2003: 3min2 by Electronic Shadow

Yacine Aït Kaci, a multimedia creator born in Paris in 1973, and Naziha Mestaoui, an architect by training, born in Brussels in 1975, met in Lille, during the FIFI (International Internet Film Festival) in 2000. This encounter seems allegorical: video mapping is an alliance between arts of the image and arts of volume… in the digital era. With a shared belief that changes were imminent in the world at the dawn of this era, Yacine Aït Kaci and Naziha Mestaoui found Electronic Shadow, a hybrid artistic production platform that mixes architecture and digital imagery. They experiment with the projection of anamorphic images using software such as Photoshop, in volumes (on a human scale), by taking account of depth. In 2003, Electronic Shadow files a patent for the ‘space/image production system’ developed through three years of experimentation and sharing of expertise. This patent, entitled “system for the projection of a sequence of images onto a volume” is now in the public domain. Electronic Shadow's statement piece, 3min², is presented at the 2003 Nuit Blanche, in Paris.

3minutes² from Fondation ELYX on Vimeo.

This is the first video mapping that we have been able to reference in France at this stage. The term “video mapping” is not yet used for this during its presentation to the public. But it soon will be; and it is the same ‘video texture’ (i.e. the same image) which covers the different surfaces of this interior (including the side walls and upper face of the parallelepiped located at the front of the stage, which is horizontal). The video, in this case, is entirely narrative: a man and a woman perform a series of apparently ordinary actions, in a world slightly different from ours (doubtless a utopia, perhaps the near future). It was created using the After Effects software. 3min2 thus required just one 3,500-lumen projector, with a fairly short focal length: the surface to cover with light was fairly large with respect to the confined space within which it was to be installed. It was even necessary to use mirrors, to ensure that the beam of light could be extended and the image might expand. This installation, with the architecture that houses it, was exhibited and recognised at the Ars Electronica Festival in 2004, before claiming the Grand Prize at the Japan Media Art Festival in 2005.

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