Vector graphics and design for its own sake in general came into its own during the 90′s with companies like Buro Destruct, Designers Republic and a host of others with similar or countering sensibilities. At the head of fueling the appetites of a growing niche of design professionals, enthusiasts and trend seekers is the Berlin based publisher Die Gestalten Verlag. One of the many themes that is prevalent was the crossing between illustration and design. Almost purely at the illustration end of the spectrum was Chalet. An entire book dedicated to seemingly countless iterations of googlie eyed circle faced characters occupying a vividly colored world all from the mind of one individual by the name of François Chalet. This book is one of the major references of vector based illustration and you can see the continuing influence his work has had on the genre.

During my first year working for the Mapping Festival I became aware that François was VJ’ing via an application that he submitted to us. He provided a highly memorable performance. Behind two laptops and a V4 he deftly synchronized his bouncy visuals to whatever music was he was submitted to. Amongst his signature characters there was also evidence of bitmapped images such as arms neatly transformed into clock hands. A different Chalet was emerging though the vectored trappings of the past.

Chalet at Mapping 2007. Photos: Ork

I had the pleasure of meeting with François recently at cafe in Berlin where he gave me an update about his activities. He showed me still images and videos of large scale projections on buildings that were on par with those of Exyzt and AntiVJ in terms of content and narrative along with examples of his work with dancers where the hint of flesh that I saw during his performance at the Mapping had clearly expanded. Further more he confesses to have adopted modul8 as his tool of choice. We managed to cover quite a few subjects in the limited time he I had. The following is mostly his evolving experience with modul8 that has opened new creative outlets for François to explore.

“I discovered Modul8 when I was invited to the Mapping Festival. First I wasn’t very willing to use it because it look too sophisticated to me and I like really simple tools with no effects.”

“During this time I was working with a French contemporary dance company in France called Compagnie Thomas Duchatelet. For their piece called “de 0 (…) a l’infini” and for this I produced all of the visuals that accompanied the performance. For that I used two laptops, an edirol V4 and Quicktime Pro. I always had a lot to carry so a year ago I decided to change to Modul8 so that I could reduce the amount of equipment to one laptop. The more I used it the more I saw its advantages and discovered possibilities I wanted to use for a new piece called “oculus.” The focus of the piece is a dialogue between dance, music, light and visuals.”

“Before we began to write the piece there we performed a series of experiments exploring the posibilites of modul8. As the theme relates to the specific functions of the body, the eye, the ear expressed through dance, we chose functions in modul8 (trace, sphere, multilayer, multiply….) that we felt best related to our subject.”

Some experiments:

“Then Thomas Duchatelet the chroreographer, marie (lighting) and Jean-paul bredif (music) and me formed a constant dialogue about the piece. The four participating dancers dancers were of course directed by Thomas Duchatelet as to how to interact with all of the elements.”

(poster of the new piece)

“The piece contains two diffenrent ways of using modul8. One is to videocapture a dancer in realtime in a space on the left side of the stage. Her captured image is modified using colours, trace and Pixel FX. The image is projected in the background with the dancer in front her her own image.”

On the left the dancer which is filmed, transformed and then projected in the background.

“Modul8 is also used as VJ-tool ‘simply’ projecting images onto the backround of the scene and from above onto the floor”

Projections of Visuals on the backscene and the floor

what it looks like a little later in the piece

“The piece is modular and can be easily modified for different contexts. Modul8 is a fantastic because it allows me to easily change a few parameters in order adapt the visuals to whatever conditions are I am presented with.”

François Chalet, December 2008

It is very inspiring to see this kind of enthusiasm in relation to modul8. It was very kind of François to share his ongoing creative process and it should be noted that the material here is still in development. Considering what is already there I look forward to seeing and posting more about Chalet/Modul8 projects in the future.