10 Questions with Bon Music Vision
Bon, aka Bon Music Vision, is an artist duo composed of avant-garde artists, composers, and producers Yerosha Windrich (Swiss, Indonesian, Greek) and Elfed Alexander Morris (Welsh, Ghanaian, Native Canadian).
Their multidisciplinary work and collaborations have been presented by notable institutions such as The R.S.A., British Arts Council, Factory Fifteen, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, McQ (Alexander McQueen), and Nowness. Additionally, they have composed and produced projects for labels like Warp Records and Hyperdub Records, with upcoming releases involving artists on Transgressive Records, True Panther, and 4AD Records. Bon has also performed at the Zaha Hadid Architects Portal installation with multi award-winning director, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist Darren Johnston.
Bon was invited by Professor Leila Adu to participate in NYU's Critical Sonic Practice Symposium Elegy, where they discussed music practice, theory, history, and political active-ness alongside Jason King, Isabelia Herrera, Debit, and Dr. Kwami Coleman. They were subsequently invited back to NYU to discuss Radical Archivists.
Since 2023, they've curated a series of events at the Reference Point 180 venue in London. These events have brought together guests from the art world, media, and academia to discuss and perform works in keeping with the themes of Bon's ongoing project, "The Emotion Industry." Guests include artists Paola Estrella, Donna Kim, Holland Andrews, and Damsel Elysium.
Bon Music Vision - Portrait
The Emotion Industry | Project Description
The Emotion Industry (2023/24) is the pair's audio-visual comment on the modern digital landscape and its influence.
'There's an unfathomable power to blur reality as we know it. The ability to discern what's real and what's not is becoming increasingly difficult - social media supercomputers using data points to push your buttons for manufacturing consent, AI articles, and deep fake images add to the illusion. Human reactions and emotions are now commodified. The ability to really 'see' the objective reality of what's been created is the new enlightenment. We're at a critical juncture where we are at risk of losing humanity to an illusion created by machines.'
Recorded between London, L.A., and Canada using tape and vintage analogue equipment, Emotion Industry is a narrative reflecting on sense of self and identity in the digital realm. It is a visual album of dream logic scored through the lens of Afro-Futurism, Asian Industrial electronica, Sound System music, Post Rave, and Dub.
'With The Emotion Industry, we aim to use the most modern, cutting-edge visual and audio techniques available to us. Sometimes, we embrace the errors and inconsistencies in the knowledge that when the "bugs" are ironed out, and the tech is made smooth, these errors will be lost forever. Capturing the spaces in between advancement is an essential archive. Yesterday's idiosyncrasies are today's nostalgia.'
INTERVIEW
First of all, introduce yourself to our public. Who are Bon Music Vision and how did you come together?
Alex & Yerosha: Bon Music Vision are Yerosha Windrich and Alex Morris. We're mixed race experimental composers/filmmakers based in London UK.
We first met in the late 2000s London synth scene. We were both working on a music project at the time and very quickly learned that we had very similar artistic ethics and tastes.
We started creating works together shortly after - first for other musicians and artists - Some visual, some musical and sonic. Then we moved on to our own output as a project/entity BON as well as continuing to work with other artists.
We were very lucky early on that our work was recognised by our peers and other artists and other mainstays in the scene. It wasn't long before our work with artists was picked up by Warp records, 4AD records and Hyperdub as well as gaining critical acclaim and positive reviews. It was actually a bit of a rollercoaster as we didn't expect the work to be picked up like it was.
© Bon Music Vision
Can you share your background and how it influences your current practice?
A: My background is largely technical, the nuts and bolts of creation, composition, and production (visual production, installation, and audio production). Having that technical background in the discipline of electronic music and the rigor of recorded music pushed those skills into a hybrid specialist space. Our current practice is smashing those two worlds together to create something future-facing.
The merging of old and new worlds to create something greater than the sum of either. We look to the old without fetishisation and reach for the new knowing that innovation is fleeting and only certain innovative aspects will go the distance.
An example is incorporating slide projectors run through self-built Ai Models in stable diffusion with sonics from cellos and singing bowls generated and regenerated through NI's Reaktor until you reach a space that's not either but still definitive. Taking things beyond the uncanny valley.
It's also a reflection of being of mixed heritage and growing up not quite fitting into one thing or another. Observations of the outside of things and being othered has really influenced and informed artistic perspectives. It was often difficult to find a place of inclusion outside the established 'things to do' leading to a deeper cultural and social search to find identity and belonging and a profound questioning of what is fundamental and what isn't.
Y: I think starting out collaborating with artists on their projects has influenced our work because we've gotten used to looking at music from an objective angle. When we're working with other artists, it's all about understanding their artistic language and what they want to say and developing that. At first, we need to sort of step back and become like outsiders looking in, which helps us dive into the concepts and themes of our own projects.
You both have diverse cultural heritage influences. How are these reflected in your artistic collaboration? And how do they influence your work?
Y: I think again, for me, being an outsider due to mixed heritage influences everything. I see being an outsider as very positive as I have no fixed assumptions, expectations, or societal traditions. My name's origin is different from my nationality, which is different from my genetics and then different again from my upbringing and culture. There is no 'right' way to be, so when it comes to making music and visuals, there's no set path, so it's very freeing. My inner city school upbringing was very rare, though, as ironically, it was normal to be diverse, a hybrid of ethnicities and cultures as most children were. You expected them to be different from you. It was during my adult years that I saw how things played out differently and what that meant. In this project, I very much enjoyed exploring pesindhèn, a female solo singer of traditional Indonesian music. The melisma and tonal qualities are very different from the Western singing that I was brought up on.
A: These works exist in their current form because of cultural displacement and belonging. Taking interest in the unusual certainly makes you stand out from the crowd somewhat - when perhaps that's not beneficial. Outside of big cities just a marginal difference in cultural norms is amplified - there are certainly strong themes of this running through the practice.
Early experiences of art have also informed the approach to practice. In the UK, It was always strange that a gallery would have the work of what it considers established artists that fit certain cultural criteria. A museum would contain artwork by POC and non-European artists. That struck me from a young age. Both are on display; one is considered the height of refinement, and the other a curiosity. A sociological, cultural lens that brings a subtle but important distinction between the types of work. One is a celebration, and one is ethnographic, where the discoverer of the artifact is given the limelight rather than the culture or the artist who created it.
A very similar thing happened in music; there were various burgeoning electronic underground scenes that were relegated to late-night counterculture radio while more traditional guitar bands were given the limelight. You could see the press and media deciding what was going to be culture and what wasn't.
These considerations lead me to consider my own mixed heritage and the conversations around that. Taking fragments of it and re-assimilating it back into the practice. There are aspects of North America in our most recent film, shot near my grandmother's house, which backs onto a Native American reservation. There are aspects of deconstructed dancehall and Caribbean themes running through the sonics and visuals. We used some techniques (tape machines, valves, and tubes from my grandfather's old TV repair shop) to run AI-generated drones and recordings. Heritage informs practice and helps to reveal a closer connection to where I originated while still celebrating the mixture that I am and the perspective that has given me.
Let's talk about your work. Could you describe your ongoing project, "The Emotion Industry," and the themes you explore within it?
Y: The Emotion Industry is here to capture a moment in time. I love the Chinese proverb surrounding fish seeing water - how aware can you ever be of your surroundings and environment when you're immersed in it. It goes on to say that the fish only can if it were to jump out of the fish bowl. Normalization is fascinating; how quickly we accept the changes and the novelty disappears. A very new aspect of commerce that drives society is that human emotion has become a product like never before. Emotions used to be the trigger to sell an actual product or service - but now, just my attention and emotions alone online are making money for someone somewhere - that to me is astounding. There's then an incentive to exaggerate and evoke extreme negative or positive emotions, which leads to action in whatever form. The music and visuals were symbiotic in order to get that across. Each vignette is a different take on the theme, from the title to the instrumentation to the visuals. For example, Data Point Dolly expresses the noise and cacophony of the online world, and the Halo effect delves into the idea of allowing influences in and observing their impact or awareness and deflection. Internal Weather moves through the light and shade of the fast-paced emotional journey of the online scroll. Illuminate ii can symbolize mindfulness, which is when we actively seek peace and serenity online.
A: Well, we've been obsessed with online culture and its influence for a long time. Although attempting to not be too extremely online! There's been a series of events building in the online space that have to be understood and engaged with if the internet is going to remain a valued space for useful information. We've transitioned from a passive internet in Web 1 where like-minded people would find hubs community and information that would relate to them and their interests with communities that would support and uplift that premise - with a view to perfect that concept and find some kind of truth. An open-source place of discovery.
With the advent of Web 2, there was a notable shift towards microblogging and social media platforms. While these platforms initially aimed to sustain the purity of online spaces, they gradually became susceptible to the influence of individuals with agendas diverging from the initial ethos.
In Web 2 +, we have a reactive internet system that listens and augments what you see to push your buttons emotionally. For better or for worse
What inspired you to create "The Emotion Industry," and how do you hope it will resonate with audiences?
A: The Emotion industry is a narrative reflecting on a sense of self and identity in the digital realm - a visual album of dream logic using AI, volumetric renders, digital film, projections, and fx techniques scored through the lens of Afro-Futurism, Asian Industrial electronica, Sound System music, Post Rave and Dub.
The idea of The Emotion Industry is to present an audio-visual comment on the modern digital landscape and its influence; there's an unfathomable power to blur reality as we know it. The ability to discern what's real and what's not is becoming increasingly difficult - social media supercomputers using data points to push your buttons for manufacturing consent, AI articles, and deep fake images add to the illusion. The ability to really 'see' the objective reality of what's been created is the new enlightenment.
We used the most modern cutting edge techniques available to us at the time knowing that the acceleration of the technology would render some of the output obsolete in a matter of months - one of the main points of this project was to archive that accelerated arc of progression. For us this demonstrates the sheer pier of progress against the fragility of the human psyche.
During the process we embraced the errors and inconsistencies produced by the limitations of the burdening technology in the knowledge that when the "bugs" are ironed out and the tech made smooth these errors will be lost forever. Capturing the spaces in between advancement is an essential archive to advancement. Yesterday's idiosyncrasies are tomorrow's nostalgia.
Y: I'd like The Emotion Industry to bring forward the concept of awareness, intention, and agenda - what are your biases, your prejudices, your interests, your opinions, and where did they come from? How authentic are they when you're up against this huge force of the digital world and its own agendas? What feels real and true to you, and what's that based on? As an archive, we created the visuals using AI for the very real purpose of capturing its growth. It went from not being able to create faces to, within a year, creating cinematic scenes. It didn't fully understand the word 'parallax', for example, so it created these morphing buildings in 'Pilot' as that was how it interpreted the command. It's special, just as a child's first drawings are. It's authentic to what they are capable of at that time a record of its growth, and a symbol of where humanity is in the timeline.
How do you see the role of art and music in addressing such contemporary challenges? Do you think art can have a long-lasting impact?
Y: The word 'Art' can really vary; people either have very set notions of what art is, or it's a catch-all for all creative intentions and executions. I'd say for me, when given context, art in all its forms is a reflection on humanity, past, present, or future. So, it is all-encompassing and impactful. And with each generation, the boundaries of what art is and isn't blurred; a meme online can have a profound impact, or a big art exhibition in a stunning venue can leave you empty. Either way, it leads the conversation every time as it sparks imagination and ideas. Context, intention, and execution are everything.
Transparent © Bon Music Vision
A: Receptivity is the only way ideas take hold. Formative experience has to shock the viewer in some way with novelty, the extraordinary, or awe. We need the hits of dopamine and serotonin to learn, as well as a hangover from the hunt and fight or flight reaction. The reason the church would build such impressive, imposing architectural monoliths in precise geographical locations is to design them so that the sun would hit certain aspects of the interior through the windows just so - to create the effect. In the same way, songs and prayers were used to immerse deeper into any given message. The idea and the concept are to put the experience into a flow state to hit the subconscious, and the message sinks in.
The charge is to create a space to emerge where the experiencer can connect and let go so the subconscious can take over. In that flow state- a fragment of the work can remain in your mind for a lifetime. Ultimately everything becomes nostalgic, from a rose tinted remembrance to a warning. Only time will determine what kind of lasting impact it has. We can only hope the work is revisited and discussed as the turning point in media and information that it's discussing.
Can you walk us through your creative process when composing and producing projects? How do you go from the first idea to the final outcome? And how do you collaborate on the same project?
A: It's a very layered thing. Mostly, the concepts start from recurring conversations. Ideas and concepts that all seem to link up into something multifaceted. You can usually trace these concepts back to broader concepts and constructs. The process usually comes from how these ideas manifest. They can be driven by technology by nostalgia or have a process born from the subject. For instance - in The Emotion Industry, we wanted the work to feel like a transition from cable TV or flicking through channels on 90/00s TV to disappearing down a click hole or doom scroll. To let this fragmentation just exist in work at an early stage is what interests me as an artist. The way we create together while trying to make sense of the question we posed is what seems to create continuity in the work. We see through such similar lenses that the output coalesses into something more tangible. We very rarely try to control the process in the beginning - we often discuss 'letting the universe in' as being part of the practice. We do, however, hone the output and refine the narrative once the concept and the work have ripened.
Y: With other artists or just us, the studio setting is always fun, philosophical, and explorative, with ideas and questions being thrown around. So, it starts with a question, even if it's not explicit, that grows into a theme. With our projects, mostly Alex and I tag team; he steps up to the desk, and then I do, and it just continues like that. The vast majority of the time, we're able to just let go of where we're individually and let the other take over and do what they feel. We take it in turn for the big picture, little picture, overview, and detail. It's pretty fluid.
In your statement, you mention different influences, such as Afro-Futurism, Asian Industrial electronica, Sound System music, Post Rave, and Dub. How do you incorporate such different examples into your visual and audio narratives?
Y: If you have an eclectic taste in music, which most people do now, it's quite easy if you listen intently and understand what aspects make a genre. Whether that's tempo, instrumentation, structure, arrangement, or rhythm, you can just play with it and take from each to create something new and different.
A: Some of these aspects manifest in what was filmed and some in how it was put together. Also, in the overall philosophy concepts that those moments relate to. They all relate to counterculture, being othered, the ability to perceive systems of control, acknowledge them, and potentially circumvent their detrimental effects and build community beyond them. We took the essence of these movements and employed them in our techniques. Afro-futurism dictates that you embrace the new, ever-moving forward and find new ways to define the black experience.
The works' workPilot' is an examination of a morphing inner city (London) and is a nod to how a lot of the structures (buildings), when failed as commercial ventures, became venues for rave music and counterculture. Spaces coming and going the whole city as a dub - subject to change, repeating patterns, echos that reflect back on themselves, and snatches of conversations that come in and out of visibility and audibility. 'Exploded View' is the concept of assimilation of knowledge and how the great civilizations of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Greece have been distilled to lines of code and data points. We gave this concept light visually by editing the volumetric rendering and Ai in the same way you would edit electronic music. We'd 'sample' our own renders, pick and choose the parts for the narrative, and use those fragments to tell the story. 'Spirit Machines' is a moment of clarity and realization once the mundane is overcome by the rare transience and visionary moments once intensity has passed. 'Recursive dream' is that of the watcher seeing realities and cultures come and go while the observer - time being a relative concept and leaning toward the idea we must always maintain an overview of the systems we exist within - that is what aids us to see the future. The visual aspect of the work focuses on North Africa, the technologies and beliefs of that region, and the spiritual side of Afro-futurism. 'Data Point Dolly' uses 'samples' of video to create an alternative experience that flits between thoughts, actions, reactions, and obstacles.
You also curate events and performances at the Reference Point 180 venue in London. What challenges have you faced while curating these events, and how have you overcome them?
A: The Reference Point shows were great. We've been incredibly lucky to have such a supportive space with great people who run it. This helped to ease the curation process. I'm not sure if the events would have been as smooth elsewhere.
We also were privileged to have had such strong collaborations with Tigris Li and Paola Estrella on the panels, Donna Kim on movement, poetry from Phoenix Yemi and musical performances from Xiaoqiao, Damsel Elysium and Holland Andrews. When you have collaborators of that caliber things tend to go smoothly.
Lastly, what future projects or collaborations are you currently working on, and what can we expect from them?
Y: Xiaoqiao is an extraordinary harpist, composer, and songwriter, and she's due to release her debut EP this year. Again, we've all really explored genre and identity to create something unique to her. We're working on a very exciting project with another multimedia artist which we can't go into just yet but should be up and running by the end of the year, early next.
A: We have a collaboration with Holland Andrews on their new EP, and there are also a few more events in The Emotion Industry series coming up at 180 Reference Point. As Bon, we're working on a techno project that explores the purity of the subject. We're intrigued by the political, social, and community aspects of the movement and how it grew out of a melting pot to become a counterculture movement shortly before it was co-opted into being 'just music' by the forces of commerciality; it was a force for political change and a space for activism. We'd like to revisit those tenets of the idea and push them forward sonically and visually.
Artist’s Talk
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
