James Patterson and Amit Pitaru are InsertSilence since 2000. They combine their backgrounds in illustration and music, and they create their own tools for generating their work in the digital media. They like to keep their tools open to handwork control, while using technology to automate some processes.

Amit Pitaru started programming his own instruments in Flash back in 1998. “I realised that Flash was not good enough for music at that time, so I had to move to scary places such as Processing, Java and C++”, says Pitaru. “Thanks to James I realised how important is to stop developing and start practising at a certain point”, proceeds while he introduces the Sonic Wire Sculptor, a tool to “draw” music in a 3D environment.

Sonic Wire Sculptor interface

“I put the Sonic Wire Sculptor in a gallery and see what people could do with it. But people didn’t get it so I had to move forward”, he proceeds, “The instrument was disembodied and I wanted to give it a body”, concludes while he shows a final result in-between an old arcade Atari machine and a tablet device.

James Patterson was really interested in getting his hands on the 3D drawing engine of the Sonic Wire Sculptor, so RHONDA was born. The tool allows to draw in 3D in a very unique way; which allows James to create his creatures in 3D. He uses Flash to bring his creatures live and put all them together in his own world. “I also had to go to a scary place. In my case to learn how to program Action Script 3 properly”, he says.

Chain Reaction footage

They conclude their presentation by showing Chain Reaction, an interactive dance performance for which they generated a time-based tool for creating background animated illustrations which are connected to dancer’s moves.

Chris Milk is an awarded film maker and writer. He was born and raised in New York and lately moved to San Francisco and started working on commercials.
His current work is mainly focused in music videos and commercials. He has worked with artists such as Chemical Brothers, U2, Gnarls Barkley, Kanye West, Audioslave, Modest Mouse and The Breeders.

Despite the long list of superstars he has been working with, Chris Milk says that he is really nervous while speaking in public. Maybe this is the reason why his presentation is planned as an interview by Michel Chanaud, CEO / Editor of Étapes & Design Flux.

Chris Milk during his presentation

“I am lucky that music artists let me do what I want to do”, says Milk, “and I was also lucky to be able to make my first video for the Chemical Brothers”. As he is asked about his versatility of style, Milk says that “the style has to come out from the story”.

We have the opportunity to watch the video The Saints Are Coming (U2), for which Milk wanted to rewrite the history. “What if we could use military forces for good? USA was spending millions of dollars in the Iraq war, while thousands of people were dying in New Orleans”, he says; “I felt sad afterwards while reading the comments in Youtube, since many people didn’t get the video properly”.

“Music video film makers are the opposite of film composers”, says Milk, “I feel attracted to songs that have ups and downs, and I try to have a visual that lines up to the song the best I can”.

“Commercial work is for paying the bills. But it’s a waste not to leave a message in a work that is going to be spread over millions of people”. Milk’s words are a manifesto which is naturally coming out from his personality.

The presentation concludes with a beautiful short film called Last Dream and which was entirely filmed with the Canon 5D Mark II SLR.

Chris Milk’s presentation is one of the best of the festival so far. Milk’s words were clear, concise and very motivating.

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