Vancouver fi rm struts its stuff this weekend
Visuals for electronic dance event
The visuals become part of the show. There’s only so much you can do with lights.
SI EDWARDS
CO- FOUNDER, VISUAL ARTFORM
When Dash Berlin, the celebrated Dutch electronic music DJ, comes to the Pacific Coliseum Saturday, a Vancouver company will provide the live- mixed custom visual animations that will appear onscreen behind every song.
Si Edwards will work a console throughout the performance, live-mixing a palette of custom- prepared abstract motion graphics and 3D animations to suit the DJ, the music and the mood of the crowd.
Edwards, co- founder of Vancouver’s Visual Artform, is a VJ, or visual jockey.
“In the EDM ( electronic dance music) world, it’s been a big thing for the past two years,” Visual Artform co- founder LeeAnne Gordon said.
“It would be hard to find a successful watched DJ who won’t have a VJ now. It’s like Batman and Robin.”
Edwards has created an animated dragonfly for Dash Berlin’s song Dragonfly.
“When he plays his song, the dragonfly appears, then it starts flying around and you can see Dash Berlin inside the dragonfly,” Edwards said. When the DJ holds his hands out and moves from side to side, the visuals will move to mimic his motion.
“When he gets the audience to sit down, arrows appear onscreen pointing down.
“The visuals become part of the show. There’s only so much you can do with lights,” Edwards said. “What we do is we custom- make the animations to tell the story of what the song is all about.”
Visual Artform’s ongoing clients Dash Berlin and performer Jaime ( Taboo) Gomez of the Black Eyed Peas have taken the one- year- old company all around the world. Through its clients, Visual Artform has worked at venues such as California’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Miami’s Ultra Music Festival and the Sundance Film Festival.
The two- employee company is based in Vancouver because Edwards, a British electronic music producer with deep ties to the European music industry, visited Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics and ended up marrying Gordon, a Vancouver local.
Visual Artform also does corporate and other entertainment work. One ongoing client is Amber Lounge, which creates high- end Formula One Grand Prix after- parties for the drivers and other VIPs. At the Singapore F1 Grand Prix, Edwards projected client logos and tiny jumping fish onto a waterfall.
At his next Grand Prix job in Monaco, he will video map a swimming pool so mermaids, logos and a giant yacht will appear in the water.
“I would love to, come Christmas time, do an animation on the side of a building in downtown Vancouver, where it looks like it’s snowing,” Gordon said.
“At a big conference, one wall could be bought as advertising space but instead of putting up a poster, you’re doing 3D animations.
“We can project animations onto a car and make it look like the car is moving. We can video map on any surface. We can make it look like the car window is going up and down, or the wheels look like they are spinning.”
Edwards believes he’s got about 10 serious competitors, each with a slightly different specialty. His forte, given his background as a music producer, is creating visuals that respond to the music.
Fees the company charges depend on the size of the projection surface. A few projectable animations that show a company name being chiselled into ice for a TV- sized screen might cost $ 500, while an animation for a giant LED screen such as on Las Vegas’s main strip may cost $ 5,000.
Visual Artform plans to hire Vancouverbased animators during the next year, Edwards said.