Relax,
it’s iHead
When Super Connected was released in May 2023, it was blocked on Apple Music. Global media outlets reported that the block was due to similarities between Super Connected’s ‘iHead’ and Apple’s ‘Vision Pro‘. (See iHead on Wikipedia or read 30 news articles here)
General Clutterbuck of Corphew Mews has since confirmed the Apple block on the album was in fact due to the presence of a fake ad on the album, rather than the content that was speculated to be targeting the Vision Pro headset.
Mr Clutterbuck was also able to confirm that, contrary to popular belief, human beans with human hearts do in fact work in Sillycon Valley, and on the 7th July 2023, Apple showed their support for Tim Arnold and his album by finally welcoming Super Connected to Apple Music.
But what is an “iHead“?
The iHead is to Super Connected what the Lightsaber is to Star Wars. It’s a powerful tool, but it really depends on who’s got hold of it.
In 2016, Tim Arnold regularly heard friends saying “Everyone has phones stuck to their heads these days”. And so begins the story of the “iHead“. And it is quite a story. Over a 100 people have worn the iHead, each signing an NDA in 2019 to never speak about it until the feature film of ‘Super Connected’ is finally made available to the public. You can listen to actor Stephen Fry explain the benefits of the iHead in the video below.
INCEPTION
After meeting a psychotherapist in Italy whose job it was to assess teenagers addicted to screens and social media, Tim Arnold began work on the song ‘Super Connected‘. The track is based on a true story of a teenage girl who locked herself in her room with her tech devices, suffering with selective mutism. Her story instigated the idea of the ‘iHead’ becoming the central focus of the album and film.
VALERIE CHARLTON – Model Maker
Arnold had already begun sketches of people with phones stuck all over their heads. In the story of ‘Super Connected’ this evolved into a virtual headset created by fictional tech company ‘Picture Sounds’ that used screens to both project and receive imagery simultaneously, to enhance our experience of sound.
Focusing on the theme of the album that highlights the imbalance between the digital disembodied world and the phenomenal world, he decided to try and make the headset for the music video for the song ‘Start With The Sound‘. He’d recently met legendary special FX model maker Val Charlton (Labyrinth, Brazil, Monty Python’s Holy Grail). Arnold asked Charlton for advice on how to make what he had affectionately begun to call an ‘iHead’. Within days, Charlton began working on the iHead at her North London studio in the winter of 2018.
Charlton and Arnold worked together for several months, making sure the ancient greek styled spirals were the right size and weight, dismantling an old ‘Dart’ Super 8 recorder from the ’60s, getting the right iPhones (iPhone 5’s), preloading them with the information that tells the story in the feature length movie Arnold was still developing.
ANDREW SCHLUSSEL – VFX
The head of global talent at VFX company Framestore, Andrew Schlussel, was a friend of Charlton’s. She introduced Schlussel to Arnold and almost immediately, they locked on as creative partners with a mutual love for early 80’s sci-fi. Schlussel offered to create the photogrammetry of the iHead so the film scenes Arnold had written were actually possible.
Schlussel began to complete all the digital rendering of Charlton’s real life model of the iHead as Arnold began to see the balance of embodied creativity and digital creativity unite in the creative partnership.
What the iHead actually does is only revealed in the full feature length film.
The full film will not be released online until it has been screened as part of the SUPER CONNECTED LIVE shows. More articles in the news about ‘iHead’ here.
