Since 1994 there has been a visual surgery. Although not available on the NHS, The Light Surgeons have become synonymous with helping people stimulate their visual cortex with their live performances. From Ninja Tunes Stealth at the legendary Blue Note to their recent narrative work on DVD, we caught up with main man Chris Allen to ask how you go from flashing lights in clubs to fully immersive film?

Steal-Life.com - How did The Light Surgeons start?
Chris Allen - I started The Light Surgeons while doing my Media Design degree at Portsmouth in 1994. I was already doing visuals for clubs in London under a different name and teamed up with a friend on my course called Paul who's dad use to tell him stories when he was a kid about these spiritual being's who healed you in your sleep. That's where the name came from, although the name found a new meaning in the work that I was doing with projections.

SL - The collective seems to be forever changing, who are the current surgeons and who are you collaborating with?
CA - The Light Surgeons has always been a collaborative project. I've worked with many different people over the years but the current core is Jude Greenaway and myself. We're always interested in seeing new peoples work but there are several freelance designers, artists and filmmakers that add their skills depending on the projects.

SL - A lot of people will remember your club visuals, but how do you describe your more recent work?
CA - Mixed media with meaning. Cross-platform-audio-visual-surround-a-scopes.

SL - Your earlier work is samples and loops lead, much in the same vein of the cut'n'paste style of music it accompanied at the time, have you needed to move on from that?
CA - We've developed our own style and aesthetic over the years and always tried to originate our own material. In the early days it was more a matter of working with whatever we could get our hands on. Now we've got Final Cut and DV cameras we've moved our work into a more documentary area. We still use a cut'n'paste approach with our own footage, photography and sound. It's a sort of electronic-av-doc-hop..

SL - You've created lots of original material for bands, brands and exhibited all over the world, how do you deal with the inevitable 'many cooks' while retaining your art?
CA - The productions we put together are the synthesis of a team of people, there are always unexpected happy accidents that come through the collaboration of minds. It's hard to be creative in this world without compromising what you do. We've always taken the Robin Hood approach to our commercial work and put our time and money back into our own stuff. We're hoping that producing DVD's and sustaining the audiovisual live performances we make, we can continue to be our own cooks.

SL - The slideshow you've done for us uses some stunning digital photography of airports, what inspired it?
CA - I've been lucky enough to travel a lot with my work and thus have spent much time in transit. There's a strange beauty in the transient space I've seen and that fascinates me.

SL - Do you use a lot of digital photography?
CA - I use many types of image making in my work. I've generally tended to shoot most of my photographs on transparency because I work with projection so much. Digital photos allow some new and different possibilities; just being able to see what you've shot as you shoot it is a major change in perspective. The best thing is you can just shoot so much, great for experimental work. I still love the surprises you get on film. I still love celluloid I'm afraid.

SL - Doing visuals live seems to be a Surgeons theme, is it important for you to retain that element?
CA - Doing live performances is central to us and we will hopefully continue to push the boundaries with it. The only draw back is that you are never left with a tangible product at the end of the day, live music relies on record sales to sustain itself and I believe mixed media work, AV performances and digital film making will become the new recording industry.

SL - How would you like to develop your work further?
CA - I'm interested in print-based books, DVD's and the two as a package. In our installation work and collaborations with architects and designers we are moving towards the concept of a Total Environment. Developing 360-degree digital films and engaging with other senses like smell.

SL - So what's on the cards next?
CA - Just writing a treatment for a promo for The Kills, finishing a video project for Ron. Over the summer we're doing our own thing at some festivals, I'm particularly looking forward to the Big Chill. Hooking up some visual show for the new U.N.K.L.E. album and maybe working on some promo's and a production for onedotzero7 later in the year.

Good luck!
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