Statement
Credits
Visit
Documentation
Process
Illustration
Sculpture
Interaction and projection
Statement
During the day it is a beautiful wallpaper, progressively at dusk the projection comes alive to “augment” the illustration with colors, lights and shadows. When the space is getting busier and the music louder, the visuals and colors become seamlessly more intense and vivid to fit the mood. The printed illustrations, projections, sculptural elements and architecture of the venue are all integrated into one piece of work, the visual illusion it creates is a magical experience.
Inspired by the location of Jaguarshoes Collective’s new venue in Stratford, illustrator Lucille Clerc and experiential design studio convivial studio set out to create an immersive installation looking at a potential future of synthetic nature in the context of urban living and a new digital paradigm.
Science and technological progress will allow us to re-engineer the living and our future habitats. After appropriating hardware and software in a DIY manner wetware could soon become part of our everyday life. Instead of thinking and designing in assembled parts, we could be able to create in a symbiotic way, using growing processes just like nature.
By manipulating nature to suit our aesthetic and functional needs we may develop plants with enhanced properties such as healing or purifying or change their appearance to fit a specific environment or taste. Botanical concepts and the selection of plants that are part of the exhibition have been studied and implemented in collaboration with Carole Collet, Research Professor and Director of the Design & Living Systems Lab at Central Saint Martins.
The current development in Stratford turns a previously untapped area into a modern estate utopia, the former olympic site testifies how London’s urban landscape is rapidly changing. This new site is a blank canvas due to be filled with the lives and stories of its new inhabitants.
The project is an evocation of the change in the way we will be able to design our world and the great responsibilities that come with it. We will explore the process through three steps, as you progress through the venue. The clinic where mutations and variegations are investigated, the nursery where fresh plants are conceived and grown and the farm, a visual exploration of plants and how they can develop into hybrids or evolve variations in patterns and textures. These different areas are depicted and brought to life in a symbiotic installation of illustration, sculpture and augmented digital scenes that are influenced by the physical conditions in the venue.
The exhibition setup is using the technique of projection mapping. We are augmenting the physical environment and illustrations in the venue, adding narrative layers in motion and simulating dynamic natural phenomena. Through generative bespoke software which is aware of the state of its surroundings, such as the time of day, the local temperature and humidity, the music and the people visiting the venue the whole setup is changing and translating into various moods. From dawn till dusk the audience is immersed in an ever-evolving visual landscape, lights, shadows and textures.
“Synthetic Nature is born.
Carole Collet
Neurotic foliage, deciduous thoughts, canescent surfaces, rambunctious leafy interactions, boisterous species, will leave you adrift in a botanical tapestry.
Interrupted by barbate walls, botanical follies and allomorphic surfaces, imagine a bio-digital world where natural forms encounter synthetic fictions.
The 18th century traveller-botanist is superseded by the lab biologist. Plants are decoded, recoded, hybridized, invented. Darwinian evolution is dead. Meet designer bio-evolution.
This installation will transport you in a botanical narrative where the natural blurs with the digital, where living organisms perform their dutiful photosynthesis whilst you gorge on their nectars. Turned bio-digital alchemists, convivial studio and illustrator Lucille Clerc invite you to share their nevergreen botanical follies.”
As technology progresses novel opportunities emerge to create and engage with new environments. We have the ability to completely reshape our habitat and are now able to simulate worlds using technology. The potential to conjure up imagined surroundings allows us to immerse ourselves in changing spaces according to our mood and personal preference.
The installation revisits how virtual and fictional worlds are increasingly interwoven in our daily life. It suggests alternative versions of reality meant to seduce and entice us. The viewer may experience glitches, distortion and meta-content disrupting the scenes whereby the artificial nature of this simulations is unveiled.
The fictional worlds Lucille Clerc and convivial studio are creating are thought-provoking and stimulate our imagination for a future urban scape that is shaped by society and science.
Visit
Visit the venue RED YELLOW BLUE in East Village Stratford at
3.3 Victory Parade, E15 2ER London
more info https://www.facebook.com/redyellowblue/
We recommend visiting in the evening
Documentation
Process
Behind-the-scenes, a selection of documents from our making-of.
Illustration
From Lucille Clerc www.lucilleclerc.com
Installation and sculpture
Creation of plant pots using voronoi patterns
Plant system 1
Plant system 2
Plant system 3
Projection and interactive
Our bespoke projection simulation.
Bespoke software made with openFrameworks using community addons and ressources ofxMtlMapping2D, ofx2DCam, andreasmuller/NoiseWorkshop , ofxVoronoi, ofxPCL, ofxRay, ofxLayerMask, ofxUI, ofxSunCalc, ofxYahooWeather
Project code is available open-source at https://github.com/paul-ferragut/jaguarshoes1
We used 4 short-thrown projectors ACER® h6517ST , 1 windows pc with a graphic card nvidia gtx 980 and 4 Neet® HDMI Extender over Single Cat 6
Lightings
Lucille’s illlustrations have been vectorized.
Every leave and all elements from the illustration are represented in gray-scale.
The vector illustrations are directly imported into our software, the shapes are extruded according the to gray value. This way we can create light effects with an illusion of depth. 
Shadows
Color palettes
Color palettes create different atmospheres in the venue. It changes seamlessly with time of the day and brightness of the sun. Human activity in the venue also influences the projection.
Voronoi background pattern
Sound-reactive voronoi textures are wrapping the illustration and are reminescent of the sculpture shapes.
Generative Texture
Some leaves are filled with generative texture using perlin noise shaders.
Light pulsing shapes with sound
Some flowers are pulsing with the beats.
Generative growing flowers
Point cloud structures building-up and decomposing with particles system
3d scanned architecture of greenhouses and construction site structures from the area are building-up and deconstructing in the background.
Distortion glitches
Glitches are interactive with sound.
Credits
Nevergreen exhibition at REDYELLOWBLUE in East Village Stratford London, by convivial studio www.convivial.studio and Lucille Clerc www.lucilleclerc.com for JAGUARSHOES COLLECTIVE www.jaguarshoes.com
A collaboration combining illustration, sculpture and interactive projection-mapping.
Art direction
Ann-Kristin Abel, Lucille Clerc and Paul Ferragut
Illustration
Lucille Clerc
Sculpture and plants
convivial studio
Technology and projection
convivial studio
Production
Pasha Jacobs and jaguarshoes collective
Special thanks to Carole Collet (botanical inspiration), Anne-May Abel (CAD, making), Florian Haussman (metalwork), Markus Vomhof (woodwork) Zannah Cooper, Isabel Webb and Jaguarshoes team
Video edit
convivial studio
Video filming
Richard Herring @wreckmedia
Video Soundtrack
Let me follow – Son Lux
NY is killing me – Jamie XX & Gil-Scott Heron
2016 – www.convivial.studio