Digitalarti Mag's blog

The UVA (United Visuals Artists) collective, recently invited by La Gaîté Lyrique to adorn the building with lights on the occasion of its opening, is one of the most active art groups in the fields of digital arts, architecture and public space, also dabbing in performances linked to fashion shows, music and…environmental issues. A frenzy of projects through which we are being led by Alexandros Tsolakis, UVA’s official architect since January 2008 and the man behind some of the most recent sculptural works such as Onward, Speed of Light, Canopy, Connection, or Rien à Cacher / Rien à Craindre.

UVA’s work mostly relies on integrating audiovisual and light technologies into iconic sculptures that challenge public spaces, buildings, interiors, a wide range of locations from churches to music and dance performances stages. Could you tell us what has been leading UVA thought the constant exploration of so many fields?
UVA begun back in 2003 working on set designs and content for bands but quickly expanded to other fields such as lighting installations and design. The diversity of its members brought broad potentials in the team and while different opportunities came up we managed to expand to other fields. That sits at the core of our practise from the beginning to nowadays with our latest move towards permanent architectural lighting installations.

This matches well the anonymous position that seems to prevail in the UVA collective? Is this a specific choice?
It is pretty difficult to define job roles because everybody arrives at UVA with a specific professional background but actually works on several different things. Anonymity is a very conscious choice of the UVA image as we think and act as a collective and not as individuals.  

In my mind, one of the most referential medium used by UVA comes through in your recurrent light and ultrasound columns featured in installations such as Array (2008) or Volume (2006). You seem particularly keen on working with these light sticks You also used them on Tonto, Battles  music video and for your installation at the opening of La Gaîté Lyrique last March. What particularly interests you in these items?
Linear fixtures on a grid layout is something that helped us move out from the flat screen and re-create / re-define something spatial. Those elements have the simplicity we like and the animation potential to generate articulated animations.

Installations like those previously mentioned are also setting particular links with the movements of spectators? Is interaction a particular focus for you ?
Interaction is a tool, not a goal. We don’t use it as often as people think. Most likely it is just a response of the system to generate content. It has to have a meaning related to our original concept in each case, so in short, interaction is not the meaning itself.

How about your work on monumental structures, with pieces like:  Speed Of Light, an entangled laser labyrinth shown in 2010 at the Bargehouse industrial art-space on the Thames riverside, Santra,l presented in Istanbul or Chorus, inside Durham Cathedral with huge pendulums swinging back and forth. Is the monumental scale of the location a decisive factor?
We work in the realm of public space creating collective experiences for many people. In order to ensure immersion in the experience for visitors, you need to give them some room to breathe and enjoy in most of the cases. A lot of installations we make are site specific. For us, those spaces were first of all highly intriguing and attractive, and thus part of the installation.

The same probably applies to your recent and specific project for La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris’s new digital arts venue), Rien à cacher, rien à Craindre (Nothing to Hide Nothing to Fear), a series of apparatuses inspired by the concept of utopia but whose immersive space brings to mind some of Kurt Hentschlager’s works, for instance…
Our project at La Gaîté Lyrique has a long story behind it to describe it in a short paragraph here. Fortunately there is a large online record of the making of and the concept behind it - the Panopticon is a big part of the concept, for instance.

Pieces like Triptych , shown at the Nuit Blanche (Paris 2007), Monolith, (London 2008), the hereAfter video installation (Tokyo/London 2007) or the virtual corridor of Y-3 A/W 2010  (New York fashion week 2010) obviously refer the gigantic monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Is science-fiction a major influence in your work? More generally, where do your influences stem from particularly for light sculpture like these?
Let’s say, that science fiction is definitely an influence for some of the members of our team. You see, our team is so diverse that influences can equally come from an art-movement of the past or a tricky computer hack. All those meet and are presented around the table on our brainstorm sessions at the beginning of each project.  Therefore, our monolithic works might be influenced by ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ as well as the minimalists of the 60’s - it’s usually a mix of influences, experiments and people that create the final work.

Is this great variety the motive behind you work on small scale digital installations such as Contact (Tokyo 2008)?
We are interested on working on any scale, from the atom to the moon!

UVA’s work originated in the field of visual shows for rock concerts, including a Massive Attack tour and it carries on with your upcoming work at the Coachella festival, in Palm Springs, California…
Performance-related work sits at the core of our practise since the very beginning. All our projects are different though, so we’re always experiencing new ways of working.

Though, in this way of approaching live performance, there must be some more direct occurrences. Is this why you also worked for dance companies or classical orchestras such as in Echo (2006) and Meltdown (2008)?
Of course. We love the power of immediacy that a live performance has and are as interested in contemporary acts as we are in more classical types of culture.

But beyond this immediacy, some of your installations have become permanent ones, such as Canopy, in Toronto, a 90m-long structure evocative of a digital undergrowth where natural and artificial lights mix. Is this the ultimate achievement for artists like you, working on architecture and light?
Canopy was a permanent commission from the start. It was part of the public art programme of the City of Toronto which the last few years has converted the city into a museum of permanent public artworks. It is great to know that our work will still be there in years as a permanent fixture, so in that sense it is an achievement.

Your installations are mostly being shown in major cities around the world. Have you ever thought about working in more remote places, far from the urban environment?
We would love to do something in a remote place and we have discussed that many times. Surely when an opportunity comes up we will see where we can take this.

I heard about this project commissioned by the Natural Maritime museum, in London, linked to climatic change, and the High Arctic exhibition following a recent UVA trip from Greenland to the Svalbard archipelago …
High Arctic, our upcoming installation at the NMM [currently on, editor’s note], came about when our creative director Matt Clark went on an arctic expedition with Cape Farewell. This project made us think a lot more about issues like climatic changes and environmental issues and we see the importance of raising awareness of this via art. It’s been a great experience working with Cape Farewell, and the team from NMM. The exhibition is a future monument to an Arctic past: the visitors will navigate freely through the landscape discovering the scale, fragility and beauty of the Arctic on their own terms, worked out in UVA aesthetics.

What kind of artistic directions would you like UVA to pursue in next few years? Any new projects you are currently working on?
A new field of activity for us the last few years is the permanent architectural lighting installations and sculptures. The next one will be in Toronto, at the galleria of Eaton Center and is a 120-meters-long permanent light sculpture made of long prisms reflecting and refracting the sunlight while creating intricate light formations during the night. It will open on 1 Oct, as one of the key works the public will be able to enjoy during Toronto’s annual Nuit Blanche.

Laurent Catala
Website: www.uva.co.uk

Published in the Digitalarti Mag #7.

Digitalarti Mag, the international digital art and innovation magazine.

Read the magazine for free online. 

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

• Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
• Allowed HTML tags: <p><b> <br> <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <div> <span> <embed> <param> <object> <script><i><b><u>
• Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
• Insert Google Map macro.
• Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.