Ecume is a collection of musical works originally written by Thomas Vaquié for the Antivj visual label.
These are all derivations of compositions for site-specific and installation projects, the original pieces having been created as a response to place and space, to light and architecture, to code and motion. Now separated and transformed from their original context, the music takes on an independent existence in these new realisations.

Ecume is the first release on Antivj Recordings, a new platform dedicated to music originally composed for installation work.

The idea of a record label focusing on music originating from transdisciplinary hybrid installation work was born several years ago from the realisation that detailed narrative-driven work, often composed with or for image, also had the capacity to exist by itself, outside its original physical/visual context. It grew out of being confronted with, and inspired by composers and sound designers experimenting with new forms of narrative and creating physical, visual and emotional sonic work, in a singular and honest way. Thomas Vaquié, Murcof, Laurent Delforge and the many other artists exploring similar fields are without a doubt some of the inspiration behind Antivj Recordings.

At a time when music seems to be forced (too often and too hard it feels) to be augmented or justified by visual impact, Antivj Recordings wants to reafirm the capacity held within the medium of sound itself to feed the imagination. In the time of attention-deficit Antivj Recordings wants to believe in making time and space for active listening.  In a digital age, Antivj Recordings wants to release physical objects, carefully crafted, that may take the form of a vinyl, a plate built in concrete, a 3D printed object, an audio book or an application.

ECUME – GATEFOLD DOUBLE LP EDITION

two 180g vinyls
gatefold with matt laminate soft touch finish

ECUME – LIMITED RESIN-CAST EDITION 

A very limited boxset edition, designed and handmade at our studios.
Edition of 25, each a unique hand crafted piece, casted from the original concrete-mould created for the album artwork.

Boxset includes:
- 33cm x 33cm dark resin-cast plate, in relief. aluminium profiles for wall-mounting.
- gatefold double vinyl LP edition

ANTIVJ RECORDINGS LAUNCH – ECUME EXHIBITION

Last week-end, for the official launch of Antivj Recordings, a docile crowd was plunged into total darkness at our Brussels studios for about an hour for a listening session of the full Ecume album.

This was also an opportunity to share some insights on the work process behind the artwork of the album, created by Yannick Jacquet. The series of objects below remain on display until September at our studios (please see at the bottom for details).

THE ARTWORK PROCESS

How could the original matter of Ecume (soundwaves) be somehow turned into something physical, tangible?

Ecume is available now at Antivj Recordings in all 3 editions: double vinyl, limited boxset and digital.

All music written, performed and mixed by Thomas Vaquié
Label : Antivj Recordings
Executive producer : Nicolas Boritch
Artwork : Yannick Jacquet
Audio visualisation tool : Simon Geilfus.
Premastering by Shawn Hatfield at AudibleOddities
Video teaser filmed by Nico Neefs & edited by Yannick Jacquet.
Thanks to Duncan Speakman for his words, to Sebastien Robert & Paul Thomas for helping with promo.

“Ecume est pour la personne qui m’est si chère et qui aimait tant la mer.”

© 2016 Antivj recordings ℗ Antivj recordings

Ecume – artwork exhibition
Antivj studios, 30-34 quai des charbonnages, 1080 Bruxelles.
June 17th – September 18th 2016

Since then, 3Destruct has been exhibited in Mexico, Russia, Switzerland and France.

In the summer of 2013 we were invited by the Berlin Atonal festival to present the piece at the Kraftwerk berlin, a former power station in Berlin’s Mitte. Disused in 1997, this piece of Berlin’s industrial history which used to power the former East regions of the city, is now converted in an exhibition and event space. During our scouting visit we were immediately seduced by this cathedral of concrete where giant pilasters and steel girders create a scenery of post industrial uchronia. The ideal set for a piece such as 3Destruct.

Thanks to a high standard an uncompromising music programming the event was a real success.
Murcof + Simon Geilfus’s live performance, another project of the Antivj label, was also presented during the festival.
We are taking this opportunity to present you this new take on the installation, and to announce that 3Destruct will be back in Berlin, this time at the Opernwerkstaetten, from April 10th to May 25th 2014 during Photography Playground.

Next exhibitions:
Photography Playground, Opernwerkstatten, Berlin April 10th  - May 25th 2014
Micro/Macro, Gare St Sauveur, Lille, Sept 1-15th 2014

After presenting the installation twice in Mexico last year (Oaxaca, Mexico city), we had the chance to go back to the American continent later in the year, this time invited by 2 Brazilian organizations.

Eletronika Festival – Belo Horizonte November 30, 2013

It is right at the heart of the Igreia Sao Francisco de Assis, designed by the Iconic Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, that the audience was invited to experience a seated and intimate version of our piece.

It was obviously quite exciting to know that Onion Skin was the first ever installation exhibited in the church. And also quite intimidating to be surrounded by Candido Portinari’s controversial paintings.

Here is a selection of photos:

Multiplicidade festival – Rio de Janeiro -December 7+8, 2013

Right at the bottom of the Corcovado mountain, surrounded by the largest urban forest in the world, can be found the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts. It was outdoors, among thick humid vegetation and mico monkeys, that Onion Skin was set, for 2 nights, and for the first time with a 5.1 surround sound composition.

Here are a few pictures of the event:

Onion Skin will be presented at EXIT FESTIVAL
March 27 to April 13, 2014
France / Créteil

While gardens are an expression of the relationship between nature and culture, mostly seen as an idealized landscape subjected to the shaping powers of culture and deprived of their own principles of ecology, the garden in Oaxaca seems untameable. Its wild diversity is an image of all ethnic groups, indigenous languages and species of plants that found here a favourable oasis. The arrangement of the garden reflects the natural history of cultivation and creates a polemical encounter between the garden’s rather “nationalist” character and the arched windows of the monastery, an expression of alien colonists. The location turns into a living canvas and mediates our contemplation on the relationship with nature, environment, the passage of time, the spectres of being and our illuminating beliefs.

The garden in Oaxaca is a microcosm the artists use to unveil the region’s endemic flora and to create a continuous experience out of the artistic format, one that may enables visitors to gain a deeper understanding of human interaction with the environment.

“We liked the idea of trying to create a trail” says Nicolas Boritch, “(…) of developing an ephemeral experience in such a unique space. A place which had never been opened to the public at night before.”
The artists’ use of an immersive experience through several site specific installations generates a physical and psychological journey, but it also transforms materials and the environment into a magic geography where matter becomes object and space is refined as a wild territory of organic forms, light and technology. The trails of light become trails of the senses through which visitors can resonate with ancestral techniques, nature, technology, and a mystical experience of the world. While the curative mythologies and practices man creates to ensure his grasp over nature are an attempt to command its wild forces, the artists were interested “in letting the spectators glimpse and hear the hidden world behind each plant, rock and construction there”, says Thomas Vaquié. “We approached this idea of a garden trail as a dream. Even though each piece could work separately, it was important for us to build the trail as a journey, so that people might enter and exit with a sense of continuity. To give them the impression that they never left the dream.”

The succession of installations unveils the layered perception of space and dimension. In Olivier Ratsi’s Onion Skin, the physical dimension of the two walls positioned at right angles is augmented by light projections. The resemblence to a half-open book is an invitation to a journey through its chapters, but it is also a psychological preparation for the garden trail. “Onion Skin is based on the principle of alignment”, says Ratsi. “In our case, the alignment of three points: the module, the projection and the audience. When the spectator is perfectly aligned with the other two, a new dimension is revealed through anamorphosis.” The installation is a light graphology that reveals the progressive structure of space, time and perception through various recompositions. Repetition and scale are used to create a physical, hypnotic and dream-like experience based on geometric elements, the illusion of a new dimension and a play of light spectres. A 5.1 surround sound set-up accentuates the physical dimension and creates volume to this perspective. Like a door unto the realm of a parallel world, Onion Skin guides the visitors through the garden, where small installations are spread out across the paths that lead to the yet-unseen The Ark.

Romain Tardy’s cacti piece creates a cultural and symbolic bridge linking heterogeneous moments into a shared continuum. As the visitor approaches the installation, he is progressively immersed into its core, where shapes of light and whispering sounds draw him towards the main scene. The architectural setting, “formed by cacti which separated the space into two unavoidable chambers of perception, allows the visitors to view the installation from different angles”, says Laurent Delforge. “The idea of playing with multi-sided space became a thread in the narrative construction of the piece.”

The Ark is a contextual installation. It uses plants as a visual canvas but also as living beings embodying an individual presence coherently integrated into nature as the unity of multiple living entities. Yet the installation was not an attempt to reach “a pristine symbiosis between nature and technology”, says Delforge. “The idea was more to create a peculiar encounter.” The trail of light is an expression of the collision between nature and technology, but its luminous matter also deals with memory and recollection. The magic of light activates our recollection. Immersed in this environment, the visitor takes an illuminating mental journey to regain memory as light.

As visitors walk past the cacti installation, guided by distant lowing lights and subterranean sounds only, an open space reveals 3Destruct | Oaxaca pulsating behind thick vegetation.

The last piece, Réplica, which is set along a straight and rocky path going to the exit, acts as a recollection, using sonic textures and musical parts previously heard along the trail. The garden thus transforms into a magic place of illumination. It spotlights the history of the place, with plants being arranged by ecological and cultural themes, but it also enlightens a personal, curative experience.

The artists create a magic geography on the border between dream, psychedelia and an elevated state of consciousness. It is based on a play with scales, light and matter that reflects upon natural, archetypal and constructed forms. Yet it is hard to describe this work singularly. As Manuel Alacala, Proyecta’s content director, justly observes, it is something visceral that goes beyond experimental cinema and could rather define terms such as future film. The journey through the magic garden is a physical and imaginary exploration of a layered space and multiple experiences through which visitors reach refined mental geographies.

Text by Sabin Bors, curator at anti-utopias.com

The trail consisted of the following four works:
Onion Skin, by Olivier Ratsi, music by Thomas Vaquié
The Ark, by Romain Tardy & Squeaky Lobster
3Destruct | Oaxaca, by Yannick Jacquet, Thomas Vaquié & Jeremie Peeters
Réplica, by Laurent Delforge & Thomas Vaquié

All projects managed by Nicolas Boritch

Proyecta festival: 
Content director: Manuel Alcala
Producer: Samuel Rivera
Technical director: Azael Saenz

The piece I presented is a light and sound sculpture whose elements are suspended in mid-airspace, and fragmented in a space. This dynamic layout offers different points of view and perspective according to the position of the spectator.
The structure was in the center of the room, and filled a 13 m2 surface and a 3m height.

“White roads in the red matrix” is in continuation of my artistic commitment over the past few years, but this time with a more “structural” approach, as opposed to my work based on still or moving images, but again with the same focus of deconstruction. A selection of my deconstruction series can be found on my blog WYSI*not*YYG, while series based around the theme of time are visible on Deconstruction Time, Again.

While doing some research around the deconstruction theme, I had to create fragments, which would always be rectangles, the main geometrical shape I’ve been obsessed with for years, the core material of the work. But this time I wanted to have an even more radical approach.

The outcome of this research is a spread of fragments in space, a floating matrix  animated in time by sound and light.

The installation is made of 14 elements of red semi-translucent Plexiglas and six  aluminium structure with embedded LEDs.

These elements can be lit up independently, and synchronized with a sound design  that brings the temporal dimension of the work. Thomas Vaquié worked on the sound design, and created two main sound ‘colors’ to reflect the each of the two materials’ singularity. The sound is then made of 44 different sounds, and the challenge was to create melodic and harmonious.combinations from these elements.

Part of the structure was projection mapped, and projectors were used to contrasts with the sharp lighting of LEDs, and the visuals were developped with VVVV. The software will allow future development of an interactive version of the piece.

Olivier Ratsi : design / Thomas Vaquié : sound design / Anthony Gouvrillon : software development / Julien Guinard : LED development

Thank you to Elektra team, Gilles Alvarez, Julien Taib, Cedric Huchet, Nicolas Rosette – Support by Arcadi, Théâtre de l’Agora and Stereolux. 

This project began shortly after Imandril contacted me via facebook to tell me he like my work and would love to work with me in the future. After this first contact, I visited his website to see his work that I didn’t know before. I fell in admiration of his mastery of drawing, composing and his preciseness. I very appreciated his detailed cityscape so precise that you can zoom into almost indefinitely as a fractal. Though using different techniques of expression, I immediately saw that our works are both heavily influenced by architecture and I immediately imagined a possible collaboration.

We wanted to mix our artistic practices to achieve this project that blends 3D animation and drawing. To do this we used the technique of “2D mapping” or “reverse mapping”. (An article in this blog is planed in a near future to explain this technique). One of the pioneers of this technique is Joanie Lemercier he use it in several personal project like “Live Painting – Shackleton”. Before this project I had not really experienced this technique which I like very much. This collaboration was the perfect opportunity

The idea was to show the passing of a day in an imaginary city in fast-forward. We wanted to puts the spectator at the summit of a tower facing a huge “world city”. We wanted to mix various architectural influences to create a dystopian city strangely familiar but impossible to locate. Thomas Vaquié made the sound design to enforces this « disturbing strangeness »

Mandrill and I really like science fiction and anticipation tale. We were quite inspired by movies like Blade Runner, Amer Beton, The 5th Element or book as 1984 (George Orwel), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), The Città Invisibili (Italo Calvino) and many more

The project was presented for the first time at the “Mapping Festival” of Geneva in May 2011.

Legoman (3D animation)
Mandril (drawing)
Thomas Vaquie (sound design)

Shot and edited by Jerome Monnot
(additional footage by Yannick Jacquet)

The 3Destruct project started in 2007, inspired in part by the wide-open yet claustrophobic space of an underground car park that the Biennale of Contemporary Art of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium had offered. Since then, the project has been presented in other festivals: Mapping Festival in Geneva (2007); Image Radio, Eindhoven (2007), 100% Montpellier (2008); most recently Yota Space in Saint Petersburg (2010).

An installation that occupies its host space in a particular and demanding manner, staging it requires finding the right venue. Since seeing the original Biennale presentation, the curator of the French festival Scopitone, Cedric Huchet, has been looking for that venue. 2011 saw the festival partner with the large former biscuit factory Le Lieu Unique, and in that space Cedric finally knew he had the perfect opportunity to host 3Destruct.

Allocated in an old workshop with industrial architecture typical of the late 19th century, we worked over a week to adapt the installation to this new space. As well as the expected issues of scale and placement, we had to update the whole projected sequence to eliminate all horizontal lines which we found just weren’t looking right especially in the more minimal sequences with the particular material used for this staging. Its a piece with real dynamic range and we had to keep that, and then we found the new constraint turned from challenging to a liberating new visual direction.

For those who might be interested by the technical aspect of the project, here are some schematics of the setup.

3Desctruct / Le Lieu Unique
4 volumes laid with mesh; 4x 1024 30fps Video streams;
6.1 surround sound.
Visuals: YANNICK JACQUET, JEREMIE PEETERS
Music: THOMAS VAQUIE

Many thanks to Cedric Huchet for inviting us, the Lieu Unique team for helping with the construction, and everyone involved in the project.

/Yannick


Official page: http://antivj.com/3Destruct_v2/

Related posts:
- 3DESTRUCT
- 3DESTRUCT IN RUSSIA WITH ONEDOTZERO

The surgeon: Nicolas Boritch, now producer at AntiVJ, the bathrobe guy: Jérome Monnot, made many of our video reports, Lady pouring milk: Yolanda, singer for Massive attack, and myself as a red faced Santa.

At that time I was experimenting with wiimote hacking, projection mapping (my first tests were on the neighbour’s house), I was also travelling a lot to VJing events around Europe such as the mapping festival (Geneva), and discovered inspiring art installations. I remember being blown away after seeing 3Destruct for the first time in 2007, and the discovery of this project triggered the idea of starting a label, dedicated to visual art.

2008 AntiVJ
In early 2008, with Yannick Jacquet, Olivier Ratsi and Romain Tardy, we decided to work more together, and then officially started AntiVJ, a structure to develop, produce and promote visual arts, and a focus on the use of light in 3D space (as opposed to a projection on a flat screen).

Then Nicolas Boritch joined us as a producer, to “try and make things happen”, Thomas Vaquié started composing music more regularly for architectural mapping pieces and became a key artist for these projects, and others. Creative coder Simon Geilfus is the latest visual artist to join the label (Murcof project). His work on realtime tools is also changing the way we approach new pieces.

NEW BLOG
So long story short, this blog, which started as a personal diary about VJing projects, doesn’t really make sense in its current format anymore, and this is now the time to open it up to the other members of the label, and to turn it into a shared space.

So from now on, the articles will be signed by their author, and we’re all looking forward to use this space to share ideas, event reports, upcoming projects, and generally to reflect a bit more the activity of the artists on the label.

You can expect posts from AntiVJ members:
- Simon Geilfus
- Yannick Jacquet
- Joanie Lemercier (myself)
- Olivier Ratsi
- Romain Tardy
- Nicolas Boritch (producer)
- Thomas Vaquié (music producer)

We’re also hoping to freshen things up in the new year (communication, website, reports) so watch this space.

Joanie.

They contacted us recently to be part of   “Yota space”, a massive exhibition in the center of St Petersburg – Russia, combining interactive art and installations and talks. AntiVJ was then invited to present 3Destruct, one of the first installation that initiated the label, in a new version, from the 6th to the 19th of December 2010.

3Destruct,

by Yannick Jacquet, Jérémie Peeters (Visuals)
Thomas Vaquié (music)
Nicolas Boritch (production)

Part of the event were also Quayola, Max Hattler, Field, Memo Atken, UVA, Brian Eno and many others. Here’s a video report of the festival, by onedotzero.

We were also part of onedotzero_adventures in motion in London, with a new installation: Eyjafjallajökull, about the islandic volcano that erupted in May 2010, a very long story (I post something about it soon), also commissioned by onedotzero Director Shane Walter and presented in New York last year.

We’ve been commissioned by pixlmusic to create a 20 minutes piece to be performed twice during the evening. The content is a mix of 2D / 3D visuals, and also a part with mapping and architecture related projections.

This project was really interesting on the technical side, as the schedule wouldn’t allow us to produce everything on site as we normaly do, so we had to develop a new technique to do the mapping completely remotely, without calibrations or tests on the actual building before the production.

=============================
a Crea Composite / AntiVJ coproduction:

Visuals production:
- Yannick Jacquet (Legoman)
- Jérémie Peeter (Shirü)
- Joanie Lemercier (crustea)

Sound: Thomas Vaquié
=============================
Here’s a short extract of the performance: