Actress Charlotte Rampling and director David Lynch weave together the threads of Loris Gréaud’s expansive project in the Parisian-art star’s new film The Snorks: A Concert for Creatures. Thirty-six months in the making, the film takes in everything from hip hop-avantists Antipop Consortium’s concert for deep-ocean dwellers, to a pyrotechnic sculpture of fireworks in Abu Dhabi, and traces Gréaud’s voyages exploring the possibility for communication between species. Inspired by bioluminescence––or biological production of light––used by deep-sea creatures to communicate with each other, the aesthetic adventurer broadcast specially commissioned music by Antipop Consortium at a depth of 4,000 meters and elicited vibrant bursts of light from the audience of plankton, unicellular creatures and jellyfish in response. “I gave them carte blanche,” says Gréaud of working with Antipop Consortium. “The only direction really was to play the game, to imagine they playing in front of aliens.” Ahead of the 28-minute film’s premiere at MK2 Bibliothèque next week and a forthcoming world tour combining screenings with Antipop Consortium performing the concert live, Gréaud unpicks the threads making up The Snorks.

What kick-started the The Snorks project? 
Basically everything was triggered by a report I’d seen on the death of our oceans, and also the paradox that we know the surface of the moon better than our own oceans. So I wanted to make a sci-fi or alien story but on our planet. From there came the idea of making a concert for these deep-sea creatures, of making sound for them and seeing them react with their own language of bioluminescence.

How did these animals react when you broadcast the Antipop Consortium concert at 4,000 meters under sea?
What we observed was what they called a “bloom.” Plankton, unicellular creatures and weird jellyfish down there started not just to flicker but to emit a cloud of light [bioluminescence], like an underwater fireworks display. I was really proud that we observed this amazing reaction. The images you see at the end of the film are a bloom in response to Antipop Consortium.

You projected this bloom on the billboards of Times Square and also recreated them with a choreographed “pyrotechnic sculpture” of fireworks in Abu Dhabi. Why?
The idea of the infinite abyss and the infinite sky and trying to make a visual equivalent to what you observe in the depths of the ocean in the sky is a beautiful chain of thought. It was an experiment in making a sort of alien communication. Some people in Times Square were not aware we were making a movie, and were putting themselves in front of the screen like they would at a fireworks show, and buying hot dogs in the street and sitting down to look at the display. 

You’ve mentioned Rampling is playing your character in the film. What’s the idea behind Lynch’s character?
David Lynch is the guy who never really gives an answer, he’s really well known for that. I was thinking this could be used in the opposite way and in my project Lynch becomes someone from another place and space giving information to the viewer. He’s just saying facts and scientific information, and explaining what is going on in the movie and helping the viewer to make links. He’s doing the opposite of what he’s supposed to do in life. He’s the access to the story. Everything is organized around him. 

The Snorks: A Concert for Creatures premieres at Mk2 Bibliothèque, Paris, on October 9.