Panteros666 and Inès Alpha are the future of cyber club culture. Under the flag of HyperAlliance, the French duo and their army of 3D artists and DJs are pixellizing the clubbing space. Using mp3, mp4, 360° motion capture and open source obj. as weapons, this new label slash digital art collective is ready to take over the control on the media galaxy.
A track with no visual is a track with no soul. This is why it is primordial for HyperAlliance to create a synergy between what you listen and what you see. Both inspired by the surreal book Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini, and by the digital worlds of visual artists like Vince McKelvie, Katja Novitskova or Jeremie Bailey, HyperAlliance is a project which definitely has the potential to become a major piece of work in the landscape of new media artists today. Far away from the cyberpunk aesthetic glorifying dolphins and Windows 98, it is creating something new, challenging the codes of the post, designing the future now.
Hello Inès and Panteros666. Who are you?
Panteros666: Hello, I’m Panteros666, DJ, producer and video maker. I want to create the future of the mp3 and augment DJ sets with visual elements while carrying on the rave heritage.
Inès: Hi! I’m Inès Alpha, art director and 3-D artist. I’ve worked for seven years in advertising, specialised in luxury and beauty. I started using 3-D software as a hobby and am now fully dedicated to it as an art. I like to create enchanted versions of reality.
Since we met, we’ve always worked on different projects such as interactive GIFs websites, music videos or live performance. We naturally teamed up because our skills were complementary and we shared the same vision and aesthetics.
Inès: Hi! I’m Inès Alpha, art director and 3-D artist. I’ve worked for seven years in advertising, specialised in luxury and beauty. I started using 3-D software as a hobby and am now fully dedicated to it as an art. I like to create enchanted versions of reality.
Since we met, we’ve always worked on different projects such as interactive GIFs websites, music videos or live performance. We naturally teamed up because our skills were complementary and we shared the same vision and aesthetics.
HyperAlliance is the new label slash digital art collective you’ve initiated this year. With this project you bring together 3-D artists, graphic designers and VR engineers in order to “re-enchant the mp3 through augmented reality.” How did the idea come up?
Panteros666: Since I have chosen to dedicate my life to club music, my two cornerstones have always been dance and technology. Dance is purely about music and fun. And technology is the science of tools and techniques. Technology does not necessarily mean cutting edge, crazy dystopian, dehumanized digitally enslaved stuff, iPad, mono-wheel bullshit. It means reflecting upon the set of tools to achieve what you have in mind. Whenever I’m done with a beat I’ll always feel uncompleted. Don’t ask me why but I just feel like it needs to be enchanted with something visual. A track with no visual is a track with no soul to me, a bed without blanket. That’s when Inès and the digital art local collective come into play.
Inès: When we began working on the version II of Panteros666’ live performance, we didn’t want to only show our visuals. So far we’ve met plenty of talented people – 3-D artists, photographers and graphic designers – both in Paris and abroad with whom we share the same taste. And we thought our live show could be some kind of gallery for all of them by exhibiting their work. We love the idea of collaboration, being part of the same aesthetic movement, helping each other to share our vision to the public. Stronger together, you know. Of course virtual and augmented reality seemed to be relevant to immerse people inside our different minds.
Inès: When we began working on the version II of Panteros666’ live performance, we didn’t want to only show our visuals. So far we’ve met plenty of talented people – 3-D artists, photographers and graphic designers – both in Paris and abroad with whom we share the same taste. And we thought our live show could be some kind of gallery for all of them by exhibiting their work. We love the idea of collaboration, being part of the same aesthetic movement, helping each other to share our vision to the public. Stronger together, you know. Of course virtual and augmented reality seemed to be relevant to immerse people inside our different minds.
The project takes its full dimension while experimenting the VR immersive 360° ‘metaclub’ you’ve presented for the first time in Galerie 204 in Paris. Can you explain what it is about? Do you see the future of clubbing in pixels?
Inès: Metaclubs are a VR / 360° environment designed for a track. We collaborated with advanced VR engineers to get a next level graphic result.
Panteros666: I have no vision of the future! Even when I was younger I felt all science fiction was wrong for the reason that it meant the extinction of plants, a fully automatized world and human beings unaware of their bodies. Clubbing is a sweaty and perilous activity for the weekend, and it will always stay that way. Pixels are a way of experiencing clubbing behind your laptop or phone. Pixels are great for online life, but the future of clubbing also lies in human flesh moving about for eternity.
Inès: With HyperAlliance the idea is to have fun by combining online club experiences and real club life. We’re still figuring out how, of course. We are here for research. We’ve tried some apps where you can immerse yourself in a virtual club with VR. You can imagine everyone has an avatar, like in Second Life, and the DJ plays streaming live on a screen inside the virtual 3-D scene. It’s pretty fun! But as Victor (Panteros666) said, it’s still hard to imagine a true clubbing experience inside a headset, without the sweat and the energy of the crowd. But we’ll see…
Panteros666: I have no vision of the future! Even when I was younger I felt all science fiction was wrong for the reason that it meant the extinction of plants, a fully automatized world and human beings unaware of their bodies. Clubbing is a sweaty and perilous activity for the weekend, and it will always stay that way. Pixels are a way of experiencing clubbing behind your laptop or phone. Pixels are great for online life, but the future of clubbing also lies in human flesh moving about for eternity.
Inès: With HyperAlliance the idea is to have fun by combining online club experiences and real club life. We’re still figuring out how, of course. We are here for research. We’ve tried some apps where you can immerse yourself in a virtual club with VR. You can imagine everyone has an avatar, like in Second Life, and the DJ plays streaming live on a screen inside the virtual 3-D scene. It’s pretty fun! But as Victor (Panteros666) said, it’s still hard to imagine a true clubbing experience inside a headset, without the sweat and the energy of the crowd. But we’ll see…
Your aesthetic makes me think a lot about the work of post-internet and new media artists such as the Canadian Jon Rafman, who explores virtual and dystopian territories in the form of a lost ideal. Are the same motivations behind the creation of metaclubs?
We feel the metaclubs are a temporary incomplete solution to virtual reality and music. What we have in common with the post-internet and new media artists is that we portray the making of the digital civilisation in which we’ve let ourselves into without taking the time to think it through. When it started in early 2010s, it was all about glorifying the Internet, dolphins, video games or parallel online lives. A wink at everything fun and futile we could see online. Not even a decade later it’s mutated into a full satire of itself. Like poetry, which began as a candid ode to nature and life but became a dark and twisted existential art expression few centuries later. Just like the demise of Instagram, going from innocent food and lifestyle pics to a post ironical narcissistic echo chamber.
Other contemporary artists, filmmakers or digital artists that influence your work everyday?
Inès favourite 3-D artist is Vince McKelv, his textures and forms are in another level. We also are inspired by Luigi Serafini, a writer from the 20th century who created a full encyclopaedia of his own imaginary world, called Codex Seraphinianus – if you’re into nudibranchs and alien maths, this is for you.
We really like Unreality Journeys, a group of American people pioneering VR DJ sets online in a cool way; Anne de Vries, always visually stunning and culturally right; Katja Novitskova katjanovi.net/, who makes great use of gallery space with her digital creations; Kevin Bray, who fascinates anyone by mixing visual mediums in his creations; The Rodina, whose idea of performance design is really exciting; and Jeremy Bailey, a fun and captivating new media artist.
We really like Unreality Journeys, a group of American people pioneering VR DJ sets online in a cool way; Anne de Vries, always visually stunning and culturally right; Katja Novitskova katjanovi.net/, who makes great use of gallery space with her digital creations; Kevin Bray, who fascinates anyone by mixing visual mediums in his creations; The Rodina, whose idea of performance design is really exciting; and Jeremy Bailey, a fun and captivating new media artist.
You are also precursors in the way you think the business model of HyperAlliance. On your website, all the files are downloadable and free open source. Why this choice? What is your vision for the music industry in 2049?
Panteros666: Legal download is gonna disappear for the mass audience. It’s all going to be about streaming or DJs paying for vinyl and high quality mp3.
Inès: Everyone is already sharing his visual work freely in high resolution, there are a lot of free 3-D objs, free green screen footages, etc. We used that a lot in our work, it is so helpful. And we would love to see what people can make with all our stuff, we are very curious.
Inès: Everyone is already sharing his visual work freely in high resolution, there are a lot of free 3-D objs, free green screen footages, etc. We used that a lot in our work, it is so helpful. And we would love to see what people can make with all our stuff, we are very curious.
“A track with no visual is a track with no soul to me, a bed without blanket.” Panteros666
Oscillating between trance, gabber, hard techno, power ambiant, future core, eurodance, etc., the music from your label has no boundaries. What do all the artists from the crew have in common?
The very first ‘hyperallied’ musicians are Fashion Italia, DJ Darklord, Raito, Oshirijima, Joseph Marinetti (Lucky Me), and Aamourocean. All artists have an artistic sensitivity and an open mind about club music. A club track needs to be a full idea or concept. They believe you can dance to anything. For the time being, music on the label is gonna be either post rave high energy or ambient healing music. Then again, we let ourselves evolve. We are here for the research and development in the field of club music and digital images. Who said we are not free to make a U-turn and decide to make only black and white 2-D images designed for fifteen-minute-long minimal hypnotic atonal micro-house tracks?
You are a product of the club kid generation of the ‘90s in Paris. Where is the cyberpunk underground scene in the French capital in 2017?
The cyberpunk is no longer underground, it’s everyone out partying with a smartphone in his or her pocket. From an afterwork executive dancing to deep disco house checking his Tinder, to a student taking a selfie with the DJ at an afterparty.
Inès: We wish there were still club kid parties, people in costumes and crazy makeups. Personally I’d love to bring more ‘Disneyland’ to parties, with more animations and scenography on stage, crazy decorations everywhere, transforming clubs into new worlds you can’t find in reality. There is this club at the France-Belgium frontier that plays mostly gabber, and inside it’s like Pirates of the Caribbean. The DJ booth is a boat, bars are boats, and there are palm trees and LED on the ceiling, so it looks like a night sky. I love it.
Inès: We wish there were still club kid parties, people in costumes and crazy makeups. Personally I’d love to bring more ‘Disneyland’ to parties, with more animations and scenography on stage, crazy decorations everywhere, transforming clubs into new worlds you can’t find in reality. There is this club at the France-Belgium frontier that plays mostly gabber, and inside it’s like Pirates of the Caribbean. The DJ booth is a boat, bars are boats, and there are palm trees and LED on the ceiling, so it looks like a night sky. I love it.
What do you dream for the future of HyperAlliance?
Further extending the family. Keeping on working innovative audio-visual formats. Creating a post cyberpunk Rocky Horror Picture Show live performance.
