Waw, I haven’t posted anything here for ages !!
We have been well busy with the label since January, and haven’t had a chance to post reports of any of our recent performances, but I think September is a good time to refresh the blog and keep you up to date !
We’re still in the process of editing footage and putting together the pictures and videos, but here are the few projects that I want to introduce here:

Performances and installations
- Grote kerk: a light and sound performance in Breda cathedral (NL), january 09.
- Tour des Convoyeurs: outdoor installation in Montreal (CA) old port, for Mutek in May 09.
- Nuits Sonores: Stage design and live visuals in Lyon (FR), May 09.
- Enghien: a mapping performance for Bains numériques festival near Paris,  in June 09.
- Sondgo: a mapping performance for the opening of a futuristic building, near Seoul (Korea) in August 09.

Projects on Tour
- Principles of geometry + AntiVJ, a stereoscopic show (3D projections, visuals by Joanie Lemercier,  Simon Geilfus and Desaxismundi).
- Murcof + AntiVJ. Visuals by Simon Geilfus

AntiVJ labs: Research and Development
- AntiVJ Mapping Toolkit !
- Stereoscopy + tracking prototype*.
*we will showcase the prototype at the Watershed event on Thursday, check video below.

So we keep ourselves quite busy, and we are really excited about the next upcoming events, as we will present some of the label’s projects in Bruxelles, Paris, Rennes, Talliin (Estonia), Brazil (3 gigs tour), and Sonderborg, (Denmark).
We will soon announce more about all these projects, and details about future events will be available on the website.

AntiVJ showcase at Watershed
By the way, we are doing a showcase in Bristol this week, to present these recent projects and the different things happening on the label, so if you’re around South West UK on Thursday, please come and meet us at the Watershed: http://www.watershed.co.uk/exhibits/2028/

This event will take place at 1800hrs (not 1700hrs as advertised) in Cinema Three.

We are doing a talk, in an informal way, so feel free to ask questions, and also a presentation of our new stereo + tracking prototype, (tickets are limited, so hurry up).

EXYZT CUBE INSTALLATION:
At the end of last year, I’ve been blown away when I discovered Etienne de Crecy live installation at Transmusicales festival (Rennes / France), not that I’m particularly a huge fan of de Crecy’s music, but I found the “stage design” very impressive and unique.
The show is an hour of visual mapping and projections on a big cube, while de Crecy is playing live electronic music, and triggering the lights and visual sequences, standing in the middle cube, inside the installation.

The setup is very effective, they used semi-transparent material to give more depth to the projections, and all the content is perfectly mapped to the structure, and produced with a very specific technique, to give the impression that the cubes are actually in 3D, and to create depth and volume.
In fact there is only one projector, and all the magic comes from the clever setup and the quality of production.

I found out a couple of weeks later that the brilliant Parisian crew Exyzt produced this installation (they are a team of architects, designers, geniuses technicians etc..) and after seeing their work a couple of times (at mapping festival), I wasn’t so surprised, and I couldn’t see anyone else doing such a great project.

THE KILLERS RIP OFF:
Waw, that was quite shocking !!!

A few days ago, I discovered a video of the american band “the killers” performing at the MTV EMA.

Same installation (with a few more cubes), same lighting effects, same content: rotating cubes mapped on the structure, with all the exyzt effects: same movements, rotations, even the same 4 colors have been copied from de Crecy’s set performance.
The only differences are the TERRIBLE mapping (not a single line is aligned properly), and hearts, equalizers, and other badly designed 2D visuals added to exyzt’s original content. Of course the result probably impressed most of MTV’s audience, but compared to the original piece, there was something fundamentally wrong in the Killers show, and it couldn’t be exyzt work.

LEFT: Original mapping by Exyzt – RIGHT: mapping failure by the Killers (click to zoom in)

This video might be offline soon, as Viacom (the owner of MTV) is trying to make this clip disappear from youtube (many copies have been removed already).

THE STORY:
It’s not that often when mapping installations are brought to mainstream audiences and TV shows, so I wanted to know more about this, so I contacted Franz from Exyzt, and Lauren (PR for the Killers) to get their inputs on this.
Franz confirmed that the MTV show wasn’t done by Exyzt, and in fact the MTV staff contacted them after seeing de Crecy’s installation to get a copy of it for “the killers” show. Of course this wasn’t possible, for obvious artistic and legal reasons, but the crew offered his services to create a new stage design for the American band.

MTV and the Killers probably didn’t want to be creative, and Exyzt never heard back from them, until they saw the Rip off of their work on TV.

Lauren never replied to my emails, so I don’t have the killers version of the story, but I guess they might be well ashamed now after doing such a bad thing.
We don’t know much yet about the company who accepted to reproduce the installation, but I doubt that this story will make them a good publicity either.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW ?
Lawyers are on the case to make the Killers pay for what they did, (remember kids, killers always get caught ). It’s a real shame to see great ideas stolen by big companies, and this might happen more and more, so it would be good to get this case known as much as possible, so maybe big bands will think twice before copying visual artists’ work next time.

Please forward this link to press, magazines, myspaces, blogs:
http://blog.antivj.com/2008/exyzt-installation-ripped-off-by-the-killers

Video report from ClubTransmediale in Berlin.

Following the A/V set I did at the M12 gallery during Avit Berlin, the venue owners, visomat.inc, asked me to do some similar visual mapping for an installation at ClubTransmediale, a great clubnight and festival at clubMaria, with visuals, workshops, interactive stuff..

So I came back to Berlin a month later, at the end of January, to spend a week the German capital and collaborate with visomat to animate and enlight the minimal sculpture they prepared..
As this year festival’s theme was “Building Space“, the idea was to create visuals during the event, and explore the links between space, volume, depth and light.

Here’s a short video of the installation and the visuals projected:

Highres version – Download – Pictures

More details and Pictures on antivj.com

This project has probably been one of my most interesting and inspiring so far, many thanks to clubtransmediale and visomat.

Toujours pas une minute, en ce moment c’est vraiment le rush, entre les 4 soirées d’affilé de la semaine dernière, notre nouvelle soirée qui arrive (Cuisine) et le vrai taff de la journée (heureusement, c’est presque le même

Jeudi: Cremefraiche, notre résidence depuis 1an au Mr Wolf avec Little Youth (expatrié avec moi de Rennes). Je faisait donc les visuels avec clu (français lui aussi, des soirées chien), et comme le lieu n’est pas évident pour installer 2 écrans, on a mis le deuxième proj sur le plafond, et du coup ca ajoutait quelques chose de super interessant car la lumière ambiante changait dans toute la salle.. Plus quelques effet de lumière et un mini stromboscope que je peux controller pour les montées. Petite nouveauté aussi, j’en avait marre d’avoir mal au dos après 2 ou 3 soirées dans la même semaine, alors je me suis bricolé une table spécial vj à la bonne hauteur et avec pleins de détails pratiques.. Tutorial et photos bientôt pour ceux que ça interesse.
Au final la soirée a super bien fonctionné, le bar était sur plein jusqu’à 5h, et pour la première fois il y a eu la queue dehors une bonne partie de la nuit !!

Vendredi: Soirée Kingpin, LA soirée Breaks de Bristol, ou je suis résident depuis 6 mois. Ce soir la, étant assez fatigué de la veille, et notre soirée Cuisine approchant (avec beaucoup de com à faire), je décide de faire des visuels, mais dans la rue, à l’entrée du club, pour toucher plus de monde et promouvoir notre soirée. Donc install en speed à base de ralonges, de table pliante, 2xprojecteur, laptop et musique à fond dans la 106 Juste 2 photos: outdoor1 – outdoor2 car j’étais pas mal occupé à distribuer des flys et expliquer la soirée… Les gens on bien accroché et du coup on vient d’acheter un groupe électrogène pour continuer les projections sur batîment toute cette semaine dans la rue !

Samedi: Out of phase à l’arc, date un peu symbolique, car c’est dans ce bar que l’on avais passé notre toute première soirée sur Bristol en Septembre 2004, et se retrouver à jouer ensemble Little Youth et moi est plutôt rigolo ! Damien à fait un set excellent, et terminé sur le morceau au saxo de Garnier, et le set visuel a été super agréable du coup ! Un grand merci a Angel et Lucas qui ont réussi à faire de leur soirée un lieu incontournable pour la scène electro/tek de Bristol. Quelques photos.

Dimanche: Soirée Easter  au Timbuk2. Je suis fatigué, j’appréhende un peu ( ils m’ont demandé des visuels de lapin et d’oeuf de paques !! ), mais finalement ca se passe plutôt bien, rien à signaler, pas mal de gens alcoolisés, after party jusqu’à midi dans le club. Bon il faut quand même que je fasse moins de soirées au kilomètre, celle là n’a pas apporté grand chose… En plus j’avais froid Plus de photos.

Au final, les porjections en extérieur m’ont bien motivées, et on va remettre ca toute la semaine, et samedi avec un mini van et des platines.. Post et photos au plus vite !!