Images courtesy of Joanie LemercierBrussels-based French visual artist Joanie Lemercier, known for his stunning light manipulation enhancing space and architecture, will unveil an audiovisual performance inside St-Michel Basilica in Bordeaux this Friday. Presented as part of the ECHO A VENIR festival, ARTEFACT is a monumental site-specific artwork in line with his past work titledGrote Kerk, performed with the ANTIVJ visual label in a cathedral in the Netherlands a few years ago.
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ARTEFACT embraces the church's gothic architecture and brings a timelessness to the edifice by fusing live-played organ melodies with electronic sounds on a side, and stained glass windows with video mapping on the other.Born from a powerful collaboration between Lemercier, Bordeaux-based contemporary organist Eva Darracq, and Bristol-based electronic music producer Damien Schneider, the A/V project offers a creative bridge between the three cities. The eclectic aspect of this installation were made by a mix of sounds and an Autodesk Memento and vvvv-generated visual environement.If you happen to be in Bordeaux this Friday, don't miss one of the three presentations. In the meantime, we asked Lemercier a few questions about this new project.
The Creators Project: Can you talk to us about the genesis of ARTEFACT and the link to your previous works also developed for churches?Joanie Lemercier: Since the Grote Kerk project back in 2009, I could not stop thinking about the strength of this combination: bringing light, projection, and electronic music into such an impressive environment. To bring the architecture itself to life and enlighten that space was one of the most emotional experiences I've had. It's very hard to have all the necessary ingredients to make it happen: access to a sacred space, artistic carte blanche, an inspiring and inspired organ player, tech team, and budget.What was the challenge to create within this kind of space?
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For several reasons I couldn't use my usual mapping process so I had to completely change my workflow. I used new tools and photogrammetry to reconstruct a model of the whole cathedral, and I modeled everything virtually. I used some of the amazing tools developed by Elliot Woods to calibrate projectors and images. It was super risky, but this worked so well that this technique will probably replace my old process.
Can we have some details about the “triangular” collaboration? What was the workflow to success in creating a symbiosis between the visual content and the soundtrack?Working together with three artists based in three countries was super challenging. But we are all quite used to it and file sharing software was the kingpin of the process. We all met for a site visit to discuss ideas, listen to Eva doing some music improve with the organ and feel the space. Eva uses a super cool software that can simulate an organ sound, and it was extremely useful to follow the evolution of her compositions, as well as a bunch of actual recordings she did in the Basilica.
Artefact is probably the first version of a new series right? Can we have any details about the next step or iteration that you have in mind?Artefact has two meanings in French. In archeology, it is a remnant of human civilization. It is also related to corrupted data, altered content, and glitches. I've started a new series in which I capture the 3D data of objects, architecture, and spaces, and I render representations of this data into several mediums: screenprints, laser-cut materials, and drawings on paper. The original data is somehow limited in precision and resolution, but it is also incomplete. I encountered some technical limitations during the rendering processes (buggy laser cut software, approximation of hand drawing), so the end result is a distorted representation, but becomes something new.
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