Stunning Music Video Imagines A Bleak Future Of Overpopulation & Post Mortem Social Networks

The year is 2100 in this stunning animated music video for electronic musician Lorn's song "Anvil" taken from his album Vessel. The black and white animation from Geriko—filmmakers Hélène Jeudy and Antoine Caëcke—imagines an overpopulated, high-rise planet where resources are stretched to breaking point.

To combat this overpopulation people are forced to plug in to a "postmortem social media" called Anvil and effectively be killed—so hooking up to this social media is the last act they'll ever do. The video follows a young woman as she plugs in and experiences her last moments through the network before she dies.

As dark and bleak a concept as that is, it's realised by Geriko using a beautiful style of animation. The pair say it's a fusion of Japanese and Belgian comics inspirations, anime like Ghost in the Shell and Akira and the richly detailed graphic novels of artist François Schuiten and writer Benoît Peeters.

The resulting video is a combination of digital 2D, 3D, and traditional animation and, according to It's Nice That emerged from conversations Hélène and Antoine had “about social networks and connectivity in day to day life”.

It's captivating and intriguing work.