This week’s guest is GŁOWA, an animator that excels at communicating a ton of feelings and vibes with polished minimalism in his work. As we dove into the details of his background, process, and intentions, it became very clear to me why his work resonates so strongly with me.
From his initial background with documentary film making, to his influences from formative years to today, I got the feeling that he lives his life by addressing things that make him uncomfortable in a very productive way. Some folks create to escape certain facets of their lives, and others incorporate their experiences into the expressive mediums they work in. GŁOWA falls in the latter category.
Note: because his work is an audio-visual experience, I will be embedding his tweets instead of images in this post, as I cannot embed videos directly from their sources on NFT marketplaces.
We started by touching slightly on his background with creative mediums a bit early on, but later really got into it. It’s fascinating how we can pull information to create something from not just our minds, but from the worlds we inhabit that influence our minds. In GŁOWA’s case, he grew up in an area that had a dystopian vibe to begin with, and getting some insight into how those formative years contributed to his current art is really cool. The societal perspective he provides about where he grew up is really intense, especially because he has come to understand how it has brought him where he is with his creative flow, as well as the subject matter in his work.
His discovery of After Effects echos my personal experience in many ways; being able to manipulate and synchronize visual and audio elements is so satisfying and exciting. A willingness to explore new tools is very important in the journey of any artist, in my opinion. GŁOWA appears to have found the right tools (like AE, and Touch Designer) to give life to the ideas in his mind; right tool, right job.
His background with making music is also a massive part of understanding what it is that he is creating - his works are not just visual; they are full on audio-visual experiences. I love how much of an influence music has on what he’s creating. When he later expresses his love of Lorn, so much clicks for me about his work. It explains so much about the vibe in his work. Here’s one of my favorite Lorn tracks:
Touching on a technical perspective, he mentions Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time, in relation to stripping away the excess to present something that’s been whittled down to its final form. That process is such a big component of creative flow for artists, and it’s really comforting to hear GŁOWA’s metaphor for what this mental space looks like for him.
I like how he calls it “delving inside of yourself.” This is, in my opinion, where the ‘dark’ in dark art comes from. It’s liminal; we cross thresholds and come out the other side with something to show for our experiences. We really got into some abstract mental exploration through use of visual metaphor, and how things look in our minds. This kind of stuff is hard to write about sometimes, because it’s such a strange frequency to explore.
As always, I bring up this weird concept that art may be a reflection of who the artist is, and whether that matters or not depending on what others perceive of the art in question. It yields a really interesting response about how Glowa feels about his work being out there as a “piece of himself,” and how the point of art for him is for it to connect with people. I think what this shows, is a reflection of what Glowa’s intentions with his art are.
We covered a lot in an hour, and there are a multitude of points to take away from this one; a lot to chew on for sure. Personally, I’m really motivated to explore some color with my work, while somehow retaining some of the “in the void” vibes .
PS. Here’s the Monolith x Glowa drop he mentions at the end. At this time, it’s still minting, and I believe there’s around 20+ left available! I love the one I pulled.
Next week, I share my discussion with Marielle AKA marilsolstice! Tune in for a really pleasant dive into her mind, and how she does what she does! There are some really deep, dark, and thought provoking themes in her work.
Personal Updates!
As I mentioned in the first part of this podcast, my Fractal x Code collaboration with Widmer Luiz is dropping very soon. Here’s the first teaser tweet:
As for Iterative, here is a sneak peek of one of the iterations I generated. There are a lot of moving parts with this project from minting mechanics, to who the team is, and even the shifting vibes that will occur as more “types” are exposed. I will be sharing more info about this project with almost every post for the foreseeable future, so let me know if you get sick of hearing about it, and I’ll consider scaling my enthusiasm back a little. 😅
I hope you’re down for this ride, because things are going to get really crazy. See you next week!
Tranmission 6 - GLOWA