2011 - our year of interactive rooms

Submitted by conrad on 20 December, 2011 - 21:22

For us, an eventful year comes to an end.

We have taken big steps, since we won the Award of the festival network ECAS (European Cities of Advanced Sound) at Clubtransmediale in Berlin in February. In the beginning, there was the idea of a system helping graphic artists and music performers to create interactive rooms, together, in a more intuitive and direct way – a platform for festivals, event locations, workshops and experimental lab situations which could be driven and utilised commercially or artistically, either way.

We started with open workshops for our vvvv-based VJ interface called Switchboy at Future Everything Festival in Manchester and Art.On.Wires in Oslo. After that, in Octobre, we started to bring the system to the the club dancefloor, at the Insomnia Festival, Tromsø, Norway. For three nights we set up an intensive audiovisual environment on one of the floors. An intimate projection setup surrounded the audience and helped it immerse into the music. Together with the audio performers we were able to pursue a most holistic approach including surrounding projections, synaesthetic visuals and the participation of the audience. Could this be the future of musical live performance?

The final presentation of our CHET project took place where it actually begun – in Dresden at the CYNETART Festival for Computer Based Art. There, we developed a full-length club line up with national and international acts such as Benjamin Damage, Steve.e, Skyence and Orkester Kubiczek. Visuals were produced and performed by artists like schnellebuntebilder, Laterne and desaxismundi. With one week time and the CHET system and the Switchboy in their backpack, they created an interactive environment for a heavy club night. The big challenge was to synchronize music, visuals and include the influences of the audience – to create an inherently consistent music playground, so-to-speak. We are very happy that the participating artists were up to the job and also wish to thank all the festival organisers for supporting us so strongly.

Here are some first impressions from INSOMNIA and CYNETART. Our own docu clip will follow.

CYNETART 2011