Art Brute No. 4 / Kill Your Co-Workers

As a director, graphic designer, photographer, and general tinkerer, the 29-year-old Mike Winkelmann could easily be in danger of spreading himself thin, but his many visual projects, almost always on the nature of "tightly synching music and video," barrel on. He just finished creating the music video for Flying Lotus' "Kill Your Co-Workers," a glitchy primer from his latest EP,  Pattern+Grid World (Warp).

Steeped in symbols of papercraft and backpack rap, "Kill Your Co-Workers" is in the director's words, an "open source music video" — animated entirely in Cinema 4D, Beeple offers the source files on his blog, allowing the curious to craft their own shorts or just learn from his work. A novel kind of interactivity from an otherwise passive medium.

Over several emails, Beeple explained why it may take a while for those remixes to appear.

Explain this video.
The project actually started out as a video for "Computer Face: Pure Being" off of Cosmogramma (Warp). And for that video we were gonna do sort of like a trippy parade and then have people exploding towards the end of it, similar to how the person exploded when shot with the "ice lazer".  As time went on and the the scope of the project grew, we decided that it might be better to see if we can adapt it for a track off the then upcoming EP. Steve (Ellison, aka Flying Lotus) suggested this track and said we maybe we could take it in a bit darker direction but still keep it light, so that's where we sort of ended at the end.

"I think right now we're going through sort of a gimmicky phase in that a lot of people are using sort of "shock and awe" methods to get noticed."

You've dubbed "Kill Your Co-Workers" an open-source music video, going so far as to hosting the Cinema 4D source files on your site so people can create their own 3d actors. Why offer that?
I think if others can benefit from the source files then that's great. So if people can see how things were made and it helps maybe spur some ideas or educate them on a technique then that's awesome. I learned a TON from tutorials that other people have posted on the internet for free and I think this is just my small way of giving back for all of the generosity I've received.

From the I.V. series to shorts like Subprime, your films focus on new ways to recontextualize audio into visual experiences. Why then work on a music video?
I've been a HUGE fan of Warp Records since I was a kid so getting the chance to do something for one of their artists has been fucking awesome!  Though I was very much into the style of music that Flying Lotus was making, I hadn't actually heard much of his work before. I have since, obviously, become a huge fan and really fucking love Cosmogramma. I think this track though fits the visual style perfectly and that was actually almost a coincidence as it was not the track we had originally intended to use.

We have sex (Girls), gingercide (MIA), and Eric Wareheim's, er, everything (Major Lazer, HEALTH). Where do you see the future of music videos heading?
I think with broadband connections fairly ubiquitous at this point, having a cool video is a something more and more bands are going to really NEED to stand out.  I think right now we're going through sort of a gimmicky phase in that a lot of people are using sort of "shock and awe" methods to get noticed.  I don't think that will last long, but then again who the fuck knows. I do know it's a fucking awesome ass (sic) time to be into [music] videos as there is not only a fucking redonkulous amount out there, but the net has made it so egalitarian in that someone like me — with no name,  living in butt fuck nowhere, with nothing but a computer, can make a video that is seen all over the world.