Explore the Dark Side of Electronic Music Inside a Virtual World

The multimedia project Anatomy is, like the human (or animal) body its title evokes, an experience made up of many parts. It is seven letters, seven organs, seven vinyl-only release and seven rooms, designed for those looking to explore “the deeper and darker club-orientated music of today and tomorrow”.

Founded in Brussels back in 2012 by Ceyhun Karasu and Jergan Callebaut, Anatomy encourages users to use their brains “for the good of every single living being.” And one’s vinyl copy is to be considered the key to unlock doors to another world; a world developed by Jan Jorissen and designed and animated by Kara Cey.

“You might not find the answer at first instance but trying to reach this goal with no end will bring you closer to things you did not realize before,” Karasu writes. “Big questions can lead to big discoveries.”

“With this vinyl series we’re aiming to highlight the complete fusion between our bodily reactions and music, but it‘s not all about the physical vinyl-only releases,” Karasu and Callebaut explain. “A complementary cross-media digital platform constructed by a very creative team of people from different art forms is being set up as we speak. It‘s a website/platform/game-world to which you can only gain access by following the trails of this project.”

Arriving at the Anatomy website, visitors hear gentle psychedelic guitars and synths soundtracking a desert landscape. There's a couch and pedestal, upon which floats and spins an amorphous gray mass with neon green veins. In the distance, dunes recede toward the horizon, and upon one of these dunes stands a figure in a black robe. Users can click on either the couch, the mass, or the robed figure.

By clicking the couch, users are transported to a couch inside a room, upon which you’ve just awoken. The music is ambient music—on the darker side—entitled "Fizzmint" by Jesse Somfay (ANA001). It's beautifully mesmerizing.

From there, users can explore the various objects in the room, which include a gramophone, a projector, a poster of a heart illustrated by Alex Konahin, a skeleton, a desk and a shelf of vinyl. If users click on Konahin’s heart, for instance, the room zooms them in on the illustration, while supplying text on the concept behind the piece. By clicking on the vinyl shelf, users are encouraged to explore vinyl records that Anatomy supports.

A click on the gray mass in the desert dream causes it to become animated, then triggers a pop-up window that asks users to decide whether it is a heart, exoskeleton, veins, or the universe. From there, it’s sort of a choose-your-own-adventure as far as what the mind thinks it sees.

We won’t spoil the rest of it, as users can easily spend the better part of an hour exploring Anatomy’s contents. It's best to just start the virtual and physical adventure, which will culminate with seven rooms on some indeterminate date. The website will grow with time and other things will happen occasionally in the room.

“Every release will have its own chapter, its own role in a greater whole game-platform, and when combined together completing a final story,” Karasu and Callebaut say. “The aim is to create an interconnected virtual and real environment where people from different scientific,artistic and philosophical backgrounds come together.”

Click here to visit Anatomy.

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