Continuum is a creative call and response between Sofia Mattioli and Brit music vanguards Jamie xx, Four Tet and Koreless, and the Spanish experimentalist John Talabot. The London-based artist and writer presented her performative silent film made with long-time collaborator Rebecca Salvadori to the four kings of understated electronic music, who in turn wrote an original score inspired by each contiguous two-minute visual excursion, with somewhat Kubrick-ian results. 

Further exploring the relationship between silence and music—the duo previously worked together on Mattioli's acclaimed dance video with the Manchester Deaf Centre for Jamie xx’s “Sleep Sound”—the filmmaker below delves behind the scenes of the project, with all of the tracks available to download today from the newly launched NOWNESS Soundcloud.

The first thing that came up to my mind was to give an Italian name for each track. My roots came back for this. We worked from Rebecca’s little room in Whitechapel, London, where we also edited “Sleep Sound,” with a computer that drove us mad. 

Rebecca filmed me on an iPhone and we worked on the footage on final cut. That’s me moving around on the floor in my living room. I cleaned the floor very well that day. 

I introduced artist names in the video as their real names. I felt that it would bring the whole project more to a human level, without the artist-persona separation. We should all feel creatively free, everyone should be able to express themselves, the discovery of oneself comes through trying.

The video has been put together in the same chronological order as the tracks were handed in. It’s beautiful how they all blend together in that exact same order. It is fascinating to see how different each piece of music is, although inspired by the same silent video and is of exactly the same length. Art always raises questions and keeps open the wonder.

Terence Teh is Editor at NOWNESS