The multidisciplinary studio my have an off-the-wall name, but it's forward-thinking approach is reeling in everyone from Warp records to McLaren's Formula 1 team. Alex Moore finds out why...       “Someone asked me the other day if I was an experience architect – I nearly puked,” recounts Robin McNicholas, one third of creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast. As namby-pamby as the title may sound, it’s actually rather succinct. MLF’s scope of work is such that it’s incredibly difficult to pigeonhole them, so difficult in fact that McNicholas himself is yet to pin it down. “We have a broad interest in using technology in an artistic context,” he says. “But generally the projects we take on are high risk.”
     
This means doing things no one has done before with technology few people know very much about. MLF pride themselves on their research and development and attribute much of their success to the experts they find themselves working with. “I suppose by realising that we are not masters of everything, and leaning on people who are experts in very specific areas allows us to achieve much much more,” explains McNicholas modestly.

            It’s this cross-pollination of disciplines that runs throughout MLF’s work. Earlier in the year, having played around with facial tracking for a while, the team saw an opportunity to work it into an installation combining food and (obviously) lasers. As part of the Convergence Festival in London, Laser Face tracked visitor’s facial movements and then projected them as a real-time laser mask. (N.B. Visitors sat in a dental chair as they chewed a marshmallow and had vodka syringed into their mouths). A contact microphone also picked up participant’s mouth movements, converting them into squishy sounds while their eyebrows controlled the pitch.               

Question whether you’re doing what you’re doing for the sake of it

“I think our mantra of not using tech for tech’s sake is key to what we do,” says McNicholas. “We have an interest in these emerging technologies, but we like to look at them from a slightly different angle and see how we can repurpose them or re-appropriate them, or sometimes just use them in unexpected ways.” From illuminated flying quadrotors to a forest of lasers where each laser tree is tuned to a specific tone, MLF are masters of the wow-factor.  
            Their work certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed; a glittering client list includes U2, Nike and Volkswagon – testament to hard work paying off. “When we first began doing the MLF thing we always had this secret plan to work towards just doing one massive project a year,” says McNicholas. “As it turns out we actually do dozens and each project we do informs the next one.”
     
But what about virtual reality? MLF recently collaborated with Warp Records to create a VR music video for electronic artist Squarepusher’s latest track Stor Eiglass. “Squarepusher challenges things and shakes things up,” says McNicholas. “So when we were given the opportunity we thought ‘right, why don’t we do an experimental VR project that actually questions what’s going on in VR?’”
     
The resulting psychedelic, retro animation is irreverent but perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the team is already looking beyond virtual reality and augmented reality and towards a mixed reality. One thing is for sure, if you want to stay ahead in the technology game, you have to have one foot planted firmly in the future.


MLF’s tips to become a creative genius

– “If you’re visually based and you have a sketchbook, keep that going, because it’s just hilarious”– “Don’t see coding as a barrier, there’s actually a really open community to help you realise stuff”
– “Go to these tech-art festivals. There are loads of them dotted around”
– "Question whether the project you're working on is using tech for tech's sake””      

Words by Alex Moore
Photography by Dexter Lander

Originally published in The Five To Nine, a good news paper, produced by Protein and Microsoft Lumia. All shot on Microsoft Lumia