Rew

Go to the Garden of Astral Blooms website to explore the audiovisual garden (eight videos): www.gardenofastralblooms.com

Rew (‘roo’) is a new media artist who has exhibited art videos and VR animations at experimental film festivals in the United States and internationally. Her video works use abstraction, distortion, and ethereal textures to inspire awe and curiosity in the viewer.

Garden of Astral Blooms is a visual album release which presents alien ecosystems. The audiovisual project was made by Columbus, OH based new media artist Rew (‘roo’), and performed via livestream. Now available digitally or through aspecially designed USB stick and 3D-printed art object,
Garden of Astral Blooms is full of immersive environments of
ruin and wonder, each one a distorted and strange celebration
of nature’s beauty. These visions are practices in optimism,
reverent poems to a planet that supports life and has a
dizzyingly uncertain future.

 Diving headlong into these manufactured landscapes we  see stained glass fractal structures replicate in “Sunlit Glass”, passageways with reproducing alien spores on “Outgrate”, monoliths and delicate wire structures replicate on a strange, barren landscape on “Scorched Earth”, volcanic eruptions and rockslides on “Crag” and amoeba like creatures populate the aquatic “Fragile Abundance”. Taken in this way we get the full grasp of the world-building power of these compositions.

Musically, Garden of Astral Blooms stands alone. Deeply textural drones, incredibly deep sound design using FM synthesis and keyed in melodic phrases recall the relationship between stasis and silence Hiroshi Yoshimura explored or the deeply ritualistic drones of Lucrecia Dalt. We also hear dark ambient undertones of Coil with the lightness and easy breath work of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – which shows up with beautiful resolve on “Fragile Abundance”. Taken alone Rew paints just as vividly with these otherworldly compositions. But taken together the project is a transporting way to lose an afternoon in.