CLUB AUTOMATIC

CLUB AUTOMATIC (CA) is a live-performance based around a cooking-action and a set of artists, musicians, VJs, DJs. All connected by the "Club automatic" interface-2 ways system.
The audience's movements in the space are analyzed through a sensor system and are retransmitted and interpretated audiovisually in real time.
Such gestures, such combinations of gestures generates such sounds, which in turn play a part in the filmsequence. The audience's body becomes the remote control of the picture-sound machine.
CLUB AUTOMATIC takes place in public spaces such as clubs, galleries or media events.

1. Live performance
2. Data jokey
3. CA_visuals
4. Live music
5. Performance
6. Cooking action
7. The Chef cook
8. Interactive system
9. Proto system
10. Workshopping
11. Biographies

Live performance

CLUB AUTOMATIC (CA) events are multi-layered live performances. The layers – for example vision and sound – are tuned and twisted by technique and choreography. Technique links all actives – including the audience. Choreography gives the basic timing and sets the ‘hot spots’.
Accordingly, CA events function like an interactive program rather than a stage-production. They integrate all circumstances – people as spaces; some in its pre-setting, some during the course of the happening. Just like the clubs we know, CA is a system made for (inter)active moments. But here it is not only the ones allowed through human commitment, but also those triggered by machines. The result of it shows you – spectator, guest and participant – and your commitment, in the mix.

 

Data jokey

Just as for the mix in the discothèque, there are jockeys in CA. They operate mixing tables and decide which one of all the inputs take a part in the final output. Often these mixes – may they be visual or audio – create the dominant image during a CA event. However, if the focus is on other action, the data jockey builds a real time framing – mostly including input from the very action it accompanies.
Therefore the data material which goes into the mix is either pre-produced or brought in live. However, even the pre-produced images or sounds generally go back to the context of action. CA-members often record stuff on location, always relating to local circumstances and according typical means of expressions. In general, the aim is to produce a cross-over of the given (e.g. local tradition or architecture) and the new (e.g. technology or individual input).

CA_visuals

CA is striving for exchange – the exchange of data and skills as, above all, the exchange between people. All devices serve this exchange – either through interactive means or, even more so, by producing general visions. Through the relation to local characteristics and to general understandings, particularly the visuals serve as mediators.
CA develops an (visual or audio) iconography which is cyclopedic. Plus, there are always images which reflect the very moment. All participants – that is protagonists and audience – find themselves being part of this information cluster, finding a universal corporal alphabet, making up fragments of the story. This is easy to grasp, since you see real reflections (e.g. yourself on the screen) and feel real connections (your image among easy to understand relating ones).

Live music

Naturally, with the images there is sound. It is generated by different devices: the usual ones as instruments or any music media player, from archives with special audio files and loops, or by one of the real time recording tools, as those going with cameras or individual pick-ups.
As described in context of the data jockeys, there is one (or two) persons receiving every sound being generated. In result, the final mix can be understood as an orchestra (of things, if you want). However, CA emphasizes ‘real’ music in their performances. Therefore there are always live musicians or bands as well as DJs involved in the program. However, even their songs may become part of the ‘greater’ composition.

Performance

Working as a sum of many ‘small’ performances, you can see CA events as one large performance or a social sculpture. Anyways, particularly through the co-operation with local artists and artist groups, there are always ‘real’ performances involved, which can be read in the basic meaning of the term.
This includes singers and music groups, dancers and other body expressiveness, machine artists and action painters, as well as so many others. Through their means every CA receives its unique expression, because when you look for special character and aesthetics of a certain region, it will always be the human feeling and its artistic translation, which can give you an idea.

Cooking action

Looking over massive media hardware, CA covers inherent needs – not only through comprehension of human input, but with fine cuisine. And since food is the only item triggering all senses (even audio, as you may read below), front cooking builds the heart of CA performances.
Depending on size and (naturally) budget of the regarding CA event, the kitchen supplies make a significant part in the installation as such. And as the CA network likes to technically link all actions, also the kitchen tools are plugged. Just imagine a kitchen-aid mixer being equipped with pick-up microphones and connected to the sound mixer.

The Chef cook

Feeding an audience of a few dozens or even a few hundred people, calls for a major job – the chef cook. Since CA does not perform at restaurants or convention centers, he is in charge of absolutely everything which goes with a multi-course dinner.
He has to create the menu, investigate places to shop the specific ingredients (particularly when abroad), find all missing hardware (such as powerful burners or just tons of dishes), build a team for all preparations, install a temporary kitchen, choreograph the courses and supervise the whole setting.As the overall choreography, the cooking goes with main settings.

This can resort to local settings, regional characteristics, on-location features or "just" artistic decisions. Every CA performance works with topics and key items which are then also found in the kitchen.
Imagine a space on different levels, e.g. an old warehouse and a happening which takes you through the different stories by a program which starts at the ground floor and ends on the roof. Each floor has its own color, atmosphere and smell. The kitchen adjusts to that. This is an easy example. However, those are the settings which work best since, with all connections and cables, complexity is coming naturally.

Tracing back traditions and social interfaces, food has always been and – fortunately – mostly still is key. Which other active rituals do we (in the "western world") have but sitting around a table and enjoying a common meal?
And then, when we talk about mixing: Which kind of mix is easier to grasp (and compare) than the one of delicious ingredients and exotic spices? So, here we have the mix par excellence. Particularly so, when the chef takes his home experience and brings it together with regarding local specialties. In fact, the meals carry a lot of what CA events stand for in general. That is the transmission of cultural icons on a basic and easy to understand level.

If we watch the cook joggling with piles of vegetables, a big pot of stew, fresh fruit and all his crew, it is a close call to title him jockey. At the same time, the term should not be stressed too much. Here it really means that the cook and his paraphernalia are in the mix.
Following the aim of real-time translation of personal expression and origin, CA events connect all participating sources. Accordingly the cook is plugged, too. To be precise, there are pick-up microphones on knifes and egg-whisks. Mobile cameras capture the action. And all data goes right into the audio-visual live-mix: Food is guided through digital streams and becomes part of the elucidating media.

Interactive system

CA performances are complex interactive multimedia installations. It builds an interface which brings people closer – to others, the technique and themselves. The audience’ bodies become remote controls of a big picture-sound-machine.
In fact, guests of CA experiment relate technical devises to their own position and motion. They make up what you could call a corporal alphabet. For example jumping would give a more dramatic effect than waving. In dialogue with the machine, you end up finding out about your body-lyrics and body-icons. And like video games, CA devices allow upgrading of levels and entrance to ever more complex combinations.
Be interactive with the audience, the same old blues, but with new digital machinery.
The audience's movements in the space are analyzed through a sensor system and are retransmitted and interpretated audiovisually in real time.
Few different sensors or pulsors are set in space [pickup, infrared, 3D scanner, beamer, etc]. These sensors correspond to the common functions of a remote control [play, ffw, rew, stop]. Control monitor gives the user a visualization of his action / interaction with the programme and gives him the possibility to take control of the picture and sound synthetizer.

Proto system

"Sensation Death" by the choreographer Rica Blunck was our first profound experience on MIDI system [1996]...
Working with Rica Blunck was a very inspiring pleasure. We worked together on the production in which we combined new interactive computer technology, MIDI system and video art with modern dance.
By different technical means the stage and the actors were connected to computer terminals, from where the spectators were able to participate and influence the course of the show...The dancer's movements in the space were analyzed through a 3D sensor system (pickup/infrared) and retransmitted and interpretated audiovisually in real time...
Apart from stage design and costumes for the five performers, Gérard Couty conceived with Jack Bigot a complex interactive system for "Sensation Death".
Rica Blunck´s way of integrating different artforms into her work was very exciting and lead to a very special new kind of performance... "Sensation Death" was a starting point for our own recherche on live 3D interactive performance.

Workshopping

CA is a teamwork and we love to find some new fellow-member and working in close collaboration with exellent young artists and some strange local personage. It´s also a way to create a group of local collaborator well informed about our aim. CA is about creating a mood and everybody involved in the CA performance has to be consciousness and consistent.
Always CA leaves some space for others to join in, provide room for the mind, a open framework.
Workshoping is a smooth propaganda technic to find a collective agreement...

• 9-13 September 2001.

CA [Jack Bigot and Gerard Couty] was invited by the Barcelona group Noda, for a workshop about the human interface and MIDI system.
We realised a complex moving scuplture, sort of fitness-machine, during a 5 days workshop.
Moving the fitness-machine was moving a 3D animation and sound. At the end we did a Première for public, with a dancer

• December 1st.2001

for the ending of the festival „Rencontre Vidéo Art-Plastique“, in Hérouville Saint Clair in Normandie, a CA as a big media techno-party in Hérouville´s theater powered by Station Mir.

• hEXPO the international festival of self-organised cultural forms, Slovenia 17.08.-14.09.2000

hEXPO was a kind of intinerant media festival in deep eastern country fields powered and directed by Marko Kosnik. The idea was the circulation of 3 groups of people in 3 cities during 3 weeks and we, CA aka „the Sexy Disco Group“ indulged into this clear and fluid concept, surfing, diving and getting wet within slovenian cultural context...

• 23rd of July 2002, the first CA in Indonesia to the honor of Jean-Pascal Elbaz (the French Cultural Attaché) who is leaving after eleven years of devoting work to the arts and culture in Indonesia, for new professional tasks to Madras in India.

A five-course menu by a french cook, installations, poetry, performances, fine arts, music, actions, concerts, gamelan, video, interactive media, refreshements, dancing, disco offering a crossover of east and west, traditions and modernism, singing, games, speaches, projections, a prepared swimming pool, chillout spaces, video lounge, resting and relaxing possibilities as well as other surprises.

Biographies

CA is a [no] group of people - artists, video-makers, media-people, performers, musicians, technicians, producers - working ON>IN interactive communication system.
A group very easely adaptable to every situation, formed by people from USA, France, Germany.

Conception / Realisation / Design:Gerard Couty
Text: Christopher Mueller and Gerard Couty
Music Club Automatic
Photo: Michel Piet, Rotraut Pape, David Dronet, Roland Lakis, Christopher Mueller, Gerard Couty, Mike A. Hentz

the CA Première was in Dessau during the International Electronic Media Forum "Ostanenie´97".
CA team was Jacques Bigot, Gérard Couty, Christian Graupner, Olivier Schulbaum.

• Christopher Mueller (Germany)DJ Moulinex

Organizer of events in the field of (club)culture [Art on Demand agency] and cofounder of the soundsystemFlush the Rhythm and the living-project Brandshof.
MA in American Studies and Media Culture.
<brandshof@hhaus.de>
www.artondemand.org

• Gerard Couty (France, Germany)

Media artist
Besides running projects like Minus Delta T, Infermental, radio Bellevue, he was the main force behind Frigo, an independent multimedia production facility. He works as independent film maker and electronic graphic designer for TV channel productions.
<pape.couty@hamburg.snafu.de>
www.unitvnetwork.org

• David Dronet (France)

Multimedia and video artist
Co-founder and director of Station Mir in Herouville St-Clair, France
(audiovisual and multimedia laboratory and artist in residency venue).
Professor for media in Caen art school, France
<mir@station-mir.com>
www.station-mir.com

• Jacques Bigot (France)

aka Doctor Zack
Electronic engineer, sound engineer, computer programmer, networking expert, designer of interactive systems. Works at the Museum of technology in La Villette, Paris.
<jabigot@free.fr>

• Michel Piet (France)

Cook, performer. Is involved in multi-media-art events in international context together with artists from different fields. Based in Lyon with its own company "Cuisine-sur-Thèmes" Michel has been elaborating on analog multi-media for the senses that make sense im-mediately for over 20 years now.
<mpiet@club-internet.fr>

• Mike A. Hentz (USA, Germany)

Besides running projects like Minus Delta T, Van Gogh TV, Odyssee, Roma Machine, and Medusa, he had done countless performances in the field of polymedia, workshops which expanded social sculptures, and connected artists and intellectuals throughout Eastern Europe long before Berlin Wall had fallen.
Professor for performance in Stuttgart art school, Germany.
<metronam@gmx.net>
www.ponton.de/archive/archive_pompino.html

• Rotraut Pape (Germany)

Noted video artist, member of the Raskin performance group, producer for Arte, author of multimedia and interactive installations. Leader of video/tv workshops for Goethe Institute in Africa and Asia.
Professor for film and media in Offenbach art school, Germany.
<pape@em.uni-frankfurt.de>
<rotron@snafu.de>
www.werkleitz.de/~pape