“The idea came from a question: if the creative energy of any living organism could be seen, what would it look like?”

This is the premise for the sublime video for Grizzly Bear’s gun-shy. Director Kris Moyes helms this stop motion piece which glides between the beautiful and the unnerving. The quality of the images compiled together is breath taking, the contrast and detail immediately beyond that of your standard video. By having stuttering scenes repeated in sequence, Moyes creates a set of gifs. Sometimes gorgeous like the set piece of Chris Taylor frozen in time, dangling above a misty lake, other times gross like the instance of skin repeatedly being gouged at by a razor. Regardless of which side of the coin they fall, there’s a constant sense of motion, a back and forth agitation.

The cinematography alternates between focus on the macro and micro. Perspectives jump between close ups of large bodies and then extreme close ups, breaking known quantities down into surreal micro worlds; like a spray of water in the air turning into vortex of particles when mimicked from the micro perspective. Alternatively there are itch inducing shots of flaking skin turning into a living, breathing mesh of some kind. The visuals here are quite a trip.