i saw one of the first shows they did at a cinema and the content was obviously sparse but it was all high-quality motion graphics they had made specially, and the 3d effect was good in that controlled environment.

few years later, and a month or so ago now, i saw what they described to me as the debut of the 'v1.0' a/v show, and i thought it truly rocked. also, the comparison to the other acts (addictive tv, dj yoda) was just night and day.

but what really, really impressed me was that as a vj collective, they had made a product that was selling on its own merits. they have 'broken through'.

fwiw, over the years i've done plenty of high-art things with them to small audiences, largely subsidised by commercial work – in fact thats how i met them, they produced perhaps the best, earliest theatrical presentations of commissioned a/v work in two events called 20/20. but this is taking them places, and paying the bills.

there can always be a pissing fight, but this distillation of a club a/v experience is good work, and i look forward to others coming up and delivering on what could take the scene further.

Guess def need to answer some of the points above….

Glasto – hmm, yes, to be honest there were 'issues' at Glastonbury, it wasn't one of the better shows, and we also we at an early stage with that show, since then we've been working hard to producing it as a full AV show, especially with Max4Live allowing us to sync up Live and Modul8 how we always wanted.  It has moved on leaps and bounds since then and we premiered the new AV show at the HMV Forum in April – we're much happier with it now and receiving really good feedback – obviously continuous development happens with all these things…

The 'jumping on the bandwagon issue' – we actually started 3d disco about 4 years ago, just a bit of fun, something a bit different – have been doing club visuals for longer than I can to think about, and I'd be the first to admit that the current cinematic clamour for 3D has helped push on what we do massively, the interest in it has meant its really taken off for us – but what are we supposed to do, ditch it because its become flavour of the month?

It has been a really interesting journey for us, we freely admit that it is far and away the most 'pop' thing we have done, but it is great to get a real sense of engagement and connection with an audience due to the glasses.  As I've said above we'e done years of vjing, some pretty big tours, many we are really proud of, others we quickly become bored of because basically all the visuals are is dynamic wallpaper.  Our more 'artistic' for want of a better word av performances appeal to a niche audience, 3D disco is something that most of the time works on a much broader scale.

Tech wise – anaglyph (red and cyan) glasses are really old technology, and yes the 3d effect is never going to be as good as watching Avatar at the IMAX, but we think we've got it working pretty well after a huge amount of effort and work creating colour filtering and experimenting in the production.  It doesn't always work well, getting the lampies to not shine red and cyan lights near the screens is a constant ballache for example.  There are however really good reasons why we're gone down this route (we have also got an OF generative polarised system).  Anaglyph doesn't require anything special hardware wise, a decent projector and a standard screen produce the results.  Its hard enough in our experience getting this done in club environments – the amount of times we turn up at a gig and its set up with crappy knackered projectors and a sheet for a screen is too many.  To do Polarised you either need a very expensive 3D projector or 2 projectors lined up perfectly over each other and a very delicate silver screen – its just not going to happen unless we set it up ourselves in an environment we've got complete control of (watch this space).  Also, as Peter says, anaglyph glasses go down really well with the members of the audience, and to be brutally honest very well with sponsors of events – in our eyes not a bad thing…

Anyways – we stand by what we've produced as an AV set now that we feel appeals to a wide audience, maybes if you get to see it in a good environment you might like it too…?

For live visuals, though, it's still interesting. I don't think the live thing is really going to work with red/blue, though, because while people enjoy the glasses as a fashion accessory, the technology itself just isn't very effective!