I was first invited in 2007, before AntiVJ existed, and since then we’ve been invited almost every year to show our more recent work, which really helped us to develop the label:

2007: – early version of my light sculptures series.
           – First time I saw 3Destruct live.
2008: New light sculpture with Romain Tardy, Olivier Ratsi and Yannick Jacquet.
2010: St Gervais, by Yannick Jacquet and Thomas Vaquié
2011: Cityscape, by Yannick Jacquet, Mandril and Thomas Vaquié.

This year I was invited to show my volcano piece (don’t ask me to pronounce its name). I haven’t had time yet to blog about it, and about the reverse mapping technique, but here’s a short documentary that explains the project.

It took me about 2 days to do the actual drawing (you could follow it almost realtime here).
I’m still not 100% happy with the visual result, and I’m looking for a residency to finally make some new parts and get the volcano obsession out of my mind, but I can feel I’m slowly getting there.

I wrote an article for CreativeApplications to explain the research and creative aspects behind the project.

             

“Mécaniques Discursives”
Being at the mapping was also an opportunity for me to see the new installation by Yannick Jacquet and Fred Penelle, it’s a project they develop outside of the label, and I was really looking forward to see it in person.
I will post more about it tomorrow.

Projecting onto the Parthénon.
On Sunday I did projection mapping workshop with teenagers, and we mapped a piece of the Parthenon, and used a new 3D scanning technique.
I’ll post more information about it in the next few days !

Our first permanent mapping.
I also did a presentation, and it was an opportunity to show the video of Omicron, our first permanent projection mapping piece on an incredible location, a 70m wide concrete dome built 100 years ago, and protected by Unesco. The piece was directed by Romain Tardy and Thomas Vaquié.
Keep an eye on the blog, the release is imminent.

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.

Even if he had some ideas in mind: sketches, drawings, and inspiring visuals from Nosaj artworks, he decided to restart the project from scratch after spending some time at the meatfactory, and to design the structure while being in the actual venue, and then make this project completely in-situ.

 Material used were paper and pens, wood, foam, paste, light and a computer.

The result is a wooden structure covered by more than 500 polystyrene triangles, blended with a layer of light. This installation completely fades out the boundaries between a DJ booth, a sculpture, a three-dimensional screen, and traditional lighting.

Romain named it Triangles, triangles, triangles (ad lib).

One great thing about all these new “post-VJing” formats, is the fact that the work of the artist is not just video-content-production-and-live-mixing anymore, but it can now be a cross over between many disciplines, such as object design, 3d modelling, physical construction of structures, and you can end up working with carpenters, architects, designers, light artists..

Great to see many people get more interest in these new approaches to live visuals, and Romain’s work had a great follow up from Wired, Computer love, fastcodesign (who actually thinks Romain is Nosaj Thing), and many blogs with different interests and focuses.

The Lunchmeat team did a great work at documenting their event ! Here’s a short film about the residency and evolution of Romain’s project, and you can also find online a film about the festival itself, and many things their offered over a couple of days.

You can also find more projects from Romain Tardy on his new website.

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.

It’s a great place to discover new artists, installations, vj sets, talks and workshops, meet visual artists from all around the world, and start collaborations, and also a good occasion to party hard !

The festival takes place in Geneva, Switzerland, and is spreaded over many locations across the city: the contemporary Art Gallery (first time I ever saw contemporary VJ installations mixed with interactive pieces and workshops, in a gallery space), l’usine club (where most of the good European VJ have played at least once), Artamis: an artists squat, and many other venues all around Geneva, with also outdoor projects and happenings.

The name of the festival has actually nothing to do with video mapping, and the first edition was in 2005, way before architectural projections started being trendy in the VJ community, and the use of the word mapping is more about connecting elements: art, people, technology, clubs, gallery spaces..

A long history with the mapping festival.
Yannick Jacquet (legoman) being originnaly from Geneva, he has his very first VJ residency at le Zoo / L’usine, and also designed their flyers for years. Being at the time a user of the great Mac VJ software: Modul8, he quickly met Boris Edelstein, the main guy between M8 and also curator / director of the festival. Legoman then played at the very first edition of the mapping festival, in 2005, alongside other visual artists, such as D-Fuse, Exyzt, Lab-au, Olivier Ratsi …

I went there for the first time in 2007, to present a mapping installation (an early version of the light sculptures), and this is where I met 1024, and the infamous Sigma6 for the first time.
The label did not exist at the time, and seeing 3Destruct live for the first time was like a blast for me, and it is the first trigger that gave me the idea of working with Yannick and start a visual label: AntiVJ.
A year later, for the 2008 edition, we were back as a team: Romain Tardy, Olivier Ratsi, Yannick Jacquet and myself, to present our first collaborative project together: Light sculpture v2, and the very first project under the label AntiVJ (a structure to develop and promote our work), thanks to Boris and the mapping team.

St Gervais
For 2010, the focus of the festival was architectural projections, and the idea of using existing buildings and structures as a canvas. Since the Audiovisual performance we did in Breda: Grote Kerk, and another project he did: Gesu Church, Yannick Jacquet wanted to do a project combining religious architecture, and rather minimal visuals. Doing something in the St Gervais church for the mapping festival was then a perfect opportunity.
Yannick went on site to prepare the project, calibrate the projections and get some inspiration from the actual space. Here’s the video teaser he made, a couple of months before the festival:

The piece was then produced in Brussels, in collaboration with Thomas Vaquié who composed the music, and Diego Innocenzi who played the organ live (“Annum per annum” by Arvo Part), as part of the performance. Here’s a short extract of the piece, with an interview of Yannick and Thomas.

The interview was captured by Jerome Monnot and Ilan Katin, on the 8th of May 2010.

Here’s the first video report, and there are many more to come !

So last May, we’ve been commissioned by Montreal based Mutek festival to produce an Audiovisual piece in the Old port. The canvas was an old scaffolding tower built in 1957, and used to load grain into massive ships, to export Canadian cereals all around the world.
In 1983 the 2 twin towers are abandoned, one is completely dismantled and the other is still standing there, as part of Montreal industrial heritage.

We came on site a few weeks before the event to check all technical options, and realized that we couldn’t really project on the rusted structure, as the projections wouldn’t be bright enough, and it would look a bit too chaotic. So we decided to put up a large white “screen”, and used an optical illusion effect to re-project what was hidden behind this screen.  It was an challenging approach, as we try to avoid screen formats as much as possible (this is why we project onto architecture and 3D objects) but it gave us much more freedom for the content production.

Here’s the video report of the piece we presented, which is about this ghost industrial tower and it’s yet disappeared twin.

————————-
VISUALS: Olivier Ratsi, Joanie Lemercier
MUSIC: Thomas Vaquié
Webpage: http://www.antivj.com/mutek_09/
————————-

Obviously you can’t see the 3D effect on a regular computer screen, but we’re touring with a special screen, so come and see the show to experience the Depth of 3D stereoscopic visuals.

This is just a really short preview of the show, more will be coming soon…

Music: myspace.com/principlesofgeometry
Visual production: Joanie Lemercier, Simon Geilfus,  Desaxismundi.
Produced with support from Arcadi.

Upcoming shows:
- Nov 14th – Belo Horizonte – Brazil
- Nov 17th – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
- Nov 19th – Sao Paulo – Brazil
- April 2010 – Paris

www.antivj.com/pog/

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).

The organisers were more after a “stage design” rather than a simple screen setup, so it was the perfect occasion to get further in the “live painting” experiments that I did in June.

If you know my work, you’ve probably noticed that I’m obsessed by minimalism, straight lines and geometry, but in the past few months I felt a bit stuck in cubes and grids, (especially after a big project in Shanghai last October, where I stayed in a room with 2500 cubes for 3 weeks) and I wanted to explore new patterns and shapes, so I started drawing more, and playing around with 3D softwares.

I’m fascinated by the work of Martin Böttger (tsaworks), and the way he deconstructs simple 3D objects into organic and very dynamic shapes, and he also works with different mediums (animation, but also paper cuts, sculptures and installations). I’m sure many of you already know his Tractor video (recently featured in the  onedotzero tours), but I also discovered recently his kluster_raum installation and his other works, and I just realized that I’ve been deeply influenced by him on this project.

Here’s a very short video of the preparations (I did many tests and sketches in order to find an interesting shape) and of the actual event: I painted during the afternoon and finished the painting during the night, and then I did an hour of live visuals during Shackleton set.

Thanks a lot to Shackleton, Nicolas Boritch for his help, and Woody for filming.