Head In a Box
I’m partly hesitant to demystify the enigma, but It’s no big secret, so here goes:
Head In a Box began in dreams. My old dream journal has the following entry:
“The scene took place in in an octagonal room, with morning sunlight forming hazy angled beams through the four bay windows forming the far side of this strange scenario
Silent as a movie, daddy brings in a gift wrapped cuboid box to the boy. The eyes of two generations meet, smiles are exchanged.
Father and son, the gift is given.
The tag on the gift reads “To my son, cheer up little fella, love always, Daddy XXX”
In childish excitement the boy casts-off the ribbon, paper and the tag.
His face is illuminated by puzzlement, then joy as he finally beholds the wonder of his present. A head in a box! This is no ordinary head, it is devoid of skin, it looks almost real
The father mouths the words “It’s remote control” before handing the boy a small plastic device with buttons. The boy is full of glee as he takes the device from his father’s hand and points it at the box.
Raw, red eyelids snap open, then blink. A big white smile appears on the face as facial muscles and tendons snap into the imitation of life.
This causes the little boy to erupt into joyful laughter. If only this scene had sound.
From within the confines of this beautifully ornate box, pale blue eyes watch this little lad jump up and down with excitement, the head in the box now stares wistfully.
The boy shows his immense gratitude by flinging his little arms around his father’s legs and hugs tightly.
The boy’s mother sits in one of the window bays, having watched the exchange and the excitement. She says nothing but the broad grin on her face captures the mood of the scene perfectly.
If the scene wasn’t silent, birds would be singing.
The head in the box takes it all in, unaware that the scene should have sound and colour.
Ignorance is bliss.
All it knows is that the little boy will never be alone again.” – June 1996
So that’s the origin story. During my twenties, dreams of this kind of detail were a constant nightly occurrence. I was captivated by this episode in particular as I was in love with the image of this highly novel gift. If these things had actually existed, I’d have bought one in a heartbeat.
If I’d made a film of this dream, it would have had track #7 from Aphex Twin’s selected ambient works Vol 2
As things transpired, I didn’t make a short film, I just made the head in a box as a prop.
I didn’t make it as well as I’d have liked, it was thrown together on a shoestring budget, but I kept it for a few years, then gave it to my neighbour, Henry.
During the same period, I was studying at Brunel College in Bristol and had made a short film called ‘Mind Grenade’ , this was to be the first time I used the head in a box as a logo. At the end of the clip, this new branding appeared strobing to the sound of machine gun fire. I was pleased with the effect, so it stuck.
The late 90’s was when I got my first PC. The domain name boom was in full swing, yet I was disheartened to quickly learn that another artist had already bought headinabox.com
This was how the first schism took place. Unable to buy the domain name I wanted, I chose to abbreviate down to hiab-x. At the time, I was blissfully unaware that hiab was also the name of a crane-gear, heavy-lifting company. The X was for Ex-headinabox, but also X for my generation. I spent all subsequent years putting my digital creations out under that moniker.
HIAB-X still feels like a comfortable digital skin, an alter-ego.
Head In a Box logo designs: Top Left – Original dream journal illustration 1996. Top Middle – First Logo used for student movie 1996. Top Right- Remixed logo using first PC 1999. Middle left & centre – 3D Model 2000. Middle right / Bottom left – abandoned concepts. Bottom centre and right – Current iterations 2021
More recently with my university degree drawing to a close, part of the final assignment was to put some focus into life beyond academia. This involved me ultimately wishing to produce a project website for Psychehedron and also to begin the path of establishing myself as an arts-based business.
I’d mulled over a few possible identities, but I found myself leaning back towards how I’ve defined myself previously. headinabox.com is now owned by sharks who want stupid money for the domain name, so .co.uk being available, It seemed obvious to go for that.
Anyone who knows me, probably recognises that I recycle old art ideas. Perhaps it might suggest a lack of new ones. I don’t see it that way at all. I tend to view my life and creative works as an interchangeable continuum where my relationship between past, present and future is a series of inner events which loop around each other. I feel that some of my old artworks were as good as they could be at the time that I produced them. If I find an image or idea resonant enough to echo from past to present, I have no qualms about upscaling these things to fit in with the current paradigm. This process is likely to continue into the future, while I continue to develop my skills or adopt new tools for reinterpreting what’s in my soul. It’s all HIAB-X/Head In a Box to me.
I feel that my creative ideas were always heading towards multi-media expression. I love to play and experiment, this is why I became so in love with the idea that VR would eventually become the primary method of creative expression. Ultimately, it shares a common ground with the space from which ideas come from, the imagination is expansive, seemingly endless, intangible. An idea born in that space has certain potentials to be manifested in 2D or 3D in the real world, but these modalities always strike me as a kind of amber-clad fossil of an inner process. This isn’t my disregarding the wonders that have been created in the name of art, yet I can only reflect that on a personal level, I’ve rarely remained satisfied that what I’ve produced has captured the essence of the imagery as it appeared in my head. I feel that VR provides the ability to externalise the inner in an explicit way, with a certain immediacy. Here’s a good example of what I mean:
Earlier this year, I had a bad dream about being followed in some lonely woodland. Although it was horrible to experience as a nightmare, within an hour of being awake, I’d managed to recreate the core visuals and energy of that dream using Dreams, and making it an immersive VR piece. From an artist’s perspective, I’d managed to blow my own mind by using a tool which allowed me to make an almost immediate reconstruction of an unreal memory. Here’s a screenshot.
Work as Head In a Box or HIAB-X will ultimately take separate twines of creativity and draw together as a metaphoric rope. I find visual communication very natural, my work in audio/visual design added formative skills in storytelling and sound. I eventually began exploring the audio side of creativity and found that I can make music. More recently, learning to 3D model and work with game engines has helped unify these separate skills and begin the process of bringing them all together.
I strongly suspect that this will define how my creativity evolves over the coming years, it feels fresh and exciting to be on the edge of this new creative zeitgeist as it seems that the tools and equipment available are only going to refine with time.