How Mac DeMarco Went VR for “This Old Dog”

“I’m not the most up-to-date with technology,” admits Mac DeMarco. “I have no idea.” He knows how to learn on the job, though. Over the past few years, the Vancouver-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has emerged as one of the most beloved names in indie rock, in large part because of albums he recorded himself at home. The latest, 2017’s This Old Dog, was the longtime tape devotee’s first full foray into digital recording, and it’s the sharpest refinement yet of DeMarco’s nonchalant sense of craft.

When DeMarco was offered a chance to work in virtual reality, he was just as game to take advantage of the opportunity. The interactive, 360-degree visual experience for his album’s breezily beautiful title track, which went live today, is the first project in a new partnership between Pitchfork and Israeli immersive-content company Inception. Directed by Rachel Rossin, a renowned painter and VR artist, the result places viewers in an imaginative world of retro-style computer graphics. DeMarco explains, “We got a lotta baloney in there, in the best possible way.”

Out of a list of 15 to 20 potential collaborators given to DeMarco, Rossin was the only one he chose. Besides being a fan of her work, DeMarco also seems to have seen in her something of a kindred spirit. “She’s rad,” he enthuses. “Rachel is a visual artist, and she goes behind the scenes and does a lot of the coding and scripting. She learned it from opening up video games as a kid and being genuinely interested. I used to crack stuff like that open too and make my own 3D models. Now her stuff goes very far out into cyberspace, but where she started, I had a similar experience. The difference is I went off and was like, I wanna try and be the Beatles instead.”

When DeMarco and Rossin first connected, they quickly realized they had mutual friends. Maybe more importantly, they also discovered a shared enthusiasm for a certain character from the Star Wars prequels: the often-polarizing Gungan goofball Jar Jar Binks. “When you get on the phone with someone and within the first two minutes you realize you both have an appreciate for Jar Jar, it seems like smooth sailing from there on out,” DeMarco observes.

For DeMarco, another key moment was when he stopped by Rossin’s Manhattan studio shortly after this summer’s Governor’s Ball festival and she digitally mapped his face. The process, which can be done with gear you’d buy for an Xbox, was so quick and simple that DeMarco has more vivid recollections of the pho he shared with Rossin earlier that day. “They had these things they were calling Vietnamese raviolis,” he marvels. “I’m Italian-Canadian, and I’d never seen this before, but I’m tellin’ ya, I loved it. Now this video and Rachel will forever mind me of Vietnamese raviolis. It was just a little soft dumpling but it was so good!”

Rossin, who was recently named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30 2017: Art & Style” list and was praised earlier this year in The New York Times for her New Museum exhibition work, has a casual way of speaking that makes it easy to see why she and DeMarco would be creatively simpatico. She also has another memory of their meeting over pho. ”He turned around and he just paid for the bill when I was looking around saying ‘check please,’” she recalls. “He’s a sweet and generous human being.”

The two concocted a vision of a surreal inner journey that riffs on VR technology itself. We see DeMarco’s face, but it’s on the nose of a dog, or a furry dressed as a dog (befitting the trippy vibe, plenty is left open for interpretation). Anyway, this old-Mac-dog wields Tilt Brush, a common tool for 3D painting, as if he’s the protagonist in the classic children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon, using it to create miniature new worlds, from the beach to space to his own flashbacks. “The main idea is to just have it be interesting-looking, hopefully beautiful-looking,” DeMarco says. “It’s essentially just strange, very strange.”

DeMarco and Rossin’s discussions for the project went deeper than this self-deprecating description lets on, though. Rossin recalls, “We were looking at children’s books and combining them with conspiracy theories.” The reasons conspiracies theories exist, she says, have a lot to do with figuring out why reality itself exists—they’re a grand way of explaining “the chaos of the world.” There were other cultural references, too, whether to the Pietà or VR humor. When DeMarco’s video proxy begins throwing around the Tilt Brush like a purple crayon, Rossin says, “He starts making environments that are so heavy with the weight of their own existence they collapse in on themselves.”

To present all these ideas, Rossin and DeMarco agreed they should use humble techniques, like the game-engine hacks they had both played around with in their youth. One of the tools Rossin used in the video is a debugging tool, something simple that’s usually used for pointing out errors, but for this she’s manipulating it to create a whole world.

The technical process was time-consuming, but the results look effortless. RJ Bentler, Pitchfork’s vice president of video programming, says the hope is for the experience to be accessible in the same way DeMarco’s music is accessible. “As this new era of VR starts and there’s an extreme sophistication with the modeling, the animating, and the CG,” he notes, “they were going for a punk-rock VR aesthetic here.”

For Pitchfork, this leftfield sensibility has precedent in traditional 2D videos, as well. When the site launched a YouTube channel in 2012, Bentler’s team directed and produced some videos themselves and commissioned others. Animal Collective collaborated with filmmaker Gaspar Noé on their video for “Applesauce” from 2012’s Centipede Hz. Antony and the Johnsons’ video for the title track from the ANOHNI-led group’s 2013 live album Cut the World was directed by Nabil Elderkin and stars Willem Dafoe. “You have these pairings where people with very specific aesthetics come together and create something unique together,” Bentler says. “What we’re going to do in the VR space will vary with each artist.”

Inception VR, for its part, sees music as a natural fit for this emerging technology. The company previously teamed with Boiler Room to produce a VR streaming experience of a DJ set from a Berlin club, allowing users to move through the space and check out various rooms, from various perspectives. “You have to choose your path, choose your point of view,” Inception CEO Benny Arbel explains. “That’s the core of our technology.”

To take part in the “This Old Dog” visual experience, viewers have a few options. The best way to watch is to download the Inception app and use a dedicated VR headset, such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or Google Daydream. The Inception app is also iOS- and Android-enabled, so people can experience it on their phones with a Google Cardboard viewer or simply by moving their phones around. “This Old Dog” is also on YouTube, which allows you to interact with it on your desktop or mobile device, as well.

By the time the visuals end, viewers should be sure to look up to see the structures building up above them, as the Mac-dog floats heavenward. “Every time you watch it’s going to be a strange new thing,” DeMarco says. “Hopefully people can see the video because it’s gonna be cool. Nothing to compare it to, it’s gonna be great.” This time, he isn’t talking about Vietnamese ravioli.