About Wartonno
Writer. Composer. Worldbuilder.
I’m Wartonno, a writer, composer and worldbuilder based in the Netherlands.
I create stories, cinematic music and visual worlds shaped by night, memory, technology, forgotten places and the strange feeling that something familiar has shifted slightly out of place.
Sometimes an idea becomes a book.
Sometimes it becomes a piece of music.
Sometimes it becomes an image, a city, a character or a signal from somewhere that may never have existed.
They are different forms of the same thing.
Ways of building worlds.
One Creative Identity
For a long time, creativity arrived in separate chapters.
Music came first.
Photography followed.
Writing had always been somewhere in the background, waiting for its turn.
Over time, I stopped seeing these things as separate disciplines.
A photograph can suggest a story.
A story can create a sound.
A piece of music can make an imaginary place feel real.
That is what Wartonno has become.
A single creative identity where writing, composition, photography, visual storytelling and worldbuilding can meet.
I am less interested in choosing one medium than in finding the right medium for an idea.
Stories From Places That Should Not Exist
Much of my fiction takes place in Meridian City, an expanding fictional world of strange architecture, occult mysteries, impossible spaces and people who discover that the city around them is not quite as stable as they believed.
It is a place of elevators that stop on floors that do not exist.
Old photographs that reveal things nobody remembers.
Buildings with histories that refuse to stay buried.
And ordinary people who find themselves standing at the edge of something much larger.
Meridian City connects short stories, books, characters, locations and other fragments into one growing universe.
I do not want to explain every mystery.
Sometimes the unanswered question is the part that stays with you.
Music as Worldbuilding
I approach music in much the same way.
I compose cinematic ambient and cyberpunk-inspired music under the name Wartonno.
Projects such as Neon Ghost Frequencies explore artificial memory, abandoned networks, digital ghosts, broken systems and cities that continue transmitting long after everyone has gone home.
Tracks often begin with a place or an image rather than a melody.
A station after midnight.
Rain against an apartment window.
An abandoned network still carrying fragments of old conversations.
A machine remembering someone who no longer exists.
The music becomes the soundtrack to that imagined moment.
Sometimes there is a story behind the track.
Sometimes I leave enough empty space for you to create your own.
The Spaces Between Story, Sound and Image
Photography remains part of the way I see.
It taught me to notice small things.
Empty rooms.
Reflections.
Light falling across ordinary architecture.
The distance between two people.
The moment before something happens.
That way of looking eventually found its way into everything else I create.
When I write, I often see the scene before I hear the words.
When I compose, I often imagine the place before I hear the sound.
When I build a fictional world, I think about how it would feel to actually walk through it.
That space between image, story and sound is where much of my work begins.
A Second Creative Life
Creativity has never followed a straight line for me.
There have been periods of making things intensely and periods where other parts of life became more important.
I used to think that meant I had lost time.
I see it differently now.
You bring everything with you when you return to creative work.
Experience.
Mistakes.
Things you stopped doing.
Things you still think about years later.
The urge to create does not necessarily disappear because you ignored it for a while.
Sometimes it simply waits.
A growing part of my journal explores this idea of a Second Creative Life.
What happens when you start again.
How you finish things when you have too many ideas.
How you build something meaningful without pretending you have unlimited time.
And why being late may be less important than beginning.
Creating With New Tools
I am also interested in what happens when traditional creativity meets new technology.
Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the creative landscape.
I use new tools where they help me explore, experiment or build something that would otherwise remain an idea.
But the tool is never the reason for the work.
The important decisions remain human.
What belongs.
What does not.
What feels true.
What deserves to exist.
Technology changes.
Taste, curiosity and intention still matter.
The Journal
The Journal is where I write about the ideas surrounding the work.
You will find notes about:
- writing and worldbuilding
- composing cinematic and ambient music
- Meridian City
- cyberpunk and speculative fiction
- artificial intelligence and creativity
- photography and visual storytelling
- creative life after starting again
- books, films and ideas that influence my work
- the process behind individual stories and compositions
Some entries explain how something was made.
Others begin with a question I have not completely answered yet.
Current Worlds
My work continues to move between several connected spaces.
Meridian City
An expanding fictional city of occult mysteries, impossible architecture and stories hidden inside ordinary places.
Neon Ghost Frequencies
A cinematic cyberpunk music project about memory, systems, digital ghosts and signals that refuse to disappear.
Listen to Neon Ghost Frequencies
The Second Creative Life
Notes about returning to creativity, finishing what you start and building meaningful work later in life.
Stay for a While
You do not need to begin in any particular place.
Open a book.
Listen to a track.
Walk through Meridian City.
Read something from the Journal.
Follow whatever catches your attention.
There is always another room somewhere beyond the one you are standing in.
Welcome to the world of Wartonno.
