In Procession, nothing is ever static. The trees and even the rocks are alive with the music, city landscapes are sliced apart by a bird flying by, the blocks of buildings turning into fuzzy shapes as they fade out. Orfeo was inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’ 1977 short film Powers of Ten – where the video zooms out in scales of ten, to a galactic scale, then back down to the microscopic. “One of the major takeaways for me was the similarity between stars floating loosely in space and the orbital movement of particles on the smallest scale,” says Orfeo.
This meandering quality can is also evident in the video for Suddenly. Orfeo designed his own typeface for the video, consisting of single ink dots he likens to grains of sand that “flow and dissolve”. His biggest inspiration was William Blake, whose prints can be found on Orfeo’s shelves at home. “I think wherever possible, if distinct worlds and formats can be referenced and merged, they really enrich and deepen the creative output,” says Orfeo. By merging worlds and collapsing references into the creative output, Orfeo enriches the process. “In the same way that Bob Dylan is drawing upon folk songs and other potent mythologies, I think there is a poetic grativas that can be carried forth through referencing older worlds in new mediums,” he says says.
In both videos, natural imagery and human figures are displayed side by side. In Procession, a figure pops through a tiny open door before launching a moon-faced rock into orbit. While in Suddenly, a person running morphs down into a snail before shifting into a hungry wolf. Facial expressions are particularly vivid too in the video, drawn by Orfeo with nods to his woodcarving work, featuring what he describes as “mythic figures with great smiles or spilling tears”.
On reflection, Orfeo ends: “I like this movement between the two worlds – it is as if for a moment you wake up from one dream and step into another only to be launched back into the original.” Theatricality, nature and folklores liesat the heart of Orfeo’ work, which is vivid and expansive – there’s not a moment the lid can be put on his animation, and not a scene where a conclusion is needed.