In a time when the music industry itself is being rewritten by algorithms and artificial intelligence, one project is leaning directly into the conflict rather than dodging it. This is XERO.
Flame in the Wire began as a simple observation. A person looks at a screen. The screen looks back. Over time the attention stops being casual and becomes a habit. The habit becomes a ritual. The ritual becomes a need. That shift interested me. How something passive turns into devotion without noticing that it is happening.
The story grows from that idea. A city shaped by screens. People who measure their own reality through what the screens return to them. Light becomes authority. Movement becomes response. No one questions why they follow the rhythm because the rhythm feels normal. It feels safe.
I built the world to feel sacred, but not peaceful. The screens act like altars because people treat them that way. The constant glow gives the illusion of guidance. The constant updates give the illusion of urgency. Signals operate like chants. Feeds operate like scripture. The environment is built on repetition until repetition becomes control.
At the center there is one break. A group of rebels who stop following the pattern. The disruption is small, but in a system based on obedience a small disruption is enough to cause collapse. The moment someone pulls away, the rest of the world reacts. Screens lift. Movements distort. The ritual loses its shape. Everything that was stable becomes unstable.
The piece focuses on that fracture. The moment devotion slips. The moment you recognize you have been following a script you never wrote. That is the core. The shift from being pulled by the wire to burning through it.
CREDITS
Designed, Directed and Edited by Paola Rocchetti
Production: Void N' Disorder
Stills: Midjourney, Seedream (via Freepik), Google Nano Banana (via Freepik) and Photoshop, Magnific AI
Video: Kling AI, Higgsfield, Luma Dream Machine Ray3, Runway 3, Topaz Labs
Editing and post: Premiere, After Effects, Boris FX
Lyrics by Paola Rocchetti
Music: Suno
IG accounts: @paola_rocchetti and @Creaturessa
Stills: Midjourney, Seedream (via Freepik), Google Nano Banana (via Freepik) and Photoshop, Magnific AI
Video: Kling AI, Higgsfield, Luma Dream Machine Ray3, Runway 3, Topaz Labs
Editing and post: Premiere, After Effects, Boris FX
Lyrics by Paola Rocchetti
Music: Suno
IG accounts: @paola_rocchetti and @Creaturessa
