Geoffrey Lillemon

TEMPLE

What inspired you to pursue a career in digital art and 3D production, and how did you get started in the field?

GEOFFREY LILLEMON

I have been in the field for around 25 years. I am currently 41 years old, so I started in the infancy of the internet and digital art. I was one of the people using Flash and exploring the use of websites and digital media as an art medium. This was quite new in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is where I first got my sensibility of how we can use digital platforms to be artistic in an emotionally provocative way. So, I started creating digital paintings in Flash, combining what I was doing in the physical realm of painting and incorporating animation, interaction and sound design. That was my first introduction to the world we're in now, which is, of course, very different.

TEMPLE

You also co-founded two companies that provided art and technology solutions for brands and museums, right?

GEOFFREY LILLEMON

Yes, the first was a company called Champagne Valentine that focused on digital art and its place in the commercial world, specifically servicing clients looking to merge new interactive experiences with advertising. Then I was co-founder of an organization under the wing of Wieden and Kennedy called the Department of New Realities, which focused on using new technology to create emerging technology experiences for brands. So, that was a lot of virtual reality, experiential event design, augmented reality, and so on. I have also had my own visual effects companies under my name. I have done a lot of consulting and freelance work with other companies, but specifically around the use of new technology and experiential design, whether digital online platforms or physical installation spaces. Recently, I worked a lot with Gucci and Random Studio. Many big fashion brands are starting to build these retail experience spaces where they're looking for more than just the utility of shopping in a space. Instead, they want big gestures and moments that people can experience.

Nowadays, my interest is veering away from art direction or aesthetics in general because we have gone to a point with all these amazing tools where we can easily generate beautiful imagery. I'm more interested in new uses of technology and coming up with new pipelines and mixing one technique with one unpredicted counterpart. I'm more interested in what new pipelines we can use for expression and how we can react to what's happening with artificial intelligence. I like the idea of incorporating physicality into datasets. I have been studying ancient breathing techniques, where you do breath patterns and then go into an ice bath. I like taking photos inside these ice baths and using that to create a custom dataset, which then produces AI aesthetics or AI imagery. I am into this kind of process of building datasets that produce artwork. I am much more into health and wellness now than before, so I am working on a solo show in September called "Muscle," which will focus on interacting with gym equipment that's very sculptural and designed in a demonic visual language. People have to do exercise moves to see the output of the artwork. The more pull-ups they do, the more they will see the artwork appear on LED screens built into the machinery.

We are in amazing times now, and as humanity, we have to react to this technology and see what can be done. I think the whole world is getting flipped on its head. Every day, I'm trying something new with AI, and then the next day, there's a whole automated way to do it. But, I think it's important to be adaptive and reactive to technology.

TEMPLE

There's a lot of negativity around AI, but you're more optimistic about it, right?

GEOFFREY LILLEMON

Yes, I think it's happening. We needed this change. I understand people in the art world who make a living sculpting dragons, demons, and other things, and then uploading the whole process to art station and then getting ripped off by text to image models. I think this is the next step in progression. A lot of things were becoming repetitive, and I'm excited by the possibilities of inventing new pipelines of art. I believe it's changing the value of art and aesthetics, making it accessible to everyone, which is fantastic. I don't think we need to be exclusive with our approach to art. It's true that it might take my job, and it already has. I'm not even working this month; I'm going to Canada with my wife to hike in the woods.

TEMPLE

In addition to your commercial work, you've exhibited your digital artworks in museums and galleries. Does your approach to creating fine art differ from your approach to commercial work?

GEOFFREY LILLEMON

I've had commercial success and been able to make what I feel is right. I think a lot of that comes because I'm constantly making new ideas and being adaptive to technology and that creates a market for new things and thus becomes commercial. However sometimes I'll make things and then it doesn't work because a.I figured out a way to do it better, haha. Then, usually, commercially speaking, the newness of what I've been doing allows me some leniency to keep the aesthetic that I've had in other projects. So most of my commercial projects look like I did it. I've done enough of them; people know what they're getting. I guess you can say it's more gothic in the visual language or a little bit darker in terms of the sensibility. But the technology will always be a new use of that. I'm usually getting hired for that.

TEMPLE

The work of sound is very present in your projects. You're doing it all yourself, or you collaborate sometimes with people?

GEOFFREY LILLEMON

It really depends. Lately, my new idea is doing motion tracking of animation, movement, and generating tones based on the position of a track point. I like this idea of tracking to create generative sound. That technique could be a way of adding sound effects automatically to AI. So you could generate an AI video of somebody, and it would automatically create the sound effects based on the tracking data. A lot of times, the CGI comes alive when you add these sound effects based on the motion of the movement of the character or whatever the subject is. So that's one case of the computer making it.

Other times, I have been using generative methods to create sound. One of them is called Wolfram's tones. That's mathematical algorithms that create melodies based on math. Then other times, I work with sound designers that are just really good musicians that depend on which projects. I've also done a lot of music videos, worked with a lot of musicians, and done show visuals. Of course, that's all the stuff I've done in the music business, like the stuff with Miley Cyrus or Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj or all those big pop acts. It was visuals that are reactive to the sound that they are responsible for.

But my latest kick is really this tracking motion because the movement of AI is very different than you would get in anything else. It makes different decisions, so the sound representation of that is almost eerie. Like it sounds as unfamiliar as the visual looks, but I'm sure there'll be a new method that will do what I'm thinking of way better. That will probably be released tomorrow. By the time this interview comes out.

TEMPLE 

Could you explain more about your influences?

GEOFFREY LILLEMON

Yes, well, once goth, always goth. But, I mean, that's just a mood that I was born with. A lot of times, it's about contrast. For the last 20 years, I've always wanted to create a dramatic contrast between technology and the visual or the concept behind it. I really like the rawness, the overly dramatic mood of the gothic sensibility. It feels appropriate to me as a contrast to the techniques that I'm using. It gives the zeros and ones a heartbeat.