MiraRuido’s Surreal Dreams

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Joseba Elorza (a.k.a. MiraRuido) is a digital artist from Vitoria-Gasteiz, a small city in northern Spain. From there he has been creating illustrations and animations for different clients around the world as a freelance artist for more than a decade. Among them are companies like National Geographic Channel, Amazon Studios, Esquire or music bands like Green Day.

The collage technique already existed long before it was given a name, but it was not until the early twentieth century, and thanks to Picasso and Braque, that it did not take on its own entity. Collage is the reuse of existing material to create a new artwork, but in those years it meant much more than that; it was a break with certain traditional art forms and was immediately placed at the forefront of it, along with cubism, dadaism or surrealism among other artistic movements.

Nowadays, and thanks to new technologies, we are living a second golden age of collage. In recent years its use has proliferated not only in commercial campaigns of the most important brands in the world, but it has also returned to occupy some of the best places in art galleries. The democratization of technology and Internet access has facilitated the entry of many artists into the world of collage, which is once again at the forefront of global artistic creation.

One of the references of this technique and this avant-garde intention is MiraRuido. Already in his beginnings he understood that the goal should not be to simply make something beautiful: “I think that to make simply beautiful works there are already many people who are better than me; my intention, obviously starting from a visually attractive composition, is to generate some kind of feeling in the viewer, whether of disbelief, uneasiness or an ironic half smile”.

“I see collage as a way of reconstructing realities and creating new worlds to reflect, highlight and denounce different aspects of our day to day life, of our most everyday reality.” Elorza is also attracted to the idea of reusing material, both photographs and videos: “Of course, I always make sure I can use the material I use, but beyond that, there is something perverse and at the same time very attractive in relocating people in new realities to create new messages and meanings.”

His collages soon began to gain popularity and he managed to get published regularly in international publications such as Esquire or Wall Street Journal, but MiraRuido didn’t stop there. “I thought about what my collages would look like if I added the dimension of time to them, and I started transforming my illustrations into animations. Completely self-taught, I learned how to use new software and immediately saw a new world of possibilities in front of me.” Since then, MiraRuido’s career has turned towards animation and directing, having already made numerous advertising campaigns and music videos, some for bands as important as Green Day.

One of MiraRuido’s hallmarks is rotoscoping, a technique he uses to cut out characters from old videos and films and introduce them into new realities. “It’s tedious because you end up silhouetting the figure basically frame by frame, but the results are worth it. I spend many hours browsing through public domain videos to find some hidden gems that inspire me.”

“Burning”. You can see the process of the creation of this piece here.

Among the most treated themes in his works, surrealism and science fiction have their specific weight. “I’m crazy about everything related to space and astrophysics. I have a clear lack of knowledge, but for me there is nothing more overwhelming than looking at the sky on a starry night and, for a second, trying to understand our place in the cosmos. It is inevitable that this will end up appearing in my work, as well as surrealism, which is the clearest way I see of dealing with universal themes with attractive allegories”.

Newcomer to the world of NFTs, he looks to the future with optimism: “I can say with pride, but knowing that I have also been very lucky, that I have great clients and for now more work than I can take. I hope this continues, but I would be delighted if this Cryptoart world allows me to spend more time working on my personal work. It’s a paradigm shift for many digital artists and I see a promising future for everyone, artists and collectors.”

But what the hell means “MiraRuido”? “It is the union of two Spanish words: “Mira” means “see, look”, and “ruido” means “noise”. Pure synesthesia.”

Superrare: https://superrare.com/miraruido
Portfolio: https://www.miraruido.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/joseba.elorza
Twitter: https://twitter.com/miraruido