START WITH THE SOUND.
Distorted guitars meet electronic sounds. A sweet voice turns into a scream. DST61 moves between the weight of metal, the energy of club music and the immediacy of pop. Our imagery gives form to the three characters making that sound and the city they inhabit.
DST61 is an AI-assisted music and visual project by Flatbitstudio,Inc. We develop its songs, characters, release artwork, films and website together. CLASH*CRUSH*KRUSH explores the will to rebuild; CYBER COR3 considers finding your own voice in a rush of information; PiNK//OVERKiLL brings cuteness and pain into the same emotional space.
THREE DISTINCT VOICES.
Kana Blaze plays guitar and contributes vocals and rap. NEO-β brings bass, synthesizer and vocals. RAY-III provides drums, rhythm synthesizer and vocals. Kana’s heat, NEO’s composure and RAY’s physical sense of rhythm each give the music a different character. Those differences inform our decisions about songs and moving images.
Their visual identities are equally distinct. Kana’s warm colours, NEO’s cyan and RAY’s violet guide the palette. Facial features, bodies and relationships with instruments provide a reference when clothes or locations change. When we move from photographic imagery to illustration, we look to those same individual features to develop the lines and colours.
DETAILS HOLD THE WORLD TOGETHER.
A character’s presence in a place depends on small details. A hand holding an instrument. Foot placement and balance. The fall of fabric and a reflection in metal. We examine how people, objects and spaces relate to one another. We check poses and lighting to make the characters feel present in the scene.
The characters also have different physical designs. NEO has skin-covered android limbs with cyan circuitry; RAY’s prosthetic arm and leg are on her anatomical left side. We check these features when changing the composition or pose.
CHOOSING IS PART OF MAKING.
AI lets us try many possibilities in sound and imagery. Choosing what stays in the work is a substantial part of making it. Does it fit the feeling of the song? Does it belong to these three characters? Does it connect with the scenes around it? An image may catch the eye and still need replacing if it does not belong in that moment.
In film, we also consider the relationship between sound and movement: a change of expression, a gesture, the timing of a cut, the instant a loop returns. We look at where attention goes and what remains after a short sequence. Our stage and performance concept films are fictional expressions of DST61’s world.
A WORLD BEYOND THE TRACK.
Listen to a song, encounter the three characters, read about a lyric. The website and social channels offer several ways into DST61. Across those different settings, we want people to find the same music and the same three identities. Fragments of their daily lives are also opportunities to get to know their world.