Review: Ryan Bibisi - 'No Place' (Art Series)

Connecticut-based artist Ryan Bibisi took one of his favorite albums - A Lot Like Birds' 2013 release, No Place - and created a unique graphic for each track. While the band's original concept for the album was a sonic representation of various rooms within the same house, Bibisi presents his own interpretation throughout the series using a line from every song to construct ten unique structures.

1.) "In Trances"

Much like the album itself, Bibisi's No Place series begins with a calm introduction. There is nothing noticeably special about this house - it is your average looking home, rather plain and uninviting. From my perspective, this initial piece is a well done representation of most people's train of thought in regards to their own home. We become so accustomed to "home" that we don't view it as significantly special or noteworthy - even if we cherish it, it is just "home" to us, normalized in every way due to the amount of time we spend within the confines of it's walls. 

The lyrics pulled from the song juxtapose a love for the home with an eerie thought: most of us grow up expecting to move on from our childhood home, not to die there. Of course, this use of the concept of death can take on many forms beyond a physical loss of life. 

As the multifaceted lyric takes hold, it causes the viewer to slip into a darker mindstate - perhaps this image, this house, isn't as "calm" as one first imagined. By the end of "In Trances", the entire tone of the song has taken a turn, just as the viewer's thoughts have thanks to Bibisi's decision to utilize this specific lyric. 

2.) "No Nature"

"No Nature" begins where the intro had faded into - a chaotic frenzy. Bibisi presents a menacing house, one that appears empty yet undoubtedly offering a promise of harm to any individual who decides to enter the ominous darkness. Almost bi-polar, we simultaneously see what once was and what is, showcased through the use of symmetrically placed windows - one of which is present, while the other features only shards remaining. 

As basements tend to be associated with darkness and fear, the individual lyric, coupled with the batshit crazy energy of the song, matches the aura of the home designed by Ryan. 

3.) "No Nurture" 

Although the track starts off peacefully, by the halfway mark it has become far more aggressive. The switch up from lighthearted to tumultuous despair is represented in the artwork by the almost 50/50 nature of the house. We see a well-kept white door on one side of the house but a 1/2 panel frame right next to it. Additionally, there is a nice dichotomy of light and dark throughout the image. 

Overall, the song and the house are dark, drawing upon various emotions present throughout. As the lyric suggests, it would be rather ironic to "die" in a "living" room. Upon deeper consideration, however, that's what people tend to do - again, not in a literal sense but the "living" room is where we often stop living, thanks to television. 

The house looks like it has the potential to be almost idealistic - your stereotypical "sitcom" family could live there, if one where to judge based on the outer appearance. When you add in the broken windows and chipped panels, however, we are forced to look beyond the outer appearance and begin to recognize a sad truth - often times, what is going on within the walls of a home is not a direct reflection of what we see from the outside.

4.) "Next to Ungodliness"

With a title like "Next to Ungodliness", it would only be appropriate to choose a classic chapel as the foundation of the graphic. Of course, one could take a religious connotation and run it in limitless directions but I enjoy Bibisi's decision to make use of the "bathroom" reference for this track's image. 

A bathroom is the place within a home where one does their private business - the stuff most of us keep out of the public's vision - but it's also the only room in the house where we have the ability to look at ourselves directly. The same could be said about churches and religion - both in theory and in a literal sense. 

The church designed by Ryan is in shambles. Whether this was an intentional commentary on religion or not is known only by Bibisi. But, to me, the design is aggressive and bombastic but in a sheepish way - much like the audio itself. The darkness is clearly evident even if it's masked by a "church-like" building or, in the song's case, a comparably short length. 

5.) "Connector" 

Marking the halfway point of No Place, "Connector" is literally connecting two parts of the same entity. I like how Bibisi uses two doorless entry ways to showcase the "open mouths" of the rooms that would be connected by a hallway. And what exists in that hallway - or in the "connector" - is not readily visible. One would have to enter the unknown abyss of the center building to discover exactly what the building contains. 

With "Connector" playing, the music begins softly, as if it's coming from the confines of the middle building. As the listener, we are outside with two options of entry - the left or the right. As the song continues, we are faced with a sense of urgency and panic, reflected in the uptempo switch-up we experience sonically. In a fashion similar to the song, no matter what room we enter first, we find ourselves in a frenzied race to move through the connector and reach the other side. 

The use of a background - the trees - is unique to "Connector". There were moments listening to track 5 that left me feeling calmed by the addition of a natural background and yet there were times I felt greater hopelessness - are we comforted by the trees or are we lost so deep in the woodlands that we have no chance of making it through? 

6.) "Myth of Lasting Sympathy"

In this piece, Bibisi captures what is, in my opinion, one of the rawest, more terrifying tracks on No Place. With audio featuring reflective spoken word, that begins normal enough but ends in an aggressively calm fashion, "Myth of Lasting Sympathy" is bittersweet at best. 

Through the graphic, we witness what once was - a beautiful home that is now devoid of any innocence. In such a simple way, Ryan uses broken windows and a loosely hinged, open door to display a lifetime of mistakes made since childhood. If the inhabitants of the home had been warned what their decisions would lead to, would they have made the decision to continue on with their actions? Alas, the bittersweet realization that hindsight has a history of being irrelevant. 

7.) "Hand Over Mouth, Over and Over"

As someone who has never been the biggest fan of overly aggressive music, "Hand Over Mouth, Over and Over" stands out as one of my favorite tracks off No Place - thanks in large part due to the softer nature of the song. Interestingly, the image Bibisi created for the song is also one of my favorites in the series. 

This structure, which resembles a log cabin, is shut off and locked down - the doors and windows are intact, but they are closed. What a good way to represent what happens within the walls of the bedroom. Similar to the bathroom, in a sense, the bedroom is where we do the majority of the things we hide from the public's view - especially in regards to intimacy. 

When it comes to couples, the bedroom is where the most love happens and where the most hurt happens - we make love, we fuck, we argue, we yell, we insult, we make up...

Bibisi paints the picture of a cozy cabin - perhaps representative of a pair of lovers. We see them from the outside, thinking how nice it must be to be in a relationship "like that". Yet, we have no idea what's happening when they are removed from the public's view - this is a theme that appears throughout the album. 

8.) "Kuroi Ledge"

The one piece in Bibisi's No Place series that showcases a single feature of a house as opposed to an entire building, "Kuroi Ledge" does it's best to present suicide in a beautiful light. This, of course, is a near impossible task. 

Focusing on just the window of a balcony, one can easily imagine being on the other side, looking out the window at the world below. What any individual sees is based on their attitude and perception towards life - if one is looking for the void, then jumping from that window or that ledge may be the most appealing option. 

As the song confronts the loss of friends that comes with growing older, the use of a window displays a sense of reflection. This is, what I believe, Bibisi was most concerned with in his use of this graphic. Unlike the majority of the images in this series, this window is in perfect condition - there are no cracks, no broken frames, no chipped paint. To me, Ryan's take on "Kuroi Ledge" has a lot to do with personal accountability, sense of self and perception. 

9.) "Recluse" 

The attic is most commonly used to house our unused or unwanted items - all the shit we, for whatever reason, don't want to get rid of but also don't have any real use for. Ryan takes this attic-theme and turns it into a disheveled shed-like building that looks dangerously close to collapsing. Again, doing a fine job matching his graphic with the vibe of the song, Bibisi has crafted an image that is eerie, dangerous and uninviting. 

As the song seems to come from the perspective of the spiders who claim ownership of our unwanted possessions, one can quite easily envision the hordes of spiders making a home within the darkness of Bibisi's art. And the spiders aren't mean nor do they have bad intentions for any "guests" - but our own fears and conditioned beliefs leave us startled by the uninviting darkness and the creepy crawlers  who call this building their house. 

10.) "Shaking of the Frame"

Bibisi ends his No Place series similar to how he started it - with a basic structure, nothing too fancy or noteworthy. However, unlike the initial image, this house is equipped with shattered windows, a door that appears built directly into the wall, and a painful lack of symmetry. 

It was, and continues to be, the non-symmetrical nature of this image that stands out to me. I can't help but wonder, what is the purpose of that upper left quadrant of the house? And then I think about how that lack of purpose has resulted in said quadrant begin the only part of the image that is without damage - so, coming full circle, maybe it had a divine purpose after all. 

The lyric chosen by Ryan for this image also lends itself in creating a sense of life for this house and for houses in general - the house has the ability to turn and vanish. But what if this was coming from the perspective of the house? That is, the house has the potential and ability to outlive it's inhabitants - houses watch their residents vanish more often than the humans witness the house "vanish". 

I'm grateful for the symbiotic relationship that exists between A Lot Like Birds' audio and Ryan's artwork - as someone who would not normally listen to music like this, I found it was far more enjoyable when accompanied by the images created by Bibisi. Overall, Ryan's work was impressive in it's ability to capture the essence of each track - turning a song that was meant to represent a single room into an artistic display of an entire building was no easy task. 

For more work from Ryan Bibisi, you can check out his website here. Rumor and innuendo suggests that Bibisi is preparing for the release of his next series sooner rather than later.