After releasing high resolution greenscreen footage at the beginning of quarantine, Grimes gave video creators the opportunity to create something as they saw fit, using post-production and effects.

Brent Bonacorso has stepped up to the plate, and this is his vision for the concept - exploring technology, myth, conception and creation. It is a mighty effort of VFX skill, and he also pays to due homage to Grimes, pregnant when created the greenscreen footage, becoming a mother for the first time during the production process. 

Breathtaking textures collide with distorted shapes, creating an aesthetic that falls somewhere between The Matrix and I, Robot. Grimes' otherworldly performance fits perfectly within this dynamic, a soft and ethereal being in a dark abyss of futurism and refined brutalist structures. 

To get from greenscreen performance footage to this video is a huge achievement, and a testament to Bonacorso's creative ingenuity. 

BRENT BENACORSO: 

The film ultimately taking on the form of a sort of birth announcement for little X Æ A-12.

"At the beginning of quarantine in the US, Grimes released a video of her new song entirely on green screen, while also releasing a link to the high resolution footage, with the idea that anyone could complete the video as they saw fit. I thought it was a brilliant idea, a way to involve her fans in making an interactive collective artwork that anyone across the world could take part in (given a certain amount of post-production knowledge). We were all beginning to huddle indoors, with people taking up jigsaw puzzles and learning how to bake bread, and as a longtime fan of hers I figured this project would be a fun way for me to keep busy during those quiet times.

"Work on it was… not incredibly exciting. A lot of heavy visual effects work went into it, which simply amounts to a lot of hours at the computer and a lot of late nights. The footage was a bit rough, and needed quite a bit of love to integrate it into the worlds I was creating, but it’s a satisfying process when an imagined idea becomes a living, breathing thing onscreen. Of course, as I created the entire film myself in my home studio with, it was all a rather slow and steady process.

"I like to allow a film to evolve as it’s being created, to become what it wants to become. For this particular film, I had a clear idea of what I wanted it to be going in, but like all living things it began to take it’s own path. Grimes shot the video at the end of her pregnancy, and actually gave birth to her son during the making of the film. So the initial themes of technology, myth, conception and creation evolved, the film ultimately taking on the form of a sort of birth announcement for little X Æ A-12 (the name of her child).

"If you look closely, there are a few Easter eggs… Grimes is obviously a visitor to our world, summoned from the cosmos to join us here and give us her brilliant music. We Earthlings are eternally grateful."