BB Video: "A VOLTA" from NASA Project: Narco-Cholo Game Ultraviolence

[Q] XENI JARDIN / BOING BOING VIDEO: When I was struggling to explain your “A Volta” video to others, I found myself referring to it as an “8-bit narco nightmare.” What’s the story we’re seeing here?

At first there was no plot, just a setting: an isometric metropolis inhabited by deranged inhabitants, full of senseless violence and anarchy. Then it sort of evolved into a semblance of a story. We started imagining what these characters could do and the plot sort of developed on its own, little by little.

[A] It began with looking at the Date Farmers’ work, and trying to figure out a way to bring it to life that would not fight against their aesthetic. It’s always hard to adopt an accomplished visual style from a static medium without compromising it.

Their world is devoid of perspective, decidedly two-dimensional. Their visual vocabulary is a mix of pop culture references and cholo folklore, a violent combination of corporate iconography, found objects and jail tattoos. The smelly back alley of our collective subconscious soaked in pop culture detritus. It’s pretty disturbing, but somehow endearing at the same time. They don’t seem to be taking themselves too seriously.

Besides paintings and collages, they make these robots out of scrap materials. There’s a whole series of them. The lineup in its entirety is like a medieval bestiary.

What is the cinematic equivalent of the Date Farmers’ pictorial universe? A blunt storyline, trite genre referencing and Scarface quotations. Compulsive borrowing and regurgitation of pre-existing elements. Lack of any sort of narrative syntax and the overall “flatness”. “Poor acting” on the part of the characters that have no range and no faces. Canned robotic voice-over. A patchwork of elements and layers that make up a saturated cacophonous experience of visuals, music, plot, voiceover and subtitles…

And so on and so forth. What would normally be considered negative connotations could actually be used to attempt a different approach. It was really liberating.

[Q] How did you come to collaborate with the Date Famers?

[A] The idea of our collaboration with the Date Farmers I believe came from Syd Garon and Sam Spiegel, who chose the pairings of artists and directors for each of the tracks on the NASA album.

I am not quite sure what criteria was used to make the pairings. Maybe they thought we had some similarity in our work, or maybe it was just the opposite. Or maybe it was a random juxtaposition. We didn’t get to pick the music track from the album either. I guess the whole thing was conceptualized as a bit of an exquisite corpse. In any case, I am quite pleased with the way it all worked out.

I recently saw the Date Farmers work at a group show and it really stood out. It has freshness and immediacy that makes it instantly recognizable as theirs, despite the fact that a lot of it is based on found or appropriated imagery. They seem to have found a magic formula.

[Q] Did you all work in the same space at any time, or was the collaboration virtual?

The camera movements had to be repetitive and mechanical to illicit the sense of anxiety and paranoia. I wanted it to have a Q*bert feel with a bit of “Street of Crocodiles” mixed in, a video game with a stop-motion feel which seemed right for the track. The subtitles where designed to be part of the stimulation overload… like watching Santo movies on VHS late at night.