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Hi. I'm Pelayo Méndez
I create things writing code
Sometimes they form images
Sometimes they get physical
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Statement
“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that's all.”

LEWIS CARROLL
Through the Looking Glass.
I began to develop an interest in coding because for me, programming is the method of electronic art creation, which is closest to poetry writing due to its proximity to words and written language. My work currently focuses on the relationship between transmedial digital communication, spaces and electronic landscapes generated in real time, and the dialogue between interactive technology and artistic narratives. On the one hand as a consequence of my university studies – I graduated in Communication Sciences and Literary Theory – and on the other because of my professional work in the last ten years as a creative coder and interaction designer.

Based in Barcelona (Spain), I work internationally as a digital artist and freelance creative coder, learning and using open-source methodology, technology and languages. In the last few years I have also started giving lectures and workshops on using code for aesthetics or narrative purposes, in schools, professional workshops or universities such as the Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art de Barcelona EINA or the Escola Superior de Disseny i Enginyeria ELISAVA in Barcelona.

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Mugaritz: OFF-ROAD (Barcelona, 2015)

Mugaritz: OFF-ROAD is a very personal inside view of the universe of the Michelin starred restaurant Mugaritz in San Sebastian. Directed by Pep Gatell from La Fura dels Baus, this off-screen narrated documentary is an experimental piece that mixes sentences selected from hours and hours of interviews with people working at Mugaritz, to create a collective psychological interpretation of the work carried out there.

Working with the Visual artist Fritz Gnad, we visually interpreted all the data that the restaurant has generated during its 18 years of existence by creating interludes of silent visual poetry to accompany the film.

This documentary was the opening film of the Culinary Zinema section of San Sebastian International Film Festival and has been selected for the 66th Berlin International Film Festival.


credits

Directed By: Pep Gatell (La Fura dels Baus)
Original idea: Andoni Luis Aduriz, Pep Gatell
MaProduction: Nadala Fernández
Filming: Sara López and Pol Aregall
Music: Àlex Ferrer (The Groove)
Visual Data scripting & Infographic animation and design: Pelayo Méndez and Fritz Gnad

Cicle of Life (Girona, 2014)

The Cycle of Life is a theatrical project created by the visual music director Xavi Bové for the 1st Girona International Mapping Festival. The idea was to represent, on the façade of the Casa dels Pastors in Girona, the different stages of the cycle of life through Richard Strauss’ music, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

In the Cycle of Life, the soprano Elizabeth Vilaplana’s voice (member of the Liceu Theatre chorus) and Raul Patiño’s piano (director of the Eclectic Colour Orchestra) give life to the building through the visuals generated by code and projected onto the façade.


credits

Art Direction: Xavi Bové
Interactive Design and Coding: Pelayo Méndez
Vocals: Elisabet Vilaplana
Piano: Raul Patiño
Making of: Estefania Carrillo

L’Ésser del Mil·leni (Barcelona, 2013)

L’Ésser del Mil·leni (Millenium Being) is a macro event created by the Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus for the 2013 New Year’s Eve celebrations in Barcelona.

In Spain, it is tradition to eat twelve grapes on the stroke of midnight for good luck in the New Year. For the show, I designed and programmed the generative font that accompanied the countdown to midnight and the twelve bell chimes that followed, as well as different video scenes that complemented other parts of the show, projected on giant LED screens on each side of the stage.

The idea that Barcelona become a melting pot of diverse cultures and a global New Year’s Eve party, was the thematic thread of the scenery created in the video, in which Twitter, interactive scenes and messages from the public attending the event, were mixed.


credits

Original concept and production: La Fura dels Baus
Artistic direction: Carlus Padrissa and Pep Gatell
Music director: Micki Espuma
Interactive graphics and video design: Pelayo Méndez
Making-of: Pelayo Méndez (Footage from La Fura dels Baus and Barcelona.cat)

Parsifal (Cologne, 2013)

Parsifal was the last opera written by Wagner and probably his best one. The artistic director Carlus Padrissa connects the story of this play to the relationship between the German composer and Nietzsche as he identifies the character of Parsifal with the philosopher.

Parsifal is a four-hour play, which contains lots of video-generated scenes with many different techniques, from recordings, motion graphics and 3D to OpenFrameworks and Processing coded sketches which are then rendered as videos. There are also some real-time interactive parts related to sound and stage movements controlled live from the cabin.


credits

Original concept and production: Carlus Padrissa - La Fura dels Baus
Visuals and motion design: welovecode / Fritz Gnad
Interactive videos and generative design: welovecode
Making-of: welovecode

Oresteia (Tokyo, 2012)

Tokyo's Suntory Hall was the stage for just one night for La Fura dels Baus’s revision of Oresteia, directed by Carlus Padrissa, the opera was written by Iannis Xenaquis, a pioneer of algorithm music composition, using ancient Greek texts from Epicurus.

The artistic performance took over the entire theatre, the central part of the stage was occupied by a giant metallic tree created by Roland Olbeter which was used as a surface for textured mapping projections during the show. Audio reactive visual effects reinforced the operatic narrative. Some of them were merely graphical effects but I also coded others based on texts taken from Twitter by users talking about justice, the central theme of the play, or texts taken from the Japanese translation of the play, which reacted to the sound of the ancient Greek songs in a kind of sonic intertextual exercise.


credits

Original concept and production: Carlus Padrissa - La Fura dels Baus
Interactive graphics and generative design: welovecode
Set design: Roland Olbeter
Dress design: Chu Uróz
Making-of: welovecode

Jack Daniel’s new bottle launch show (Madrid, 2011)

An audio reactive concert created just for one night to celebrate the launch of a new Jack Daniel's bottle, which featured a concert by the guitarist Christian Rey Nagel from the Pinkertones.

For this project I developed an audio reactive narrative with OpenFrameworks, based on different generative visual graphics scenes that responded to the musician’s guitar sound, and which were projected in combination with traditional videos on a semi-transparent tulle placed in front of the musician during the show.

Unfortunately, the recording of the concert was lost so there's only a video left form the rehearsals and press photos from the event in the making-of.


credits

Original concept and production: EURO RSCG Barcelona / Tigrelab / welovecode
Visuals and motion design: Tigrelab, Fritz Gnad
Interactive graphics and generative design: welovecode
Music: Christian Rey Nagels
Making-of: Tigrelab

Orfeo ed Euridice (Peralada, 2012)

Orfeo Ed Euridice is an Opera by Gluck, which the director Carlus Padrissa from the Catalan artist group La Fura dels Baus wanted to bring up-to-date. His version of this classical play takes place on an empty stage covered with video projections. Not only are the chorus and opera singers on stage but also the orchestra too, something that almost never happens in opera.

Eco, like the Greek muse that responded to the poet’s voice, was the name of the software I engineered for this play. At the end of the project it contained all the video and the interactive scenes for the opera and became a part of the final piece like the musical score or the scenography were. The different interactive scenes I created in situ during the month of rehearsals, reacted to the music and movements made by the performers on stage, creating a nexus between the actors and musicians and the video scenography narrative.

The opera was performed for the first time at the Castell of Peralada Festival in Girona (2011) and performed again a year later at the Solís Theatre, Uruguay's oldest theatre in Montevideo, and again in Palace of Charles V in Granada, Spain in 2013.


credits

Original concept and production: Carlus Padrissa - La Fura dels Baus
Video: David Cid, Sagar Fornies
Interactive graphics and generative design: welovecode
Making of: welovecode

APOLO-Nitsa (Barcelona, 2018)

Apolo-Nitsa, one of the most well-known concert hall and night club in Barcelona, relies on the technology of ProtoPixel to renovate La (2) room with a large-scale LED grid, almost covering the entire roof, controlled by ProtoPixel technology.

credits

A project by: Protopixel
Client: Sala Apolo
Project Managment: Pelayo Méndez
Making-of & Photos: Protopixel

Absolut New Dimensions (Barcelona, 2017)

The “New Dimensions” experience was the result of the collaboration between art director Joan Guasch and ProtoPixel, providing our advanced expressive lighting technology. The lighting installation, a volumetric and three-dimensional structure developed around an open bar, was used as a canvas for Guasch’s work.

credits

A project by: Protopixel
Visuals: Joan Guash
Client: Vice - Absolut
Project Managment: Pelayo Méndez
Making-of & Photos: Protopixel

Electronic Hair Dyer (Barcelona, 2016)

Wella TrendVision is an anual meeting where the best hair designers meet to present their artistic approach to hair dressing. In 2016 Alexis Ferrer performed the opening show for wich we designed an electro0nic hair dryer controlled life on stage.

We had the idea of using light as the product to dye the hair and reach out to Protopixel the most advanced company in interactive light control.

credits

Art & Concept: Alexis Ferrer & Pelayo Méndez
Technology: Protopixel
Client: Alexis Ferrer
Project Direction: Pelayo Méndez
Making-of & Photos: Welovemartha

CROMA (Barcelona, 2015)

In a world where unlimited images are traveling through the network, there is only one possible way of communication. A world of digital images, where pixels are the only existing being, the minimal expression unit, the essence of the system.

CROMA is a contemporary dance performance between three dancers located in three different locations simultaneously. Each dancer represents a pixel, a non human unit of light, colour and digital action, whose purpose is communication. Dancers will be placed in a squared shaped stage, meant to be the pixels habitat/home, whose walls are recipients of images and colours. Those three stages are connected, sharing images from each other and combining them through its walls thanks to the technology used.

In 2015 Croma has been awarded with the Future of Internet Performing Arts Price.

credits

Original idea: Hand Made Dance & Pelayo Méndez
Video and Interactive design: Julio Clavijo y Pelayo Méndez
Scenography: Jaume Grau
Music: David Torres
Making-of: Sara López and Nico Di Masso

M.U.R.S. (Barcelona, 2014)

The show MURS by La Fura dels Baus offers a criticism or parody of the technological excesses of Smart Cities. The audience arrive having preinstalled an app, which acts as the main driving force as well as one of the central characters of the show.

MURS is divided into 4 rooms through which the audience move around freely, either following orders from the actors, from the multimedia content they receive on their mobile phones, or the instructions given on the video screens placed in each room. The show also offers the spectator different interactive installations related to the use of new technologies.

Due to its complexity, various companies carried out the technical development of the project. My studio was in charge of designing and developing the interactive part as well as carrying out the technical and artistic direction: a role that bordered the technical development as well as the visual creation and play writing of the show.


credits

Original concept and y production: La Fura dels Baus
Artistic Direction: Carlus Padrissa, Pep Gatell, Pera Tantiñà and Jürgen Müller
Musical Director: La Fura dels Baus and Carles López Campmany
Interactive Design: Pelayo Méndez
Coding: Pelayo Méndez and Rafael Redondo
Additional coding: Glen Fraser
Video design: Tigrelab
Network: Iglor Soluciones audiovisuales, S.L.
APP Development: Inqbarna
Making-of: Sara López and Nico Di Masso

The Magic Melody (Singapore, 2013)

The Magic Melody was an interactive video mapping projected on the façade of the Singapore Art Museum during Singapore's 2013 Night Festival. The installation ran for ten days every night and included a video mapping show every half hour with the interactive part running in-between.

After the video show, the interactive was projected onto the building and the public could interact with the façade with eight tablets available in front of the museum facade. The interaction consisted of a pseudo game without any objective or fixed rules but that related to the idea of playing just for fun and learning through experimentation and failure. Each player used a different colour and interacted with the cells generated from the centre of the building, colouring and moving them around, creating endless patterns on the facade.

I wrote the Magic Melody system using OpenFrameworks and an amazing Box2d physics library through Vanderlin's ofxBox2d add-on, which allowed me to make the cells interact with the windows and the building transmitting a sense of physical presence of the projection.


credits

Original concept and production: Tigrelab / welovecode
Visuals and motion design: Tigrelab
Interactive interface and generative design: welovecode
Original Music: Franck Desert (Setlego)
Artistic Production: weloveart
Making-of: Tigrelab

Virtual air guitar (Barcelona, 2013)

The original idea of this project was to develop an invisible guitar instrument, like the one participants play at air guitar contests, using OpenFrameworks and Microsoft's Kinect sensor. The first prototype was fairly simple, far from the precision of a real guitar instrument but still difficult enough to play without a little practise, but had the added experience of a 360º video scenario provided by Mr. Fogg, which immerses the user into the experience. The musician Felipe L. Navarro also provided some excellent guitar sounds for the installation.

After a few months we were given opportunity to test it with the public at the Sónar+D festival, where the images from the video were taken. So we decided to rewrite and simplify the code, adding some intuitive interfaces so that people could start playing the guitar in seconds and have fun with it.


credits

Installation concept and production: welovecode
Music: Felipe L. Navarro
360º Video: Mr. Fogg
Making-of: welovecode

Visual Sound Building (Milan, 2012)

An interactive video mapping show projected on the north facade of the Villa Titoni, near Milan, which is controlled by the audience using tablets and smartphones. This installation was part of the Kernel 2012 Video Mapping Festival and involved two nights’ performance at the main entrance to the festival.

The building was transformed into an interactive musical synth whose windows acted as a keyboard. Using websockets technology and an http server based on OpenFrameworks allowed me to create simple web interfaces accessible from smartphones and tablets. With this system the public could change the melody and generate graphics on the villa facade.


credits

Original concept and production: Tigrelab / welovecode
Visuals and motion design: Tigrelab
Interactive graphics, interface and generative design: welovecode
Original Music: Franck Desert (Setlego)
Making-of: Tigrelab

Mugaritz: OFF-ROAD
(Barcelona, 2015)
Visual Data Scripting.
Documentary Film
with La Fura dels Baus
Cicle of Life
FMIG Mapping Festival
(Girona, 2014)
Interactive Mapping Concert with Xavi Bové
L’Ésser del Mil·leni
(Barcelona, 2013)
Macro Spectacle
with La Fura dels Baus
Parsifal
(Cologne, 2013)
Interactive Opera
with La Fura dels Baus & welovecode
Oresteia
(Tokyo, 2012)
Interactive Opera
with La Fura dels Baus & welovecode
Jack Daniel’s
new bottle launch show
(Madrid, 2011)
Audio reactive concert with Tigrelab & welovecode
Orfeo ed Euridice
(Peralada, 2011)
Interactive Opera with La Fura dels Baus & welovecode
APOLO-Nitsa
(Barcelona, 2018)
Interactive Dance Room
with Protopixel
Absolut New Dimensions
(Barcelona, 2017)
Interactive Light Installation
with Joan Guash & Protopixel
Electronic Hair Dyer
(Barcelona, 2016)
Interactive Fashion show
with Alexis Ferrer & Protopixel
CROMA
Fut. Internet P.A. Prize
(Barcelona, 2015)
Multi-Located Dance Show
with Hand Made Dance
M.U.R.S.
GREC Theater Festival
(Barcelona, 2014)
#Smartshow with La Fura dels Baus
The Magic Melody
(Singapore, 2013)
Interactive Mapping with Tigrelab & welovecode
Virtual air guitar
(Barcelona, 2013)
Interactive installation with welovecode
Visual Sound Building
(Milan, 2012)
Interactive Mapping with Tigrelab & welovecode