Old school video games and '80s video walls inpired Max Hattler's visuals for "Where's Your Head At".

When British house duo Basement Jaxx approached abstract animator Max Hattler to create visuals for one of their biggest hit songs, they gave him only one constraint: no monkeys. The Traktor-directed video for "Where's Your Head At" prominently featured primates and the band wanted something completely fresh for their spring European tour.

Hattler, known for his adventures in experimental films on the festival circuit, jumped at the chance to make his abstraction animations arena-sized.

"If you think of that song, you think of the video," he says. "In a way it was a little challenging to see if I could break that and make something totally different."

Hattler's canvas was a seven by two meter grid made up of 60 square LED elements displayed behind the band during their spring tour of Europe. Rather than treat the display as one fluid screen, he took advantage of the grid's '80s video wall look and designed flat, two-dimensional visuals that resemble old school video games such as Tetris.

"I thought it'd be interesting to play with the structure and use it as a pixel playground to work within," he says. "I thought it'd be nice to do something flat and use the video wall as a wall, as opposed to the screen... I think less can be more in that sense. I tried to play within those limitations; I quite liked that constraint."

Screen shots from Max Hattler's visuals for "Where's Your Head At".

A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, the German-born animator's shorts and music videos are regimented, abstract narratives, told through tightly-edited close-ups and subtly changing high-contrast colors. Both Drift and Collision, a political mash-up of flag iconography from 2005, were popular with audiences and RESfest and animation festivals.

His "Aanaatt" music video for Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo Lab artist Jemapur is perfect example of his need for constraint: Its geometric landscape of ever-evolving shapes is captured from a single camera angle and edited precisely to the song's minimal electronic pulse.

Though Hattler regularly creates visuals for his own live audio-visual performances, the Basement Jaxx project was his first arena-sized assignment. Last year, he spent a month on tour in Japan with video artist Robert Seidel and regularly VJs clubs and galleries in the United Kingdom. Performing at night is a nice way to tear apart the meticulously conceived constraints of his film work, he says.

"I like things to be very neat," he says. "I'm quite concerned with timing. I like things having a degree of slickness, but my live work is much more free and much more raw and low-tech and gritty.

"It's nice to go out and be amongst people and get drunk while you're working and mess around with stuff. It's more of an adrenaline-based way of working, which is messier. But it's a nice balance. I can recommend it."

Watch Max Hattler's visuals for Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At" in the screening room.