There was a time when everybody I met around would say “Being the way you are, I tell you: Berlin will blow your brains out of this world, mate. You MUST go and check it out by yourself!”. Don´t know exactly what everybody meant by “being the way your are”… but the case is they were all right.
Berlin had a profound effect on me. Always loved love for details, but Berlin showed me how it´s applied on an entire culture scale. Kinda surprised me. I mean, german people. One could expect some sort of chillness from them, more rigid minded personae…
But I´ll never forget one walk I took some early winter morning, just letting myself go and see what happened. Happened I immediately felt like being in Wonderland. Graffiti, shops, food, music, gallerias, bars, everything distilled love for it. Everything had the label “I had fun doing this” on it, from the Wall to that gorgeous basement bar with razor blades embedded inside the toilet chair…
Can’t speak highly enough of this place. In fact, I can´t speak any more of Berlin. Drifting post topic… Speaking of which… one fun VJ project was Bread&Butter 2010, at beautifully recycled Tempelhoff legendary airport.
Desigual was to attend this convention as exhibitor, so had this jumbo-booth installed right in the middle of it all. Music, lighting, ham and, of course, video.
Booths were getting more and more complex with every exhibition. Really interesting LED layouts would come up at major events, and didn’t quite know what to do for BBB2010. In the end, don’t know exactly how, a unique LED layout for this one came up: a gigantic cube with a doorway carved in the middle, which served as the entrance to the actual booth.
Such an unusual layout deserved special contents. So… came up with some true 3D visuals for it using Maya. The idea was to subdivide the whole thing into cubes full of fluids. At some point, they would get hit by some magic invisible bullet, making fluids jump out their cages, smashing the actual geometry of the cage and dripping down the actual side walls and doorway ceiling… Sides were separately simulated in left and right orto perspectives… Mad, I tell you… Ended up with a set of snacks ready to be composed live, color against black for starters (my choice) and color with some video on background layer later on (Meyer’s choice).
Then took my laptop and a couple of toys of my own, finished programming some layers on Modul8 (my live sets software at the time), and had really interesting VJ sessions all throughout that year´s convention.
Composition was a little tricky, as I had to place every clip in the right place of the LED cube for the whole thing to make sense. Final piece was a collection of visuals carefully synced along music at the booth, calling people all over the building into the Desigual booth. Kind of a mermaid chant, you know…
But Berlin is not just about BBB… and one of those slow nights when I was just going back to my hotel after dinner, we took a cab and headed for mystical Tresor… One fun night we pulled there, guys…
The morning after I was so trashed I could’t even get my name right on the standard qwerty keyboard… No metaphore.
Visuals set was not anything to remember that day, but the whole experience was just unique.
As always, didn´t have any decent device to shot with… But my Old Faithful Nikon D70 did just fine. Check out some pictures!
And let me tell you some: “Being the way you are, I tell you: Berlin will blow your brains out of this world, mate. You MUST go and check it out by yourself!”.
