DJ Food takes audiovisual performance to the next level at the SATosphere

“There are no rules yet, you don’t know what to expect, and I like that,” says DJ Food, a.k.a. Strictly Kev (a.k.a. Kevin Foakes), about doing a/v performances in planetariums and domes.

“It’s unbelievably challenging. Making footage and animation for domes is a whole other ballgame because you’re thinking in 3D.”  In fact, he’s only done it once before, when he launched the latest DJ Food album, The Search Engine, at the London Planetarium in January. Adding to the technical challenge is the fact that the show at the SATosphere uses an entirely different system because the genre is so new that there’s no standardization yet.

“A lot of things I’m doing will be proof of concept on the night,” says Kev. It’s a risky but exciting challenge. “The software is such that you can almost place things in different places around the 3D space so a lot of the footage is huge in size. It has to be 4,000 pixels squared to cover the dome at a good resolution, most cameras don’t shoot film that big.”

SATosphere’s 150 speakers add another dimension to the sound, and how it’s sculpted to work with the visuals. “I’m bringing a 2 terabyte drive to Montreal with the show on it, it’s no longer a laptop or vinyl, it’s a terabyte drive!” Clearly, dome performances have come a long way since the days when people dropped a tab to listen to Pink Floyd while stargazing at the Planetarium.

That said, space is still the place. For the visuals, Kev is using footage provided by the astronomer he worked with at the London Planetarium, his own artwork (he’s also an accomplished graphic artist), as well as work by fellow dome artronauts working in the genre.

“There’s a lot of imagery that was generated for The Search Engine album, both from the cover imagery, that is very cartoon and retro scifi-based, and a photo shoot of myself in an astronaut suit. Some of my old Ninja artwork makes appearances in a few sequences, so people might see things they recognize. There’s a lot of space imagery too, star field things. I’ve tried to balance that out with more graphic type stuff.”

3D space: the final frontier
While much of Kev’s current focus is on the visuals, the music is no afterthought.

“It’s like I’ve made the soundtrack first and now I’m making the film to go with it,” he says about the process. The album that launched Kev into the outer limits of visual creation, The Search Engine, is the first DJ Food release in a dozen years. It too explores new sonic ground, featuring collaborations with J.G. Thirwell (Foetus), Matt Johnson (The The) and others, and is being reshaped for the SATosphere performance.

It’s also getting the dome treatment, being broken down into its various parts to take advantage of the SATosphere’s 150 speakers and advanced technology to add another, mind boggling dimension. “It’s not as easy as turning up and plugging in. It’s beyond anything I’ve done…ever. It’s such a wild unknown.”

Of course, the aim remains the same as it was when tripping out to Pink Floyd under the stars – to create a mind blowing, out of this world experience and to enter the wild unknown. “There are sensations you don’t get in a regular club,” says Kev. “If the visuals are spinning too fast you can feel dizzy, there’s a point where the ceiling drops in and everything sort of caves in on you in one sequence. Until you’ve experienced it, cliché as that is, you won’t get it.”

DJ Food: The Search Engine
July 19-20 | SAT (Société des arts technologiques)
1201, St. Laurent
djfood.org