Filmmaker Josef Gatti is pushing the boundaries of film, visual arts and science. In this exclusive interview, we discuss the creative forces driving his work, his recent collaboration with Cercle Music and the mysterious project he's working on next.

As a filmmaker, there are laws and rules and things that just work. But then you go smaller and smaller and something flips and you discover an entirely different set of rules. And when that happens, it’s fucking incredible.” 

Josef Gatti is someone who celebrates the things that no one else sees, the magic in the minutia. In his groundbreaking series, Phenomena, currently streaming on the ABC, Gatti works with naturally occurring phenomena, manipulating biological and physical processes to create astonishing visual effects. 

For Gatti, these boundary points between science and art are where some of the most exciting discoveries are made. 

“At its simplest, my work aims to capture the beauty and mechanisms of nature at their simplest. With my process, I do my best to set the conditions and then just get out of the way and let the universe do its thing. Much of the work is shot in macro, anywhere between 1:1 and 5:1, and captured in 6K raw. But the secret to the epic visuals is really just paying very close attention to the details, finding the story there, and shining a light on it.”

The success of Phenomena has led to a remarkable collaboration with Cercle Music. Known for their stunning nature-infused music, Cercle Music were looking for visuals that inhabited the same halfway point between biology and technology.  

Gatti set out to create a series of visualisations that would give each song its own unique aesthetic language. Teaming up with "tech lord" James McAsey (Jmac), the duo developed four unique concepts across eight videos. 

“Jmac just loves production from all angles,” says Gatti, “from music to lighting to all the tech. He can do it all. He also understands how to make electricity work in a really detailed and exciting way”. 

Concept 1: Manipulating Ferrofluid

“I knew you could control these electronic magnets with audio. But I didn't know how. So I presented Jmac with the first challenge: how can we make the signal, a music waveform, activate the magnet because then I can make the ferrofluid do crazy things to the music. He just pulled a bunch of cables out and plugged it into his USB interface and then pulled up some Ableton Logic combination and next thing you know the music was coming out of the magnet. Wow.” 

Concept 2: Vibrating Smoke  

“This one was crazy because I wasn't 100% sure if it would work. At music festivals, sometimes when you look up, you can see the smoke from the stage and the lasers are cutting through and you can kind of see the smoke moving to the music. And I wanted to know if it was possible to fully control the smoke and sync it to the music.” Using sub-frequencies twinned to the bassline, the duo were able to  make smoke and even fire vibrate to the music. “We burned so much incense. Six months on, you still get a waft of it in the house.”

Concept 3: Dissolving Paints 

This concept proved to be the most time-consuming, with each 15-minute shot capturing one moment of the slow and intricate process of paint dissolving in thinners. “The paint reaction is so slow and miserable. Not watching paint dry, but watching paint dissolve. It took over a week to shoot, for six minutes of footage. But the end result is beautiful. One looks like an ice world, and another has the swirls of Jupiter. Really cool, but oh man:. PTSD.”

Concept 4: Glitter Reactions 

Adapting an experiment from his web series, Gatti used glittery ink and chemical reactions to create a captivating and responsive visual representation of a starry nebula.

Audience Response

The response to the Cercle Music series has been overwhelming, with the deep technical expertise on show bringing in fans from all over the world.

“We received a great response to the series, a few hundred thousand views in the last few months already. One of my proudest moments — the curator Mathieu at Cercle, said a particular video literally summoned tears in their office when they were reviewing it. That’s probably got more to do with the incredible song by Bantwanas, but I like to think I had a little part to play!”  

And what does Gatti hope others take away from his work? “I want them to discover the natural world again in a way that they haven't considered before or in a way that they don't see it anymore. Because that's why I started doing this in the first place. I isolated myself from nature for a long time, I'd forgotten about it. Then at some point, something switched, and I became obsessed with it again and started seeing it from this whole new perspective, providing that experience to the audience is what underpins all the work.”

As for what comes next, Gatti is keeping his cards close to his chest. “It’s like a feature length version of Phenomena, but pushing this whole art-science-music thing as far as it can go.” Screen Australia are on board, but we’ll have to wait and see what magic Gatti can conjure for his next outing. 

Here at Enamoured Iris, we're committed to pushing creative boundaries just like Josef. We believe that by embracing unconventional approaches and fostering collaboration, we can create captivating and impactful visual experiences.