How to VJ #9

Puma Lift by Droga5 on Vimeo.

I didn’t expect to include ads in this series. But I didn’t see this spot coming.

Droga5 and Puma have used projection mapping to spectacular effect for their ‘Light Injected Footwear’ – the print work is striking too.

Where set design, installation and architecture converge with live visuals, we’re getting to glimpse the future. It’s increasingly spatial.

CAD render showing the beam traffic and early set design [image via ‘boards].

Production designer James Chinlund explains some of the thinking in interview:

“We felt like it was important that it feel at all times like these people were doing this themselves, in their own space. When you watched it that you felt like you were seeing a performance that was happening in real time.

We thought of them as a team of young artists making a piece with almost no money, you should be able to feel the “edges”. The projections weren’t mapped perfectly, there were shadows and spill-off.”

It pays off. The piece feels like a performance and that, for me, makes the creative ambition all the more impressive.

Flight of the Conchords – Carol Brown, Dir. Michel Gondry on YouTube.

That’s not to talk down the projection mapping in composed pieces. Michael Naimark’s installations were groundbreaking and Michel Gondry keeps using the technique with aplomb.

Since Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (White Stripes) he’s taken it into TV.

But how far can you take projection mapping in a club performance?

I hope to find out tonight when Etienne de Crécy and Parisian crew Exyzt bring their Cube to matter (London).

Etienne de Crécy Live 2007 by Clement bournat on Vimeo.

The 3x3x3 cube puts different demands on a VJ crew – but this crew has architects, not to mention scaffolding.

Managed to snag free tix for tonight and will report back from the field…

More on Projection Mapping:

– AntiVJ: Exyzt Installation Ripped off by The Killers.

– Memo.tv: Projection mapping with VDMX.

Previous How to VJ:

– #8 Interaction: keeping interface simple

– #7 No laptops: 8-bit VJing

– #6 Pixel-per-pixel: a history

STOP MOTION! New from PES

Not nearly new enough, you say? OK, so in internet terms I came to this one about 1.2 gigayears late. But a good meal’s worth the wait.

(Thanks James for the link).

I’m not sure which piece made PES the cult star he’s become.

RoofSex is well worth watching if you haven’t already seen it. He’s been tapped up for work by Diesel, Bacardi, Nike and Orange, to name just a few money men. Michel Gondry gushes over him.

Drooling yet?

Previously: The beat goes on – Stop-Motion Graphic Equalizer.

Mom! My Body’s Gone Video

It’s some weird science. But it must be as popular as happy-slapping these days.

Improv Everywhere have been zapping reality with orchestrated human video effects – slow motion, freeze frame – and watching their latest work it clicked. That’s 3. A trend?

I’d say Michel Gondry has something to do with it. Be Kind Rewind aired the idea feature-length for the mainstream, and music videos – beyond Gondry’s – were making up the rules before.

Manipulating reality to mimic a video effect now requires more skill and effort than making a film. Orchestrating a “cinematic moment” live, and generating the precision of an edited film spontaneously… Well that technique’s alive in the commercial world after Honda’s Difficult is Worth Doing TV spot.

There’s a few key characteristics to this as a trend, if you could call it that:

1. Liveness

2. Real people

3. A real context

4. Mass participation

5. Precise results

I much prefer Improv Everywhere to its commercial progeny, and you should peep their excellent blog for the full range of their playful anarchy. It’s more compelling because of point (3) – it has a real context.

The participants are larger in number (see point 4). But it’s more important that they’re volunteers. They choose to be there because they want to be there. And as long as you’re paying people to do something, and controlling the environment, it’s not a real context.

Gondry? That’s art. That isn’t live or real – but it more than makes up for it with its inventiveness and dedication to point (5) – blissful, beautiful precision.

What’s your take on this as a trend? Do you agree with these characteristics, or have I left my lens cap on here?