Serpent Dream
Multimedia Arts
Music and sound art
Deadlock: 2021 - 2022
Deadlock is a melancholic audio journey through ambient and cinematic soundscapes, psychedelic textures, folky guitars, violins, and layered vocals, all morphing into a mysterious dreamlike world.
Deadlock's concepts relate to trauma, cycles of abuse and disrupted mental health. The album cover is a photogram of a key taken form an infamous mental institute in Australia, it represents the hidden fire inside to unlock the path to healing and transformation.
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Written and Performed: James Costin and Kelda Morris
Production, Mixing and Album Cover: Serpent Dream
Pūtōrino Flute samples: Nick Spicer Balme
Drums Performed and Recorded: Chris Brush
Mastering: Benjamin Lincoln at Middle Mastering UK
Carotoes, Dragon Rebirth: - 2023
Extract from artist text Caratoes
This ancient deity, is found in Mayan culture as Kukulkan and Aztec as Quetzalcoatl, Asian, as dragon. In all these ancient old cultures, they are known to embody a snake body and feathers around its head. They are known to be the god of creation and destruction. REBIRTH!
We build its feathered head, in an Ayahuaska temple in Tulum. Where healers from around the world have shared their medicine.
We build the tail in Wuhan, China. We build a part of the body in Mexico City, that was the sacred center for the Aztec civilization.
This is the Dragon of collective healing Collective rebirth The more people who put attention on a specific intention the more powerful we are together, becoming part of the collective manifestation of our truest selves. BURN what you want to shed, watch your old self crumble away.
This video performance celebrates the constant impermanence. We burned together what we created as a collective body in movement without exclusive location.
We are all part of the process, no attachments, no possessions. To let it go, to let it burn is to make space for transformation.
Credits:
Artwork "Rebirth Dragon” by: Caratoes
Produced by: Wolf Giridan and Antonio Hernandaz
Direction: Mire Moschella Coello
Editing: Antonio Hernandaz
Cameras: Paasca Schaller and Antonio Hernandaz
Music/Sound Design and Audio Mixing: Serpent Dream
Audio Mastering: Benjamin Lincoln at Middle Mastering UK
Deadlock Ritual Performance: 2022
The live performance of Deadlock at Nautilus Creative Space NZ, this performance was accompanied by an alter where the audience was invited to place an object, feeling or intention, with the purpose of letting go what no longer serves. String interlace between the candles were carefully trimmed and placed to burn during the 41 minute piece, severing the hold of past ghosts.
Credits:
Concept and Design by: Dirt Child Design and Serpent Dream
Photography by: Vanessa Cone
Visual art
Deadlock and other stories: 2022
Built off existing cast glass, photography, found objects and photogram work, Deadlock is digitally combined and transformed into bold abstract images, This work is part of an ongoing multimedia project exploring the fragility of the mind when exposed to traumatic experiences.
Deadlock embodies the emotions of hate, despair grief and helplessness,how through pain we inflict pain, blindly forming cycles of abuse and transforming into the monsters that hurt us. The key, acquired from an infamous and abandoned mental institute in Goulburn Australia, represents the hidden strength inside to unlock and transform our painful experiences into healing and growth.
The Revelation: 2022
For this multimedia installation, a child’s desk is draped in a heavy chain and a bible cut into pieces, echoing the fear, shame, and guilt imposed on the child’s mind. A hidden speaker under the desk emits an ominous, shivering sound of rattling chains. Above the floor a key hangs, obtained in an abandoned mental institution in Goulburn, Australia, symbolising the inner ability to unlock healing and transformation. Impressions of the key, captured by camera-less photography, are mutated into organic forms and crudely pasted onto the wall. Ripped Bible paper blows in the wind across the gallery floor.
The Revelation is the first experiment, a prototype, in an ongoing exploration around the experience of the artist's childhood in a family of inter-generational Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Audio Visual art
Frames of Mind: 2021
Description by Kelda Morris.
Frames of Mind is one part of an ongoing series of works that explore the feelings surrounding sexual abuse.
I dreamed of this film over seven years ago and am so excited and relieved to have finally turned it into a reality. Dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse is confusing, lonely and terrifying and working through these glass forms has helped me so much on my personal journey.
A glass magnolia flower represents both a purity which is lost, as well as the pain, fury and confusion that assault brings, which, in some cases, can be released.
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Directed: Dirt Child Design
Videography: Mire Moschella Coello
Music/Sound Design and Audio Mixing: Serpent Dream
Lighting director: Amber Jayne Bain
Nova: 2017 - 2021
Nova is a multimedia work meshing electronic music, sound design, and audio-manipulation. The visual component consists of a multi-faceted, psychedelia inspired, mixed media projection. Inspired by travels with friends, this piece started as an idea to articulate this mantra that we have: to follow our passions.
We had been discussing how all-consuming work, and social and cultural norms instill in us feelings of self-doubt, neurosis, and for many, deep feelings of depression and anxiety. Using sampled audio of these conversations, I formed a narrative, a thread of individual experience and perspective that expresses the innate urge inside of us to create and explore within our world.
Credits:
Music, visual design and Audio Mixing by: Serpent Dream
Audio Mastering by: Benjamin Lincoln at Middle Mastering UK
About Serpent Dream
“Serpent Dream are the kind of act you’d unexpectedly expect from Wellington; and even where they’re from, to begin with, is complex. They defy categorisation, with equal parts ambient, experimental, folk, soundscape, and post-rock with the vaguest hint of heavy metal references. The instruments are classical and acoustic but are interspersed with technology. The image of the band is mysterious, seductive and dark, but the members are approachable and humble. Serpent Dream has performed in a variety of venues and places. They would appear to be perfectly paired to both a music hall as they would to an abandoned theatre or an outdoor festival accompanied by hallucinogenic projections. Even the music is paradoxical as the layers of instruments can create a dense fog, but the way out and in remains simple enough: just keep walking.”
- Nicolas E Clark
Serpent Dream was first formed in Canberra, Australia as a solo project by James Costin. Starting their creative pursuits as a musician and audio engineer, they graduated with distinction, and attained an Advanced Diploma in Audio Production from the Canberra Institute of Technology, Australia in 2016. They have been playing guitar since 2014, and are self-taught.
Since relocating to Wellington, Aotearoa in 2020, James has expanded into the realms of sound and video art, cameraless photography, digital manipulation, found objects and psychedelic painting. They have worked on collaborations and commissions locally and internationally, and have been deeply involved in arts communities such as Nautilus Creative Space and the Datura Children Project.
Having released two EPs; The Language of Things (2019), an infusion of earthly and celestial ambience, and Nova (2021); an audio-visual psychedelic experience. The overall project extended into a collaboration with violinist Kelda Morris joining when James relocated to New Zealand. Together, they produced Serpent Dreams' first full-length studio album Deadlock (2022), exploring the worlds of drone, ambient, acid folk, and doom metal, as well as the album format as a cohesive art form of sonic storytelling.
Kelda Morris is an accomplished violinist, having classically trained under Yury Gezentsvey through Victoria University's Academy, and played with the Wellington Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra. They have performed in orchestras throughout Europe, as well as in the finals of the National Chamber Music competition.
After a long hiatus from classical music, Kelda is excited to be exploring her musical talents through Serpent Dream.
When not playing music, Kelda works full time as a designer, artist and educator, working in the material of glass from out of the bush clad hills of Wellington.
Serpent Dream is open to commissions in:
Music and Sound Art
Video Art
Digital and Visual Art
Professional Audio Mixing
For inquiries and pricing use the form below and tell me about your project!