Love-liesse (2019, 3:45)
Music Video for musician Ami Dang.

This video was directly inspired by Ami’s interest in South Asian and Middle Eastern folktales, specifically the tragic romance Sohni Mahiwal which tells the tale of forbidden love outside the rules of the caste system which ends in the lovers' deaths.

Using footage Ami shot on her travels to India and 18th century paintings of the tragic romance Sohni Mahiwal, the video mimics Ami’s process of making music, combining traditional methods with modern digital electronic methods, by using the grey & white “transparency” grid as a sort of digital liminal space—a space from which all creation begins—to allow further rumination and where the images from the paintings are transformed and reconstituted into a vast digital landscape to create a new vision.

In this new vision, the lovers do not perish in the choppy waters, instead they are happily reunited above the waters, depicted here in the late 18th century painting “Embracing Lovers with Sparklers” which shows a loving couple during Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, which celebrates the triumph of light over darkness.

An exercise in identity, the video consists of a series of jittery 3D animated GIF portraits of a small part of the Baltimore arts scene. The 63 person cast is made up of Dan's friends, peers, and collaborators, all active artists. Each person was photographed with objects they deemed special to them- from the deeply sentimental to the highly frivolous. A 2013 time capsule. 

The interactive feature lets viewers participate through the use of a smartphone app that syncs the phone to the music video and results in two simultaneous playing videos. The video on the smartphone displays a more detailed view of the objects of the cast members in the music video. The object rotates 360 degrees in either direction, depending on which way the viewer tilts their phone.