Experimental music of Brooklyn-based producer Oneohtrix Point Never releases some amazing music projects — from artist Takeshi Murata’s immaculate hyperealistic CGI still life to the too-creepy-for-YouTube video by artist Jon Rafman to the collaboration with artist Cory Arcangel that we had to crack through layers outmoded digital tools just to even listen to (key word: “artist”). Here’s the latest — the music video for “Boring Angel” by John Michael Boling aka gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com.
With Emoji icons hard-embedded into our visual culture — and a bevy of creative, artistic applications, as highlighted by Eyebeam’s Emoji Art & Design exhibit — this is a stand-out. As various emojis flash, change with zero second delay, cycle and change, a narrative unfolds. You see basic and quite banal blocks of human emotion and behavior fire manically into a subliminal plot arc — heart, happy face, broken heart, sad face, broken heart, tears, pills, fists, etc. etc. — to a minimal, beautifully crafted track. It lends a subtlety and complexity to something so often garish and silly.
