AntiVJ: Songdo 

(2009) 

by Yannick Jacquet, Joanie Lemercier, Olivier Ratsi and Romain Tardy (visuals) and Thomas Vaquié (music) is a monumental video projection in Songdo City, South Korea.

In 2010 AntiVJ was invited by the Nabi Art Centre (Seoul) to develop a monumental video projection in Songdo City, which was at the time still under construction. "Here you can see the future of cities" says New Songdo City’s website. Refered to as a "u-City" ("u" for ubiquitous computing, a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction), Songdo City lies at the heart of New Incheon, a new economic hub in Seoul’s periphery. Built from scratch on an artificial peninsula, this city still under construction formed the backdrop to this mapping piece.


Questioning the relationship between the ancient and the new and the place of human beings in such a controlled and modernised environment, this piece might have an aftertaste of apocalypse. The importance of technology, the coexistence of the ancient and the new and the presence of the sea as both a calming and menacing element seem to be the fundamental ideas that have informed the creation and development of this model-city. The city of Songdo challenges man’s ability to plan a large scale construction work and, most of all, to reflect upon the impact of omnipresent technology on the traditional roles of the individual and social ties in such a modern city. AntiVJ’s artists produced an audiovisual piece exploring these ideas.

 

Source: Yannick Jacquet

 

 

AntiVJ: Songdo, vierecke, sacral, architecture, design, Live Visuals

Reading

Notation. Calculation and Form in the Arts (2008) is a comprehensive catalogue (in German) edited by Dieter Appelt, Hubertus von Amelunxen and Peter Weibel which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Academy of the Arts, Berlin and the ZKM | Karlsruhe. (ZKM)

VJam Theory: Collective Writings on Realtime Visual Performance (2008) presents the major concerns of practitioners and theorists of realtime media under the categories of performance, performer and interactors, audiences and participators. The volume is experimental in its attempt to produce a collective theoretical text with a focus on a new criticality based on practitioner/ artist theory in which artist/ practitioners utilise theoretical models to debate their practices. (VJ Theory)

VJing (2010) is a reproduction of the Wikipedia article VJing, based upon the revision of July 25th 2010 and was produced as a physical outcome of the wiki-sprint, a collaborative writing workshop that was held 2010 in the frame of Mapping Festival, Geneva. (Greyscale Press)

 

SEE ALSO

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