Producer, musician, and visual artist 1011 is on another creative level when it comes to combining his talents. The innovator successfully fused his music production, visual art, and programming to create his new immersive video game.
His creative vision clearly comes to life in his latest project “Ancestral Harvest”, an adventure game and music album hybrid. The innovate, ambitious project “Explores a harsh world as the emissary of death, in their quest to discover the mysterious root of their wound.”
He is now based in Greenland and does not prefer to label himself or his style. When asked to describe his genre he explained “For me all the mediums I use are part of the same picture. If I had to pick a fancy title it would be “observer of the natural world.”
When we spoke to 1011, he went into detail on the impressive, tedious, and time-consuming process of mixing his sounds with visual programming as well as the new chapter in his career.
How did you come up with the name 1011? What does it represent?
I was around 19 when I picked the name 1011. At the time I wanted a moniker to go by other than a governmental name and surname combination, that I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to say out loud after a few years. Until then I went by a few ridiculous monikers, and I just didn’t trust my own judgement in potential art names anymore.
Since I couldn’t make up any names that didn’t seem overwhelmingly cheesy, I resorted to a number that meant something important to me. It seemed harder to regret a number than a word. I won’t dwell on it too much but the ‘1011’ name has to do with man’s inability to process the fourth dimension in real time.
How we are locked in an incomplete present driven by a blurry past and fearing a meaningless future. It’s also about the necessary coexistence between presence and absence of matter for us to interpret reality. And the infinite sequences of binary juxtapositions that our perception can be broken down into.
You’re a man of many talents, besides being a music producer and video game creator, how would you describe your role, genre or style?
Thank you!! For me all the mediums I use are part of the same picture. If I had to pick a fancy title, I would like it to be “observer of the natural world”. I feel an endless awe and gratitude towards what we still have left of the non-man-made world. I want to share how this world gets translated through my eyes and left ear.
What goes into the process when you produce a track or any of your creative projects including your latest work Ancestral Harvest?
For visual art and programming, I try to stay disciplined. I stick to a daily routine that is extremely repetitive and divided into hourly time slots and lots of rules. It’s self-imposed mental prison that gives me the stability I need to stay grounded while exploring fields I am not comfortable in. Usually, I just have mental fragments of something specific I want to achieve, and then I try to optimize my time to bring the full idea to life as effectively as I can. It’s a very exciting and fulfilling process, but it can also be very draining, and it often leads me to neglect my personal life and real-world obligations.
The music process is quite different – I try to only write songs when I feel a very strong urge to do so. The process is very unhinged, and I try to keep things as unpolished/honest as they felt when the idea originally came out. It usually happens when I am in nature, and I feel like I can hear my surroundings sing melodies. I’m just reporting what I hear as closely as I can remember.
Usually, my interpretations are clumsy approximations. But I don’t mind lacking the skill to replicate exactly what I hear, because I think that everything we make as humans is a humble imitation and tribute to nature. Here when the Inuit drum dance, they say they are borrowing songs from the spirit world for the duration of their performance. When the song is complete, they send the energy they borrowed back to the world it came from. I think it’s a very beautiful and selfless way to think of music.
You’re currently in Greenland working on projects, how does the quiet enhance your creativity? Do you plan on being anywhere next?
It’s a very big honor and privilege to be here. The quiet is so precious. I have always been around big loud cities, and I remember dreaming of a place where I could go for more than a minute without hearing a car engine or a plane. Or a place where I would be able to look in the distance and see no road or building. That is exactly how it is here. It feels like my mind has space to breathe for the first time in my life. Letting the silence fill up my void has been by far the most fulfilling experience to date. I hope I will get to stay here for a very long time.
What track or project did you produce that you are the proudest of?
I really treasure a song called “Beneath the Tree of Life” from the Ancestral Harvest album. One day I was sitting with my laptop near some trees and a violent storm hit suddenly. As the storm developed further, I was given the chance to hear and borrow the song – I feel like the way I portrayed it is the closest to what I heard.
‘ Ancestral Harvest’, both an adventure game and music album, looks like it’s on another level, one might call you a pioneer mixing the two art forms. Can you tell us more about it?
Thank you, a lot! It’s been incredible to receive such a warm welcome for this project, and the reception has been very invigorating. After years of working on the project in silence and isolation, the general reaction to the reveal trailer of the project showed me that I was on the right path. Ancestral Harvest is a story about the big family of humankind and the relationship between the natural/real world and the world inside man’s mind.
It was originally narrated by a collection of songs, and eventually it was brought into interactive life in the form of an adventure game. The fact that I could create something that people could interact with, and experience directly was very exciting and fulfilling from the start. I look forward to seeing how you will feel about it once it’s finally out.
We see it is in pre alpha stages, when you plan on the release and where could people order and follow it?
I would like to release the main music album by October, alongside the alpha version of the game. The full game and extended album release will hopefully follow in 2024, on PC, PlayStation and Xbox. If anyone wants to follow the progress of the project and stay up to date with its developments, here is a link to join the mailing list.
You can also sign up here to become a tester of the game’s pre-alpha or follow the project on socials.
Do you plan to do live sets again, or are you going to stay in the lane you’re in for the time being?
I have been playing around with the idea of creating audio reactive visuals of Ancestral Harvest that interact with the music in real time, maybe it could make for an interesting live performance/experience, but I don’t have anything to show yet. My dream is to one day listen to an orchestra perform the album.
