Sizing Up: Artist Helena Papageorgiou on taking over Ric’s and the future of music videos

For the first time this year, BIGSOUND is including a dedicated Visual Arts Showcase. Fortitude Valley’s streetscapes and venues will be transformed with large-scale, music-friendly and forward-thinking works by mostly Brisbane-based artists.

Illustrator, animator and videomaker Helena Papageorgiou is one of the showcased local artists. Papageorgiou already has strong connections with the music industry, havingcreated music videos for bands including Terrible Truths, Kitchens Floor, Blank Realm and Mope City. Delegates and festival punters will be able to admire her space-scape animations atRic’s, where they’ll be lighting up the Big Backyard with 80s sci-fi neon colours.

TMN caught up with Papageorgiou (when she had a spare moment between mapping projections at the Ric’s site) to talk music videos, hwo the industry can strengthen relationships with artists, and The Future.

How long have you been working as a visual artist?

I studied Fine Art at QCA over ten years ago as well as Game Development a bit later. I was practicing on and off during this time using elements from prior study. The last few years though have been a lot more concentrated specifically in animation, illustration and music video production.

What’s the first music video that really made an impact on you?

Animation has always been my natural inclination for great music videos. That syncopation and pacing with animated imagery that plays between reality and the abstract. One of my favourite quotes is “It doesn’t have to be real, it just has to be believable.”

If I was going to be honest, the first video would be A-Ha’s ’Take on Me’. The rotoscoping and dramatic storyline in that video is killer.

What’s the last music video you saw that struck you as a piece of visual/narrative art?

It is a few years old now but Blockhead’s ’The Music Scene’ is one the best clips to me. Again it’s all animated and has an anime/psych blend in the style, little neon glowing flashes between an intense color palette.

The content is incredibly surreal and that is something that always hits me when I am watching clips. Anthony Francisco Schepperd is the artist legend behind the work.

What should a band focus on when they’re working with a director/creator on a video? And what should creators know about working with an artist, in turn?

Communication is always great, working with bands who have an idea or a general aesthetic in mind and want to you to use your skills to turn into their own. It’s symbiotic and both parties need to have clarity and talks about it, and beers. Beers usually help the brainstorming process.

Creators need to be able to make these ideas come to fruition but still maintain a sense of their “stamp” in the output. The band chose you for a reason and usually want you to run with your own style as well.

How can the music industry build more creative, mutually beneficial relationships with visual artists?

To me the incorporation of visual artists as part of the music industry seems to be very congruous and natural. Whether the art is for posters, t-shirts, music videos or interactive stage projections the opportunity to immerse your audience in a visual representation and reflect your art on a whole other level than just an auditory one should be seized.

I think the music industry is already doing this in some forms and BIGSOUND including a Visual Arts team this year is a great step towards this focus and will hopefully continue to roll out across heaps of other events. Who doesn’t want to see a portion of their town transformed and all lit up as a part of a music event?

What’s the future of music videos – is it as simple as new production techniques making for cool visuals, or will tech like AR and VR become mainstream enough and accessible enough to become commonplace?

Hopefully both! But I think AR and VR is definitely moving into that accessible space for music. When you look at people like SUTU and how he incorporates his AR App for storytelling and live show integration it seems that it is all coming together and is only a matter of time before it becomes another layer to the visual cake fest.

What’s the best thing about doing what you do in 2017?

The limitless possibilities in developing concepts with all the new tech. Discovering new ways to make your creative work is always stimulating and inspiring. Embracing the changes into your work to take it to a new place. For instance, even the information I have learnt about progressive mapping during BIGSOUND has really opened my eyes and is something I am keen to get across for future work!

What can we expect from your work at the VA showcase at BIGSOUND?

My work will be primarily featured in the Ric’s Big Backyard and is a luminescent space-scape journey that transports you into a digital world of neon-galactic visuals inspired by the Fantasy Science Fiction films around the 80s. Fluorescent geometric shapes creating celestial structures and highlighting luminous landscapes act as a vortex to the vision of the future by the assemblage of tech past.

Who are you planning on seeing at the music showcases?

Donny Benet and Miss Blanks’ stuff is stellar but I am also keen to discover a whole bunch of new artists too.

If someone at BIGSOUND wanted to chat about working together or just pick your brain, what drink should they buy you?

As we are sprinting towards summer here, probably a mojito. I am going to need mojitos please.