Matt Mendez, better known as ZiP Visuals, is a talented visual artist and VJ based in Brooklyn. Over the last couple of years, ZiP has ascended to a pedestal few have been able to reach. A self-taught artist, his combination of dazzling original content, effects, transitions and flow has created a live performance that have audiences’ jaws on the floor from what they are witnessing.
ZiP has performed at some pretty spectacular venues and events over the last couple of years. This includes Night One of the legendary Kings Theater weekend headlined by Detox Unit and Jade Cicada, Sound Haven with Tripp St., Nocturnal Funktion with Hullabalo0, Brooklyn Mirage with Nestra, Secret Dreams with Alejo, Submersion Festival with VCTRE…the list goes on and on.
Not only has he thrown down some unbelievably fire sets with amazing artists, he has also been involved in some really cool projects outside of playing shows. During Fall 2022, he joined fellow visual artist wizards Actualize, Glass Crane, Papa Bear, Arkitekt and Oni on an insane projection mapping project involving a Rolls Royce for a pop up event in Brooklyn. Check out the recap video to see just how crazy this was! He has also worked with the team behind Tipper and his events, most notably as an assistant wall tech for Tipper Red Rocks in 2021 as well as last year’s Tipper n Friends event in Suwannee.
Tomorrow night in Brooklyn at The Chocolate Factory, ZiP will be throwing down a couple of sets with two legendary artists: the NYC debut of Hamdi and a late-night extended set with Nikki Nair. This show, presented by Sermon Nation, will also feature fire sets from Player Dave, Potions, FREQ, and Smokestax. Ahead of these epic performances, we chatted with ZiP about his visual origins, what inspires him to create all of his unique content, his favorite moments and performances over the last year, as well as what the future has in store on the visual side of things for live performances. Check out the full interview below! To learn more about ZiP, check out his website where he shares content that he’s created as well as some very cool merch.
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HIHF: Thanks for taking some time to speak with us! To kick things off, how did this project start? Was there a specific moment where you were like, “Oh my God, I really want to do this.” ?
ZiP: I remember being at a Jack U concert, oddly enough. The days of Diplo and Skrillex, but I remember seeing their visuals and I was just like “I could [do that]”. I always wanted to be involved with music, but I never felt like it would be on the musical side. I definitely didn’t want to be a manager or anything like that, so I was like, “Where am I going to be involved with all of this?” And then that’s where it all hit me, I’ve done art my whole life. I luckily had [Adobe] After Effects on my computer from a friend in high school that had the entire Adobe Suite downloaded. I started digging in and just taught myself stuff in After Effects. Shortly after that I started making videos for my friend Alex (Psybernautics) and I to watch. He was the first person I ever showed stuff to and he encouraged me, “You need to keep doing this.” It was one of those things that was like a fun side hobby at first, but then I wanted to turn it into something more because I loved it so much. Eight years ago, in 2015, I knew nothing about this world at all, so it’s really cool to see where it’s all gone in such a short amount of time. Funny after all of that, I have now played with Diplo twice; the first time was a full circle moment.
HIHF: The pandemic changed the trajectory for so many people, especially visual artists and VJs. What was your experience like during those times as you were continuing to grow as an artist and take on more work? How did it shape the trajectory of your career?
ZiP: COVID was interesting because I made a decision right before it happened to take VJing and creating visuals way more seriously. I quit my job in D.C. and moved to New York City nine months before COVID, which was very interesting because it was my first time freelancing. When COVID happened, like many of us, I got crushed financially. I ended up taking on this post closing job at a mortgage company that I was very much not into.
I got some advice from Beeple when I was first learning 3D stuff. He had all these videos and project files and tutorials, and he said, “If you ever use them, just hit me up and show me what you made.” So one time, I emailed him and sent him something that I made with his stuff. After chatting over email I asked what advice would you give to someone starting out? And he replied with: “Get a job that you can half ass, and full ass your art.”
That was about seven years ago, so I thought it was great advice based on my inexperience at the time. Basically he said just keep pouring your fuel into this project and keep learning. So during COVID that’s what I did. I got a job for a few months here in the city, but I just kept pouring it all into the art. There were a lot of those live streams and, like you said, it was good for visual artists. It really gave a lot of recognition to the importance of being able to listen and look at something, where the video with the audio can really add something together that they can’t do by themselves. Honestly, you can make a silent film that’s stunning; however, when you add music to it, it makes it that much better. And the same can be said vice versa in my opinion. Music sounds great on its own, but adding visuals to what you’re hearing makes it that much better. A lot of my friends got recognition, so that made me really happy to see and there is now a community behind the visual artists, which there wasn’t before.
HIHF: I spoke with Actualize last summer and one of the things that he told me was that, during COVID, there was a giant Facebook Messenger group chat that had a couple hundred VJs meeting one another and interacting with each other. Are you guys still using that group chat in 2023?
ZiP: Oh yeah, it’s still going on. It’s huge, it was definitely one of the more positive things to come out of COVID [for VJing]. I feel like before COVID, it wasn’t necessarily competition, but it was like no one knew each other, so we were all thinking about the other person and if their stuff was cooler than our own. But now it’s different because we are all friends, which is awesome. I see my friends make something and I’m like, “I know that person and I’m super happy for them.” It’s helped us all push each other to a level that we wouldn’t be at; we share knowledge in that group a lot. We all got way more connected when we were locked down and I mean, we’re all nerds at the end of the day; I like to tell people we make glorified video games only we can play. Some of the programs we use are literally video game programs; that’s what they are intended for, but now I get to incorporate that into making visuals and stuff. Some of those programs are going to be serious game changers – Unreal Engine is already reshaping the way video games are made.
HIHF: That’s incredible. Speaking of software, what are some of the visual-specific software that you use to create your content?
ZiP: My main software right now is Cinema 4D, which I use for a lot of 3D work, and Adobe After Effects. Pretty much anything that I make – if it’s from cinema 4D, I’ll render PNGs and then I’ll put them into After Effects and make videos from it. After Effects is kind of like my ending spot for everything. You can also make really cool 2D/3D art there. You can make cool effects and warp out images in different ways. I use Daz Studio a lot too, which is a really cool character-creating software and it’s also free! I also use ZBrush, which is a program that basically starts out with a ball and then I can begin sculpting off the ball. It’s like using clay. So, after I sculpt a lot of stuff in there, I bring it into Cinema 4D to make my characters move. Then I render it all out of Cinema 4D and put it into After Effects, add some more effects to it, render it out again, and then put it into Resolume to do playback during shows. So there is a lot of different software involved in my process and I have only scratched the surface on what is out there.
I’m currently teaching myself Unreal Engine 5, which like I said before is a video game software where you can use literally whatever you want; it’s the software they used for the Hogwarts game. There is a really cool feature where you can link your phone camera to track your facial movement and there is a character on the other end making the same movements. It’s open source and I don’t know how they do it, so I have to give them a shout out because anybody can use it. It’s seriously one of the most impressive pieces of software I’ve ever seen. What I’m able to do in there would take so long to do with Cinema 4D and Daz. Daz is where I make all of my characters, so when in there I animate each muscle movement on each little spot of their face with keyframes. Unreal is like a cheat code for that, so I expect things to get even crazier in my art very soon.
HIHF: There are so many specific pieces of content of yours that stick out in my head. Lots of animals. You have the shoes tapping on the basketball court with all the balls. You’ve got some eyeballs going all over the place as well, and who could forget the Hungry Hungry Hippos sequence – where do you draw inspiration from when you go in and create this content?
ZiP: Recently, it’s been digging into things I liked growing up and a lot of nostalgia-driven stuff. Like you said, the sneakers – growing up, I played a lot of basketball and was in gyms all the time. The Hungry Hungry Hippos visual, for example, was inspired by the show Solar Opposites; there’s an episode where they make real life Hungry Hungry Hippos that destroy the town. I thought it was so funny and I told myself that I need to make ‘real-life Hungry Hungry Hippos’.
Sometimes you get inspired by some odd stuff, I don’t know. During a kLL sMTH set one time, I thought that one of the songs sounded like a bubble trying to be flipped inside out. When I told my friend, they were like, no way, it does not sound like that. The next day I made an inverted bubble visual on the computer to show my friend and they were like, “OK, I totally see it now.” I get a lot of weird inspiration like that – sometimes someone’s sound design can bring images to mind, I love music like that.
Recently I’ve been collaborating with more artists, which is fun because it’s like a whole different sort of inspiration in a way. It’s cool to see their process and create things that will work for their workflow as well. For example, I’ve been working a lot with Johnathan Singer recently – whose art can be very different from my own. It’s been a lot of fun to find ways to slow my art down and render it in ways that will make his effects pop.
I also get inspired by a lot of the tools I use, too. There are a lot of days where I end up spending way too much time trying to figure out how to make something do the thing that I want it to, because I get lost having fun with effects etc.
HIHF: One piece of content that really sticks out to me is ‘The Analog of Evolution’ remix that you did for Psykiss. I know that was a really big deal for you and a lot of people were talking about that specific piece of content. How did that come to be and what was it about that specific piece of art that made you really want to remix it?
ZiP: That’s a really good question because I didn’t know Steven [Psykiss] before this past Sol Fest. We’ve known each other for less than a year, which is crazy to think about because we made that piece and I’ve played it in so many places. [Steven and I] had some awesome experiences this past summer, just hanging out and wandering festivals.
He’s such a great person and everything he makes is very inspiring. The second I saw [the Analog of Evolution], I said, “I want to make this.” I don’t know how else to describe it; I just thought it would look so cool in 3D. I didn’t know this guy and felt really awkward just reaching out and being like, “Hey, I know you don’t know me, but like…trust me with your art.” I saw him painting at Sol Fest and from the moment we met each other, we hit it off like we were already great friends. I told him that I always wanted to make this piece and he was like, “Sweetie, you can do anything with my art anytime.” So I took that piece and I actually made it without telling him. We talked about it that one time at Sol Fest, but I never told him about it actually coming to life. The next festival I saw that we were both going to be at was Nocturnal Function. I saw him painting again at Nocturnal Function and I told him, “You’re not gonna want to miss my set.”
So then he came to the set and saw it and he told me he was so happy he couldn’t even take a video. I’ve gotten to play that piece all over the world now and it’s crazy to think that it’s been less than a year of me and Steven even knowing each other. The impact that he’s had on me has been pretty tremendous. It’s really cool to be connected with people in the community. I sit at my computers a lot, which can sometimes feel like I don’t know anyone in the scene. When I worked with the team at Tipper Red Rocks, who I still currently work with, it opened a lot of doors for me to meet people within this community. Ever since then, it feels like I’ve had a little family of different people when I do shows, it’s really nice.
HIHF: Love to hear that. And yeah, as a result of working with that team, you’ve played some pretty spectacular venues like The Fillmore, Kings Theatre [in Brooklyn], Brooklyn Mirage last summer, which was arguably my favorite night of the year, Secret Dreams…is there a specific event or set or moment that really sticks out to you from the last year and a half?
ZiP: I’ll give you the two big ones from last summer that really impacted me. The first one, for me, was The Mirage. Getting booked for that alone was like the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s literally right around the corner from my house here. I was like, wow, I get to play in my backyard on a brand new wall that’s like 200 feet wide and like 30 feet tall. So, to get to do that with so many of my friends here in Brooklyn in attendance, it really was like a hometown show. Same with Kings [Theatre]. Kings was awesome because I got to bring my family, which was sick. I brought my mom and she was like: “I get it now.” I also brought my brother to that one. At that one and The Mirage a ton of my friends showed up – which always makes me so happy.
But at Mirage, I was using my buddy’s computer and long story short, the new graphics card he had in there didn’t have enough power, so the computer kept shorting out on me now as I was preparing to play. We did not get much prep time [in the venue] beforehand either; we literally got to go in the afternoon of the show and then that was it. I get anxious when I don’t test, so I remember sitting there in the green room practicing on my computer during the other people’s sets and it just kept crashing because of the graphics card.
With that computer not working, I had to take all of my programs, all of my files…literally everything and put them onto a brand new computer. I’m sitting there trying to switch everything over to a new computer in front of house and Keith [Fractaled Visions] is playing his set. Our hands were literally inches from each other, and I felt so bad – I kept apologizing to him, like, I’m so sorry – but I don’t even think he noticed me.
Sure enough, one program crashed within like 2 minutes of my performance because I copied the files wrong, so I had to go on with half my programs. I did that whole set with about half my set that I had prepared and it felt a bit like the universe was throwing me to the wolves, but the team around me was so supportive. That was one thing I learned; no matter what show I do with that team, I have the most supportive and smartest people in the room standing next to me. You can’t be nervous with that. I also learned how to roll with the punches and continue to have a great time; it’s a concert at the end of the day and those are fun. I’m super satisfied with how that show went and I was proud of myself, so that was really big.
The second one for me was when I played at Boom Fest in Portugal. I was playing in front of almost 30,000 people at one point; however, at that level I felt like a pawn in the scheme. There is so much going on around you production wise and I just kept telling myself that there’s nothing to be nervous about; it’s just a visual show. People came in from all over the world, I came from America; I was thinking, “Just shut up and have some fun.” There’s no time to be nervous at events like those. Shout out to the Datagrama crew for everything. They brought me out there to do Boom and I owe João from Datagrama a ton at this point because that was the coolest experience I’ve ever had. We got to hang a lot on that trip; I played 8.5 hours one night with David Negra of Datagrama – that festival can be a marathon. It’s really cool to see where this project has gone; just a few years ago I would have never imagined I’d be working alongside the people I am.
HIHF: Speaking of Datagrama and cool experiences, they really changed my life and the trajectory of what I like in music and gave me a new perspective and appreciation for visuals at Camp Bisco 2019 with Tipper. When they were doing that projection mapping off the front ceiling of that pavilion, I was completely stunned. I had never seen anything like that before. I don’t even know if it had been done like that before at a show, but that for me was like a real turning point for visuals and live performances. So, with that in mind, where do you see VJing and live visuals going in like, let’s say, the next five years? What do you think the future holds for live performances like that?
ZiP: I’m expecting to see a lot more of the stages that have the big extravagant frames with projection mapping. If you look at what’s happening overseas, that’s all they do. They actually don’t even use LED screens that much; it’s all projection mapping. So, I’m expecting to see a lot more of that being incorporated into the states during concerts. To do extravagant projection mapping isn’t easy, it’s a fine art within itself. I struggled with it when I first prepped for Boom because I had never done anything like it before.
I’m not sure if you were at The Fillmore, but they had this project there with the HoloLens. It’s a Microsoft HoloLens, so you put on these glasses and it’s augmented reality. You still see everything through the glasses; however, there are objects floating around you. So now imagine you go to a concert and everybody gets a headset when you walk in and then the crowd can all experience AR together throughout the show. I think it’s a matter of technology catching up with people’s curiosity before we see stuff like that at shows. There is a lot of stuff happening in the techno community – look at Eric Prydz, for example. He’s got holograms that float above crowds, it’s really next level stuff. Now he is incorporating a transparent LED wall in front of a normal wall to give depth. It’s hard to say where the next thing is going to come from; it’s just going to take one crazy idea for someone to crush it and create a whole new kind of production. I’m here for it – I want to see it expand and I want to be challenged more like I was at Boom/The Mirage.
HIHF: You have performed with some incredibly talented musicians over the last few years. Are there specific artists that you haven’t performed with yet that you would really like to in the future? Who are some of those names?
ZiP: For sure. I think anybody within our scene would probably say Tipper. I mean, with his sound design? Come on, it’s the most fun music to play with. Every now and again you get a weird sound that’s really fun to play with, and then I could do an effect for that sound – “that sound gets this effect and this sound gets this effect.” That’s how I’ll mix my stuff when I’m listening; I’ll be like, “that was a really nice sound. Next time they do that, I’m gonna hit it with something.”
Also at the top of my list is Mickman; Cam and I are extremely long overdue at this point. I love that dude, he’s such a ball of joy. I really like how a lot of his music can be very progressive, it just keeps building. It’s almost kind of hard to mix visuals to because the video needs to keep organically growing like the song does, but I just think it would work really well with what I do. I make a lot of series of content that build and build and build, which I think would work well with his music.
I also would love to work with Jade [Cicada] and Detox Unit. They’re both so insanely talented. I’ve gotten to work with Schmoop before, and if I can work with Will [Schmoop] again, I’d be so happy. Same goes for Kursa – we’ve gotten to play together twice, but I’d love to run that one back. I’m fortunate enough that I’ve gotten to work with a lot of my close friends, which makes me very happy. Of course I have a long list of people I want to perform with, but these are some within the realm of reality. Hopefully one day I get to work with really large acts like Anderson Paak., Dreamville, or Kendrick Lamar. That would be insane to work on a hip hop show of that level – one day it’ll happen.
HIHF: Awesome stuff, as we wrap up here, is there anything else you wanted to share that we haven’t covered yet that would help our readers know more about you?
ZiP: I guess, knowing that I’m self-taught, if there’s anything that you think you want to do, just do it. Nowadays with YouTube and everything on the Internet, there’s no reason not to learn something that you love doing. And I know I said the advice Beeple gave me earlier, but I’ve been freelancing for the past two years and it’s been very difficult at times. That being say, it’s one of the more rewarding things I think I’ve done. I’m really happy with the choices I’ve made and it just takes a lot of dedication and time, so just give yourself some patience and if you want to learn something you should do it. You should teach yourself it. Time is too short.
HIHF: I love that. That’s a great message to close out here with. Do what you love, love what you do. I’m so happy we got to do this, and it was a pleasure talking to you and learning more about this stuff. Thanks again for taking some time to speak with us!
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