It has taken the Franco-Swiss artist Yannick Jacquet three years to create Élytre, a forty-metre-long generative work on display at the foot of the the Alexander III bridge in Paris. The piece was commissioned as a permanent design feature for Le Flow, a floating building moored along the new pedestrian area on the banks of the Seine.

Yannick Jacquet drew inspiration from the dark mass of the barge between the sky and the river to fine-tune his response to the immediate surroundings, calling on the instability and permanence of the flowing water, the infinitely nuanced shifts of light, and the interplay of transparencies between its large plate-glass windows and the glass dome of the Grand Palais just across the water. Drawing on the barge’s organic, cocoon-like architecture, he came up with a highly sensitive, reactive work in the form of an installation that reverses the overall structural inertia of the barge’s four hundred tons of steel, as if echoing Reyner Banham’s principle of regenerative architecture.

The installation is linked up to a battery of sensors so that it varies according to the time of year, season, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, temperature, and so on. It is in a constant state of flux, permanently subject to imperceptible shifts. As a generative work, it has its own dedicated, custom made software programme and required the artist to work closely with a team of specialists in engineering, craft manufacture, electronics, programming, and architecture.

As night falls, the work softly rises up into the surrounding cityscape. The impression on the viewer’s retinas is deep and lasting. The colourful stimuli of elements emerging and fading seem to mirror the shimmering river and foliage and mimic the circadian rhythm of breathing. The artist also devoted considerable research to the issue of colour. A metal mesh with its own unique structure is fastened over the cladding from the roof to the hull, creating a pointillist effect by means of an infinite palette of pixels. The material resists the quantity of light and contrast: the artist has sought to create nuances and shadings of colour by pushing LEDs beyond their usual capacities.

Yannick Jacquet explains that the installation is part of a broader project exploring cycles and our relationship with time. The work is designed less as an invitation to a journey as an order to slow down. To take the time for contemplation.

Elytre in 6 stone-cold facts:
957 custom-made Leds sections
789 micro perforated sunshield panels
340 different sizes
372 universes of lighting information
4 weather instruments
1 cinder application

> Making of  & Artist interview:

Concept, design, animation: Yannick Jacquet
Producer: Nicolas Boritch Label: Antivj
Software: Eric Renaud-Houde, Simon Geilfus
Hardware engineering: LedPXL

Elytre – video teaser: https://vimeo.com/channels/antivj/225525522

Making of credits: Camera: Corentin Kopp, James Medcraft – Editing: Corentin Kopp – Music: Thomas Vaquié
Pictures by James Medcraft

Remote Memories is a new project by Yannick Jacquet, in collaboration with composer Laurent Delforge (Before Tigers). Remote Memories is a polyptych in panoramic format, a large canvas of video and sound. This highly pictorial work resists immediate apprehension; rather it needs to be observed a moment, contemplated in order to grasp its minor details. Textures are superimposed and interlaced, creating atmospheres that vibrate with neither line nor contour – a sort of “sfumato video.” The image that seems fixed at first is criss-crossed by almost imperceptible waves, like a brownian movement that shakes a gas’s particles. Glimmers, colours, shapes unknown or anxious seem to emerge and disappear as if glimpsed through thick fog.

Remote Memories from ANTIVJ is a visual label on Vimeo.

The soundtrack broadcasted through a series of 11 vibration speakers makes use of the canvas’ wooden panels as a sound box. Just like its visual counterpart, it is composed of vibrant textures superimposed on one another and creating a “drone” that alternates between brooding moods and more luminous sounds.

There is no question of audio-reactivity here since the images and sounds evolve at their own rhythm, mixing, losing ground, drifting, letting chance and coincidence create new interactions endlessly.

The installation Remote Memories invites the gaze to pause and apprehend the impossibility of immobility in an age where data is overabundant.

Remote Memories & the Six Cycles Orchestra – performance view

Remote Memories & the Six Cycles Orchestra

Remote Memories & the Six Circles Orchestra is a performance work adapted from the installation Remote Memories.

Before Tigers (Laurent Delforge) uses 6 turntables to play a collection of custom-made handcut vinyls with locked grooves, conjuring up an abstract composition by adding in or stripping out harmonies and textures to paint a soundscape in conversation with the work’s visual element. Images and sounds develop at their own unique rhythm as the sound and visual loops form intricate layers, intertwine, shift, and fall out of sync, triggering in nite new interactions at random.

The musical composition is spatialised by means of a unique setup combining standard speakers and transducers, or vibrating speakers, creating an echo chamber that encompasses the screen polyptych and the surrounding space. The installation and the live performance explore the tensions engendered by a certain conception of slowness, inviting the viewer to engage in contemplation.

Over the last few years, Yannick Jacquet’s twofold research into colour and the notions of time and natural cycles has led him to flesh out a new paradigm: slowness. Slowness as one possible path to the urgently needed restoration of sensibility.

Remote Memories (installation + performance)
Scopitone festival, Nantes (Fr)
20-24 September

More dates to be announced soon.

Since then, the ongoing collaboration project has been presented 25 times, in 11 countries around the world, and has received 2 prizes: a Milano Design Week award and the Slick Art Fair’s collector prize.

Today is the opening of a new version at  Rome’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
The group show, entitled I Belgi – Barbari e Poeti, and presented under the patronage of the king of Belgium, features some major modern and contemporary Belgium artists among which: Berlinde De Bruyckere, Wim Delvoye, Jan FABRE, Panamarenko, Pierre Alechinsky and many more…

I Belgi – Barbari e Poeti
MACRO, Rome, Italy
15.05.15 – 13.09.15

MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art / Rome / Italy

We would like to thank all the people and organisations that have supported us in these last 3 years.

Thanks to : Antivj, Nicolas Boritch, Mapping festival, LKFF Art & Sculpture Projects Gallery, Millumin, Scopitone Festival, Imal, STRP Biennial, Nemo festival Paris, Bozar Electronic Festival, ElectroniK Festival, ShinyToys Festival, Mirage Festival, EMAF Festival, Nuit Blanche Metz, Mira Festival, Digital Choc, French Institute of Tokyo and Kyoto, Slick Art fair, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts,  Nuit Blanche Brussels, Atsuko Barouh Gallery Tokyo, Logotel, Oddstream Festival, LUX Scène Nationale de Valence, SAVE Festival, Reversehead, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Matthieu Safatly…

Recent exhibitions:

LUX / Valence / F / 21.12.2014 – 07.03.2015

STRP / Eindhoven / NL / 20 – 29.03.2105

“While the passage of time seems to accelerate every day, Fred Penelle and Yannick Jacquet offer a pause, a suspension, a breath. A strange mechanism stretches across the wall, populated with shadowy chimeras. They are mysterious and yet somehow familiar. Is this a laboratory experiment or the plan for a future network?
Minutely constructed like a fine clock, it traces connections, routes, genuinely-false, looping itineraries, inviting escape, inviting dreams. The narrative is deconstructed like a thousand-storied film script. Every effort is made to lead astray, to turn around, to forge ahead. Time is shredded, decomposed, lost…and yet everything references it.
Mécaniques Discursives is like a parenthesis between two epochs: Gutenberg’s and Big Data’s. By contrasting the oldest form of image reproduction (woodcutting) with the most recent digital technologies, the installation straddles centuries and contracts time.”

Certain artistic collaborations seem self-evident, a synthesis that transcends practice and brings out the best of each individual. The Mécaniques Discursives project, which we’ve been working on since 2011, derives from such an intense collaboration. Three years of research and experimentation, accompanied by twenty exhibitions across Europe and Asia, have allowed us to continually perfect our infernal machines.
After these numerous exhibitions, we thought it would be interesting to take stock of our collaborative practice by filming a documentary that presents the project from behind the scenes and explains, in part, the thought processes and research that underpin it.

The future direction of the project has already been set: engines and physical movements have recently been added to our vocabulary as the installation becomes more sculptural, particularly through the integration of wrought-metal animated elements.

An exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts gave us the opportunity to develop our project as a polyptych. We will be continuing to explore different, smaller standalone formats alongside the in-situ installation.

From the end of December until March 2015 a new site specific version of the project will be presented at Lux (Scène Nationale) in Valence, France. We will exhibit a very large version of the installation, taking over two floors of the building. We hope it will mark the first in a series of large-scale installations.

Yannick Jacquet, Fred Penelle

Prizes
- Winner of the Milano Design Week Tech Award as part of the Timescapes exhibition
- Winner of the Art Collector’s Prize – Slick Art fair 2013 / Brussels / B

Past exhibitions (selected)

- National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts / Wonder of Fantasy / Taichung / TW / 2014
- Milano Design Week / Spazio Logotel / Milano / IT / 2014
- Digital Choc 2014 / Institut français du Japon / Tokyo / JP / 2014
- Atsuko Barouh Gallery / Tokyo / JP / 2014
- Nuit Blanche Metz / F /2013
- LKFF Art & Sculpture Projects Gallery / Brussels / B / 2013
- Slick Art fair / Brussels / B / 2013
- EMAF / Osnabrueck / D / 2013
- Nemo / Paris / F / 2012
- Bozar Electronic Festival / Brussels / B /2012
- Scopitone / Nantes / F /2012
- Mapping Festival / Geneva / CH /2012

More info at: www.antivj.com/md
Contact: hello(at)antivj.com

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

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. 

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.

In the meantime, here’s a preview of the 3Destruct project soundtrack. This version was composed during a residency at l’Usine Lu, in Nantes (FR),  inside an old factory warehouse. You can find the full length video report and more details in a blog post by Yannick Jacquet, who produced the visual content with the help of Jérémie Peeters.

“COMB”, Thomas Vaquie. This version is a stereo edit of the piece originally produced for a 7 channel system.

This extract is the second part of the piece which was articulated around 3 movements. I started the composition once the visual narrative and dynamics were developed by Yannick Jacquet and Jeremie Peeters. From there i decided to go for a frame based approach to composition and editing and synched every frame over a final video edit. Inspiration had to be found solely in the visual dynamics of those simple visual elements, vectors.

The physical structure of the installation is made of thin vertical stripes of material. This specific canvas created a strong direction for the general aesthetics of the piece. Also, a large part of the piece being based around the idea of streaks pattern, the use of “comb filters” to slice the space both sonically and visually became an obvious choice. And finally for the name of the track.

Streaks pattern, part of the piece aesthetics inspired by the physical structure of 3Destruct.

The 3Destruct video has just been nominated for the vimeo awards in the captured category, please show your support.  You can vote once a day until the 30th of April.
https://vimeo.com/awards/vote/captured

The installation will be touring more this year, keep an eye on the website.

Thomas.

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)