Louise Stickland meets the trio who ooze positive energy in their creation of some of the most striking imagery seen on stage today.

United Visual Artists consists of three individuals - Chris Bird, Matt Clark and Ash Nehru - united by their passion for music and collective talents for creating innovative digital art.

Their recent work included Massive Attack's 100th Window 2003 tour, where UVA evolved the concept of a huge central on-stage LED screen streaming with data, run live throughout the performances, and updated in real time each day to reflect the local culture, geography and environment (shown right, center)

A complete contrast is the stunning high energy video images and graphics for Basement Jaxx's pumping Kish Kash tour. Although UVA have a list of bands they'd like to work with and music is their raison d'etre, there's a string of trendy corporates in the portfolio, too - The Face, Diesel, adidas, Red Bull, PlayStation and others. UVA has also worked with fashion designer Hamish Morrow, creating live video artwork for his catwalk shows (shown right, bottom).

Fusing ideas and concepts in the fast-moving world of video and visual art, and harnessing the power, logic and maths of computing, UVA are carving out a special niche for themselves. Their diverse backgrounds, interests and specialist areas create a unique synergy and working relationship in the world of live visuals.

You can feel the positive energy as soon as you step into UVA's south London office. As you might expect, this is crammed full of computer screens, the near-therapeutic humming of fans and gentle chuntering of bit-crunching algorithms. Bird, Clark and Nehru have already outgrown their first office in Brixton, and just upgraded to a bigger, better and funkier base in The Borough, SE1. It only takes a couple of hours talking to the three completely different, very bright personalities, to realise why they work together such a great creative team.

UVA was formed in 2002 when they all ditched their 'day jobs' and decided to build their own company. However, all three had known each other and worked together in various combinations before that. Bird and Nehru's association dates back around eight years, when they met through producing club visuals.

Bird was a VJ (visual jockey), freelancing for software production company Notting Hill Publishing and working on the road with various bands. Nehru was a software developer and whizz-kid for a well known computer games company, indulging in a myriad of club visual orientated side projects, including the legendary clubland figure 'Frankie the Robot'!

Clark worked a creative director and stage set designer. He introduces a sense of overall spatial definition and big picture awareness to the buzzy UVA equasion. Clark and Bird first met whilst working together on Leftfield's 2000 Rhythm & Stealth tour, and remained firm friends and creative associates.

All three have also spent a lot of time on the club scene in pursuit of both hedonism and work. Each thought that one day a collaborative opportunity would present itself and allow the integration of their various skills and produce their own specific art. That chance arrived in 2002 when they heard Massive Attack were going out the following year. The band were high on the hit list of artists Bird and Clark wanted to work with, and it also happened that Ivan Kushlick - with whom they'd worked on Leftfield - was appointed as production manager.

They asked Kushlick if they could pitch for the visuals. About the same time as this, their newly-completed showreel CD also landed on his doorstep, purely by coincidence. They were invited for an interview, got the job, and then decided the time was right to form UVA as the project was to large to take on in anything other than a full-time capacity.

Bird and Clark immediately asked Nehru to work with them to produce the unique 'Mosquito' specialist software and control that would be needed to run what they had planned for Massive Attack's visuals.

AMALGAMATION
UVA see their work as an amalgamation of science and art that produces emotional responses in any given live situation, be that a concert, a club or a presentation. Chris Bird explains how any good experience usually has many components: the venue itself, the way the space is dressed and presented, the music, lighting, sound, visuals and the people you're with... "In essence, that's what we're about - the combination of a diversity of elements to produce a pleasant and stimulating experience for those enjoying and imbibing the vibe."

Matt Clark's ambition was to work in a 'live' arena since he can remember. Childhood memories include his dad's gig tales as a punter in the 1970s, which he found very inspiring.

They could hardly contain their excitement and enthusiasm when they won the Massive Attack contract, explains Bird, as they are all into the band's music and politics. Lead singer 3D had originally wanted a large screen, and UVA worked closely with him to develop this surface into an interactive part of the show. Once the creative juices were energised, 3D was happy to let them get on with producing most of the content, occasionally chipping in his own ideas to the melting pot, and also listening to what Bird and Clark were suggesting. "We work on a less-is-more philosophy," says Clark. "3D was very responsive to what we were saying, and prepared to go along with most of our suggestions."

The core oeuvre of the Massive Attack screen was a simple one - that everything on Earth or in the universe can be expressed as some form of data: binary code, zeros-and-ones, on/off, yes or no. Stripped to the most basic components, information is positive or negative, and that's how data is transmitted via phone lines or computers. UVA developed a whole story for the show based on coding, from hexadecimal to the atomic structure to genetics, so by the end of the show, everyone was effectively flying through a stylised space environment.

The Mosquito control software had to be flexible enough to allow the show to be translated into 34 different languages including Japanese and various Cyrillic typography, and for local information to be input everyday. The show would run to exactly the same timeline each night with the text and location information pulled from a single text file, ensuring the linguistics and geography always appeared correctly on-screen.

PROJECTS
While Massive Attack kick-started UVA and consumed major chunks of last year, things have now moved on rapidly. The phone is constantly ringing, and there's a host of interesting up-coming projects on the table.

Basement Jaxx's 2004 tour was a more video orientated project. The show's video design follows the album's heraldic and punky imagery, and each song has visuals related to its title. The software developed to run this show - primarily playback material that can be effected in real time - is called Dragonfly. Live cameras were added to the Basement Jaxx show as the tour progressed, and live video jamming is an area they are keen to experiment with generally.

UVA are also currently on tour with MTV's 'Motomash' show, involving the mixing of audio and visuals from two different pop videos and manipulating footage live on the fly. Real-time effects can also be added to the mix, completely transforming the nature of the footage.

The trio custom-build all the machines to run their various software programmes - oodles of RAM and processing power and the fastest stable video cards on the market. As and when new technology becomes available, it's utilised in the system design. The pace is rapid - they can do things that weren't possible two years ago - and Bird and Nehru are constantly researching what's new, good and what works.

The ability to produce custom and specific software to run their shows is a major advantage for UVA. They can figure out a way of doing pretty much anything and this gives them the edge over straight art production houses. They also use a lot of MIDI devices to run software because it makes the whole operation more ergonomic, easier to run and video becomes more of a visual 'instrument'.

For the Hamish Morrow show at Old Billingsgate Market, Nehru wrote a video 'print' module that coincided with some of the fabric blueprints Morrow was using. The software calibrated the print image and broke it up into triangles, which could then be tweaked to become either more accurate or more abstract. For the show, cameras followed the models up and down the catwalk, the images were fed into computers, and a 'processed' image was then projected on to the back wall behind the catwalk. This resulted in reflections (digital silhouettes) in the style and print of the dresses following the models up and down in real time.

NEW AVENUES
Current challenging work on the table includes the first permanent UK installation of Barco's low-res MiPix LED. This is at the Kabaret, a private members club in a basement off Beak Street in Soho, newly refurbished in a project led by high-profile architect and interior designer David Collins.

The MiPix covers two curved walls and has enabled UVA to engage in some excellent light sculpting. The walls will have constantly changing digital content, and will be operated live on special nights, when UVA will work in cameras, microphones and motion sensors plus the operator to make the walls appropriate for the occasion and atmosphere... rather like live digital wallpaper. Putting video through the low-res MiPix allows subtle fluid movement to be applied to the wall that Clark describes as a "technical sponge".

UVA is working in partnership with CT Screenco on Kabaret. They have a fruitful on-going relationship with CT that also yields useful information like advance warning of product developments in the LED and projector markets. With the new premises, and no shortage of ideas and opportunities in the ether, UVA's creative ambitions include getting the opportunity of working on some more conceptual art projects and public installation installations.

With these levels of positive energy, lateral thinking and imaginative application of science and maths, anything is possible for UVA.