Category: Design

VJs Artists: Jesse Lucas and Erwan Raguenes
Location: Rennes, Bretagne – France

We asked SATI do an exclusive V-ROC for us and they came up with The Right Track, a post Christmas concept of material items……read on.

VM: We are fascinated by your ongoing works and experiments in audiovisual. Your musical concepts and animation performance is entertaining visitors and guests at various exhibits. You have explained before that you like to create a very interesting feeling from blurring the boundaries between sound and image, and love to do just that (especially on stage). As musical artists and visual designers we can appreciate the use of type, composition, panning, camera views and analog synths used to create such pieces.

SO tell us, how did you come up with the name Sati? What have the last two years been like for you two?

SATI: The name SATI is borrowed from the French classical composer Erik Satie. We love his music and although it may surprise many we share a lot with it. He had a sense of simplicity and his works are often oneiric. We like to keep it simple, less is often more ! That is why we settled for a short and musical name.

SATI will be celebrating its two years birthday in march so you can imagine these last 2 years have been great. We’ve written nearly 30 songs, many have been left along the way as we were looking for our style. We’ve create several videos and played in various venues and festivals. We met many interesting people along the way and learned a lot on the creative process. Erwan quit is day job to focus on music and I’ve started to work on interactive installations such as “The machine”.

The VJing scene in France is really about discovering new talents. Many visual artists are choosing this medium as a way to showcase there work. As time goes by I’m realizing that VJing isn’t really an art form itself. Film making, graphic design, photography are art forms, theses art forms can be past on to the audience through VJing. This medium might not change the entertainment industry. But people are loosing track of the preciousness of creation through the overload of choice offered by the digital revolution. VJing and live performance are unique, and happen in one place, on one date. I’m sure the audience is going to get bored by their 5 inch Iphone screen and prefer the real thing.

VM: Tell us about the video The Right Target, what is the message? Mental process and approach?

SATI: This is the typical post Christmas video. Its about our dreams in this material world. What do we really want? Which goals have we set ourselves for this year to come? Are theses goals the right ones?

The mental process was very straight forward. The track started as a drum loop composed on the Elektron Machinedrum in bed with a flu! This loop was then transformed into an audiovisual sequence through the use of custom software written in Quartz composer. The graphical design of the sequence resembled a target and that triggered the idea for the video. I’m sure the idea was latent and resurfaced naturally.

VM: How long does a video like The Right Target and Pic Vert Attack take?

SATI: If we’re inspired the music will take a day. Unfortunately, not all days are struck by inspiration. And it is often necessary to look back at a track to take it further. The video style will take another day to find. Its like pulling string from a ball of wool, once you’ve found the right string keep following it ! Once the spirit of the video is decided it takes 2 days to a week to create. All together we work at least a week on every audiovisual track.

VM: You have done several installation exhibits, one called The Machine, tell us whats going on in this installation? What reactions did you get from the audience?

SATI: “The Machine” is a black box containing a magic mirror. People enter the box and use their bodies to paint on the screen followed by an ambient soundtrack. But the machine is capricious and takes the audience by surprise. Changing the way it reacts to their bodies. The audiovisual experience ends up in club style, with the flashing of the stroboscope on every back beat. Finally, the machine ends up dying in an sonic mess.

People love the machine. Its a timed installation, the audience often queue to get in. And that is all part of the experience, not knowing exactly what happens inside. Its also a place to liberate yourself and play with your body. Its very funny to see how people react depending on their social status our age group. Some go completely wild, few stay motionless and just don’t get it I suppose!

VM: For your live performance, what type of visual clips are you triggering?

SATI: We use modul8 loaded with quicktime movies at near HD resolution. A lot of audiovisual precise syncing goes on in the studio. But on stage we keep the audio on Ableton Live and the final loops in modul8 are re- trigged every other bar by midi information sent by Ableton Live to modul8. This technique enables us to play live the sound and image and also keep it tight and synced.

VM: You commented in your interview with Accentfeed, as do motion graphics, new artists are bringing the pixels out of the screens, what do you mean by bringing the pixels out?

SATI: I mean creating real physical spaces using graphic design concepts and video. I’m thinking of the work of the “United Visual Artists” with led screens or the mapping techniques used by our friends “AntiVJ”. Architecture is joining motion graphics and so the pixels are brought out of the screen. To a certain extent the “Machine” is also part of this movement. We are able to physically walk our way trough an audiovisual experience.

VM: Random movement of many particles, how do you trigger the animation for so many elements at once? (duplicated loops+programming?) What are you using to pan around in a 3D environment?

SATI: A use a variety of techniques to create the videos. And I love random and natural movements. So I use code very often to create simple elements that I bring back into After effect for further tweaking. I’m not a good coder but I have ideas and the environments are simpler now for visual artists to start coding. I use Quartz composer and processing for most of my work. The 3D work is either done directly in quartz composer, or using cinema 4D. The particles are created with the excellent Trapcode plugins.

VM: SATIs online videos look awesome, what compression and formats do you upload to keep graphics and audio high quality for screen?

SATI: We like to keep the best quality in our works. This is done through out all the creation process. The final export is done using the H.264 codec (video) and AAC codec (sound). We’ve decided to only use Vimeo also because of the excellent encoding quality of the site.

VM: From your education and self-taught experiences what holds to be the most important underlying influence in what you are doing now?

SATI: I’d say its the environment we’re living in. The people around us, the sea, nature and the urban lifestyle.

VM: Is this your day jobs for both of you? What happens to be your pet peeves in the working environments?

SATI: Yes, its our day job. I used to enjoy having a day job. But I just couldn’t accept to share my time between the day job and the artistic process. I love to have a flexible timetable. Even its hard do deal with most of the time!

VM: How do you both disconnect from your busy electronic atmosphere?

SATI: Nature, nature, nature. Most of the time its the beautiful wild coastline of Brittany (on the west part of France). It as inspired many songs and it is featured in our live set. We’ll soon post a video dedicated to it.

VM: What minimal artists do you admire for their approach and representation in music and art?

SATI: Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, the AntiVJ crew, The United Visual Artists, Yro Yto, Robert Hodgin, Erik Natzke, Stanley Kubrick.

SATI: This is a photo of Rick the Cube sitting on my monitor speaker in the studio. Its the rough version of the main character in an audiovisual road-trip we’re creating. Its called “The odyssey of Rick the Cube”, and the show will be aimed at kids but adults will have fun too! More on that soon.

http://www.eyehear.org/
http://www.myspace.com/eyehearsati