You are called. Who answers?
What happens when the world convinces you to stop trusting the very things that make you you?
Decoding You is an autobiographical audiovisual work exploring the gradual surrender of creativity, courage, and personal agency—and the decision to reclaim them.
Through spoken-word performance, cinematic imagery, music, and multimedia storytelling, I revisit three defining patterns from my life:
I didn’t trust my creativity.
I didn’t face my fears.
I didn’t make any decisions.
As a child, I loved movement, sound, and imagination. But the qualities that made me feel most alive were repeatedly treated as problems to correct. Over time, I began to fear my own ideas, emotions, and dreams.
The work moves between vulnerability, absurdity, confrontation, and humor, reflecting the contradictions of a life spent trying to fit into expectations that never quite fit me.
At its heart is a paradox: by saying yes to everything else, I made one enormous decision—to say no to my own dream.
Decoding You is my answer to that decision.
You are called. Who answers?
Decoding You is a completed audiovisual work—and the beginning of a larger artistic journey.
The piece will also introduce the forthcoming Decoding You AlbumBook series, an evolving fusion of autobiographical storytelling, music, cinematic video, and interactive multimedia.
The AlbumBook format extends the experience of a traditional book beyond the printed page, bringing its stories into audiovisual and participatory forms.
Where the trailer invites audiences to confront the dreams they’ve abandoned, the larger series explores what happens when we begin reclaiming them.
The artwork stands on its own today. Its story continues beyond the frame.
Artist: Rene Rafael
Title: Decoding You
Medium: Digital audiovisual art, spoken-word performance, cinematic video, and multimedia storytelling
Materials: Digital video, original music, recorded narration, performance footage, motion graphics, code and typography.
Completion: 2017–2020
Software: Premiere Pro, After Effects, Logic Pro, Photoshop, ProPresenter, and my own custom software development for AV visualizations
Credits: Concept, writing, narration, performance, original music composition and production, audiovisual design, editing, and custom visualization software — Rene Rafael.
Runtime: 3 minutes, 56 seconds
Presentation: Digital video, 1920 × 1080 (Full HD)
Language: English
The work combines autobiographical narration, performance, moving images, typography, music, and visual contrasts to externalize an internal struggle between personal identity and outside expectations.
Its shifting imagery and tone move between childhood imagination, fear, self-confrontation, and the possibility of renewal. The visual storytelling is deliberately theatrical, allowing the narrator to become both the subject of the work and a character within it.
A 9 year old slowly falls asleep in the awesome bunk bed he “helped” dad build … and then …
I’m rudely awoken at 35.
April 1984—I was listening to Michael Jackson’s Thriller in the backseat of my dad’s Chevy. Until that night, I created head-banging music that completely possessed my young mind. After that night, seizures robbed my rhythm. Convulsions unleashed havoc and silenced the beats. My music stopped and I slipped into 26 years of medicated cryosleep.
July 2010—Singing for a local band heals my mind. Sober, I now share my three decade journey of hope through motivational multimedia performance art and experiential storytelling. Infused with technology and shaped by my IT background, I relive my story, not retell it, so we can adventure together now and have awkward conversations later.
My struggles with health and over-medication is one link between your story and mine. Sure, yours might be different but we all avoid confronting something. Mental health, money, religion, porn, addiction? Irrelevant. At the heart of it all, is the powerful difference between choosing and deciding. Choose and chase the world’s every distraction or decide and direct your own destiny.
Deciding first to love the beauty and brokenness of my story, I press on with yours next. Gently. Humbly. I’m not another HOW-TO force-feed what’s missing. I’m a HOW-NOT-TO lose what’s already there. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers. I ask, to remind you of these. I dare your inner child to say aloud what your “adult” has violently silenced. It’s OK to speak again. DO.
Avoiding tough decisions, doesn’t mean one won’t be made for you.
I’m Rene,
What’s your story?
Rene Rafael is a multimedia performance artist, musician, author, educator, and software developer whose work explores the intersection of creativity, technology, personal identity, and human connection.
For more than three decades, he has combined artistic expression with interactive technology across independent music, education, corporate environments, and entrepreneurial ventures. His work spans original music, cinematic video, spoken-word performance, and experiential storytelling.
His autobiographical audiovisual work Decoding You evolved alongside a three-year national research and performance-art tour (2017–2020), during which he traveled 30,000 miles to 13 educational conferences, engaging with students and exploring the relationship between identity, creativity, fear, and personal purpose.
Through his current venture, Shhpeak, Rene continues extending his artistic practice into participatory audiovisual experiences that invite people to rediscover their voices, share their stories, and connect through what matters most to them.