano, Synth and Laptop), Giacomo Franzoso (Guitar), Simone Tiraboschi (Bass), Alessandro Orefice (Drum). There’s no vocals in the band and their music is a cross of Rock, EDM and Psychedelic. On|Off|Man aims at creating a fusion of multiple international and contemporary genres of which continuity is the keyword.

Enoz (real name Renato) was the designated creator of On|Off|Man’s soon-to-be-released music video, “Sane Man”. He began taking an interest in virtual reality this year and started analyzing the new medium and working in this new field to understand the essence of VR better. In the meantime, he also tries to understand the designing methods and the linguistic methodologies of VR, being increasingly aware that the language being used in VR production will have more influence on audiovisual language as time goes by.

First trial illustration for the cover of the thesis POST-CLIPS (The mutation of the videoclips in the era of interactivity)

Renato tells us Enoz is his alter ego. He grew up feeling passionate about the hip hop culture, specifically in the art of graffiti. As an adolescent, being invested in graffiti enriched his artistic style and calligraphy & typography skills, which eventually matured into his expertise in graphic design and animation. Enoz is a mix between his real name and various nicknames his friends gave him (Renz, Renzo, Renèè). He gradually eased into the habit of including this special identity of his in any creative production he does, as a brand of his visions for his personal creative world.

3D Model Test for the VR music video “Sane Man” – On Off Man

His collaboration with On|Off|Man was born out of a long-term friendship dated back to when he was a graphic design student in Bologna. He worked with Stefano Diso (now keyboardist of the band), his girlfriend Elena and Marky on certain productions and created a small collective called “Istanti Mobili”. They also collaborated during a few live performances that Enoz VJ’ed for. At the beginning of 2016, Enoz was approached by the band members about a visual project of their new album. To renew their aesthetics, they re-designed the band logo, and produced music videos for “Siren Song” and “Sane Man” (in 360).

The main idea of the music video, explains Enoz, starts directly from the message the group wants to convey with the new album, namely “the duality between analog and digital“. To quote his own words: “From a musical point of view, the band tries to mix digital sound (synths) with analog sounds (musical instruments) to create something unique, new and experimental. From a methodological point of view, the message is a reflection of the times we are living, this fast and powerful transposition between reality and virtuality in our society. From a stylistic point of view, I was very inspired by the “cyberpunk” and “post-human” lines, from Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard’s books, to manga/anime like “Evangelion,” “Ghost in the Shell,” to Bill Viola and Matthew Barney’s video artworks, to Jesse Kanda’s videos and the Internet in general.”

The main message conveyed through their new work, says Enoz, is to remind us to reflect on the time we are living, the worlds we create every day, and the role we play as progressively intelligent human beings in this universe. The geometric representation of human bodies in the teaser symbolizes the inquiry of the part human beings assume in this technological advancement.

Graphic Composition Test for the music video “Siren Song” – On Off Man

Once his script and mood board was okayed by the band, Enoz designed the storyboard and blitzed through the project in less than two weeks. Aware that in a VR production the editing eventually disappears, as each spectator creates their own point of view as they go along, Enoz produced a long, “Divine Comedy”-informed sequence, which resembles Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory and paradise.

Dancer Scan Test for the music video “Siren Song” – On Off Man

The phase that made him burn the most brain cells was rendering. For the best video quality, each frame required 1-2 hours to render, and the whole music video had 8000 frames in total to render which started to worry him. To work with their budget, Enoz turned to friends and band members who had laptops available to assemble a render farm and successfully pulled it off.

Ballet shooting for the music video “Siren Song” – On Off Man

The whole design was achieved through MAXON Cinema 4D and its CV-VR Cam plug-in for rendering virtual reality content. Enoz explains that the reasons why he chose this software was because he has a good grasp of its dynamics and it’s “the most intuitive” VR rendering software in his opinion. He says it also synergizes very well with post-production software such as Adobe After Effects.

FPS Export Test for the VR music video “ Sane Man” – On Off Man

Enoz tells us that this period of growth for VR is but the tip of the iceberg, which we should expect to grow into a significant explosion. Also if given more opportunities to work with VR, he’d like to concentrate on and experiment with the content and language, to create more immersive, provocative experiences. Let’s hope that’s in immediate future cause we can’t wait to see more from him!

For more information, visit——

On Off Man’s official pages:

https://onoffman.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/onoffman/

Enoz’s personal website:

http://cargocollective.com/enozign/

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360, Italy, Music, Music Video, MV, Rock, VeeR, Virtual Reality, VR video