On New Year's Eve, residents of the Hillbrow suburb in Johannesburg, throw unwanted furniture out their window to celebrate. – WTF Fun Facts

Peter Stewart, Stacked

Oi Man Estate in Ho Man Tin, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Strangely familiar.

We're excited to receive NZ On Air funding for a new music video. Having previously supported the production of Helix and Shinkansen, the government agency's investment is making all the difference in creating great video content for Dihex.

Reflecting on 11811, I recently came across something I wrote for our label at the time. It's all a bit academic but the context is interesting. We were a difficult prospect for a major (read more about that here). This was part of other presentations I made to help explain the album themes. Embarking on what is probably the last creative project associated with the record, it seems appropriate to share this now.

Leo Villareal had an early interest in rule-based systems where basic code generates complex patterns. Similarly, with a small amount of information inputted via his own software, he creates interesting and compelling artwork. Geometric patterns emerge in the dynamic, sequenced displays of the above-mentioned pieces ["Light Matrix," "Supercluster"]. Morever, Villareal’s fascination with geometry is embodied by the physical construction of "Monohex" and "Trihex" in which LED tubes are laid out as polyhexes. The incandescent lights morph through the colour spectrum with mesmerising languidness.

“Dihex” references these two works: the name and form; the visual phenomena of the sculptures (“emergent like frondescence”); and the viewer experience (“I recognise the patterns here,” “I’ve become enraptured”). It is also a metaphor for a relationship in which two individual characters or entities are inextricably linked; first mentally by some degree of precognition and then physically. The metaphor is compounded by another: “binary horizon” - two celestial bodies in the same orbit. The word binary is also a reference to the basic programming language or machine code that Villareal first began working with where zero equals off and one equals on.

Our friends Lense Flare captured this beautifully in the Helix video.

Thanks to NZ On Air for helping us to explore this album further.