December 12, 2025

What do you want to express that you feel you can’t in everyday life? That’s the question composer and producer Max Cooper posed to his audience in hopes of unearthing some of the hidden parts of our shared emotional landscape. In return, he received more responses than expected, many of which tapped into passionate displays of pleasure and pain. “It was like finding a secret window into our collective psyches,” he writes.

These submissions spawned a tender project in collaboration with musician Félix Gerbelot and animator Masanobu Hiraoka. A multi-part endeavor spanning an album and digital installation, On Being opens with a poignant music video. “It started from the sound of Felix Gerbelot’s viola and eventually became the title track of the album,” Cooper shares.

Paired with the meditative instrumentals, Hiraoka’s monochromatic visuals appear to emerge from a single line, leading viewers on a swirling journey of growth and loss. While the film references what Cooper’s community had shared, it also incorporates Hiraoka’s own family videos through rotoscoping, a technique that involves tracing over live-action footage frame by frame.

“At first, I planned to create random cuts and gradually link them together. But as I worked, the concept itself evolved, and in the end, I focused more on vivid personal memories,” Hiraoka told It’s Nice That.

The result is a tender portrait of universal human emotion, one that races through the birth and development of a child. Energetic and dynamic, the animation gives the feeling of being a bit too quick to allow viewers to savor any singular moment, instead resigning us to a chaotic swirl of time passing.

Find more of On Being on the project website.