ARTIST: Peter Gabriel

CREATOR: Oranguerillatan

SONG: The Court (Dark-Side Mix) FROM i/o

Video info:

Seeing the 'Sledgehammer' stop-motion video by Peter Gabriel was a pivotal moment in my life, igniting a love for animation that led me to study Animation/Illustration at University over 20 years ago, essentially setting me on the track to where I am now.

As a long term admirer of Peter Gabriel's musical/visual contribution to the world and Tim Shaw's magnificent sculptural masterpieces, I entered this competition with an AI-animated music video for ‘The Court’ that attempts to embody the spirit of their recent artistic collaboration (see the beautiful artwork by Tim that accompanies the song).

In creating my video, I wanted to pay tribute to the visual and musical genius of Peter and Tim. Both artists relentlessly convey fascinating messages and deep meanings with their bold audio/visual outputs.

Drawing visual inspiration from Tim’s profound sculptural work, I sought to capture its essence without directly emulating it, using text prompts containing aesthetics and subject matter rather than specifically using his name. I hope my video stands alongside Tim’s fantastic artwork in a respectful manner, instilling discomfort and empowering viewers much like his pieces do.

The resulting video aims to capture the duality of the human experience, at once gritty and hopeful, conveying the daily struggles of humanity while also highlighting our collective hope for a brighter future. At the same time, I sought to capture Peter’s vision of a just and peaceful world, where embattled people can rise together towards a better future.

In creating my video, I wanted to pay tribute to both Peter and Tim. Both artists are geniuses that relentlessly convey fascinating messages and deep meanings with their bold audio/visual outputs.

-Orangerillian

Song info:

The Court is a track taken from Peter Gabriel's album i/o, released on 1 December 2023. This is the Dark-Side Mix, by Tchad Blake.

Words and music by Peter Gabriel. Produced by Peter Gabriel.

Published by Real World Music Ltd. / Sony Music Publishing.

The Court began with a Cuban loop that I was playing around with on my keyboard. I’m an old drummer, so I still love to find a groove that makes me want to dance and then build ideas around it.

In the lyrics, the chorus refrain ‘the court will rise’ came early, and this free-form, impressionistic lyric around justice evolved around it. There’s a sense of urgency there. A lot of life is a struggle between order and chaos and in some senses the justice or legal system is something that we impose to try and bring some element of order to the chaos. That’s often abused, it’s often unfair and discriminatory but at the same time it’s probably an essential part of a civilised society. But we do need to think sometimes about how it is actually realised and employed and if justice could be applied.

-pg