PARIS — The beautiful people who grace the covers of lifestyle and fashion magazines can rest easy. “I Hate Models,” the stage name of the red-hot French techno music producer has nothing to do with them. Guillaume Labadie, the extraordinary talent behind the name, says that he chose it because of his abhorrence for literal models or genres that put creativity into boxes.

This artist’s passion for transcending easy categorizations and expanding creative vision in every direction animated every moment of “Refract: I Hate Models All Night Long” this January. Taking place in a 12,000-square meter space at Hall 1, Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, the show served up an incredible journey of imagination that kicked off at 10 pm and last until the wee hours of the morning.

Enhancing the experience at the spacious venue was a visual production by Nick Jevons and Ross Chapple of Auratecture that flowed with the music note for transcendent note. Immersing the entire room in its dynamic lighting displays, the production design seemed to bend space and time as it transported fans to new levels of reality, precisely what the music intended!

Describing the show with its 360 stage and asymmetrical design, Jevons referred to it as a combination of “brutalist asymmetry and Mayan-like scenography.”

Elaboration on this point, he said: “For us Brutalist asymmetry meant raw mass plus deliberate imbalance. It is the look of a structure that is too heavy, too stubborn, or too functional to bother aligning itself perfectly. We wanted to prioritize function over visual comfort. We reference Mayan civilization because architecture and how they used sheer size in their structures it to show power and the doorways of their temples often represented a cave which were seen as portals to the underworld, while all set in a scene from a movie set.”

A collection of 60 CHAUVET Professional STRIKE Array 4C blinders, placed in the “inner sanctum” of the massive central DJ booth, were instrumental in bringing this vision to life. Visible to the audience only from the booth’s tiered platforms, the high output fixtures created glowing reflective light of the metal set, which accentuated the brutalist aura around the stage.

“Our vision was to create a chaotic and industrial energy underneath the booth’s walkways,” said Jevons. “The Strike 4C was the perfect choice for this, as we got the wide, bright throw of a blinder combined with the ability to chase and strobe them at high speeds. The fixtures’ intense output, combined with their color rendering (RGB + Amber), gave us the ability to apply the overall color palette of the show around the booth through the dense fog and haze. This greatly enhanced the transformative atmosphere in the room.”

Jevons, Chapple and their team (Jean-Denis Rolland -TD and PM), and rigger S Group Live Event spread strobe lighting throughout the room to accentuate the starkly intense mood. Their shared vision was to create a “desert -scene, much like you would see in the Dune movies with scorched sunsets, deep reds, sandy CTO’s, bold open whites,” said Jevons.

Elaborating on this ambition, Jevons added that their ultimate goal was to create a “shared vision” as opposed to a simple lighting configuration… an ideal aspiration when lighting an artist who’s fiercely committed to breaking down barriers.