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Animation

[Premiere] Maria Chiara Argirò’s Animated Music Video Visualizes Jazz Improvisation

Illustrator My Elastic Brain illustrates the musical dream world of Italian jazz composer Maria Chiara Argirò’s standout hit, "Dream R."

The erratic nature of jazz music gets captured in a new music video by Portuguese illustrator and animator Pedro Oliveira, otherwise known as My Elastic Brain. "Dream R" is the standout track off Italian-born composer Maria Chiara Argirò's crowdfunded debut album, The Fall Dance. Within the song's nearly eight-minute runtime, My Elastic Brain pieces together a stunning animation that takes the viewer on a sinister and abstract journey through Argirò's musical dreamworld. "There's collapsing dreams, there's destruction, there's confusion, there's anger, there's violence, there's fragility. But at the end, you stand up and hope that things will eventually get better," My Elastic Brain tells The Creators.

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The original drawings that comprise "Dream R" were strung together through stop-motion animation. The artist's muddy illustrations form patterned graphics that play with color, shape, and form. On his website, My Elastic Brain writes, "I might use a pencil or a pen, digital crayons, vectors, pixels or something else. I can draw 12 frames per second and build an entire film from a blank sheet of paper." The animations in Argirò's video have the same sporadic and disheveled character as the music they accompany, a quality no doubt reinforced by the video's frame to frame format. Argirò says that each drawing "captures [My Elastic Brain's] different moods, emotions and imperfections. Almost like jazz improvisation." Watch "Dream R" below:

Maria Chiara Argirò is about to take her album on a seven date tour through the UK. Buy tickets on her website and stream The Fall Dance album here. Be sure to check out more work by My Elastic Brain on his website.

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