Lovotic [w/ Charlotte Gainsbourg, feat. Willem Dafoe, Atom™]

Lovotic is Soundwalk Collective's concept album turned music video, featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, and Atom™. It is a study of intimacy between humans, robots, and artificial intelligence. Stephan Crasneanscki directed; the visual language needed to stay close and strange rather than slide into polished sci-fi surfaces.

My contribution was the generative visual material and the creative technology pipeline behind it. In TouchDesigner, sorting algorithms tuned to variable visuals, animation templates, and AI-assisted optimization became a production backbone. I also modeled and rendered the artists' faces in 3D for composite work. The output wasn't a single prompt-and-export. It was a library of material shaped for editorial choice.

Ali M. Demirel edited the final cut from selections drawn out of that generative pool. The workflow sat between code-driven image-making and traditional compositing: production feeding edit, edit feeding tone.

What holds the piece together is restraint. The technology stays tactile, uneasy, emotionally proximate to the music, rather than announcing itself as futuristic spectacle.

by SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE with Charlotte Gainsbourg, feat. Willem Dafoe and Atom™ Video directed by Stephan Crasneanscki Album available on Bandcamp

My contribution sat on the visual art and creative technology side of the video: building AI-assisted and generative image material that could support the project’s uneasy intimacy without turning it into a clean sci-fi surface. The challenge was to keep the imagery tactile, strange, and emotionally close to the music while fitting into a larger editorial and compositing process.

Written and conceived by Stephan Crasneanscki, ‘LOVOTIC’ is a concept album by Soundwalk Collective, composed in collaboration with lauded actress and singer/songwriter Charlotte Gainsbourg, featuring veteran techno stalwart Atom™, rising singer/composer/performance artist Lyra Pramuk, celebrated actor Willem Dafoe, and writer/philosopher Paul B. Preciado. The album will be available from April 1st via the new Berlin-based Analogue Foundation.

Inspired by a relatively new field of research that seeks to explore and develop the possibilities of sexual and emotional relationships – and even love – between humans and robots, ‘LOVOTIC’ interrogates the impulses, ideas, and needs underlying this phenomenon. The project ventures into a future where sex, intimacy and desire are reformulated through the connection of humans, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Credits

All music written, composed and produced by Soundwalk Collective Additional production: Stan Neff
Arrangement: Simone Merli, Atom™, Stan Neff
**Mixed by Atom™
Lyrics: Stephan Crasneanscki, Atom™
Editing and compositing: Ali M. Demirel
Creative coding & 3D Renders: Çağatay Güçlü (Defektu) / DECOL
Archival footage research: Lan Linh Nguyen Hoai with Tommaso Cosmacini, Neal Franc, Anastasia Ivanova, Josefine Jacob, Shira Kehla

Soundwalk Collective
Analogue Foundation