Music design

Background

Worm Pornography is a short HD video by Ian Haig. The sci-fi /conspiratorial plot focuses on a hazmat-suited researcher in a bathroom/toilet, credited only as the slime narrator, talking about discovering a new kind of parasite that attempts to complete its life cycle within various contemporary media platforms. It quickly emerges that our narrator has possibly started to lose his mind or has been affected by the parasite as he explores topics such as Virtual Reality worm simulations, our symbiotic relationship to 7-11s, AI censorship parasites, to the appearance of programmable dark matter, slime TV game shows, parasite pornography and mutant YouTube cat videos.

Credits

Script, direction, VFX, editing & mix - Ian Haig
Background music & atmospheres - Philip Brophy

2024

Premiere screening - Thornbury Picture Theatre, Melbourne

Overview

Ian commissioned a suite of atmospheric music tracks, plus a series of visceral, repulsive sonic textures. Philip provided 6 tracks using analogue synths playing fractured, non-quantized rhythms, which judder and stumble and ultimately collapse while moving forward. The sound effects are recordings of material surfaces and textures which suggest a tactile, physical sensation, in an attempt to imagine a type of sonic pornography. The voice-over narration was also effected into a dozen passes, each to match the slow degraduation of the researcher.

Technical

For the music, a Roland System-100 with Expander was used to create a core texture for each track. A live pass was recorded with module manipulation. In Logic, a selection of soft drums were configured and played live un-quantized to each synth pass. All mistakes and sloppy playing were retained. A 'dub' mix of each track was also supplied, removing all the rhythms and leaving only the original synth textures. The sound effects were typical close-miced foley textures: rubbed ceramic bowls, dried beans in a plastic bag, gloop handled in a metal bowl, a mix of paper and metallic pieces pushed around a table-top, porridge stirred in a plastic bowl. Each of these recordings were then processed further using outlandishly dumb pitch/flange/fuzz processing. The highly artificial/synthetic/tasteless quality of these sounds was in keeping with the video's embrace of the plastic, decrepit world Worm Pornography conjures. All music tracks and SFX were handed over to Ian, who chose where to place everything for the video. Ian produced the final mix of the video.