That’s the impression you get from Matt Pyke’s new show at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris’ brand new digital creation center. Mutating monsters, illuminated silences, evolving creatures, disintegrating dancers, glowing trees… Pyke and his friends from the studio Universal Everything use every corner of new-old parisian theater to make your head swirl. Literally.

Meet Matt Pyke. Photo by René Habermacher

ANTOINE ASSERAF: I noticed everything is looping, there is no beginning and no end. What as your intention with that?

MATT PYKE: One of the reasons for the looping is we’re really interested in the idea of infinity and how it creates video artworks which don’t really have a narrative story to them.

We’re creating almost a video sculpture, a state of mind or a trance-like situation: for example where dancers that are continually struggling up the wall to get to the sound or the giant walking monster in TRANSFIGURATION which is walking forever and nobody knows where he is going.

It’s that idea of foreverness and how you can use video to do that as an artwork that never stops: everything is almost like a machine that is going and going…

Matt Pyke & Friends : Super-Computer-Romantics

Sometimes you have some very un-digital elements like drawing.

I studied drawing and painting at art school and still find it very important to have a pencil as well as a computer. All of the artworks were based on drawings originally. The archive of the Gaîté Lyrique has a collection with all the working drawings from all the artpieces.

In the exhibition, the one called SEVENTY SIX SEEDS was entirely created through drawing but influenced by the more recent years where i’ve been working with people who use codes. The drawings are very much influenced by digital processes and the shapes that code make.

We’ve made an iPhone application that gave me kind of genetic instructions of what type of seed what type of plant to draw every morning- so it’s a way of using technology to control me, control my pencil.

Works in Progress: left Matt Pykes drawings for SEVENTY SIX SEEDS inspired after an iPhone application.
Images Courtesy of Matt Pyke

Do you code and program yourself or are you trying to bring that kind of “old school” thinking into that?

I intentionally do not code and program myself. I tried to learn and found it did not suit me, so I focus on the conceptual side of things and the visual side of things in terms of art direction and creative direction and come up with the initial seed idea and then work with programmers who are genuinely experts or super talent in their field.

I think one important thing is, by me not understanding code, that my ideas are not restricted to what is possible.

How did you first started playing around with this digital universe?

One of my first influences was partly due to my brother learning to write electronic music when he was very young, so we got interested in music technology. It was just before the Mac really arrived in the 80’s – he got his first sampler when he was around 10 and twas trying to make beats.

I’ve always been interested in the forefront of something: the forefront of music or the one of science. Technology is always been ahead in terms of CGI in Hollywood films and using the power of a laptop to create digital music or animation. I think I just get excited by these new tools emerging. Every year there seems to be a new, more powerful tool that Steven Spielberg or James Cameron work with and we can use a few days later. (laughs)

Matt Pyke by Matt Pyke.

I feel like in the 90’s the people were very excited about the future and the digital arts and things like this, but then it had kind of taken a back seat in the last decade were people were more looking backwards.It seems now people are looking more ahead again and say: what can we do that has not been done?

That is something we’ve talked about a lot recently is how there is obviously a lot of negativity in the world at the moment about with what is happening in Libya or Syria or the economy and the environments. Naturally bad news is what sells papers but I think on the other side of that we see technology as something very playful and something you can use to create very positive, utopian experiences and it’s really something that can save mankind. That is something I really wanted to explore in our work is how you can create this super positive energy and use it to hopefully influence the people who visit the exhibition. Because it’s kind of celebrating how technology can enhance your life.

Going back to the vote against technology: there is a big movement of paper-craft design and all these — because I studied painting and drawing originally, my heart still lies in handmade and analogue processes. My studio is in the nature in the North of England, is very much part of me and what I see — I don’t live in a big design city kind of environment.

But I think there is always action and reaction. At the moment we see it as “let’s try and do something which is in reaction to this kind of organic and analogue approach and try to do something with technology that excites people and does not feel it’s about closed-circuit TV and surveillance and all this kind of negative things.”

Poster for "Matt Pyke and Friends" exhibition.

Do you know the work of Nick Cave- not the singer but the other Nick Cave- the artist?

Yeah I saw it recently — it’s amazing! really really nice!

What is its called? SOUNDSUITS! I tell you where I got the idea from for TRANSFIGURATION:

Originally it was used for MTV, but the idea came from searching on Google images for “fur”, CGI-fur, and I found one image which is some random test from some crazy tech-forum image of a guy who got a stick man and wrapped some fur around him. Just this really tiny CGI test and we thought lets take that small experiment or test and turn it into this kind of bold living thing for MTV. From that we took the part which is the most popular across the web and turn that into more a story of evolution for the gallery. But recently I saw on twitter someone mentioning Nick Caves SOUNDSUITS- and I was like: Ahhh interesting parallel! What I really like about that is the fact that two people have come to a similar direction, his is analog and ours is digital. But it’s very very hard to make something completely original and unique these days;

It’s great because they are almost the same thing but because they are in a different medium they don’t give out the same vibe at all.

Yeah i’d love to see them- I know he is based in Chicago. I’ve seen the films and images on the web. It’s just nice to see these parallels…

CHANEL invited Universal Everything to create a series of video artworks in response to the 5 codes of Mademoiselle Chanel.

Do you actually have things that actually function interactive? I mean there is some interaction in the sound room system…

That is a good question the interactive one, because people have asked us a lot is, as we’re in a digital gallery, if we’re making interactive works, and I think I would not really call myself an interactive artist or a designer. There are certain things we’ve done with real time video mirrors and things like that but generally I prefer the word “participation” where you can involve the audience in some way even if that is them just standing there in a trance watching it or dancing to it in the Petite Salle or the Chambre Sonore…

I actually started posing…

Yeah — it’s great! That is what we predicted what people would do. It’s a subtle way of creating some interactions.

But I would prefer to leave the interactive design to the super talented interactive designers out there and us to focus more  on the video-sculpture and audio-reactive kind of world that we live in.

There always seems to be a big expectation for digital things to be interactive and I quite like the idea, personally as a member of the audience, that you don’t have too work hard.

Some of your pieces have an intelligence to them, they do react but they react with each other…

They interact with themselves! Yeah they are more self absorbed! (laughs)

MATT PYKE & FRIENDS
Until May 27, 2011
La Gaîté Lyrique
3 rue Papin, 75003 Paris
Curated by Charlotte Léouzon

Matt Pyke / Universal Everything / Everyone Forever

Abdel Bounane at AMUSEMENT gallery, by René Habermacher.

Antoine Asseraf : So where are we, there’s a store downstairs, but this is something else…

Abdel Bounane: This is the space where soon we will offer services and events linked to the store, and to the magazine.
The service part is probably the most interesting, because this is going to be the most original part.
For the store we try to have some original products, but for services, starting in May, you’ll be able to order a tailor-made video game.

You make an appointment, meet with one of our consultants, and give your craziest ideas regarding what you want from a video game, and we’ll be able to materialize it. It can take a few days, a few weeks, or sometimes a few months, it can cost a few hundred or a few thousand euros.

It’s a world first.
It answers the question “if you want to make a space linked to the digital world, how do you offer something original and human ?”

Something that doesn’t lag behind the virtual world.

Exactly. What is the use of being in the real world when you’re talking about the virtual ?
So for me, it is the meeting with people, the ability to explain face to face your ideas, a human and interactive touch, it’s fundamentally linked to a physical place. It wouldn’t be the same thing by Skype.

That’s one part of the services we will offer.
We will also offer a gallery side.
People have been trying to sell digital art for decades now, and they haven’t really been able to, except for installations which hard to sustain. But now tablets are here, and I feel that tablets are a good media for that art, like a canvas.

The ressource center of the Gaïté Lyrique. By René Habermacher.

That makes me think of that bloom application for iPhone, by Brian Eno…

Well, Brian Eno’s been here !
What we’re developing is the sell of pieces on tablets, offline, and also an online store of limited edition digital content, with a certificate of authenticity on our servers.

How do you co-exist with the Gaïté Lyrique proper?

Well with the digital art we’re going to be working a lot with artists from the Gaïté, such as Matt Pyke/Universal Everything,
They do a lot of cool particle effects, very pop, very colorful, and they’re don’t want something that is all over the internet, just something that is visible physically at the Gaïté, because it’s a site-specific installation, and potentially sold digitally.

That’s where the logic of the Gaïté comes in, it’s not a museum, it’s a creation center.
So it’s perfect for us, we become the distributors of content that cannot be found elsewhere, and digital limited edition fits the Gaïté perfectly.

We’re not only the commercial arm of the Gaïté, we’re here to play with new ways of crossing art and digital, video games and one-to-one distribution, or take a mass media like video games and make it personalized, how do me make something pop more haute ?
How to legitimize a physical location, with launches, workshops, etc.

Gaïté Lyrique communication.

I think it’s perfect that this place was launched now, in 2011, because today there is a mix of the digital and the physical worlds.
We’ve experienced a very de-materialized digital world for the last 15-20 years, through computers only, but as the intelligence of the network become more miniature, we’re going to unperceivably go back into the physical, with walls that give information. Tablets, smartphones, nano-technologies, that’s what they’re all about.

From the 60’s mainframe, to the 80’s Personal Computer, to the connected personal computer with a more diffuse intelligence, to the smart phone and the tablet which are more disseminated… I think think there’s already twice as many smartphones as desktop and laptops combined.
This year is the first where more smartphones are being sold than computers.

All this means that intelligence is more diffused into the real physical world, so if you look forward, it means this place will become even more pertinent.
More experiental, more subjective, about participating in a world that was created for you.
So if you combine that with the more diffuse intelligence, you get a place where you can live unique experiences.

Matt Pyke / Universal Everything for MTV.

Was AMUSEMENT magazine influenced by the 1990’s French mag univers >interactif ?

It’s funny because a blogger asked me that, “do you know >interactif, what do think about it” ?
but in fact I only knew it by name, it knew Ariel Wizmann had made it, and I had seen maybe 2 covers.
But people have told me that Amusement seemed like the >interactif of the 2010’s.

So since then I went back into >interactif, and I can see the connection, editorially, visually…

I remember especially the cover with a chick wearing a Nintendo Power Glove.
Almost all the covers had chicks on them as much as I remember.

Left: W< by Jean-Baptiste Mondino for >interactif magazine, 1995?. Right: Excerpts from >interactif magazine.

Actually there was one memorable cover by Mondino with a guy in a W&LT latex suit with some phallic balloons…
The connection between the fashion editorials and the content was sometime a bit forced (laughs).
The funny thing with >interactif is that when it came out, in 1995, no one had internet. Something like 3 people in France.
But did you know WIRED then ?

Yes, Wired I read since the beginning, since 1993/94.

How old were you ?

12 or 13 years old. I used to go to Brentano’s [American bookstore] to get it.
I was also reading EDGE, a UK video game magazine, which back then was a world reference.

Once as a high schooler I bought EDGE and sold the translation to French magazines (laughs).

You’re not the only one, some real journalists got into trouble for ripping off articles from THE FACE.

So WIRED, EDGE… It was complicated, I didn’t really get all of it, but it was like a film addict, you go see it even if it’s in Chinese.
I was fascinated by these magazines even though I didn’t speak English.
The UK press is sophisticated.

The content and the visual as well…

Those magazines had a completely different artistic direction.

How does the AMUSEMENT store affect AMUSEMENT as a magazine ?
By the way I went to your website and I loved that there was no blog, just the best of past issues.

It’s a real question (laughs).
I always wanted to ensure the legitimacy of the paper magazine as a format.
But now, in this post-tablet world, AMUSEMENT will become a bi-annual, because the tablet has further de-legitimized paper.
So we want to make it more high-end, more of an object, a book, 400 pages.
Less of a magazine.

We’re going to create connections between the AMUSEMENT store and the web, in July.
And everything I was telling you about online digital art stores is something we’re also working on, maybe not for 2011, but it’s in the works.

Amusement magazine.

I think it’s also interesting to go for a book/object format, because it voids the question of the iPad format … you really can’t compare an iPad magazine to a book/object.

I’m very open to the idea of iPad/tablet publication – once it becomes a real business, once there’s a 100 million of them out there.
Right now it’s only something that CondéNast can do, for image.
But how many GQ do they sell on iPad ?? 5000.

So right now, either you’re a huge publisher and you want to show that’s you got it, so you do an iPad version at a loss,
either you’re independent and it doesn’t work.

What about something like Flipboard ?

You become a moderator, aggregator, art-director – you’re creating a moderation platform.
I would love for Amusement to go in that direction as well.
We try to be high-end in the design, but I’m interested in the idea of the opposite, of letting people appropriate the content.
That’s a challenge that I would like to tackle with AMUSEMENT.

Because the richness of internet is not the platform as much as the humans.

In AMUSEMENT, there is one side which is very “we’re speaking to you, you have to listen, it’s our art-direction, our pictures,” there is no feedback, a bit like a dictatorship — that’s actually attractive because it’s megalomaniac.

Then there’s the opposite, which is create a platform and let people move it forward…

Yet I feel that today a lot of the internet, with the advent of blogs/Facebook/Twitter, has become only about discussion, and that very few people have the time to do a megalomaniac project of creation.
With a magazine you make it, you step back, improve it, you don’t have to constantly ask everyone if they “like” it or not.
T his applies especially in fashion.
Every month you were waiting for some new images coming from new issues of magazines.
Now the blogs bring a constant flow of magazine articles from all over the world, self-styling pics, etc – it’s like a deluge of images from which nothing can stand out.
How many articles per day can you stomach on “what to wear” ?

Do you think that nothing stands out, or that different things stand out ? That’s what’s interesting.
What is true is that there is less in-depth reporting, because there are less producers who invest.

But I think there are still people out there who create and innovate, without necessarily a lot of means.

Yes, there is an ocean of repetition – but only because someone created something in the first place.

Left: detail of the Gaïté Lyrique entrance. Right: Amusement shop entrance.

AMUSEMENT creative shop
3 bis rue Papin
75003 Paris
Metro: Réaumur-Sebastopol

Matt Pyke & Friends @ Gaïté Lyrique
April 21 – May 27, 2011

AMUSEMENT magazine