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FRANCE:
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Lille: Paysages Electroniques.
(Full report in a blog post).

Paris: Elysée Montmartre.
Very nice gig, I was doing a VJ set for my friends Loo and Placido, the bootleg alchemists.. The start was a betty stressy, and I had to run in Paris streets trying to find a s-video to composite 30 minutes before it starts, and climbs 10meters above the stage whle the doors were opening.. The venue was rammed, and it was a great experience to play on very different style of music. My camera died this night, but I just found a couple of pictures on flickr (thanks antifillon).

Dijon: La vapeur.We did a smaller gig in Dijon at La vapeur the next day (great venue and people, and amazing catering), in a smaller night, but still a nice experience. Have a look at L&P’s website, in the download section ! I really like Eleanor ridgy’s reggae version, sounds like Paul is high..

Bourges: Printemps de Bourges.
Quite a big mainstream pop / rock festival in France. I was lucky enough to do a mapping installation, and project on the inverted staircases of the entrance hall on Saturday, for the Electronic night (unfortunately my camera was still dead, but I’ll try to post a video soon).
I’ve met there the RCTC, a VJ team from Nantes, who did a big video installation in the main room, driven by the amazing VVVV.
More pictures of the night, with Joey Starr, TTC, Justice, Agoria..

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SWITZERLAND:
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Geneva: Mapping festival.
Mapping + VJ  set + Wiimote workshop.
(Full report in a blog post) + new photos.!

Zurich: Tweakfest.
Very nice Art / media festival in Zurich, with many different things happening:around the TechnoPark. (panoramic picture)
- a fascinating conference by Steve Wozniak (ex apple n°2)
- an installation by e-toy, called Mission Eternity: a massive LED pixelated screen inside a container, with lowres animations and pixel art played on 5 of the container’s sides. When you first come in, after registering your details, a friendly “agent” will explain you the concept of this “metaphysical adventure”..
A beautiful medium, but unfortunately no interactivity, no relevant visual content or anything exciting.. The life/death and memory concept is very interesting, but it’s a shame that the installation itself (the LED sarcophagus) doesn’t add anything really.. It’s just amazingly beautiful pixels. (i should do a proper post about this).

- A very interesting 3D screen created by Nova and called “Lightsculpture” hangs in the Zurich station hall, and there was also a smaller version of it in the festival’s hall. Read the full post.

- Many others things, like a Multitouch screen interface, a VJ set and workshop from the great sigma6 duo,
I did a mapping in the main Hall, another workshop, some projections on building and a light version of the A/V set “flight to Kyoto” (sadly without Damien Schneider this time).

Thanks a lot to the friendly organisers. More pictures on flickr.

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SPAIN:
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Barcelona: Sonar festival
I wasn’t actually playing there, but I had a nice week of holidays with Sun finally. The festival itself was a bit dissapointing compared to my first one 2 year ago, but it was still ok.
Richie Hawtin did an great set again, with some nice minimal visuals from Ali Demirel on a massive LED screen, and nice work from the Pfadfinderei team as well.
Nice afterparty on the beach on Sunday, but much smaller than before
During the festival week, I discovered an outdoor club called Kubik, made with big luminescent cubes, controlled by DMX. I’ll do a more detailed post soon.

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UK:
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Manchester: FutureSonic festival
Nice interactive / media festivals, I did a simple mapping installation on a brick wall and on a canvas, at the Uni Cafe. I’ll try to post some pics one day.
Nice stuff going on during the festival, really enjoyed TTC in english, and awesome live from Sleeparchive.

Reading: Glade festival
I’ll never manage to do the report it deserves.. Incredible weekend, a bit hardcore with the floods and mud, but we were safe at the top of the VJ booth, with Aalto supporting the visuals for the great overkill tent lineup.
Thanks to VJ Meno who just sent me a short video souvenir:

Glade overkill stage from vjmeno

I also had a funny crowd surfing time dressed as a chicken with scotch egg.

Bristol: Bloom festival
Almost the first sunny weekend I spent in UK over the summer, which was already a very good start.. Very nice location, on the top of a hill (we could clearly see dozens of Ballon over Bristol, as it was Birstol Balloon festival). Very nice ambiance, and really nice to hookup with some great VJs (Syzygy, FataMorgana, Fade in Fade out..). I had a short VJ set that went ok, very nice crowd.
Actually very dissapointed by the “A/V acts” I’ve seen, Coldcut (boring youtube quality mashup with big MTV logos) and Eclectic Method (mashing up MTV music videos as well).

Northampton: Shambala festival
Would be to long to explain. Best festival in England this year. Human size, chilled out, rave in the forest with massive disco ball and DJ booth in trees, poetry and slam, theater, sculptures, visuals, glowing ballons floating in the air and Love.. Only the best of what “hippie” means.

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IRELAND:
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Dublin: Electric Picnic.
I did the visual installation and live visuals for many hours every evening in the Next Dome, with a nice bunch of people from Bristol.. Even after 2 days of technical setup (I hate seting up screens in circus tents, with nowhere to hookup thing..) it was a nice weekend !

The ultimate highlight was Bjork… I managed to film a bit of her concert. Outstanding !

The Reactable, used live during the concert:

The team behind the VJ Software “Modul8” organised in Geneva the third edition of Mapping,  their audio-visual festival: a great audio lineup (including the amazings Birdy Nam Nam) and a very dense program, with exhibition, VJ sets, talks and workshops.

The festival took place mainly in 2 venues: the BAC (Contemporary Art Builbing) with installations, ehxibition and talks during the day, and le Zoo, and great club for events during the two weekends.

A great atmosphere, and a very good opportunity to meet other visual artists, and talk with a very unusual audience at the BAC (kids and grannies..).

I did a Workshop about the Wiimote to Midi, a VJ set for the D&B night, and a mapping on some large cubes built by Cube3, from Geneva.

Here are a few pictures of the Cube mapping (some of them with Clandestine from Montreal):

View the slideshow.

My highlights were: 3Destruct AV installation by Lego_man and some friends, an immersive 3 dimensions piece, very impressive and a real experience.
Exyzt did a nice installation at the Bac, and an interesting VJ set with Wireless live cam.
Clandestine did a nice A/V set with pheek, with hypnotic minimal geometric shapes, messing up with color perception, and retinal persistence..

Also, very good stuff from Narrative Labs, V-scratch, Sigma6, Quayola and many more..
More infos on the mapping’s blog, and some great pictures by Ork.

Many thanks to Boris and to the Modul8 crew, who did such a nice work, and booked great artists, pushing forward visual art..

30/03/07 – France / Paris / Batofar                                   vjset
06/04/07 – France / Lille / Paysages Electroniques              visual mapping
08/04/07 – France / Lille / Paysages Electroniques              visual mapping
13/04/07 – France / Paris / Elysee Montmartre                   vjset
14/04/07 – France / Dijon / la vapeur                                vjset
21/04/07 – France / Bourges / printemps de Bourges          visual mapping &  vjset
28/04/07 – Switzerland / Geneva – Mapping festival *start   visual mapping

03/05/07 – Switzerland / Geneva – Mapping festival *end     visual mapping
10/05/07 – Romania / Bucarest – TBC                                visual mapping
11/05/07 – UK / Manchester / FutureSonic                          visual mapping
12/05/07 – UK / Manchester / FutureSonic                          visual mapping
18/05/07 – UK / Bristol / Timbuk2 – Cuisine                        visual mapping &  vjset
25/05/07 – Switzerland / Zurich / Puls 5 – Tweakfest            visual mapping &  vjset
26/05/07 – Switzerland / Zurich / Puls 5 – Tweakfest            visual mapping &  vjset

I’ll do my best to post pictures and videos quite regularly.
Hope to see you there…

Mais l’évênement du weekend a été Ashton Court, LE festival de Bristol, avec 100 000 personnes sur 2 jours, une grosse organisation, et beaucoup de soleil et cidre de poire. On était visiteurs l’année dernière, quelques mois après s’être installés ici, et très bonne surprise quand nous (Little Youth et moi) avons été contactés il y a quelques mois (suite à nos installations audiovisuelles des soirées cuisine) pour être la tête d’affiche de la tente Blackout lieu de découverte des performances audiovisuelles locales depuis 5 ans.

Préparatifs.
Une très bonne occasion pour moi et Damien de se remettre à bosser sur un set audiovisuel, avec lien étroit musique / visuels, et une vraie cohérence des images, plus de narration et pas mal d’explorations pour avoir un bon équilibre entre le “dancefloor” et un rythme intéressant pour les images. La presta se présente comme une sorte de cinémix ou toutes les séquences sont en live (montage en direct sur arkaos / midi). Il y a quelque chose vraiment passionant dans ce “défrichage”, c’est l’analyse les différences de rythme entre un film / documentaire, et un dj set bien ficelé. Je crois qu’on a encore beaucoup de taff, mais on tiens une piste vraiment excitante.
Le set est aussi ponctué de dessin live sur un écran transparent, et là aussi, encore du boulot mais ça rajoute beacoup à la prestation générale et aux réactions du public.

La tente Blackout.
On arrive sur place le samedi soir dans la nuit, pour venir installer l’écran transparent et checker l’install. C’est super classe, 7 écrans en montage asymétrique, avec du gros projecteur de 2500 à 6500 lumens, 4 output qui partent de la scène, de la V4 à profusion, enfin pour une fois tout est installé d’avance, c’est super appréciable.
Le lendemain, on arrive assez tôt mais finalement je rate tout le festival et passe la journée dans les backstage à préparer mes claviers pour le soir (on joue à 9h30) pas mal en stress de ne pas finir à temps… et ca ne manque pas, 9h20, changement de scène, stress et fin du set visuel pas tout à fait au point… gloups.

La presta.
La tente est pleine, le public assez chaud, l’équipe technique a tout installé en 3 secondes, c’est parti pour une heure de set. Tout se passe super bien, quelques mini problêmes techniques (tous mes visuels sont en hdtv, mais avec les câbles composite ca rend comme de la basse res, mini delay entre mon laptop et la régie vidéo) que personne semble remarquer. Au final une presta super interessante pour nous, et pas mal de bons retours, donc on va continuer dans cette voie là !

Photos et vidéo (merci Jérôme):
Intro: 1 – 2 – 3 dessin: 4 – 5 – 6

Bonus: Quelques photos et une vidéo (qui coupe juste 20 secondes trop tôt ) trouvés au hasard sur le net: 1, 2, 3, 4