Pixelflowers’ current live sets and video installations

Pixelflowers performing live at Berlin Atonal 2023 - Universal Metabolism

Pixelflowers performing live with Transistors Of Mercy at Berlin Atonal 2023 – Universal Metabolism

Our last video live set took place at Berlin Atonal 2023 – Universal Metabolism (photo). Since then we did a few screenings of our visuals, and we now return to full activity. Here is a a quick overview of our next performances and installations:

Friday 6/9/2024, h23
Live set all night long
Tresor meets Enigma 6 year anniversary
Tresor – Köpenicker Str. 70 – 10179 Berlin

Saturday 20/7/2024, h 9pm-8am
Live set all night long
Pink Noise Generation
OHM – Köpenicker Str. 70 – 10179 Berlin

Sunday 21/7/2024, h 1pm-late
Video installations
Fafanto [bazaar/bizarre]
secret location

Wednesday 24/7/2024, h 11pm-8am
Live set all night long
Art Bei Ton x Acquario
://about blank – Markgrafendamm 24c – 10245 Berlin

Live visuals for dancefloors

As Pixelflowers we always perform live, making visuals primarily for techno dancefloors. Admittely, we have been keeping very little documentation of our past shows: at these dance parties most people refrain to take photos and videos (it’s frown upon here in Berlin, often actually forbidden, and for good reasons we think; we have learnt ourselves how valuable this is, how it contributes to the atmosphere and freedom). We could record our visuals directly from the outputs of our video mixer, but we think that wouldn’t really document our performance, as it wouldn’t represent the way projections and CRT TVs look in the physical space and how they become part of the dancefloor experience. Anyway, here are some short clips to give an ideas of how our shows look like.

12/3/2022: secret place, Interzone

 

18/3/2022: About Blank, Eclectique x Art Bei Ton

 

26/3/2022: Loophole, Daddies On Acid

 

12/11/21: Krake Festival, performance with Transistors of Mercy (projections on site + broadcasting show)

Back offline! News on our live sets in March

Last Tuesday we supported two live concerts (Rtalin and Evripidis and His Tragedies) and a DJ set by Daddies On Acid at the underground club Loophole, the same small, dirty lovely venue where a couple of years ago we gave our very first live VJ performance.

Then on Saturday we made live visuals at our beloved Interzone party where Suzanne, La Baldi and again Daddies On Acid played:

 

Next Friday, we will head with our cameras and TVs to Ostkreuz to perform in the well-known techno club About Blank. From 1am we will make live visuals in the ‘Tent’ dancefloor, supporting DJ sets by Unjin, Jessica Kert, Vibko and Marian Tone. The event is a collaboration between Eclectique and Art Bei Ton.

And on Saturday 26 March 2022, we will be part of the Daddies On Acid party that for the first time will take place at Loophole.

Our latest video productions and live performances

While Autumn gets colder and darker, more and more pixel flowers blossom! A few months ago, the Berlin-based producer and DJ Exildiscount committed us our first music video, and we are now working on a second one for another music act. We’ve still been streaming every Wednesday for the Daddies On Acid and Interzone parties, and uploading all the recordings to the Internet Archive. Since August 2021, as soon as the lockdowns eased, we got back to performing live at techno parties, in a new collaboration with Art Bei Ton and then again with Interzone. A few days ago, we achieved our dream of making visuals all night long at the Gegen party in Kit Kat Club, in our beloved Dragon Floor. Next Friday, we will support the legendary synthesizer band Transistors Of Mercy as part of Krake Festival 2021. More VJ sets at techno parties are planned for November. In December we will also begin collaborating with Autonoma Industriale, whose events feature techno industrial music, often played live on synthesizers.

Check out the sidebar for details.

Exildiscount – Going to Bed Hungry [Official Music Video]

Here’s the music video we made for Exildiscount‘s track “Going to Bed Hungry”, taken from their EP “Next Big Thing”, released on June 11, 2021 via Unboxing Shadows (UXS001).

The title “Going to Bed Hungry” refers to an art performance/video installation by Exildiscount, which was simultaneously video taped from 3 camera perspectives, called “Of the Eternal Fear of Going to Bed Hungry”. We remixed and processed this footage in our own visual style, interpreting the track in a kind of live video performance.

A child being sent to bed without dinner? No, here’s a punishment more pernicious and severe: a life lived in the shadow of a dark past, marred by the attempt to break out of the sway of ideology, biological family, normative identity. A life that has left you hungry, while a history of trauma keeps spoiling your appetite. Here’s to the healing rage – one of the many steps on the way to redemption and owning your truth.

Spreading our colorful pixel virus across Europe

Pixelflowers VJ set at Art Bei Ton: Private 3 event. Berlin, 27 August 2021

Pixelflowers VJ set at Art Bei Ton: Private 3 event. Berlin, 27 August 2021

While we continue our weekly livestreamings in a collaboration with the Berlin-based queer parties Interzone and Daddies On Acid, in the last months we also got back to performing live. Pixelflowers is a VJing duo and ideally we make live visuals together, but this week-end we will split across the continent, in order to spread our colorful pixel virus to the widest possible area. We will perform simultaneously in Berlin -at an Art Bei Ton event- and somewhere in France. If you would like to attend, please get in touch with us (via Instagram, or email: pixelflowers at privacyrequired dot com)!

420 (our submission to the Scanlines birthday community showcase, 2021)

scanlines.xyz, an online forum and website devoted to audio/video DIY projects we’re actively involved in, recently got 1 year old.

A community online showcase was organized to celebrate and since it was going to take place on 4/20, we decided to play around the coincidence and created this smoky video.

Pixelflowers x Marsala – Phantom Bra

In 2017, the participants in the PUOI DIRLO FORTE workshop, organized by Marsala and Silvia Torri and focused on disrupting gender violence and its toxic narratives, created the short video Phantom Bra. Il primo reggiseno per tette libere e fantasmagoriche.

On occasion of 2021, March 8, we reworked visually Phantom Bra and included it in a collective livestreaming organized by Trial & Theresa, a network of feminist VJs.

We made five different versions of Phantom Bra with original music and Italian dialogs, and a shorter one without audio.

Stream them below or download them here.

Continue reading “Pixelflowers x Marsala – Phantom Bra”

Our VJing equipment and setup – mid March 2021

For a few weeks we’ve been playing with a new (old) toy: a Canon XM2 camcorder. We don’t have any tapes at the moment, but we’re using the camera together with two 14″ TVs (found on the street) to rescan and to create video feedback loops. The camcorder has controls for the image quality and effects and we’re exploring its potential.

As we experiment with the camera and try new connections with our other video signals, looking for new interesting imagery to burst out of the wires, our setup grows and is now more involuted than ever.

Below is a diagram representing the equipment we use during our live visual sets and the connections between devices. The graph is made with Graphviz. Graphviz creates automatic diagrams out of text descriptions; we use it as a plugin on the Scanlines forum.

Pixelflowers' live visuals setup

click for full resolution madness

 

Check out our previous post for a background about equipment and techniques.

The video we made for Ephemeris Time

Here’s the 20′ video we created for Ephemeris Time, an end-of-the-year collective audio visual show organized at scanlines.xyz. Read more about its content, soundtrack, etc.

Continue reading “The video we made for Ephemeris Time”