Interview to VJ Suave

Of course we couldn’t hold ourselves from interviewing this beautifully talented duo of audiovisual artists.

We have never hidden the fact we particularly love the playfulness and delicacy of their AV style. Their street art itinerant approach open the door to a myriad of creative opportunities.

Throughout the years (while keeping fit cycling their AV bikes) they have been engaging with audience of all ages and backgrounds. Here our interview to VJ Suave: enjoy it!

0. How did you meet and decide to work together on this beautiful project?

We met in 2009 in Buenos Aires, and we’ve decided to work together. Cecilia comes from animation and Ygor from painting and drawing. We mixed our best and created VJ Suave.

1. How have your techniques advanced since the beginning of your career? What specific technological tools have enabled you to express yourself in a different way because of this?

In the beginning, we took a class on how to use Modul8 and it blew our minds. Cecilia came up with the idea to animate Ygor’s drawings and. Using a small projector, we’ve projected the animations from the window on the street outside.

At that time, we used Adobe Flash, After Effects and Photoshop for animation. Later on we met Maki, and he introduced us to Tagtool, a tool to draw and animate in real time.

The first version of Tagtool was a DIY thing, you needed to have a wacom, arduino, knobs and sliders, ps2 controller, all connected to a computer and a controller box.

You needed to build it yourself, it was a bit complicated. Later on Maki and his crew started to develop Tagtool for iPads and we fell in love with it.

Most of our animations are made frame by frame, using Flash, and this takes time and people to work. Tagtool is easier. It’s a tool that allows us to create drawings and animation by ourselves in a short amount of time.

We also started to investigate virtual reality. In 2017 we’ve created Floresta Encantada / “Enchanted Forest”, an interactive VR experience.

The VR is a very immersive solo experience. You actually believe you are inside a different reality. In Floresta Encantada, together with our crew, we’ve created an experience where participants are teleported to a magical forest where they can interact with both characters and the scenery.

They can play instruments near a bonfire and even drink medicine from a shaman. Each experience is unique as the map is very big. Some people say that they saw a spaceship, others say they had a trip on mushrooms, experiences which are rare in the map. At thee end of the journey all travelers come back to reality with a big smile.

2. Your work with the Suaveciclo is possibly the one thing that you are most well known for in Europe. What was the original thought behind the idea and did you realise how successful the concept would be when it first occurred to you?

In 2011 we created 2 short movies, Run and Homeless. They were very experimental because it was our first time trying to move the projections. The videos have been showcased by MTV and received a great response.

We were happy and we wanted to keep doing moving projections. Instead of keeping on creating videos we wanted to try the performance format, so people on the streets could see it live. 

Instead of a car, we thought of a way that could be affordable to us, first a bicycle, and then finally the tricycle as our moving base to project from.

Suaveciclo was created to be able to move our animations throughout the city, bringing joy to everyone who happens to be around. As we don’t use background in the projection the characters look more alive, with a digital graffiti style.

The idea was to take the characters out of the TV screen and make this colorful universe that was inside our heads to merge it with the real world.

When we started VJ Suave back in 2009, we did a lot of research into the VJ world and, at that time, it seemed to us there was no character animation in the VJing scene.

It felt like a perfect gap for us to fit in. From then till now, we keep on doing what we love, what is true for us and we believe anything made like that will always be successful.

3. What technical issues did you encounter when you first came up with the suaveciclo setup? How do you feel about other artists using this idea in their performances?

There have been a lot of adaptations till we got to the actual version of Suaveciclo. First version was very heavy, had small sound speakers and an overall flimsy structure for the projector.

We also had issues as we bought the wrong batteries (now we only use deep cycle batteries). We now have 2 tricycles in São Paulo, one for Ygor and one for Cecilia. What we use now is actually the 5th version.

A few months ago we finally installed an electric battery to help us doing the cycling. It’s also equipped with great sound speakers and a tripod head adapted for the projector.

We like the idea of more visual artists working with images in movement throughout the city. We encourage and help people around the world to build an audiovisual tricycle to express themselves. 

4. Do you remember what first drew you to the audiovisual world? What do you think you would be doing now if you hadn’t discovered the art of video projection?

Ygor: VJ Suave was the starting point for me. Thanks to that I developed my career in animation, creative technology, virtual reality and music. If it wasn’t for it I would still be doing graffiti on the city walls, or maybe working in the forest.

Ceci: I would be applying technology to some other area, maybe holistic health.

5. How is the world of video art in Brazil? Is there a big scene, or is it something quite unusual? Is there anything about your artistic context that you feel influences your work?

Nowadays it is blooming. During the isolation, many audiovisual artists from all over Brazil started to project videos on building walls outside their windows. They have come together and created a group called Projetemos. Thanks to this group, we can share our animations to be projected in different cities. 

Great artists have come out of Brazil like VJ Spetto, VJ Vigas, United VJs, and there’s definitely a scene for vjing and videomapping!

6. What has been the most exhilarating experience or biggest achievement for you? What are you most proud of?

We are proud of having been able to show our art in more than 20 countries at different kinds of audiovisual events: film, street art, animation, music, bike, art technology and light festivals.

If VJ Suave had a little bit of each event, we would be defined by this mix which is something new with technology, animation and movement. 

With Suaveciclo we can create magical moments. We gather people to see the city in a different way, more imaginative. We colour the path with light, expressing love. We think this can open people’s hearts, at least for a second. 

7. A lot of your animation work has an infantil theme with bright colours, organic shapes and friendly faces. Would you say that children are your main audience, or at least, that they are who you most have in mind when you come up with the narratives for your work?

We don’t have a specific audience in mind. We create what we are able to express. Sometimes it is naive with simple forms, sometimes it can be more complex. 

Regarding the colours, we have the limitation of the projector. For Suaveciclo performances we carry a 5.500 lumen projector, which is very bright and powerful for a tricycle. However darker colours can be difficult to project. That’s why our colour pallet is always bright, with high contrast and saturation. 

Kids are essential for our performances, because they appreciate magical beings. They want to play with the characters. When they do, adults start to believe in that magical moment too: when kids are yelling and chasing our enchanted characters. 

VJ Suave on Audiovisual City

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Onomatopoeia Club

Audiovisual art doesn’t just have to be about performing, in fact, this year in light of the global pandemic, we’ve begun to see progressively more innovative and creative ways of the culture of sound and image begin to trickle into new realms and industries.

An AV Webzine

Presenting Onomatopoeia Club. As audiovisual culture vultures, way back in 2011, we saw a need to document, curate and to explore audiovisual culture as a whole as we saw it begin to unravel into its very own discipline.

Onomatopoeia Club have done something much in the same vain. They’ve created an online creative space where sound and visual artists can come together to collaborate on a short 30 second project. The project is a collaboration between Coda to Coda and Rosie Lee.

The most curious thing about this from a visual artist’s point of view is the fact that they have turned traditional VJ and music video culture on its head – rather than the visual artist creating content based on sound, they’ve taken a more soundtrack approach to the project.

How the artist collaboration works

The visual artist creates a 10 second loop, which the Onomatopoeia team turn into 30 seconds and THEN pass them on to a sound artist for the mini projects to be completed. The result? A quarterly webzine of 10-15 audiovisual collaborations and a lot of fun and inspiration.

They’e just launched their first edition (6th July) with a great mix of 12 artists’ collaborations. It’s really curious way to discover new visual and sound artists, and warning, it’s quite addictive. Maybe it’s just me, but I certainly can see and hear the difference of the sound being created after the visual… can you?

Top 3 Audiovisual Collaborations

Here are my faves from this month’s edition:

Cumi Na Gatandu: By Emily Evans (Visuals) & Auclair (Sounds)

This Place: By Catherine Repko (Visuals) & Luisa Gerstein (Sounds)

I cannot fly but I will not hit the floor: by Sophie Clements (Visuals) & Suitman Jungle (Sounds)

Check out the first edition and let us know your thoughts, and get in touch with them if you’d like to participate and have some fun, whilst meeting new artists!

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Join the community and see new episodes via the Instagram channel!

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Memo Akten

At Audiovisual City, it’s always a pleasure to discover new audiovisual artists, and sometimes even artists that we should already know, but that we discover late, like Memo Akten.

I stumbled upon Memo’s work in my investigations and learnings of the well-known VJ software, VDMX (which is to put it quite lightly – VDMX is a very powerful visual creation tool).

Memo Akten describes himself as:

“an artist and researcher from Istanbul, Turkey. He works with emerging technologies as both a medium and subject matter, investigating their impact on society and culture – with a specific interest in the collisions between nature, science, technology, ethics, ritual and religion.”

http://www.memo.tv/

Artificial Intelligence

His work goes much further your average visual artist, as he specialises in Artificial Intelligence, works with algorithms and large-scale responsive installations with image, sound and light. In AV culture’s layman terms he’s an audiovisual jack-of-all-trades and a true techy, oh and he’s studying for a PhD in AI as if that wasn’t enough. Here you can see a selection of his work in the very accurately named video, ‘Selection of work in 3 minutes’ (2017).

Audiovisual awards and prizes

Akten received the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica – the most prestigious award in Media Art – for his work ‘Forms’ in 2013. He has exhibited and performed internationally at exhibitions including The Grand Palais’s “Artistes & Robots” in 2018 (Paris FR), The Barbican’s “More than human” in 2017 (London UK) and the Victoria & Albert Museum’s landmark “Decode” exhibition in 2009 (London UK). He has shown work at venues such as the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow RU), Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai CN), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo JP), Royal Opera House (London UK), Lisbon Architecture Triennale (Lisbon PT), Itaú Cultural (Sao Paulo BR) and many others.

Creative Collaborations

He has collaborated with celebrities such as Lenny Kravitz, U2, Depeche Mode and Professor Richard Dawkins, and brands including Google, Twitter, Deutsche Bank, Coca Cola and Sony PlayStation. Akten’s work is in numerous public and private collections around the world.

Alongside his practice, Akten is currently working towards a PhD at Goldsmiths University of London in artificial intelligence and expressive human-machine interaction, to deepen collaborative creativity between humans and machines and augment human creative expression. Fascinated by trying to understand the world and human nature, he draws inspiration from fields such as physics, molecular & evolutionary biology, ecology, abiogenesis, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology and philosophy.

Marshmallow Laser Feast

Memo hasn’t just emerged on the scene by any means. In 2007 Akten founded The Mega Super Awesome Visuals Company (MSA Visuals), an art and tech creative studio. For some of those who have been following audiovisual culture since before even Audiovisual City was born, then they’ll recognise the name Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) – the evolution of MSA Visuals in 2011. In more recent years and a lot of success, Akten is now focusing on his own work and research, though his contribution to audiovisual culture and performance, must not go unmentioned. I strongly recommend that you explore his exceptionally wide and varied body of artwork and scientific investigations, as it takes you on a socia cultural journey that goes beyond audiovisual art.

Website

Instagram | Vimeo

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Natalia Stuyk

Natalia Stuyk is a self taught video artist, famous for her colourful surrealist landscapes and vivid digital fantasy worlds.

Think how things would look if you dreamed in digital formats. Her creative work as audiovisual artist is generally split between personal projects, which later feed her portfolio to get commissioned projects, generally in the world of fashion.

She has performed live VJ sets, for example at Mira Festival, and has also been known to dabble in sound for her digital art pieces (see the ‘Visitor’ project below).

In her more recent work, she took her fantasy world to a physical space in the form of an installation at Galeria Melissa in New York City for her project ‘Paradise’. You can hear her talk about the whole project here.

Her latest project can be found on Vimeo (below).

Website

Instagram | Vimeo

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