No better proof of what design can do for music than the award winning video clip for ‘Witch Doctor’ by Dutch rock band De Staat. Designer Floris Kaayk will speak at WDCD Live Amsterdam – 30 June & 1 July; tickets available from our ticket shop – about the clip that brought De Staat world fame.
The ‘Witch Doctor’ clip nearly wasn’t published at all. ‘There were a few setbacks and the clip only was finished just before the last show of the festival season,’ Floris Kaayk, who designed the clip together with Studio Smack and De Staat foreman Torre Florim, told a newspaper. ‘It was disputed whether it was still useful to release the clip, until De Staat saw the result. The rest is history.’
Witch Doctor, a visualisation of a demagogue’s power, became an instant hit on social media and since its release in September 2015 has been viewed over 10 million times. It was awarded the Grand Prix Dutch Animation at the Holland Animation Film Festival in Utrecht and won the audience award at the International Music Video Festival in Paris.
Futuristic visions
The work of visual artist Floris Kaayk focuses on futuristic visions, fantasies and concepts. It involves a new kind of fictional storytelling, often imagining the potential consequences of technological progress. Among his videoworks are ‘The Order Electrus’, ‘Metalosis Maligna’, ‘The Origin of Creatures’ and ‘Juxtaposis’. In 2012 his online media project ‘Human Birdwings’, suggesting a story of the first man flying on wings, reached the world press. Simultaneously he worked together with Next Nature on the Rayfish Footwear project, a story about a fictional company that offered personalized sneakers crafted from genetically modified stingray leather.
His latest project, ‘The Modular Body’, is an online science fiction story about the creation of Oscar, a modular living organism built from human cells. ‘Today already it is possible to 3D print with human cells,’ Kaayk says. ‘Maybe in thirty or fifty years from now we will be able to produce completely functioning body parts. But why should these look exactly the same like we know them now? Why shouldn’t we take this opportunity to redesign the human body and make it more efficient?’