As I’ve been following the FLIM sessions for a while now, I was really happy to be invited to the november edition (the main musical act was Deadbeat – that made me even happier), and I imagined 2 structures with a simple design that could be hanged both over the stage and the VJ booth. The 2 structures were mapped with the great Millumin software (be sure to check it out at http://millumin.com/) and the visuals played live with modul8 (routed through Millumin via Syphon). The idea was to stick to the minimal aesthetic of FLIM, with only white lines creating patterns on the structure, with bits of 3D graphics from time to time. Similar visuals were projected on a curved wall and on a small stucture made with semi-transparent screens.

View from Millumin’s interface with grid warping enabled.

Many thanks to Kristoffer Karlsson for inviting me, Johan Holm for helping with the construction, and all the people involved in the project.

For more info: FLIM Stockholm / Facebook & www.romaintardy.com

/ Romain

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/

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.

If you are interested in live visuals, you probably heard about Olivier’s work before, as the man is one of the most demanded VJs in Europe, and he performed in many festivals (Festival Optronica, Mapping, Nemo, Exit, Centre George Pompidou, etc) under his VJ name EMovie.  I presented his work a couple of times on this blog, in the Paysages electroniques 07 report, or after Nordik impact, at the time we were tracing the first lines of the Label project.

I discovered Olivier’s work a couple of years ago, and I’ve been instantly convinced by his visual style and his artistic statement. Unlike many VJs, all his content is created around a main theme, a research on the time and space dimensions, fragments and deconstruction, and you can find some very interesting meanings behind his pretty images.

Olivier applies his ‘time & space’ fragmentation technique on different subjects (simple shapes, urban and land scapes, and more abstract textures) and several mediums, such as photography (check his Anarchitecture series), graphic design (he worked with the cult Parisian ‘Rex club’ for many years), live visuals (multiprojection and unusual formats), and more recently he’s been exploring installation work..
ANARCHITECTURE

LIVE VISUALS – Demo 08

So we met several times with Olivier, and each time we realized that we were sharing the same interests and aim in our work (also with Yannick Jacquet and Romain Tardy): step away from the usual projections screens and formats, explore projections in 3D spaces and study visual perception, and the classical but fascinating ‘time/space’ subject.

This is what initiated the creation of AntiVJ as a label, which Olivier Ratsi is now part of.

The french strikes didn’t really help (no public transport in France that day), and it’s been a long journey: bus, plane, lift to Rennes (thanks Wahn !!), then driving for 2 hours and I finally arrived safe in Caen in the evening (the 10 energy drinks I had in the car really helped keeping me awake).

There I hooked up with Aalto, Ratsi and Lego_man, who were

taking care of the visuals in the ”Klub” room of this big festival, on a massive installation they helped to design: the big room has litreally been created by building 3 walls made out of big square screens, to create a very geometrical semi closed space. Then 7 seven video projectors were projecting images on the all around, using a multiprojection setup (which means that each wall could have a different visual on it) and playing with the mapping technique, then they could also “map” visuals on the big squared screens and play with masks.

Photo report
Ok, you might find it quite difficult to picture, I guess the best explanation is a set of photos

Technical setup:
- Custom screens and installation.
- 6 x 8 000 lumens video projectors + 1 x 12 000 lumens.
- hundreds of meters of vga and RGB cables.
- 8×8 VGA Matrix switcher, signal amplifiers
- 4 laptop computers (all Apple, running on Modul8) with multi output support.
- 7 different video signals (with a dualhead and a triplehead 2 Go)
- Loads of different Midi controlers.

The result was a very impressive and immersive setup, the crowd was literaly surrounded by amazingly well produced visuals (ratsi, Aalto and Lego_man all have very unique visuals, but with some commons points in style and subjects, and their content blends really well together) and this setup created a very cutting edge experience for the audience.
To be honest the audio lineup in this room was good, but didn’t sound “that” special, and it’s funny to realize that sometimes the visual element is starting taking over the music side, and I’m convinced that many people that will come back for the visual lineup, and because of the great visual experience they had, which left much more souvenirs than the usual silhouette of a dj pushing records.

Video report
Here’s a short video (edited by Lego_man) which might talk by itself :

It’s a bit of a shame that the Lighting was a bit random and didn’t really add anything, organisers might have better switch that off rather than having multicolored oldschool and disco patterns overlaying the projections sometimes, but anywayyyyy….

It was great to hookup with Pikilipita (which actually is from Caen, before he left to London to hack gameboys), grominet and other nice friendly people.

Radio interview
Aalto and Lego_man have been interviewed on a local radio show (at 4AM during the festival), and I was around to show some support while ratsi was busy playing live.
If you don’t fluently understand french, here’s a good opportunity to practice..

Download the podcast. (french only)

Here are a couple more on Sigma6′s website.

Thanks again to Sigma6 who came down from Geneva to do the visuals, and Zac our mini model for the juicy Flyer.

See you this month, with the infamous RCTC from Nantes !

So they came to Bristol to perform at our A/V clubnight “Cuisine”, and played together for a couple of hour on a semi transparent screens installation over the crowd (designed by another brilliant Swiss VJ: Lego_man).

They are great producers and have a very special taste for urban slices and industrial architecture visuals, playing efficiently with light, depth and immersive visuals.

Here’s one of my favorites Sigma6′s production, and a live performance:

Creative Space by Florian – Sigma6

Sigma6 Live – Le Zoo, Geneva

More videos on Sigma6′s website, youtube and myspace.

I’ve been invited to a local radioshow with one of the Guest Vjs, Spark, to talk about visuals, vjing and cinema.. I’m not quite good at explaining things, but I found Toby captivating:

Download the podcast.
Toby’s blog post.

Report of the VJschool masterclasses coming soon !

I like the idea of highlighting and promoting very good VJs, but the magazine really doesn’t reflects the quality and diversity of our scene, and has quite strange rules:

In 2004, for the first VJ Poll, winners AddictiveTV (1st position), Coldcut (5th), Exceeda (10th), D-fuse (12th), Charles Kriel (14th) were also judges for the competition, while VJ Anyone (9th position) was working for the magazine (no blame to them, I just don’t understand how the magazine could allow that).

Since then, the results didn’t change much, even when people started to vote online (this generated loads of myspace spam and other “VOTE FOR ME” emails non-senses) and for a strange reason, many of the TOP 20 names are not even VJs but Audiovisual Acts.
Since 2004, ”live visuals” evolved quicker than ever, and most of the best new VJs remains ignored by the Londonian magazine, so it might be time to create an independent competition, based on actual quality of work, selected by people deeply involved in the visual scene.

Before that, I feel a bit bored by people spamming stuff everywhere, so I decided to do my own advert..

Feel free to use them as well if Vjs flood you with their promo, you can post that back
Here’s the code you can use:

PICTURE:
<a href=”http://crustea.vjfrance.com/article-176482.html” target=”_blank”> <img src=”http://www.antivj.com/anti_djmag.jpg” border=”0″ /></a>

BANNER
<a href=”http://crustea.vjfrance.com/article-176482.html” target=”_blank”> <img src=”http://www.antivj.com/anti_djmag_banner.jpg” border=”0″ /></a>

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..