Artist profile: Media apparat

Austria has a really awesome visual scene. We've been lucky enough to experience the good vibe and great people there a few times. And always the experience was rewarding and enlightening (and also there may have been a schnitzel or two). So we'd like to introduce you to one of the major players in the Vienna scene: Media Apparat.

Birthday Video: Media Apparat 2008-2012

Can you explain a bit about the history of Media Apparat?
Following several workshops in 2008 with bildwerk.tv and first gigs via the eye-con Label (4youreye), the collaborating DJs Matose & Flobert, VJ Sito Sun and Mister Pink founded an event called Media Apparat. VJ-Setups, which enable the audience to sense music in a space-consuming way, were focused.

Due to a lot of positive feedback the event was quickly turned into a collective for trans-medial Arts:
From stage designer to fashion designer, from producer to 3D modeler; many creative individuals encountered at the same place. Colleagueship and networking became our main principals. Countless gigs in clubs all over Europe provided us with the experience to win further commercial contracts.

Our tireless work on different techniques as well as the club-crowd itself made experimental projects possible. Most importantly: We were not afraid that anything might have gone wrong. Things did go wrong in the beginning. Our first mapping show turned out to be a fiasco; nevertheless this is how we managed to land our first major contract: The complete staging and production of the biggest Austrian science award. Through this engagement the Media Apparat became an Enterprise: Media Apparat Company + Network

Today, one and a half years later, we work for the biggest event agencies in Austria and have positioned our work as follows: We offer an All-In-One Service for agencies. We own a small film-studio and grow with every project. It is our ambition always to move ahead: To become more efficient, to design more impressively and to reduce mistakes to a minimum.

Eventually nowadays our clients spend enough money for the projects so that we can meet with our main principle which is networking on a trans-medial level. Out of the collective and networks therefore arose: Media Apparat Frameworks.

Biggest Austrian congress for Startups

What about the tech? What sort of gear do you lug with you for a show?
We are now in the fortunate position to being able to work without limits to our equipment. Every project has its proper profile of requirements. We have worked with several media servers, yet we mainly count on instruments that we are familiar with: A self-arranged computer with a 16 Gigabyte Ram, i7 CPU, ASUS EAH6970 graphic board, SSD as our work disc and if necessary Matrox-boards. For software we exclusively use Resolume Arena and as a plugin for mapping we use IRMapio. For backups, or if we deal with a high number of signals, we synchronize two systems, that’s it!
Controller: Launch-Pad + VCM-600

Is working commercially very different from a VJ gig?
One leads to the other. In the Club one gets the opportunity to learn about techniques, to test them, to experiment. What we learn there forms the basis for our commercial work.

Latest Mapping Show

How does Resolume fit into all this?
Resolume is a Live-System. On stage things don’t always go smoothly; often we must improvise. It enables us to react faster to external sources of error. I don’t know any other software with which I can map and arrange complex Setups with screens and projectors so fast as with Resolume.

What's your favorite show of the last four years?
Without a question: Amon Tobin- isam

And what about the future? Where is Media Apparat headed?
More and more we receive international enquiries, for which we are very pleased as in Austria complex shows usually are not within the budget. We continue to develop ourselves permanently. Elements like the stage-interaction between audience and artists are very promising for the future. The markets where we operate are subject to constant changes to which we try to adapt to. We increasingly rely on solid knowledge about classic live-direction and on existing systems (for example the Congress-technique). We try to develop those techniques without loosing our traditional playground – the stage-management of shows. We enjoy our diversified work a lot, it’s a lot of fun. The journey is the reward. We are looking forward to further projects. What they’ll look like, time will show.

Vienna Awards for Fashion and Lifestyle

Check out the site for more visual goodness:
Media Apparat

Posted by Joris on Friday August 17, 2012 at 12:00

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Artist profile: Media apparat

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