Jérémie and Laurie at Atelier 131, thereby focused their primary effort in finding an object of creation that embodied a double temporality, with natural light, which is a crucial topic in architecture, but also with options for artificial lighting possibilities. This aspect was challenging for Atelier 131 even though it seemed interesting to work out the lighting to enhance the design of a building and at the same time, challenge the work of the artist. On the other side, Julien, Michael, and Romain at Alien found it most exciting to begin the video project at dusk and to end it at night. In this way, the natural light of the sun could reveal the details of the chosen building whereas the lighting design afterwards had the potential to bring up much effect in terms of space perception. The storytelling of the project therefore was built around the aspect of time passing by, which also fits the image of a building being used for different occasions at different times of day.
The team then headed out and planned everything from scratch, as it would have been for a real-life production. The architecture team came up with the building’s accessibility, signalisation system, revegetation, security railings, etc. The stage design team on the other hand thought of the use of technical lighting as well as the lighting design of the show and paid particular attention to the positioning of the artist and the audience. The objective was clear: the team had high hopes and a desire to make something great and nonconformist. A parking garage seemed like the perfect venue so to speak, to combine practices. After nightfall the building, which was originally created by Atelier 131, housed a show, and therefore become Alien’s playground for a massive lighting installation. Jérémie and Laurie had designed the plans for the building following a circular and repetitive framework, which reveals a continuous circle appearing almost endless. It can be noted that this geometry is strongly reminiscent of that of a stadium, where in a natural way everything converges towards a certain point of attention. The CORE.
For both Atelier 131 and Alien, 3D imagery plays a crucial part in the development of a creation. Jérémie and Laurie elaborated the building using SketchUp and then sent the model to Julien and Michael who in turn imported and tweaked it in Depence integrating the desired textures for all the materials. Alien pushed the envelope of photorealism, as their experience using Depence allowed them to go the extra mile using PBR textures. Thus, enhancing the appreciation of Atelier 131’s building.
“Both the show encoding, and the editing of the video were made using only Depence in one draft. Everything from the configuration of natural light to camera movements, car movements, crowd control, architectural lighting and show lighting was made using this great software.”
Atelier 131 is a architecture workshop based in Lyon (France) in 2016 by Jérémie Taite and Laurie Paillet: https://www.atelier131architecture.com/
Alien is a lighting, stage and video design studio created in 2020 by Julien Peyrache, Michael Berzon and Romain Render and based in Paris (France): https://www.alienlestudio.com/
