From the End of Heaven

A story procedurally generated from music and ancient manuscripts of ritual praxis

2014 January

Directed for Australia’s Gods of Eden, this music video investigates the lyrical and musical themes within their debut album, titled “From the End of Heaven.” The concept album is inspired by the Paleocontact Hypothesis, which is a theory suggesting that ancient civilizations and monuments such as the Pyramids of Egypt were facilitated by extraterrestrial aliens and the theory is based on interpretations of ancient manuscripts.

In reaction to this theme, a computer program was written that would procedurally use their music to extract and assemble phrases from an ancient manuscript authored circa 1000BCE called Atharvaveda, which defines ritual practices of Hinduism. The program generated several poems which were later adapted into a screenplay for the video.