“Visual storytelling is a central pillar for any idea, a strong backbone for all levels of production, giving diversity of opinion that is produced out of imagery.”
Mapsandmachines is a 3d visualization studio run by Yves Marquillie and working foremost in architectural, print and art projects with over 10 years of experience.
The idea behind mapsandmachines is the cross-over between practice and study with the focus on different fields of production, implementing more artistic input into different case studies and project proposals. Visualization can work both as a singular entity, as well in symbiosis with any other activity-albeit commercial, educational or purely aesthetical.
Ideas don't always need to be 'strictly formulated' , engineering schematics don't have to be alone pragmatic, and solutions can be abstract and yet informative at the same time. Artistic input can help bring a new perspective on things, give solutions or open up questions.
We aim to achieve a good balance of commercial assignments and personal projects as a means of blending research and visual freedom to create immersive digital imagery.
Mapsandmachines is always on the lookout for future endeavours and cooperations, whether they are small independents, large companies, schools or artists.
So, feel free to contact us at any time, anywhere in the world.
©2023 Mapsandmachines
Having worked for a broad range of clients in Belgium and abroad as freelance assignments, mapsandmachines tries to create digital imagery to visualize both the unseen and ubiquitous elements of a universe.
Maps and machines is a reference of Yves Marquillie’s early interest in imaginary cartography and the metaphysical application of the mapping terminology. The machines refer to the same element of hidden machinery in language and human abstract constructs.
Yves Marquillie is also a son of a car sculpturer, and has an outspoken love for car body design, and the intricate machinery it covers.
Mapsandmachines is based in Ghent, Nazareth and has worked extensively with renowned artist from over the world, including Jan Fabre, Anouk De Clerq and Hans op de Beeck. Art visualization has become one of the center practices for mapsandmachines in a world where Arts has transformed from physical to digital in a relatively short time. This transgression has become so evident that any other industry has been following up this trend in fear of missing out.
One of the innovations mapsandmachines wants to create is to digitize libraries of future stock of objects. A large amount of products are being digitized to ensure a long term database for engineering references for future products aswell for presentational and visual purposes.
Analogue photo-studios are still widely used as the tool for presenting products for new campaigns, but as the GPU render engines (Octane, Redshift) are wildly taking over the market since they are pretty easily tuned to hyper-realism, a shift towards a new tool for realism presents itself. This realism is no longer photographic; but will be digital in the next coming years. Digitizing libraries is nothing new in this age, but when it comes to objects and visualizing complex structures or existing stock of products, this field is relatively new. Larger corporations and institutions have already set the bar pretty high ( Nike, Ikea,...) in manifesting their stock, but smaller companies and organisations still need to follow. As the cost is getting smaller for producing this, mapsandmachines is aiming at creating a ‘digital photo-studio’ for these practices.
This would serve the purpose of growing to a independent studio that would be referential for anything 3d related, so mapsandmachines can grow to a studio that could tackle the visualisation of complex structures within society. Think of urban planning and the ecological impact we still have today in a world that is shifting from carbon dioxide to electrical, and how this would effect industries, arts and societies. What is the future of a town center in Belgium, and how relevant and different will it be from a town center in Benin, Shangai or New York? Machinery is becoming more and more digitized aswell, with the birth of A.I. becoming a not-so-distant reality. Server space has increasingly become more important than manual labour in western societies, and one of those big questions is, how other under-developed nations will grow towards that same tendency.
These questions are yet to be answered and are pretty much unpredictable with any model in this rapid changing age. Mapsandmachines tries to grasp the complexity of that model and visualize it as clear as possible with a specific aesthetic to make it understandeable for a wide audience, but also to differentiate itself from the pack.
Yves Marquillie