CRAZY MONKEY

art4d CAUGHT UP WITH HO CHI MINH CITY-BASED LE THANH TUNG, AKA ‘CRAZY MONKEY’ TO TALK ABOUT THE PROCESS AND INSPIRATION BEHIND HIS LIVE VISUALS AND VIDEO MAPPING PRACTICE AIMED AT “INVENTING NEW FORMS OF ENVIRONMENTS IN WHICH TO EXPERIENCE ART.”

 

“The first time that I saw my artwork at a music festival it was on this giant screen and I felt like – Ok! My artwork is no longer just on the monitor or on the canvas, it has come out and it is on the giant screen and there are 1000s of people watching it – that was something that made me so excited,” described Le Thanh Tung, otherwise known as Crazy Monkey, a visual artist currently working with live visuals and video mapping based in HCMC.

Crazy Monkey’s works, which range from generative visuals and installations, 3d projection mapping and holograms to live video performances for EDM festivals do seem far from possible to contain within a canvas’s frame or the restrictive dimensions of any form of monitor, their melding of light, sound and at times the viewer’s own interaction demanding something of a much broader playing field. “Whenever I would go to a party or festival the sound was always interacting with me in a very different way and I wanted to explore that but could not – I was just the same with all the people, just dancing. But now, that I have found out about VJing and performing live visuals as an art form, I can make my artwork move and interact with the sound. With video mapping and visuals I feel that I can explore my feelings with the sound, the music and my artwork – and that is awesome,” furthered the young media enthusiast whose unique and playful visual style undoubtedly stems from his background working in graphic design and animation, finding the perfect blend between effect provided by the technology and that which calls upon you, the user, to contribute.

“I think, in the graphic design world, we have a word for it – eye candy. When you combine the human form and human body language with the language of the digital, it is also some kind of eye candy. For example, when you are working in 3d animation and you have to animate the whole character, one by one, the hand and the finger, it can move – but when the motion capture catches a real person moving and the 3d character moves following the person’s movement – then people are like, Oh! Yeah! It just moved! – and that is eye candy.”

 

Crazy Monkey’s eye candy has recently expanded scope from the incorporation of other’s input as visual to that of the form of partnership and collective practice through the establishment of the Box Collective, an Art Atelier and “container for the combined activities of various artists based in Ho Chi Minh City” founded apace with fellow visual performer Antonio Rosciano (VJ Paki) and aimed at “inventing new forms of environments in which to experience art” through the incorporation of live performance and various degrees of interactivity. “The latest project that we just finished was for the Future Now Music Festival, it was our first project together and we handled the visuals on stage for the whole event while spending some time to experiment with different techniques like 3D dance, the Kinect Dance and interactive media. I also created some designs with the Kinect that collected the dancers image from the camera and also recorded the bitmap image, so that the two forms of information could come together and from that we created the 3d visual.” The Box collective remaining open in terms of media and technique while committed to the design of participated social experiences and the production of projects rooted in the opportunities live performance provides.

 

Projection mapping, live video performances and user interaction are not, however, new forms of expression the world over and, as Crazy Monkey sees it, it is the familiarity of the tune elsewhere that provides him with the platform he requires in order to learn and experiment within the discipline further. “New media is new here, but it is not something quite new all over the world. You know? I can find a lot of open source and open libraries where people have shared their projects and I can download, change things and learn from that. Facebook is also a great community for me to learn and connect with people; there are a lot of groups and a lot of pages that can help me a lot. I learn a lot from the Internet, from Google and from YouTube.” Crazy Monkey’s own interactive media works finding these social platforms that have become matter of course for exchange and the facilitation of relationships a fitting platform for obtaining not only advice, but also further opportunities. “It has been a long process of self-promotion and, like a lot of artists here, I have an Instagram and a Facebook page and I update all of them with my recent work daily or weekly. Also, with my networking from my work in graphic design and advertising, people can find my work. But I do have to self promote and say, ‘Hey, I am doing design for this event!’ and share the work on Facebook and then people will see the work and call me for another event, it works like that.”

 

One event leading to another and new skills learned as well as the artist’s increasing adeptness at harnessing the potentials of the medium unfolding in an ever-evolving, and growing body of work, Crazy Monkey’s repertoire is at present, driven by the opportunities that the technology provides. “At the moment, the technology drives my ideas further. I am still in the process of experimenting and trying new techniques and new technologies and whenever I find a new tool that can help me to do something, then I can also find a new idea and a concept that fits with that. So, for me, at the moment, the technology comes first.”

 

Nonetheless, pixel and point cloud aside, what really lies behind Crazy Monkey’s desire to explore a medium one has yet to fully comprehend within a format whose boundaries seem far from reach is that which is closest to home, the human element.

“People love the creativity because it is something that brings them to another dimension and it brings them to something new, it gives them something inspiring for their life and that is why they support it. Whenever I talk about a new plan or a new project, I always find support from people around me and for that, I feel lucky.” The media of light and sound matching the intangibility of expression and feeling in a manner that just might allow for one to hear what they think, see what they feel.

crazymonkeybox.com