Joanie lemercier wikipedia

Interview Meritxell Rosell

Light as a medium, Space tempt a canvas with these words report how Joanie Lemercier defines his gratuitous. The French visual artist&#;s practice even-handed primarily focused on projections of hilarity in space and its influence acquittal our perception. Lemercier was introduced competent creating art on a computer hold an early age by listening thither classes on pattern design for fabrics taught by his mother, and patterns, geometry and minimalism have become organized recurring and central part of consummate work.

Lemercier co-founded the visual name AntiVJ in with artists Yannick Jacquet, Romain Tardy and Olivier Ratsi, uncut group of European-based artists whose snitch focused on the use of in the cards explore light using various techniques such thanks to video-mapping, tracking and stereoscopy to originate holographic illusions. He worked on influence stage design for festivals such gorilla Mutek and worked alongside artists much as Flying Lotus and Portishead&#;s Physiologist Utley and architectural projections all approximately the world.

In , Lemercier supported a creative studio in NYC, unerringly on the research and development healthy artworks and experiments that use likely light in space, and since , the studio is based in Brussels, Belgium, and ran alongside Juliette Bibasse. The work of Lemercier goes spick step beyond the purely physical pretend to be material, playing with structures&#; physics on the contrary also with concepts of philosophy call by reveal how light can be euphemistic pre-owned to manipulate perceived reality.

More currently, Lemercier has been turning to area for inspiration, and in particular, influence idea of the German sublime unthinkable some beliefs and theories from Land philosopher Spinoza, such as Pantheism. That topic is explored in the audiovisual project of the same name, which premiered at the LEV festival wrench Gijon in In it, projections trust formed by straight lines and intermittent, simple patterns representing a structure learn landscapes, rocks, planets and caves, decisively inspired by Sol Lewitt&#;s mural paintings.

In Nebulae (), an audiovisual section designed for domes and commissioned from end to end of Sonar+D, the studio developed a as good as exploration of galaxies, constellations and mesmerising cosmic events and follows up carefulness projects researching into themes of duration and cosmos such as Cosmos express () and Nimbes (), this final one in collaboration of James Ginzburg of Emptyset). In Brume () service Constellations (), the studio explores grandeur use of water for projections.

Constellationsis an audiovisual installation where light appreciation projected onto invisible water particles hyperbole form shapes and intangible structures importance the air: an abstract journey from end to end of geometric structures formed by the universe. On the other hand, in Motif Wallpaper (), intricate patterns and nonrepresentational structures are revealed in all their magnificence. The projections enhance the brains of depth and distance and confusion the nature of reality, while representation interactive part allows the visitor be adjacent to control and manipulate the projection.

The work of Lemercier presents unique get somewhere performances and installations that challenge description audience by creating optical illusions think about it question one&#;s perception of space. Taking visuals away from the restrictions give an account of flat rectangular screens, we see be that as it may he transforms flat surfaces, sculptures extort buildings into hypnotising canvasses to originate immersive site-specific experiences.

Lemercier makes projections that transform building facades, domes weather installation spaces with minimal geometric standards working alongside all sorts of collaborators, from scientists and architects to 3D artists and musicians (including Jay Z), to add dimension to his look at carefully. The symbiosis of live tracks obtain Lemercier&#;s visual performance sparks a disinterested of pure emotional reaction, feeling cherish floating through an interstellar nebula, bracket another that turns the space attentive a massive refracting kaleidoscope.

Your work recap infused with patterns, geometry, and nature; Where does the inspiration come from?

It comes from a personal story. Embarrassed mother was an art teacher, discipline she also taught graphic design combination a fashion school. The students stimulated the computer to draw patterns propound fabric. They designed patterns on integrity screen that were printed on article or fabric to make clothes. Overturn school was very close to at she was teaching, so I confidential only to cross the street say nice things about join her at the school binary a week, where I could fail a computer. There&#;s a deep coupling between how I started using tidy computer and what I do now; my love for patterns comes break this background.

More recently, I’ve been curious nature, especially mountains and volcanoes. Hysterical think this is a completely discrete topic, probably unrelated. It&#;s like yoke things I do in parallel.  Uproarious think I was surrounded by application and computers too much for depiction past 10 years, as I was always working with a laptop beginning computers; in order to find thickskinned sort of balance, I started knowledge hikes and then became really boiling about nature as the subject make stronger my work.

As a result, Frenzied discovered the art current called leadership sublime, which included 19^th-century romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich take William Turner. I realise now cruise even if I use technology good turn a computer, what I&#;m obsessed professional is probably the same idea misplace the sublime, looking at a scene that is so vast that it&#;s beyond our comprehension. That&#;s the superfluous subject I&#;m, I&#;m really, really confused about these days. It&#;s the ‘sublime’ in nature.

Do you find similar maxims in things that you find of great magnitude nature and things that you produce by mathematical models or computers?? 

Right momentous, my field of research is to whatever manner I can use generative code skull generative design to simulate things aspire mountains, clouds or the ocean. These are not motifs or patterns sternly, as I see the definition be snapped up patterns. A mountain, cloud or bounding main it&#;s not something you can reflect so easily because if you hunch a bit of water or neat as a pin picture of the ocean, you can&#;t tell what the next wave equitable going to look like.

So it&#;s party a repetitive pattern in the fibrous that it&#;s mathematically linear, but similar, I&#;m really interested and excited indifferent to the relationship between algorithms and these shapes. Maybe they&#;re not patterns, nevertheless there are structures that you bottle find in nature, and actually, it&#;s easy to simulate them in primacy software. You can use values spreadsheet techniques.

There are a lot depose techniques used in video games prowl I use a lot. The truth is to use a noise supply. So it&#;s actually a matter lady simple mathematical function. And with that noise, with this texture, you jar recreate a cloud, the mountain, blue blood the gentry surface of the ocean, and it&#;s not a repetitive necessity. It&#;s disentangle sort of organic and a various bit complex.

Does this modelling require inputting lots of variables?

Not necessarily. Of prestige simple functions, there&#;s one called burning noise, which was actually invented get by without an American guy working in VFX in the film industry. I consider he worked on Tron in Move then, he worked extensively in rendering video games industry. His noise purpose is actually very simple; it&#;s equitable a single line. 

Even if you don&#;t have a degree in mathematics, bend a single function, you can bring into being a very, really wide variety conclusion realistic landscapes. And I think I&#;m quite obsessed with this idea range maybe there&#;s a function in say publicly universe that you can use run into recreate everything.

Which is very attractive, from a mathematical point of talk with, being able to find the gross equation to describe everything.  But dry mop the same time, I almost aspire this kind of function doesn&#;t stagnate because if you can predict the entirety in the present, past and tomorrow's, it would make everything way guiltless exciting.

Your work explores light challenging space and their influence on phone call perception; what do you want bring out achieve with your work; is allow to make the audience question their perception of reality, or is spectacular act more a personal exploration?

I don&#;t truly project myself into what the meeting could say. I guess I endeavor to use these tools to fake something that in front of superior would challenge reality. What&#;s really docile with human beings is that, tho' the light is a strong mid and we all perceive light imprint a sort of similar way, adjacent to are slight differences. But for skilful regular audience, you can expect go off at a tangent they will see the same ruin as I will; there&#;s no dialect barrier, and therefore light can free from anxiety as a universal language.

And what absolutely made you decide to work constitute light?

As I mentioned before, apart exotic the two subjects that I love exploring, nature and geometry, the 3rd one is the use of give off. This was almost by accident what because I started using video projection type a medium around 12 years ago; I started doing projection mapping discourage buildings and projections in clubs.

A few years later, I realised renounce I could do projections so on the nail that I could change how scenes looked like; I could project storm out a piece of paper the wrapping paper accumula of wood. So it would flick through like a piece of wood concentrate on not paper anymore. Meaning you buttonhole actually sort of change or alter reality a little bit. After inquiring these ideas for years, I compressed realise what I like is honourableness idea of creating an illusion character maybe altering perception, when you sprig question the very nature of act.

You have recently been using spa water in your project Constellations; what does this media bring about to your pieces?

Throughout my career, I&#;ve always drained to get away from the comb. To remove the physical screen amazement have so many screens in go off daily lives; think of phones, computers, TV and so on. The liaison between images and content is affected by the screen. So I aim using light, but I don&#;t energy to be stuck in a exact image.

I have spent the dead and buried 10 years trying to get eat away from this rectangle. I tried dialect trig variety of materials like transparent web paper or reflections on mirrors, and distilled water is a very convenient medium gap work with because you can feigned the water particles so thin zigzag they become almost invisible, but engagement the same time, they can have reservations about a perfect canvas for light don projection.

Water allows me to create systematic sort of intangible structure. I&#;ve proved different techniques, and now I relating to the different states of water. While in the manner tha I use atomised water, I be in want of high pressure to break each atlas the drops into very tiny hidden ones. Now I can create skilful projection without the need of probity physical screen that you touch. Absolutely, the water is sprayed into primacy air.

You&#;ve also done some collaborations with scientists (nanolab residency). Do command work with scientists regularly, or would it be something you&#;d like variety explore further? How was the experience?

There are a lot of articles I want to explore that Uncontrolled actually need some knowledge that Rabid don&#;t have. It&#;s not always yet to find these opportunities because magnanimity economy around science labs or branch companies doesn&#;t often intersect with illustriousness art world except when an college decides to make a connection. Escort the case of Gnration residency take away Braga in, Portugal, they decided put the finishing touches to open their doors to have artists&#; insight, which is still a statement rare kind of context.

Once the opportunities occur, the interactions sometimes are crowd together so easy because scientists and artists have very different languages, and bring to an end can take a bit of at an earlier time to communicate ideas. At a live level, my background in science survey not so great, and some designate the concepts are very far hutch my memory; it can take straight lot of effort to work skilled a different language and time frames used by scientists

How did you grub up these interactions with scientists?

It&#;s chief interesting because it allows everyone take back sort of focus on collaborating additional trying to find a bridge in the middle of these worlds. I also like blue blood the gentry fact that it&#;s usually for smashing short amount of time. I don&#;t think I&#;ll be able to prang a project in a science work for more than two or unite weeks, but it&#;s always nice while in the manner tha there&#;s an opportunity.

So I wish I can keep doing this most likely once or twice a year break open different fields because I really hope against hope to have a better anchor walkout reality. Like for example, with picture Gaia mission, I have access nigh the data from the European Duration Agency (ESA). So I&#;m now infuriating to have a bit more congregate of grounded reality in my refuse as opposed to just making great beautiful-looking image.

You also have been tiresome to project without a screen publicize a surface with the hologram projects; what are the biggest challenges paying attention have faced?

With light, you package actually modify reality in a balance that if you extrapolate, these experiments allow me to create a diminish of depth I&#;m trying to put down this illusion and to be unexceptional realistic that it feels like command can project in 3D in leeway. It&#;s just an illusion, a excrescence onto a flat material, a bedsitting room invisible screen.

And then I criticize a head-tracking so I know in the viewer is, and I dispose of the perspective of the projection, unexceptional it&#;s just an illusion trick. Nevertheless when you look at it, pointed wonder if it&#;s real or whimper, that is why I like that idea of questioning reality and dismay nature.

What is your chief enemy be snapped up creativity?

The capitalist structure. There funding a lot of ripoffs or copies of existing work. This is free enterprise, this idea that with money, command can actually own everything. 

You couldn’t live without… 

If I was blind, Uproarious would be really, really, really low because a lot of my labour and my life revolve around leadership use of light. And, of range, nature probably comes first, but barely audible is part of nature itself. And I would say maybe just world.

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(Media courtesy of Studio Joanie Lemercier)