Portfolio project Yellow Brick Road #6 installation

Continuing our collaboration with artist Morgan Dimnet, of French art collective QuboGas, we developed an interactive installation that explored the relationship between of visual artwork and electronic sound composition.

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The Yellow Brick Road #6 installation/workshop at the Frigo (Albi, France)

The project was inspired by the Mélisson, an educational modular sound synthesizer developed in the 1980s at the GMEA — Centre National de Création Musicale Albi-Tarn (France).

Initially created to introduce children to the fascinating world of sound synthesis through experimentation and collaboration, these playful instruments were also used by experienced electronic musicians to create complex soundscapes and compositions.

Morgan Dimnet wanted to place the Mélisson at the centre of his new installation/workshop, inviting pupils of local primary schools to use its intuitive physical interface as a composition tools for not only sound, but also for visual art.

Exploring infinite variations of sounds and visual compositions, the visitors are then invited to create a physical vinyl disc cover for their own musical creation.

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Collaborative sound creation with the Mélisson modules (© GMEA)

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As the knobs of the Mélisson modules are tweaked to create unique sounds and effects, this soundscape is translated into similarly unique composition of shapes and colours, projected onto the workshop’s wall — ready to be reproduced by the visitors on mini stamping workshops designed by the artist for the exhibition.

We developed for this installation a hardware interface that could “listen” to the Mélisson synthesizers, and a custom computer program that translated the sound creations into unique visual artwork, following the artist’s visual language and aesthetics.

The project took place in 2022 with several primary schools in Albi, and concluded by a public exhibition at the collaborative cultural centre Le Frigo.

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Project credits:

• Visuals and furniture design: Morgan Dimnet

• Hardware interface and electronics: 2hD Architecture Workshop, with Jean-Jacques Devulder

• Programming (Processing): 2hD Architecture Workshop

• Music composition (vinyl edition): Roland Ossart

Prototyping with the CNC router

We have now access to an amazing CNC router at our new office space at Kroloftet. I tested it today for the first time, initially to fabricate some simple wooden gears for a homemade “analog music sequencer” I am developing for our next Ooo-Ya-Tsu art project (more in this later…)

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The wooden gears, cut on the CNC router, with MIDI music “encoded” into grooves on the right

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These gears were modelled in SketchUp and imported into AutoDesk Fusion, before being sent to the CNC router for fabrication. The geometry for the round grooves on one of the large gears was generated by a computer program I coded in Processing that reads musical MIDI files and convert them into 3D shapes, which can then can be grooved into the gears, effectively “encoding” the music into the wood. Fairly simple to start with, but it worked, so on with the prototyping!

Many thanks to Peter Magnus, expert digital fabricator at Kroloftet, for the heads up on using this amazing machine!

Portfolio project Symétriades: visualising contemporary music

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View of our live projection mapped onto the performance stage

Symétriades/Extension is a visual experience that we created for an eponymous contemporary music piece for solo double bass and musical artificial intelligence.

Commissioned by Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France, this art performance was presented at a contemporary music festival in October 2018.

In this project, art director Alain Fleischer and music composer Yann Robin wanted to express the idea of an abstract immolation of the soloist through the performance of this powerful musical piece, “plunging the audience into an immersive experience of engulfment” and “a fusion between the worlds of the seen and the heard.”

We developed with the artists a scenography and live video projections generated in real-time by the sounds and movements of the musician on stage, merging the expressionist visual universe of Alain Fleischer with poetic elements from Stanislaw Lem’s book Solaris.

“This is what I call an immersive experience! It was incredible to witness my own avatars being destroyed in real time, as I performed the piece.

2hD’s work, under the artistic benevolence of Alain Fleischer, gave an exponential dimension to Yann Robin’s composition, merging the visual and musical architectures into one.”

— Nicolas Crosse, soloist in the performance

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Extract from Yann Robin’s musical score, codifying the complex movements of the soloist on the double bass (image © Yann Robin)

Symétriades as a musical piece

Composed in 2013 by Yann Robin, Symétriades is the second opus of three abstract compositions, all titled after the incomprehensible architectural formations described in Lem’s fictitious discipline of solaristics.

Inspired by and written for Nicolas Crosse’s double-bass powerful playing technique, the composition of the musical piece also includes an artificial intelligence that reprocesses in real-time the soloist’s live performance. This electronic system, developed at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), distorts, filters and reconfigures the music into a network of 8 loudspeakers and 4 sub-woofers that spatialise the sounds around the audience.

The visual experience

The artists wanted to visually express the contained ferocity of the music, using the metaphor of the bass as an instrument of self destruction.

Echoing some of the themes from Lem’s enigmatic book, we constructed the visual narrative of the performance as a succession of digital incarnations of the bass player.

Overlaid onto his physical presence on stage as video projections, each of these “doppelgänger” gets corrupted and eventually destroyed under the assaults of the sounds and movements of the musician on stage. Progressively turning into an abstracted version of his image, it finally recomposes itself into a purely abstract visual representation of the music.

To achieve this, our approach mixed real-time filming, 3D motion analysis of the musician on stage and sound analysis. We coded a custom computer program that could dynamically create and composite layers of animations over the image of the musician being projected onto the stage and coordinate them with the electronic sound processing.

The dynamic nature of our system allowed the video projections to adjust to the improvisations of the musician during the performance — something that the musical score specifically encourages during certain parts of the piece!

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Double-bass solist Nicolas Crosse during rehearsals, seen through the shifting moiré of the translucent projection screens of our scenography.

The scenography

In parallel to the visual effects, we also designed a stage scenography for the performance.

From an early stage, we wanted to keep the powerful delivery of the soloist at the centre of the visual experience. Its perception by the audience should therefore be altered not only by the means of digital video projections, but also through the physical, direct medium of the scenography.

Playing with the perception of depth, we shrouded the stage with multiple layers of finely meshed black fabrics. These translucent surfaces create the screen for the video projections superimposed onto the stage and blur the projection into an elusive volumetric presence.

Positioned between the audience and the stage, they further distort the direct sight of the bass player through shifting patterns of moiré, adding to the expressionist makeup and costume of the performer, and echoing the liquid nature of the book’s protoplasmic being. Modulating the contrast between stage lighting and video projections, we could also shift the audience’s focus between the performer on stage and his abstract projected doubles.

The creative process

As we developed and refined the effects over the course of the production phase, we produced a series of video prototypes that precisely simulated the effects, based on high-definition videos and 3D captures taken during the first rehearsal. This allowed the involved artists to visualise the performance in real conditions at each design iteration, keeping the artistic discussion open and adjustments to the system simple.

We also took care of sorting out the technical solutions for the performance, selecting adequate equipment and producing detailed 3D models of the scenography and technical workflows, so that its feasibility could be checked with the technical team as the project developed.

Credits for the project

Art direction: Alain Fleischer
Music composer: Yann Robin
Double bass soloist: Nicolas Crosse
Electronic sound treatment: Robin Meier
Scenography & live video projection system: 2hD
Production manager: Bertrand Scalabre
Stage manager: Alexis Noël
Sound setup: Geoffrey Durcak
Production: Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, in co-production with L’Ensemble Multilaterale

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The tools we used for the Symétriades performance

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Technical diagram of the performance setup

Capitalising on our experience in the Ooo-Ya-Tsuproject, we developed for the Symétriades/Extension performance a custom program in Processing, which managed the sound, video and motion captures and generated the projected visualisation in real-time.

Some open source libraries were also used to interface together the different components of the system: Open Kinect for Processing (for real-time video and 3D analysis on stage), Minim (for real-time sound analysis) and oscP5 (for OSC network communication).

The different computers in the performance were communicating via OSC, using the excellent OSCulator (controlling the multi-track audio playback) and TouchOSC, for which we developed a custom graphical interface to tune the parameters of the Processing program in real-time.

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Symétriades live performances this weekend!

I am at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains (a.k.a. Le Fresnoy) for the final rehearsals of the Symétriades art performance, for which we developed the scenography and live video projections.

Double bass player Nicolas Crosse will be interpreting Yann Robin’s Symétriades piece for solo double bass and electronics, spatialised over a complex electronic post-processing system and overlaid with the live video projections we have created with visual artist Alain Fleischer.

The performance will be shown as part of a contemporary music festival within Panorama 20, the yearly exhibition showcasing the art projects developed at the Studio over the last year.

There will be four public presentations of the performance over the weekend:

• Friday 5 October 2018 at 20:00 and 22:15

• Sunday 7 October 2018 at 15:00 and 17:00

Come and join us for a mighty musical and visual experience!

First rehearsals for the Symétriades art performance

Prototype of live visual effects, projected over double-bass player Nicolas Crosse, through the black open weave screens

I was at the National Studio for Contemporary Arts this week, for two days of rehearsals for the Symétriades art performance.

It was the first opportunity to test in real conditions the scenography and visual effects for the video projections that I had been developing for the performance in the past few months, collaborating with lead artist Alain Fleischer, music composer Yann Robin and double-bass player Nicolas Crosse.

Based on the idea of the soloist immolating himself through the performance of Yann Robin's piece for solo double-bass and electronics, our scenography is playing on the layering of open weave fabrics that are shrouding the musician in shifting patterns of moiré and acting as translucent screen surfaces for real-time video projections. 

We will be developing further the motion capture techniques and visuals over the summer, until the first public performances of Symétriades on 5th and 7th of October 2018, at Le Fresnoy.

Visualising interactive art installations with Processing and SketchUp

While developing the scenography for the Symétriades performance, I experimented with mixing the 3D model of our proposed stage setup with a sketch program, to communicate our proposed concept.

This simple example maps an early animation prototype of our Processing program onto layers exported from our SketchUp model of the scenography. The multiple projections are mapped over surfaces using the KeyStone Processing library, while lighting is controlled by dynamically adjusting layer opacities in the program. The mapped animation responds to a real-time spectral sound analysis of a rehearsal recording, as well as mouse movements on the modelled stage screens.

The integration of Processing sketches and SketchUp 3D models has a great potential for communicating ideas of the art installations in an interactive way. To be explored further…

New art performance project at Le Fresnoy

Double bass player Nicolas Crosse and music composer Yann Robin
(photo © Franck Ferville)

We have just started a new art performance collaboration at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains (a.k.a. Le Fresnoy) in Tourcoing, France.

Titled "Symétriades/Extension" (a reference to Stanislaw Lem's book Solaris), the performance project is a collaboration with Nicolas Crosse (double bass player), Alain Fleischer (visual artist) and Yann Robin (composer).

The artists' intention is to:

... give rise to a gigantic, organic, “living” creature whose every component is interdependent and whose nerve centre whose vital organ is constituted by the double bass player and his instrument. The soloist and the double bass will be positioned on a structure placed in the middle of the “playing” space. The instrumentalist’s body, the double bass, as well as the structure, will act as surfaces on which various visual dimensions will come to life. By extension, this visual entity, whatever its forms, will extend and proliferate in the architectural space hosting the performance.

Using our experience with the Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance, also interweaving music and interactive visuals, we will be helping the artists to develop the concept and scenography for the art performance and to create the real-time interactions between live projected visuals, the soloist’s gestures and electronic sound manipulations.

The first public performance of the piece is planned for October 2018.

Portfolio project Ooo-Ya-Tsu, an art performance

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We like to describe Ooo-Ya-Tsu as an art performance of "collaborative soundscape painting", exploring the interaction between the gestures of classical hand-drawing, animated computer graphics and electronic music.

Ooo-Ya-Tsu is the fruit of our collaboration with visual art collective Qubo Gas and musician Olivier Durteste (a.k.a DDDxie), which took place during a series of artist residencies and public presentations between 2013 and 2016.

2hD takes part in the live public performances of Ooo-Ya-Tsu, but also developed the computer programme that drove the interaction between the drawing instruments (pencils and paint brushes), the video projection on the canvas and the musical instruments.

A short video of the performance, filmed during one of our public presentations at the multimedia festival Les Pixels, in Beauvais (France)

What is Ooo-Ya-Tsu

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The layering of watercolour painting and animated video projection during one of our Ooo-Ya-Tsu performances

Taking place in the midst of the audience, three visual artists draw simultaneously on a large paper canvas laying on the floor, using pencils and watercolour brushes. Each of their actions leaves physical traces on the canvas, but also creates flurries of colours and animated collages — superimposed by a video projection that tracks their drawings movements — as well as layers of sounds and musical rhythms that build on the musical performance of the musician, sitting next to the paper canvas.

Responding to these new sound patterns, the musician himself adjusts his own live composition using electronic music instruments, creating in turn new visual effects on the paper canvas and influencing the live actions of the drawing artists.

As the performance unfolds, a complex graphical and musical dialogue develops between its different actors — each influencing the others' work, while all collaborate interactively to create a unique sound and visual landscape.

Inspired by the principles of phase music, the different rhythmic and visual layers of this landscape come in and out of focus: sometimes momentarily revealing the different musical and graphical universes that constitute them, sometimes recombining them into complex abstract patterns. Until eventually, both music and projected animations begins to evolve autonomously, continuing to shift and echo long after the performance of the actors themselves is over.

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Creating Ooo-Ya-Tsu

At the centre of the Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance is a custom-made computer programme created by 2hD, using the Processing programming language. This powerful language allowed us to develop a system that allowed linking all the different aspects of the performance, combining motion tracking, video projections, interactions with physical objects and simulations of autonomous particle systems...

A video showing alternative views of the performance programme in debug mode, revealing the interactions between the graphical particles, as well as the sound phasing partition (scrolling at the bottom).

The visual aesthetic of Ooo-Ya-Tsu is based on the dream-like imagery of French art collective Qubo Gas, whose work poetically combines painstakingly intricate paintings and collage techniques, with scales ranging from miniature to architectural.

Having scanned a series of artwork they produced for the performance, we programmed the system to dynamically recombined them into an near-infinite number of different collages.

These images could then be superimposed and animated onto the paper canvas, responding to the physical ink forms drawn on the canvas during the live performance, which are analysed by the programme in real-time using infra-red cameras.

The modular aspect of the Processing language also allowed us to combine existing programming libraries to interact remotely with the musician's live performance: triggering visual events in response to certain of his composition patterns or sounds, but also playing sounds directly on his electronic instruments in response to drawing actions on the canvas.

The resulting soundtrack of the performance is a layered composition of phase-shifting abstract samples, overlapping and structuring DDDxie's live electronic music:

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Details of some of the watercolour images hand-painted by Qubo Gas and used by our programme to generate the animated projections on the paper canvas.

Despite its technical complexity, we conceived Ooo-Ya-Tsu so that the technological aspects of the performance remained mostly inconspicuous, keeping the focus instead on Qubo Gas' poetical hand drawings, the materiality of the paper medium and DDDxie's layered and minimalist sound compositions.

In 2013, the Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance was awarded a production grant from the prestigious Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), in France.

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Ooo-Ya-Tsu's public appearances:

• 11/16: public performance at l'ASCA (Beauvais)
• 02/16: public performance at La Malterie (Lille)
• 07/15: exhibition Experiences Interactives at Pictanovo (Lille)
• 09/15: public performance at Gare Numérique (Jeumont)
• 08/14: Arte TV documentary at Le Cube (Paris)

Institutions supporting Ooo-Ya-Tsu:

The Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance was developed and produced with the support of: L'Aéronef / Le Cube / La Malterie / Pictanovo / Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia (SCAM) / Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC) / La Gare Numérique

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Ooo-Ya-Tsu: video of our live performance at ASCA

Following our artist residency in France last November, we have put together this short film, based on the third public presentation of our art performance Ooo-Ya-Tsu.

(Film by Olivier Lallart & Justine Pluvinage)

Designing self-build projects for artists

A recent project at One Thoresby Street artists studios and gallery gave us a chance to develop new techniques for designing with self-builders.

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Artists at the One Thoresby Street gallery, building our design themselves

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Experiential & compartmentation strategy

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Escape strategy

As part of a longstanding relationship with the artists at One Thoresby Street (OTS), we were asked to design a lobby space for the top-floor Attic Gallery. This would sort out circulation between the gallery and studio spaces and provide a vital fire safety feature by separating the occupied space from the access stairwell. Unusually, the lobby would be built entirely by the artists themselves.

We approached the project through a careful survey of the existing building and designed the lobby to create a great experience for visitors as they approached up the stairwell. A sliding fire door, held open on electronic sensors linked to the fire alarm system ensures that movement and views through are eased. The height of the lobby is reduced to contrast with the tall gallery space, which also minimises the materials used and creates a storage and projection deck overhead.

High technical standards had to be met in the project to create a fire resistant construction, the budget was tight for materials and the building team (skilled makers but not construction professionals) needed to have excellent clarity over the build process.

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This put huge demands on the communication of technical information, so we took an approach more normally found in larger scale projects - we created a 'Building Information Model'. This was a CAD model showing every structural member, board and component, organised to give the artists a coordinated picture of the materials to order, the dimensions for cutting, the assembly sequence and the spatial relationship between every item in the final assembly. We then lent the group a laptop with the CAD model installed so that they could take the information directly off it on site.

The build proceeded smoothly with a tiny number of requests for additional information, wastage of materials was kept to a minimum and the end result is a happy self build client, an effective adaptation and an safer, better Attic Gallery space at OTS.

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Mark Pearson, 2014

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Mat Jenner, 2014

Ooo-Ya-Tsu at digital art festival Les Pixels

L'Association Culturelle Argentine (ASCA) has invited us to present our art performance Ooo-Ya-Tsu as part of the 8th edition of their digital art festival Les Pixels, on Thursday 24th November 2016, in Beauvais (France).

In the days preceding the performance, we will be also running workshops with local schools and associations, creating a large hand-painted and digital fresco for the festival.

After La Gare Numérique and La Malterie, this will be the third public presentation of our live performance Ooo-Ya-Tsu, an art collaboration with art collective Qubo Gas and musician Olivier Durteste..

Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance at La Malterie

Some photos from our latest public performance of Ooo-Ya-Tsu, at La Malterie.

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Musician Olivier Durteste (left) composing a live soundscape, as I (right) recompose the digital collage projected on the paper canvas in front of him.

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Yves Sabourin, during the public discussion after our live performance

Special thanks to our guest Yves Sabourin — art curator for the French Ministry of Culture and former master-weaver — for his inspiring speech after our performance, comparing our work in Ooo-Ya-Tsu with the luxuriant garden motives of traditional Persian tapestries...

Ready for our performance

One hour before our second public performance of Ooo-Ya-Tsu, as viewed from DDDxie's perspective...

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Photo by DDDxie

Update 16/02/16: we posted some photos of the performance...

Artist residency at La Malterie

I am spending the week at La Malterie for an artist residency, to develop our art performance Ooo-Ya-Tsu and prepare for our next public presentation, on Thursday.

Together with collaborating artists Qubo Gas, we are dwelling a bit more on the subtle interactions between the physical drawings and the animated video projection on the watercolour paper...

Come and see the live Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance on Thursday!

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Update 16/02/16: we posted some photos of the performance...