watching Project Hail Mary, interrogating migration as a mode of problem-solving, and developing film-inspired audio-visual work using GarageBand and Claude Code
“just stop your crying, it’s a sign of the times… we gotta get away from here,” says Harry Styles. it’s just practical. when things get bad, you leave.
but last i checked, not all of us are allowed to leave. people like Harry Styles, Ryan Gosling, they can leave. so much so, they are allowed to leave the planet if it ever comes to that. good for them. i wonder what exactly i did to not deserve the same privilege.
movement is not a romantic idea. it is basic survival. birds move, animals move, bacteria move. life does not stay somewhere that is killing it out of loyalty. it leaves.
so when Project Hail Mary sends a man across galaxies to fix a dying sun, it doesn’t feel wild. it feels like common sense. of course you go somewhere else, take what you need, and come back, or don’t.
so why can’t i move my family out of delhi? to a walkable city where i can breathe AND make money? why does that feel excessive when interplanetary escape feels logical?
in imagined communities by Benedict Anderson, nations are not natural, they are constructed. so what exactly are we being asked to stay loyal to when a place becomes unliveable? the land, or an idea that benefits the same people every time? and if it is just an idea, why does it trap us so effectively? why is leaving not equally allowed, especially when staying can kill you?
oxygen is, quite simply, life’s first birthright. the basic deal. but in delhi, breathing clean air is not a given anymore. in today’s world some people breathe easily, others don’t, and it is not random.
the people most responsible are fine. they always are. in fact, they are planning their next exit. new cities, new systems, new planets. the same white men who extracted everything here now want first access to whatever comes next.
so when space gets colonised, what exactly are they taking with them? just survival, or the same entitlement that made survival unequal in the first place? will there be ownership before there is even life? will they divide land that does not yet exist? will the rest of us be told, again, to stay where we are and endure it?
and then there is this other thought that won’t leave me alone. it feels like people have become so obsessed with moving forward that they refuse to look at what they are leaving behind. “degrowth” is no longer interesting to me, it feels necessary. like the kind of knowledge you should have before you’re allowed to keep participating in this system.
the signs of our times are obvious. empathy and community are dismissed as feminine, weak, optional. violence and extraction are treated as competence.
so when will men actually take responsibility for the damage they keep producing? when will they stop turning their ignorance into something the rest of us have to survive? when will they shut up about borders?
i worry for rocky. i hope he stayed back on erid and didn’t come to earth to drop off grace. humans would have either dissected him or turned him into an immobile god. that’s what we do. this species is run by its traitors. we would never have shown up for him the way erid did for grace.
experiment phase 1: intuitively building soundscapes inspired by space travel & the movie
experiment phase 2: i’m exploring claude code and its capabilities. after i was done with the soundscape, i asked it to generate moving visuals that respond to the music, prompting mostly generic interpretations like bioluminescence and orbs. i kept it simple and direct, given what i know of its limitations and mine.
the result:
experiment phase 3: i tested whether claude code could replicate references. i provided a detailed description of the green gaseous planet and the astrophage collection process (in red), along with linked images.
close enough:
play them together:
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