Elovution is an immersive experience that transcends the boundaries of art and philosophy. This bold project offers a profound reflection on the challenges humanity faces, through music, writing, and visual expression.
The influences that inspired Evolution are many and varied. Elovution is, in the end, a synthesis of everything I have read, listened to and watched throughout my life: I was born in 1972, and my name is Egée (Aegeus).
If I try to understand the development and pathway of my creative thought process, I could start from the premise that imagination can compensate for the deficiencies of reality, when compared with our fantasies. How can this need for the imaginary be nourished? Well, for example, in the 80s, roleplaying games were an activity that constantly stimulated our creativity, as did music, which nevertheless struggled to find new directions after the great artistic flourishing of the 70s.
The first video games were also a real revolution in play (on Atari, Commodore, and the first PCs), but the quality of the graphics and interface was still a long way from the standards of current productions. The low quality, pixelated graphics encouraged our brains to compensate for the imperfections by creating their own almost hallucinatory illusions, allowing us to escape, feed our dreams and transcend our mental limits.
It was science fiction, as well as heroic fantasy, that fed my imagination: Asimov’s Robot and Foundation series, Romain Lucazeau’s La Nuit du Faune, Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem trilogy, and J.R. Dos Santos’s La Formule de Dieu. I was also obviously greatly influenced by the great ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, and more recent ones like Nietzsche and today’s Étienne Klein who try to popularize science, to allow the latest discoveries to be understood and to give them meaning. At the end of the day, religions and technological advances should complement each other, through a spiritual process that unifies rational and emotional approaches. In this sense, I particularly enjoy the film and television work of Alexandre Astier (Que ma joie demeure, l’Exoconference), which bring together knowledge, intelligence, humour and an artistic sensibility.
With regard to cinema, films such as Interstellar, Wall-E, Blade Runner, the Alien saga, but especially Star Trek, The Matrix; television shows like Altered Carbon and The Expanse, but also manga such as Ulysse 31, Albator, Psycho Pass and obviously Ghost in the Shell, are foundational elements of Elovution’s universe.
Musically, I must thank Pythagoras, for being the originator of our harmonic system. The entire discography from the 70s was particularly inspirational, from which I could mention Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Supertramp, but also Genesis and obviously Magma, who remain the driving force of my overall approach, a fundamental guideline throughout the Evolution project’s design process. Rhythm being the essential basis of my musical creativity, through the bass/drums pairing, I am genuinely transported psychologically, as soon as I start listening to funk music, or even disco. My life and impulses move to the rhythm of James Brown, Maceo Parker, Earth Wind and Fire, Tower of Power and Cory Wong, but also Michael Jackson, Jamiroquai and Daft Punk. On the emotional level, or sentimentally, you could say, it is life and love that have been my greatest source of inspiration, through my friendships, my passionate and rational loves, my excesses, existential crises, and my furious drive to live: music has been an extraordinary outlet for these overwhelming emotions.