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WATCH: Pyrotechnics Meets Dancefloor Doc
The Quietus , December 2nd, 2014 18:15

Short film follows artist Charles Gadeken's dance-triggered fireworks display in South Africa

In the next episode of their Nightscapes series, Absolut are taking a look at the changing nature of dancefloors and what we might be able to expect from them in the future. "Dancefloors are the epicentre of the clubbing experience. It's exactly like a canvass and you've inviting the participants to become protagonists in your painting," says Jan Kennedy, art director at Prada, at the beginning of the short documentary, which you can watch above.

Normally, we'd assume that adding pyrotechnics triggered by a crowd jumping up and down on a dancefloor to this canvass would only end in tears, destruction and any number of fire-damaged turntables, but the doc shows that it's not so. It traces interactive artist Charles Gadeken pursuing this very venture at a gig hosted in a huge, custom-made mirrored cube outside Johannesburg in South Africa. The pressure exerted on the dancefloor from the audience's movements set off fireworks, setting up a vivid call-and-response relationship between them and the band.

Reflecting on the event, Gadecken says: "Bringing art into an experience takes it to the next level, where you're looking at beautiful things and being inspired by them, and hopefully it makes that viewer want to make beautiful things and to go out and demand more out of life". Watch above, take a look at the first episode and get further details here.

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