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sione

@lonelyspeck.bsky.social

120 followers 94 following 170 posts

🇹🇴 they debut album 'Crown of My Spirit' out now https://lonelyspeck.neocities.org/

lonelyspeck.neocities.org

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · May 21

idk if there's much audience for this on bsky but
my new song and video 'Wishing' is out now

video directed/animated by me
character designs by me & Solomon Enos
#b3d #fantasy #art #animation

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 21h

The temple is the earthly residence of an ancient deity who tends to the cycles of nature and fate like a farmer tends to a harvest. My name for this character in my notes has simply been ‘Time’.
Its pitch black appearance was initially inspired by the ‘shadow entities’of my sleep paralysis experiences, which were an important influence on the album and have profoundly shaped the way I think about sound and reality. Throughout Polynesia, ʻuli (black, darkness) also has associations with spirits, divinity, and earth.
I originally envisioned Time as a more human-like figure wearing a robe and black taʻovala (Tongan formalwear), a feathered headdress inspired by the Tuʻi Tonga’s palā tavake, and ornamentation inspired by ceremonial wear from around the Pacific, including the Tahitian heva tūpāpāʻu (chief mourner costume). I wanted it to feel cosmic and impersonal but also like a guardian connected to the earth, full of nods to rituals of life and death.
Some other inspirations included the black dress from Legend (1985) and the works of Trevor Henderson and Andrew Thomas Huang.
I felt my original designs needed something more and I’m incredibly blessed that Solomon Enos (one of the true OGs of Pasifikafuturism) was up for fleshing them out. He came back with this beautiful interpretation of Time that perfectly synthesises the cosmic/earthy dynamic of the character. From there I sculpted it in Blender to create the version seen in the video.

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 21h

1. the time deity
2-3. my early sketches + inspos
4. redesign by Solomon Enos 🙏

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 3d

i followed this linguist guy called languagejones on twitter and yt for years and he never had much of a following, then i unfollowed like last year because it became obvious he's a zionist. just checked and he has 200k subs now lol. okay

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 3d

this 1845 tongan dictionary (compiled by an english missionary) has a word for when the whole neighbourhood is fist-fighting 😭 what did this guy see

Fuhu, v. To box; to fight with the fists.
Fuhuloa, v. To box, applied to a whole family or neighbourhood.

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 8d

posting for posterity this image i made a few years ago of how i see the apple when i imagine an apple

Reposted by sione

MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 12d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 17d

"internalized racism" is putting it far too lightly, it's collaborationism

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 18d

😨

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 19d

there are analogues for google, instagram and spacex that are extremely thinly veiled and a lot of the missions are about infiltrating them and sabotaging their shit. amazed that this even got made by a major studio, no chance it would now

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 19d

i've been playing Watch Dogs 2 for the first time and aside from being very fun it's wild how prescient it was 10 years ago. it's basically about the silicon valley big tech companies being a cartel that's deeply embedded in politics and creates high tech weapons for the police & military

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 20d

The visual world of Crown of My Spirit

'The Temple'

some references + notes

I wanted to share a bit about the visual world of Crown of My Spirit 🗿 My goal was to envision a high fantasy world grounded in Polynesian & Pacific concepts instead of the Eurocentric tropes typical of the genre.
The stepped pyramid ‘temple’ that appears in the Wishing video is based on the ceremonial structures of ancient Polynesia such as Tongan langi and Tahitian marae. Its top is lined with stone sculptures that took inspiration from the megalithic art of Te Fenua Tane (the ‘Marquesas’) and Rapa Nui (‘Easter Island’), and at its head is a trilithon, referencing Tonga’s famous Haʻamonga ʻa Maui (its flared silhouette was also partially inspired by roofing styles from other regions of Austronesia such as Sumatra and Sulawesi). There’s a relief sculpture of a serpentine tail on its columns which was a bit of an homage to Hikuleʻo, the Tongan god/dess who ruled Pulotu.
I’m interested in this not just as a way of exploring and learning about my own Tongan heritage, but also as a way of trying to reclaim these references from thoughtless exoticisation and appropriation. There’s a long history of Western designers lifting Pacific styles for their ‘tribal’ and ‘primitive’ qualities, which continues today through revivals of 90s trends like neotribal aesthetics and tiki bars. I want to challenge this by using Pacific references with care and intention, and experimenting with ways of reappropriating the contemporary aesthetics that came from appropriation.

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 23d

violent extremists of the tylenol community you are seen, heard and loved

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 23d

ok i may have to watch

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 23d

omg years ago i went through such a phase of watching this designer play Cities Skylines, he was argentinian though. he just made very aesthetically driven cities and it was so relaxing (strictoaster was the name but i think he stopped a while ago)

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 23d

holy shit

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · 24d

the concept of Chappell Roan being in Goodwood

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Sep 15

a perusal of the right-wing side of twitter makes it clear that there is a huge american neo-nazi/white nationalist movement just waiting for state sanction to commit a mass pogrom against Black & brown people, trans people and leftists. that country is a few more escalations away from a civil war

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Sep 13

are the SA Socialists just SAlt rebranded...?

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Sep 11

uber signing me up to uber one and charging me without my consent (haven't used the app in months) is insane work

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Sep 9

sometimes i feel like i'm the only queer gamer who doesn't care for toon/pixel art style platformers

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Sep 9

this lastfmstats chart of all my listening over all time is indirectly an amazing record of my 10+ years of inability to maintain a normal sleep schedule (see how it always slides later and later 😭)

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Sep 7

i've spent all weekend going way too deep on a mapmaking hobby project but my brain needed this... currently downloading a 1.2 GB pdf about ancient Tahiti

Reposted by sione

Walter Marsh @waltermarsh.bsky.social · Aug 30

Covered @lonelyspeck.bsky.social’s debut LP: www.indailysa.com.au/inreview/mus...

‘I would never give up the process’: Lonelyspeck’s world of experimental, Pasifikafuturist pop - InReview | InDaily, Inside South Australia

Feted by Troye Sivan, Charli xcx, and Bring Me The Horizon, Adelaide-based producer Sione Teumohenga has resurfaced with their long-awaited debut album – and the culmination of over a decade of pop ex...

www.indailysa.com.au

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sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Aug 29

i got woken up by what i thought was a jet but it was the wind and hail 😵‍💫

sione @lonelyspeck.bsky.social · Aug 29

pro-israel media has just spent the past 2 years laying the groundwork for the mainstreaming of white nationalism and white genocide conspiracy theories. stuff like march of australia is the intended result

Osman Faruqi @osmanfaruqi.bsky.social · Aug 28

Everything the pro-Israel media think the pro-Palestine movement is (racist, extremist, building up violent hate) is actually happening with the anti-migrant “March for Australia” but with a fraction of the outrage.