Patrick Doan is a Canadian 3D artist based in Berlin, Germany. With a background in design, film, and architecture, he now focuses on dynamic 3D real-time graphics for live performances, music videos, installations, and streaming. He has been publishing his graphic works under the username ‘‘defasten’’ since 2002.
Working mainly in the events/arts/music industry, his future-facing visual designs exist as audio-reactive, generative, deconstructed geometric objects, establishing a simulated digital reality.
Patrick has exhibited in over 25 countries, including online. Events and venues include The New Museum (NYC), Ars Electronica, CTM Cyberia 2021 (Xquisite Force SFX), Transmediale with Suguru Goto at WWW in Tokyo (2016), MIRA 2021 with Azu Tiwaline, FLARE 2022 Shanghai, BRDG Channel 22 with Yaporigami (Tokyo 2020), and SIGGRAPH.
As a member of the sonic research collective AUDINT from 2015 to 2021, he showed work at Unsound (2019), MIRA (2019), Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Arebyte (London), Sonar Istanbul (2017), Loop Berlin (2016), MUTEK Montreal (2015). With AUDINT, he has also been published by MIT Press and Urbanomic (Unsound:Undead).
Patrick’s work is featured in the book The Age of Data curated by designer Christoph Grünberger and published on the Swiss design label Niggli Verlag (2021). It includes works by forty artists, such as Refik Anadol, Daito Manabe, Joshua Davis (Praystation), Joëlle, Christopher Bauder (Dark Matter), Quayola, Nonotak, and more and a foreword by Ian Anderson (The Designer’s Republic).
For this series of interviews we’ve dubbed With the Artist, Jake Triola from Notch sits down with defasten to discuss his evolution from Cyberpunk fan and raver to full-time artist working with his own, distinctive voice in the same tradition.
Jake: What’s your background, and how did you first become interested in motion graphics?
Patrick: I’m mostly self-taught in my motion graphics skills, but I studied design, film, and architecture. In the late 1990s, I started off doing graphic design in Photoshop, which led to doing club flyers and websites (Macromedia Flash!). After moving into motion with After Effects, I got into VJ-ing in the local electronic/music scene in Montréal where I lived at the time, doing gigs in clubs, galleries, cultural centres, festivals, etc.
You could say I was already doing motion graphics before it was branded as such by the 2010s. I think Cinema 4D really pushed this motion graphic brand because they designed a toolset all around this called ‘‘mograph.”
By 2005 and through to 2010, I was showing my own experimental 2.5D/3D short film works at digital art festivals in Europe, which already had an active network of festivals like Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Onedotzero, and Sonar. I also showed a piece at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston, USA.
Jake: Are you inspired by other mediums? It’s a funny question to ask now that I’m saying it, as your work seems to be completely based on combining many different forms that, perhaps, could be categorised as “graphics.” It seems like you latch on to anything that interests you in a very instinctive way.
defasten: Yes, of course. Since I was already working as a VJ and doing short 3D experimental animation films, the transition to motion graphics was an eventuality to adapt to the needs of the changing market because the software was improving, and so was my technique.
I’m definitely interested in other mediums. Initially, I mainly wanted to do music videos because they combined everything I wanted to do: cinema, live-action, 2D/3D visual effects, and music.
These days I follow trends in various fields: design, technology, architecture, robotics, AI/Art, automotive, gaming, industrial design, fashion, photography, pop culture, K-pop, and, of course, (electronic) music.
Jake: I’ve noticed technological and scientific imagery are integral to your works. Do you have a special relationship with this aesthetic? How did you arrive at this style?
defasten: I suppose this is the case mainly because I am a sci-fi/cyberpunk geek at heart, sedimented with watching an English dubbed version of Akira in the early 1990s. Then I became interested in graphic design from The Designer’s Republic, who were active in defining the aesthetic of the UK's 1990s rave culture, decomposing data into future-facing graphics, and incorporating this with subversive ideas on (Japanese) consumer pop culture. A lot of the (experimental) web design scene from 1998 to 2004 also leaned into this fragmented digital data design look. I’m thinking of whatever was happening around artists and studios like Designgraphik, Vir2L, GMUNK, Chapter3, and Praystation.
A lot of the music I listened to in my formative years also had this digital data aesthetic that felt very visual to me, so that informed a lot of how I would develop my own aesthetic.
These influences all blended together, and gradually, I paid more attention to interface design sequences you see in films like Minority Report, or in animes like Ghost In The Shell, Macross Plus, Evangelion, etc.
With time, my attention shifted to the work of UI designers in the film industry, like Mark Coleran, Ash Thorp, and Jayse Hansen, who made fictional sci-fi interface animations for well-known American film productions.
In parallel are some electronic music acts who make data the basis of their craft and music. I’m thinking of the label Raster Noton or, specifically, the artist Ryoji Ikeda. Nowadays, there are ‘‘AI data artists’’ like Refik Anadol, whose monumental Latent Being exhibition I saw in 2019 at Kraftwerk in Berlin.
Jake: Music also seems very important to you in your work. I hear cold synths and hard beats that pair well with the imagery. Do you feel this aesthetic comes naturally to you?
defasten: It certainly does. This is largely why I moved away from Canada to live in Berlin— to be closer to this scene and get involved in it. However, I’m also very interested in a wide gamut of music, from very analogue indie rock and post-rock to soul, opera, and new classical to more traditional cultural works outside the Western European cultural sphere.
Because of this, I enjoy doing visually dynamic 3D graphics content with Notch because it’s actually quite easy to do once you find a combination of nodes that works well. Unsurprisingly, this works well with most electronic music's patterned, loop-based nature.
Whether I’m working on personal creative projects or with high-profile clients, I find it quite easy to create audio-reactive pieces in Notch.
Jake: What kinds of creative hurdles has Notch helped you with?
defasten: I’ve come to learn some things are simply more easily done in a real-time 3D environment. With the time you save, you can go deeper, stay in a flow state, and develop your designs.
I could start off thinking of a creative concept and really prepare myself when thinking about how I’ll actually execute it. But when I begin working it into Notch, I often realise it doesn’t need to be so complex.
Things may take a different direction as I create. Sometimes, it’s better to simplify or break things down into parts from the complex core idea and save those extra ideas for later.
Jake: What’s your current setup and process? How has this changed over the years?
defasten: For about six years, I worked with a MacBook Pro. Then in 2017, it died after a project in Tokyo, so I switched to PC. In 2021, during the pandemic, I was fortunate enough to upgrade all my home studio hardware, so now I’m using an MSI RTX 3070 with three 4K monitors. I ordered all the computer parts individually and customised the hardware. I’m really proud to have built it myself.
I also have the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S17 with an RTX 3070 for working remotely.
Jake: Who or what are your greatest inspirations?
defasten: It’s hard to say now. I can’t really say I have ‘‘greatest inspirations’’ that continue to influence me. Maybe on a subconscious level. You can look at the initial inspirations I mentioned earlier that got me into this line of work. I think it would be easier for me to answer what inspires me lately.
I’m closely following what’s going on in the AI Art scene — Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Runway text-to-video, etc. — and related new techniques (gaussian splats!) because not only is it interesting and evolving quickly, it will also change the way graphic artists like me create their work in the very near future. I’m all for working more efficiently, faster, at better quality and spending less time at the computer desk waiting for renders and doing iterations.
I’ve gotten back into gaming since getting the new desktop. I replayed Half-Life ALYX (2020), Detroit: Become Human (2018), Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), and more recently, Stray (2022), in which you play a cat in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future. I played Stray a few times, and in each playthrough, I paid a lot of attention to the design of the environments, the lighting, the textures, the mood, the atmosphere, and the camera work. I took note of all this, and these details found themselves back into my work in some form.
I’m looking forward to watching The Creator by Gareth Edwards, who directed Star Wars: Rogue One, a film which my brother worked on at Industrial Light & Magic Singapore in 2016. It’s a prescient film that aesthetically and conceptually combines a lot of what I’ve been interested in: a near future cyberpunk/sci-fi vision of where today’s world could be going set in Thailand and Southeast Asia, a region I’m interested in discovering more after my trip in 2022 to Vietnam with my dad.
Jake: What have you been creating lately?
defasten: I’ve just released the new video, “Planet Helvetech” for the Osaka-based Japanese black metal-meets-death rave band VMO (Violent Magic Orchestra). They recently finished a successful European tour, and they are currently featured in the December issue of The Wire, so it’s a huge honour for me to work with them. You need to see them live and experience their powerful black metal-meets-gabber sound and stage presence!
This December, some of my works will be shown in a group exhibition event in Miami called Beyond Basel by Trippy Labs, a parallel program to Art Basel Miami, but focused on showing artworks from over 250 emerging, pioneering and world renowned artists. Some confirmed artists I’m familiar with include 404.zero, Ada Sokół, Beeple, BakaArts, desilence, Function Store, Fvckrender, gmunk, NastPlas, Paul Chadeisson, RubenFro, scuy(v0id), Sevi Iko Dømochevsky, and loads more.
I recently showed the 360 dome version of “Mirrored Madness” at the Nordic Film Days festival in Lübeck, Germany. It was really nice to see the piece in this immersive format, with the cyber-ambient sounds by Danish sound artist SØS Gunver Ryberg. In fact, I would love to do more 360-dome immersive work after this experience. I see a lot of potential in this medium.
“Mirrored Madness” was also featured on the platform Neo Shibuya, and shown around the screens at the famous Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. It’s a nice feeling to see my work displayed in such a well-known urban centre that’s inspired many like myself.
I also recently released the music video for Blush Response, a really prolific modular synth EBM/IDM industrial techno musician in Berlin, who has toured with the seminal industrial band, Front Line Assembly. The video itself is very audio-reactive, and for it, I created scenes of an alien pilot getting cyber-hacked by some mysterious celestial force. I wanted to create the feeling of being lost in deep space with an abrasive soundtrack.
Jake: Has Notch allowed you to break free of restrictions?
defasten: Mostly yes. It was initially a different way of working for me, but I’ve adapted and now enjoy it. I’ve learned to feel a bit less precious about any content I’m working on, even at advanced stages of production. Previously, with other non-real-time software, backtracking on a design could feel like a chore — depending on how complex the project was — while trying to keep the best bits but still updating your design.
Now, If I’m stuck with a design, I don’t mind redoing it and changing direction because, with Notch, I can work quickly and non-destructively. I know things will start moving again rather quickly after reworking my Nodegraph setup.
Getting used to working with generative animation also meant I started to embrace the dynamic, more randomised aspect of animation. Coming from years of keyframe animation, now I actually just get lost sometimes — in a good way — looking at how everything moves in the Builder Viewport once I’ve set up my content in the Nodegraph.
Jake: On average, how much of your work is produced on site?
defasten: In my experience working on large projects, I’d say 60–80% of the content is prepared in advance prior to on-site integration. That’s a wide range, but it also depends on how long the integration period is and what new content is made on-site.
I think coming prepared with content already produced is expected on these large-scale projects. The integration process always requires some re-alignment of content and unexpected changes to do once you see how all the parts come together.
Jake: Has Notch led you to any breakthroughs or changed the way you approach work?
defasten: Using PBR textures and materials and integrating 3D models overall has changed how I work. I feel like I really made the transition to being a proper 3D artist/motion designer when I committed to Notch.
It’s changed my overall visual design aesthetic (see my videos before 2019), and I’m glad for this change of workflow because it’s opened new paths toward other related real-time 3D rendering software. They basically all use the same terminology and concepts, so technical knowledge in Notch is transferable to other similar software.
Jake: Where do you see this industry going in the next five or ten years?
defasten: There’s industry people out there who could answer this better than me, but I think there will definitely be even more focus on using real-time 3D content, more XR productions, anything that could blend digital content with live-action content and anything that allows for seamless integration of virtual and real-world live-action stagecraft.
The pandemic did push the industry to go in a direction that it was probably already going in, and it turned out that the industry did benefit from this forced leap in production workflow.
I think everyone benefits in the end, because if we can at some point remove pre-rendered content from the workflow pipelines, that would accelerate production across the board and allow everyone to use this extra time to be in the moment of fluid content creation and focus on making innovative content.
Jake: What’s your best advice for someone new to Notch or motion graphics, 3D art, etc. in general?
defasten: It will always be important to know the foundations: design, form, compositing, colour, lighting, cinematography, camera lenses, typography, grid systems, etc. Get to know your inspirations and their history, keep an analytical eye, and learn to give and take criticism about your (and their) work. It’s fine to copy and emulate if you’re starting and looking for a visual language that fits you, but move on from that stage and try to find your own voice, as cliché as that sounds.
Besides the foundations of 2D and 3D craft making, absorbing anything else not related to visual design culture will also make you a more savvy and informed artist/designer/creator. That said, I’ve seen some amazing work that may appear to ignore a lot of basic design concepts or operate in its own design language, so I think it depends on what exactly you’re trying to achieve, and where you are coming from, culturally, aesthetically, etc. If you can break away from the usual rules and get away with it, why not?
Looking for inspiration outside this industry is also important. There is so much to learn from other disciplines and cultures, and as a result, I think anyone benefits creatively from diverse exposure.
But I think you can’t improve without doing the actual work, so theory is one thing, but in practice, the more content you produce, the better you become at your craft, whether it’s motion graphics, using Notch, designing a building, composing music, etc. Being able to critically analyse things — including your own work — is also important. Don’t get lost in the blind spots of your own ideas and preconceptions.
A special thanks to defasten for taking the time to sit down and talk to us about his journey as an artist. You can follow him on Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, LinkedIn, and his website.
