I was invited to be part of a group exhibition for the 5 years anniversary of WTF Bar and Gallery. I spent a few weeks deciding what to do (the theme being “wonderful thai friendship”), hesitating between photography and video. Som, the curator encouraged me to go to the later, so I brainstormed on some ideas of a series of little videos focusing on my Bangkok Experience. I didn’t want anything pretentious, preferring something light that will make my audience smile. I came up with 4 short videos using mashups talking about very small problems in Bangkok in a non-serious way. All my videos were in low-res, 4:3 ratio for the purpose of the video and Marine Caillat helped me with the sound design for
Meanwhile in Thailand from Gabriel Camelin (Freelenser) on Vimeo.
I also have a personal problem with videos in exhibitions; I found them quite boring perhaps because of the serious environment surrounding them. I decided to go toward an interactive approach, leaving the audience deciding what they want to play. I used a makey-makey card and connected them to objects that would trigger the video. Each objects are a symbol of what the video is about: a lucky cat, a taxi (was hard to find a Thai toy version), a plastic bus, a doll that look like a squirrel (from far away) and a metallic shopping cart for the ground. All this objects were connected to the makey-makey which would trigger a video in modul8 (a vj software). The computer was then using an analog card to display the video on an old analog TV screen.
Everything worked fine but the makey-makey is oversensitive and is not the best choice for a long exhibition (2 months) so I had to come quite often to replace a few cables and fix some connection problems. I will have to work more carefully next time.
More information here. Wonderful Thai Friendship II, at WTF Bar & Gallery, 29 May-24 July 2015