Abre Ojos is the creative practice of Australian artist Scott Baker, who tinkers at the intersection of sound and vision through technology. Based on Djiringanj Country in a small seaside village in Australia, Baker’s performances and installations merge modular synthesis and generative visuals into evolving soundscapes and filmic journeys.
Since the early 2000s, Abre Ojos has released a body of work that includes the acclaimed Gates CD/DVD and numerous live recordings that fuse drone, ambient, and ritual sound with hypnotic visuals. His work has appeared in galleries, festivals, and underground venues across Australia.
With the demise of the DVD, releases are now through Youtube which has over 100 (and counting) audiovisual journeys. These are not 3-minute pop songs as food for the algorithm, these are tracks to ask you to slow down and step out of the Shorts attention span and step into long form hypnotic psychedelic doom rituals.
There are so many strange things happening in this world of ours, dangerous things, distorted things, lies, false truths, conspiracies theories, sleight of hand, facades, there are things just under the surface ready to take us down.Labelling the work as “improvised sound and vision for dystopian meditation”, Abre Ojos is seeking to find a balance between the imminent evolution of humanity and the distorted reality we inhabit today. When you watch an Abre Ojos live set or recording you are watching the sound and vision as it happens- all improvised, all live, allowing serendipitous clashes of the sound and reactive visuals. Walls of tones with their root in the sacred frequencies mix with monk like chanting and hypnotic mandala based images creating something more than their parts, something more than you hear or see.
Abre Ojos is a term found while reading a book called 1606 – An Epic Adventure by Evan McHugh. 1606 is about the multiple discoveries and voyages to Australia before the “official discovery” by Captain James Cook in 1788. “Abre Ojos” was a constant saying by the Spanish and Portuguese sailors while navigating the dangerous reef infested waters surrounding Australia’s coastline meaning “Watch Out” or “Open Your Eyes” there is danger all around.