Under The Dome
The Melbourne Planetarium (at the Scienceworks Museum in Spotswood) features a ‘16m domed ceiling, reclining seats, a stereo surround sound system and has recently been upgraded to incorporate Sky-Skan’s DigitalSky projection system’. In practice, this means craning your neck around everywhere to see what’s happening beyond your peripheral vision. MIFF featured 3 compilations of dome films, and I opted for the experimental collection – which could’ve been called screensaver collection and only a couple of films would’ve suffered by that description.

Domefest / Elumenati
Part of the compilation came from Domefest, an annual screening curated by Artslab, an interdisciplinary arts centre in the New Mexico desert. A big of googling reveals that festival to be connected with another group, Elumenati, virtuoso specialists in the field immersive projection design. Which also happens to be a group that Johnny De Kam ( founder of VDMX and vidvox.net ) has done a lot of work with. Small world dome thingy.

Anyways, best film of the evening? Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels (2005), which aimed to visualise the manmade aerial technologies between us and the heavens, starting from police and news helicopters, and working through a range of transmitters and satellites, beautifully evoking their processes as it unfolded. Less good? Cosmic Dance, self-described as ‘astrophysics meets Bollywood’, and a painful 48 minutes of a patronising female host, who when not speaking down to the audience, was being washed in cliched special effects and dancing with the universe. Or something.

DIY DOMING
“DomeXF is a content plug-in for Adobe After Effects, Windows version. For fulldome producers, it is a key tool for transforming flat-screen content to the dome. The DomeXF plug-in for Adobe After Effects is available from Sky-Skan for $395USD”.

DomeXF offers the three standard Full Dome video transformations: standard, panoramic and fisheye.
• Standard transformations give the artist the ability to represent true geometry on the dome allowing the composite layer to appear flat and undistorted.
• Panoramic transformations force the bottom of the composite layer to align with the horizon, even when resized.
• Fisheye transformations give the composite layer depth, akin to the traditional all-sky transformation.

And a vast array of potential filming and projection transformative possibilities await you at Paul Bourke’s site of maths and video surfaces.

Fulldome ANAT Masterclass Opportunity
Dome Lab 2010 wants you, applications due Friday 3 September 2010, masterclass to be held 31 October – 5 November 2010 :: Perth, Australia.

“… most fulldome content to date has been educational and comprised of computer-generated animation, data visualistion, or a combination of both. Now, however, there is a shifting focus, with producers turning their sights to the entertainment potential of live-action story-telling for large-formats such as fulldome. Dome Lab is a world-leading intensive workshop investigating this potential and the specific challenges involved in creating compelling live-action narrative content for large format and frameless screens.

Filmmakers and artists excited by the chance to leap beyond the frame and into the expansive creative potential of large-format, immersive screen experiences are invited to apply. Participants will work alongside a team of creative and technical luminaries including Academy-Award winner, Ben Shedd, 2010 Peter Rasmussen award-winner, Peter Morse and international fulldome pioneer, Hue Walker Bumgarner-Kirby.”

All below are cheap options, and can be frowned upon by photography purists – you’ll lose some of your camera controls ( eg autofocus), but when used for DSLR video, image quality is still fantastic compared to traditional video cameras in the same price range, and really, you’re swimming in miniature worlds, and potentially capturing them in HD video.

Macro Conversion Lenses
Option one – find out what diameter size your lense is ( it’ll look like this on the lens – Ø72, meaning 72mm ), then buy a cheap lens add on magnifier of the same diameter that will screw on. An Ebay search for ‘macro lens kit’ will deliver a cheap collection of lenses with a variety of magnifications.

Reverser Rings
Again, the diameter of your lens is needed her, and when you flush the reverser ring search through Ebay, a small package will arrive from Hong Kong in a week or so. The reverser ring attaches to the front of the lense, which let’s the lens go onto the camera backwards. (Or DIY Reverser ring )

Extender Tubes
These cheap metal cylinders extend the distance your camera’s innards and the end of the lense, enabling a closer minimal focal distance for shooting from.

Bellows
There’s something perversely analogue and satisfying about these, kind of like attaching a small piano accordion to your digital pixel capture magic box. They allow easy fine tuned adjustments, moving the lens with respect to the focal plane for focusing. ( Crazier, more expensive tilt-shift bellows option, with full Canon EOS controls retained by camera: Novoflex have you covered.)

Or You Could Just Use
A Pringles can. And aye, naturally, there are many DIY iphone macro photography tutorials ( eg Instructables ). Mostly they involve magnifying glasses of some sort in front of the camera lense. Or maybe a video endoscope’s more your flavour?

Challenges?
Depth of field will be a problem. Even very, very small movements with the camera will take objects in and out of focus. Stability is key then, and DIY stages / environments for objects, even better. Lighting can also be a problem, both in terms of having the camera so close to the object, and with the extra lense lengths being added, letting less light through to the camera. This can be solved with ring lights which fit around a lens, or thoughtful side lighting / reflected light.

Be off swimming with the micro-beasties now, won’t you?

Hassle Canon to sell a 7D at cost price in exchange for review, knowing from using the camera, and seeing online videos, that this is a most desirable camera for shooting video.

Part 2: Zoom In

Focus the review on the video qualities of the Canon 7D, knowing that the Canon 5D MK II has much better photo image quality, and that while other video cameras are on the horizon, which promise similarly large sensors but better video handling controls ( eg the SONY NEX range), the 7D holds a unique position for video capture at this point.

Part 3: Dirt, Meet Fingernails

Run around with the camera a bit, see what it can do ( it sucks light in! ), see how it feels ( sturdy, solid, well built). Think back about shooting video with it, and analyse each component.

The Body
Jumping inside, the camera’s sensor is APS-C sized which means the focal range of all lenses used with it need to be multiplied by 1.6 ( eg a 50mm lens which gives a natural perspective on a full framed camera, will look like an 80mm lens on the Canon 7D – 50×1.6 = 80mm = a lense which gives a slightly zoomed in perspective.) Lenses are separate, and not something being considered here, but the camera itself feels great. Controls are precise and reliable, built to last. That said, this is not a traditional video camera, with ergonomic focus and zoom adjustments within reach. The small size ( relative to a big video camera) also means stabilisation is needed to prevent too much wobble-cam. There is a smorgasbord of companies rushing to supply supporting rigs, but the cost of these also needs to be considered up front if video is your goal.

Software
- Highly customisable interface ( hardware buttons can be re-defined / has 3 custom global settings for easy access to specific settings to suit particular shooting conditions )
- Saves files to a Compact Flash card, in the H264 codec. (Good quality, but needs transcoding into editing software)

Image Quality
Utterly gorgeous. Induces giddy laughter in low-light. It’s not without issues ( google 7D + jello-cam, rolling shutter, moire and aliasing ), but if you’ve come from any other video camera in the same price range, you’ll mostly just be slack-jaw amazed at what the camera is capable of.

Audio Quality
As lame as might be expected for what is essentially a photographic camera slowly morphing into becoming a video camera. A work around? Record using an external recorder such as the Zoom H4N, and use PluralEyes software to auto-sync up your high quality audio files with your lower quality ones, within your video editing software. Once synced, delete the bad audio, and your filmic masterpiece now has rich sound to match.

Part 4: Duel at Dawn

Compare the 7D with the 5D Mk II, the 7D’s only true competitor in the field.

5D: Full frame sensor, greater image quality, more depth of field. Better for wide shots. Use up to 25600 ISO ( ie great for low light). 3.9 FPS for photos. 1080p at 30p only. ( ie 1920 x1080 HD progressive / non-interlaced footage at 30 fps ).

7D: Smaller APS-C sensor ( means less image quality, but also means closer to 35mm movie sensor size and possibility, after adding mods, of using cinema lenses ). Better for telephoto shots. Use up to 12800 ISO. 8FPS for photos. 1080/30p (29.97), 1080/25p, 1080/24p (23.976), 720/60p (59.94) and 720/50p ( 50p + 60p footage can effectively create slow-motion footage at 25p and 30p ).

Aside from the above specs, the 7D also has a dedicated video record button, a better LCD screen for viewing in daylight, and better ergonomics for handling. Plus, this guy recommends it for video.

Part 5: Signing Out

When offering some final words of critical acclaim for this most desirable video camera, don’t forget to crowdsource, and point to the huge range of support material online developing around the 7D and it’s enthusiastic fanbase. People like to see it for themselves.
vimeo.com/groups/eos7d
vimeo.com/groups/canoneos7d

See also:
The skynoise intro to DSLR cameras and an overview of
steadicams and video stabilising systems DSLRs.

Thanks to Canon Australia, and to 3DWorld for printing the review.

French Rubber

Mr.Oizo, already somewhat notorious from his audio exploits at Ed Banger records, has earlier branched out into music video and film making. Steak, a feature released only in France in 2007, had a plot based around kidnapping, plastic surgery and the fashion world, and handily, featured cameos from French artists Sebastien Tellier, Kavinsky, and SebastiAn ( who appeared as wheel-chair bound car thieves ). Apparently Mr.Oizo himself, Quentin Dupieux, is the only person who has an English subtitled version, after the French producer lost interest post-release in France.

Rubber on the other hand, is already popping up all over the web video radar, with quirky trailers available at vimeo.com, or fresh from the leathery horse’s mouth at rubberfilm.com ( and as it turns out, writing rubberfilms by mistake, delivers a premium fetish gallery. Not to be confused with Rubber, the 1936 Dutch flick, or Chris Cunningham’s flickerfest, Rubber Johnny ). It’d seem easy enough to think of this as a quirky road movie ( and yet another feature film shot on the Canon 5D), but this rubber tyre serial killer flick might just transcend the genre’s usual offerings. Also on the soundtrack alongside Mr.Oizo, will be Gaspard Augé of Justice ( another Ed Banger ). Make of it all, what you will. See Rubber at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival.

And In The Other French Corner..

Being both a master of comic timing and carefully orchestrated cinematography, Jacques Tati’s films inevitably unfold with visual charm, and an abundance of surprise for the eyes. Playtime, his most famous film, took 9 years to make, was shot on 70mm and involved a set on the outskirts of Paris which resembled a small city in itself. Like his other films, it too took a sword to modern society, lampooning social attitudes and obsessions with gadgetry and convenience, and being near dialogue-less, requires viewing to see just how funny it and Tati are. Interest is high then, for The Illusionist, an animation based on a script by Tati, and directed by Sylvain Chomet ( who also directed the gorgeous Triplets of Belleville animation feature). Tati intended to make the film as a live action film with his daughter, with the plot revolving around ‘a struggling illusionist who visits an isolated community and meets a young lady who is convinced that he is a real magician.’ And being a French production, naturally everything is a little more complicated.

See The Illusionist at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival

Car Sharing
Taking a leaf out of Kurt Vonnegut’s book, and looking at civilisation from a distance – we do seem to be a species of oil crazed demons, intent on paving the planet over, and shuffling ourselves around in vehicles that weigh a whole tonne all by themselves. In cities with better urban planning and public transport, it’s obvious to citizens living there that not every single person needs to own a car to survive. Extending this idea another step, car sharing is about renting out cars for short periods of time and thereby reducing the amount of cars needed for a suburb. Some people need a car daily for various reasons, but for others who only need the occasional trip, the car sharing service can save a lot of money ( and other problems such as maintenance etc ). If you drive less than 15,000km a year you will probably find carsharing will save money. There’s three main car sharing groups operating in Sydney and Melbourne, each blowing their own eco-trumpet about the benefts of having access to a newer, fuel efficient car when you need it, and through sharing it with others, effectively reducing the amount of cars needed.

Flexicar, phone 1300 36 37 80 GoGet, phone 1300 769 389 Charter Drive, phone 1300 135 358

Renting Two Wheels?


Like car rentals, daily bicycle hire has long been an available option for visiting tourists and wandery folk. Arguing that the short trip rental could appeal to the general public, and potentially encourage them to leave cars at home, the Victorian Government has launched a $5 million scheme which will see 600 bicycles available to pick up or drop off at 50 different bike stations across Melbourne. Subscriptions cost $50 a year, $8 a week or $2.50 a day – and the first half an hour of every trip is then free, $2 for the next half an hour and so on. A credit card is needed to participate, and helmets aren’t included, so it’ll be interesting to see whether people find bringing a helmet into the city more convenient than bringing a car. [ Yet to see a single blue bike 'in the wild', though plenty of them seem missing from their racks around the city... ]

Buzzkill
Audio nerds the world over must love soccer, because there’s been a huge outpouring online of ways to filter out the drone. Create Digital Music have done a pretty great round-up of these, tackling everything from EQing with onscreen TV controls ( get rid of 233, 466, 932 and 1864 HZ if you can), free VST plug-ins for mac and pc, acoustic engineers explaining the science of why vuvzelas are annoying ( I actually enjoy the medieval carnival / sacrifice kinda vibe they add ), vuvuzela orchestra ( yes, really ), vuvuzela radio ( uhuh ), and how to re-route audio signals using JACK or Soundflower into another application that has better audio filtering and VST capacities.

Audio Re-Routing
Wormhole2 – allows routing of audio between machines on a network. Now you can make use of all the processing power in your studio. For example; set aside a machine for complex instruments or effects, route audio out to it, then back into your favorite DAW. Or route audio between your PCs and Macs to get the best of both worlds. Or share audio between laptops on stage.

Soundflower is a Mac OS X (10.2 and later) system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. Soundflower is easy to use, it simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed. Soundflower is free, open-source, and runs on Mac Intel and PPC computers. IS often used for podcasting to combine tow different audi streams, or to combine skip interview voices etc.

Jack (the Jack Audio Connection Kit ) is a low-latency audio server, written originally for the GNU/Linux operating system, and now with Mac OS X support. It can connect any number of different applications to a single hardware audio device; it also allows applications to send and receive audio to and from each other. Jack is different from other audio server efforts in that it has been designed from the ground up to be suitable for professional audio work. This means that it focuses on two key areas: synchronous execution of all clients, and low latency operation.

Video Re-Routing?
But let’s say you want to send a video signal from one program into another program – how to do that? No such re-routing software currently exists, but there is at least a work around through Vade’s excellent ( and free ) Screen Capture utility. This is a Quartz Composer patch ( and therefore mac only) which allows a portion of the screen to be selected, then sent into another compatible program. This can mean web browsing / web-flash games / computer games etc can all be displayed in one corner of a screen, and then accepted within VJ software such as VDMX and used as a live signal, and filtered, mixed or processed to your heart’s content. ( Be warned : Removing plastic horns visually is likely a bit trickier… )

But Wait, There’s More..
Vade has more in the pipeline, a video re-router that will work fast, and on the graphics card rather than CPU. Tests so far allow easy re-routing between Max MSP / Jitter / Quartz and VDMX. Bookmark his site for announcements to come. And in other news the Auvi Objects have been updated for Max 5, which will please live visualists who remember it.. )

“Auvi was designed with an attitude of sympathy towards beginners. Even now, Auvi can be a lot of fun for those who are less technically advanced — for example, those who don’t want to mess about with shaders and GL. I like to think of Max as a haven for artists whose needs aren’t met by standard software. Auvi was my attempt to increase the fun-factor for these newcomers.” Kurt Ralkse

Soccer Video Remixing
Because you need something to do with all those pipes, right? Recommendo : the 1981 Escape to Victory starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine + Pele in a German prisoner of war camp. Or maybe? Pele’s viagara campaign, where he offers these last smiling words to the camera:
“Talk to your doctor, I would..”
An amusingly careful phrasing, which allows Pele to retain all suggestion of athletic virility, but let anyone else know – Pele says it’s ‘ok’.

Actually Making Stuff From Within Your Browser
How about that! Again, just a convenience in some ways, and not meant to replace your more powerful desktop tools, but sometimes there’s more than enough power right there in your browser.

aviary.com – First shout out must go to Aviary – where from within the browser you can use a variety of their software to do – Photo-editing, adjust vector logos, play with web templates, filters, color palettes, screen captures, edit audio files and more.

looplabs.com – An online music mixing application with an impressive list of features in the sidebar.
online jamming : ninjam.com + jam2jam.com

soundcloud.com – Increasingly popular hosting service, which notably allows comments on specific parts of audio timelines, has convenient dropboxes for easy file sharing, and has many more musician-friendly features. (See intro video for more )

skype.com – Screensharing options for comparing software production notes / techniques / debugging. Voice chat, audio recording.

xtranormal.com – your text + their audio + button to publish = auto generated and published animated movie

pixton.com/uk – Templates for generating online comics.

slideshare.net – Easy development and publishing of slideshows with accompanying audio.

Need Files to Play With?
The popularity of Creative Commons has meant a continued growth of sites legally offering media files for creative re-use :

ccmixter.org – Huge collection of mostly musical sounds, including song parts, and full tracks by the likes of Chuck D and the Beastie Boys, DJ Vadim etc etc.
freesound.org – Giant library of atmospheric, FX and musical sounds.

flickr.com/creativecommons – Flickr’s creative commons collection is ginormous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources – Also ginormous.

archive.org – Noble San Fran cats with an abundance, an overload of audio and video work available for re-use. Lots of high quality and unusual vintage material, as well as contemporary netlabels etc.

And What To Do With It All?
Maybe something like this? starwarsuncut.com – where Star Wars is being remade by fans, in 15 second chunks – there are still a few scenes left – sign up and make yours, to be part of the final edit!

Get some print on demand books happening via lulu.com – upload a PDF and no-one pays a cent until a book is ordered online, then it’s printed and delivered to them, money put into your account, and all why you lie in your hammock.

Upload your work to bandcamp.com – and have them offer a variety of free to expensive downloads and even VINYL options!

Make $19,000 in ten hours on Twitter. ( Yes, this may work easier if you are Amanda Palmer )

In other words, you can build your own interactive software or effects using Quartz 2D, Core Image, Core Video, OpenGL, QuickTime, MIDI System Services, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), XML and various hardware inputs ( eg mouse, audio inputs etc ) – without needing to know any code. It is however, also kinda complicated to get a non-programmer head around. The benefits for mac visualists though, are starting to get too large to ignore: continuous developer and community momentum behind it, easy integration into many other applications ( eg VDMX, Resolume for live work, or other apps for production ), a large body of existing examples that can be customised to suit, and the potential to create or invent visual effects, transitions or processes that are exactly suited to your one-off or overall needs.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to try and document my own learning process with it here, and aim to post a weekly-ish blog post exploring what I’m learning, or what I’m struggling with. Hopefully this’ll motivate me to get up to speed quicker, but also provide something useful for someone else. This first post just sets the scene, puts Quartz Composer in some kinda context, and offers up some links to the key online resources for it. With the next post, I’ll try tackle what it feels like to dive into, and how to start making sense of it, what kinds of rules and quirks it has, and how to start making your own quartz patches. Yes, neantherdal baby steps, because they’re mine. Somewhere in the distance, there’s an endgoal though, of being able to execute a range of long desired visual effects and processes that would be handy / interesting in some situations. And so begins the Hobbit like adventure..

What You’ll Need
- A mac running the Leopard ( preferably ) or tiger operating system.
- XCode Tools ( free on the OS installer disc, once installed, Quartz Composer + examples can be found in the /Developer/Applications/ folder).

How does it work?
Quartz Composer creates Quartz Compositions ( motion graphics programs that work by assembling ‘patches’ in a workflow for processing and rendering. There are several types of patches eg Composite Patches / Controller Patches / Environment Patches – Filter Patches etc which can be combined in various ways.

User Interface
Opening up QC, options for Blank Composition, Graphic Animation, Graphic Transition, Image Filter, Music Visualizer, RSS Visualizer and Screensaver offer easy templates to begin from, and give some idea of the program’s scope.

Once open, there are four main windows to consider:
Editor window – a workspace for assembling and connecting patches. Also, on the editor window toolbar clicking the patch parameters button will open up the Patch Parameter Pane – a place for Editing input parameters.
Patch Creator – utility window for browsing and getting information about QC patches and clips. ( A good place to browse and familiarise with available patches )
Patch Inspector – Utility window for editing input parameters and patch related settings.
Viewer Window – Where you get to see the results of all your pixel mangling.

A good beginner exercise is just to open up the example patches that are installed with the program ( found inside Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer ). Exploring some of those will help clarify the relationships between the above four windows, and give an idea of how it operates. I’ll dive in further with the next post, and the resources below will help anyone wanting to keep on trucking.

Further Resources
Apple’s QC Guide – Comprehensive breakdown and introductory explanations.
QC Developer Mailing List –
http://kineme.net – A community surrounding the development of Quartz Composer custom patches, plugins, and other hacks.
VDMX wiki- Tips for integrating QC into VDMX, links to other QC sources.

Over at Vimeo –
vimeo.com/tag:quartzcomposer : 1,477 example QC clips and counting.
vimeo.com/groups/search:quartz
vimeo.com/5616060 – Shakinda shows the basic concepts for setting up QC.
vimeo.com/goto10 – bouncing balls, feedback effects, double helix, QC plugins, dynamic slideshows.

Extra Patches / QTZ FX
http://vdmx.memo.tv – QC patches ready to drop into VDMX.
http://002.vade.info – great QC add-ons from New York’s Vade.

videocopilot.net – has a great range of free introductory video tutorials, and sells more advanced tutorials ( as well as software plugins ).
ae.tutsplus.com – Probably the most regularly updating AE blog out there.
aescripts.com – Useful scripts that can make several tasks easier ( auto-detect edit points and separate clips into individual layers? No problem. )
[ And via Synesthete in the comments :
GREYSCALEGORILLA – has AE gems mixed in C4D and production tips.
maltaannon – in depth AE
Making It Look Great – paid DVD tutorial series has some great stuff. ]

creativecow.net/after-effects-tutorials-podcast – The pioneering motion graphics site also has 150+ video podcast episodes to wander through, from easy through to brain-squintingly hard. Which reminds…

Alternatives to Itunes For Podcasts
While the iphone/itunes combo can be a delight, it can also be a pain in the ass – Apple extending it’s control too far, and trying to limit how easily media can be moved too and from your device. Stepping outside the itunes publishing monopoly also reminds how much more can be found on the web. And indeed, there are several options for subscribing to podcasts :

Doubletwist.com
This looks interesting, coming from a company with ‘DVD Jon’ onboard ( famous for reverse engineering many pieces of software for the purpose of allowing citizens to do what they wanted with files ):
“We started doubleTwist because we were disappointed by the quality of software applications offered by the major device manufacturers. We feel that just like you don’t use a different browser for every web site you visit (Firefox to read the NY Times, IE to stream Hulu, Chrome to browse YouTube, etc) you shouldn’t have to use iTunes for Apple products, Nokia software for Nokia phones, Sony software for Sony products, etc. The typical household today has many such devices and there is a need for a simple and powerful software that connects them.”
Boasts a much bigger podcast directory than itunes, and features easy sync with any gadget, as well as amazon.com mp3 access.
Songbird ( mac / pc / linux )
Smoother interface, easy gadget syncing, social media integration, artist ticket updates.

Miro ( mac/PC/linux )
Includes audio, video podcast subscribing, bit torrent downloads, HD optimisation, smooth interface.

yamipod.com ( mac / pc / linux )
No podcast services, but worth mentioning as a good freeware app to manage an ipod.

Love to hear about any other recommended podcasts, be it tutorial wise, or clever audio storytelling from the likes of Radiolab… Drop a line if there’s something you love..

- collaborating on projects via tropical hammocks. (”no, no – I think an edit to a darker scene at 1:47.. like this… just a sec.. topping up my coconut juice”)
- remote tutorials (in real-time rather than recording and uploading).
- really direct feedback and refining of work ( compared to email ping pong and uploading / downloading test clips / songs / graphics etc )
- live remixing of processed video from afar

A friend introduced me to this while we were working on an animation project together, and it was so effective at jumping to problem areas on a timeline, and changing things immediately without having to render and upload etc. Move this bit here, put that on the other side of the screen, a bit less of that effect etc.

Working on an animation project with a friend, we began to use it quite a lot to show each other where we were at on the timeline, able to voice chat at the same time, and request to adjust parts, or jump to certain parts of the timeline. Really useful, and

MPEG StreamClip
Elsewhere in the so-damn-useful video software ballpark, is the free MPEG Streamclip from Italy, an awesome but under appreciated bundle of code downloadable from http://www.squared5.com:

“MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files, not only MPEGs; it can convert MPEG files between muxed/demuxed formats for authoring; it can encode movies to many formats, including iPod; it can cut, trim and join movies. MPEG Streamclip can also download videos from YouTube and Google by entering the page URL.

You can use MPEG Streamclip to open and play most movie formats including MPEG files or transport streams; edit them with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trim; set In/Out points and convert them into muxed or demuxed files, or export them to QuickTime, AVI, DV and MPEG-4 files with more than professional quality, so you can easily import them in a DVD authoring tool, and use them with many other applications or devices.”

It support a huge range of file formats, allows easy cropping of images ( to get rid of bad borders etc ), it does batch processing, it lets you easily export snippets from DVDs, it can split large files onto multiple discs, and the list goes on. A must download for any video-heads.

http://fffff.at/fattag-meet-projector
For whatever reason, the iphone’s video out can’t be used while using apps – without jailbreaking the iphone. In other words, the phone has the capacity, but this is being annoyingly withheld. Once jailbroken, yes, there’s an app for ensuring video out while playing games or using visual tools. And a sign that this dormant feature might become activated? Try the ‘fat tag’ graffiti app – which although doesn’t support video out in it’s official version, has been made available as a custom version that does. Draw, paint, connect video out to projector and there’s a nice little portable touchscreen projection rig right there.

Bonus Round
http://wayneandwax.com/?p=3069 Free album by Mutamassik, That Which Death Cannot Destroy
http://flattr.com/beta – micropayments system designed by one of the pirate bay

Sculpture are one of my favourite discoveries of late. Notice the words ‘zoetrope record deck’ in their description? Those custom made picture discs ( just a sequence of images arranged around a vinyl disc and filmed from above ) definitely help define their aesthetic but there’s much more going on than that. Glimpse a few of their animations and live performances to grasp some more.

Everything
http://vimeo.com/6364896
A vibrant array of visual creators constantly pump out material on vimeo.com, so even casual exploration of the site usually brings some rewards. It’s especially nice though, to discover delights in clusters, masses of talented folk orbiting around one of vimeo’s groups or channels. Such as the awesome compilation ‘Everything’, curated by Danny Jelinek, each episode tending to feature 5-6 snappy segments, sharp editing and humour, and sophisticated but whimsically used visual effects.
 
Op Art in Visual Chinatown

davidope.com
http://dvdp.tumblr.com
On the optical art front, albeit with a more contemporary feel, ‘davidope’ creates hypnotic looping animations, which he offers up as a series of tumblr gifs ( hosted at what he calls his ‘visual chinatown’), or java apps / quicktime movs for those inclined. His recipe?

1. I create a simple animated 2d looped pattern in Flash or with Illustrator+Javascript.
2. Then I use them as a displacement/diffuse/alpha map for a static 3d object in 3dsmax.
3. Rendering it with Vray or Illustrate.
4. Finally converting it to GIF with Photoshop.

DJ Yoda 

www.djyoda.co.uk/
youtube.com/user/djyodauk

Belated shout outs to DJ Yoda, who toured Australia in late December. Admittedly I was skeptical after glimpsing a set portion online a long time ago ( too obviously cut and paste in that mid-late 90s way, with little sampling subtlety in the choices or choreography), but for the sonic and visual heads in the audience alike(@ Falls festival) yoda ‘ripped it’, constantly weaving through pop culture grabs with fluid, sophisticated ease. This included a range of recently new worthy items as well as an extended encore of contemporary Australian TV.    

Apart from busily honing his live gigs, DJ Yoda also recently contributed to the DJ Hero game ( Playstation, XBox, Wii ), offering up two mixes for playing : Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” vs. Gang Starr’s “Just to Get a Rep”, and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” vs. Shlomo’s “Beats”. As an aside – has anyone ever used this? The game made a lot of splashes on release, but I haven’t heard from a single user of it since, or even seen anyone pointing to an interesting video of it (or it’s turntable controller ) in action. Meanwhile, ‘Scratch, The Ultimate DJ‘, being developed by Bedlam games and delayed because of legal troubles, is now back on track – with tracks by Mixmaster Mike, Kid Koala, Gorillaz, Salt N pepa etc. Stay tuned.

The Books ( Mini Review )
John Curtin Hotel ( Carlton, Melb Jan 09)

Thanks to the tasteful way they’d championed the collagey folktronica sound back in the day, what with their sparse guitar, cello, vocals and samples (though never sampling or playing drumkits, only using ‘inanimate objects like children’s toys and filing cabinets, sampled and looped’ ) and their charming albums ‘Thought For Food’ and ‘The Lemon of Pink’, New York duo The Books have gathered quite a following. Expecting they were only in Australia for the Sydney festival, I was pleased to discover they were also doing a Melbourne show, and that it extended their sampling to include video in the live show. Unfortunately the John Curtin’s low stage meant two things – only the front row of the audience could see them performing ( they sat near milk-crates to play with their electronic gear and play their guitar / cello ), and even the onstage projector screen itself was hard to see much of. Eyes closed the music was gorgeous, if a little too perfectly replicating their album sounds. Open eyed, the screen shared some of the responsibility for mirroring the albums so tightly : it seemed they were playing entire tracks of video for each song, which included lots of screen-based audio. Many of their known sample riffs’ then, were sampled from video in the first place, which makes for an absorbing av show, but limits their live improvisation when played as stand alone tracks. Later realised, they released a DVD of 13 music videos, ‘Play All’, in 2007, and you can watch snippets from these at www.thebooksmusic.com. New album on its way, Break, themed around New Age philosophies, and using samples from self-help and hypnotherapy cassettes.

{ And an abstract video take on that :
by David Lublin, one of the developers of VDMX. )

Stingray Sam

Kicking space musical western ass since 2001, the year of his debut feature, American Astronaut, storytelling musician and film director Cory McAbee was in Melbourne recently for the screening of his cinematic follow-up, Stingray Sam. Designed for both mobile devices and the cinema, it’s shot with smaller screens in mind ( a tendency for close-ups rather than long shots, lots of static shots, broken up into six small episodes etc ), the film’s another great vehicle for Cory’s uniquely combined explorations of musical storytelling and cinematic style. Although the songs of his band, The Billy Nayer Show, tend to be comedic, they survive or even thrive on the salt of the earth charm embedded throughout, and it helps that the film(s) can shift into song in such unpredictable ways. Recommendo.

Download episode one and two for free, check out the storyboards, buy the DVD at stingraysam.com.

Farewell Songs
This is the last song played at The Tote, the latest Melbourne live music venue to suffer under licencing changes. Complete with 2-3 minutes of arm-tingling cheers at the end.

Other Kinds of Magic:
Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers.

The World As Sonic Map?
Via @ballardian, a link to a nice post about collaborative sound mapping projects – from the BBC, others exploiting Google Maps, and sites that allow to pick a starting point and destination, then present a mix of field recordings between the two places ( sound transit ). The Freesound map gets a deserved shout-out in the comments at the same site, and elsewhere you can listen to the underwater atmosphere of Antarctica in realtime.

All of the above of course presumes we navigate by text / visual cues… what about if we navigated by sound?

The World As Instrument?
The World as instrument: A Theoretical Workshop Taught by Francisco Lopez ::February 16-18 2010

“focused on the historical, sociological and philosophical aspects of different practices that have the “real world” as a source, or an inspiration, for sonic creation. From ancestral manifestations of music derived from nature to the present massive sonic exploration of our world, analyzing the historical attempts at recording sonic reality and creatively transform it, from musical notation to digital technology… the workshop aims at stirring up discussion and at challenging many stereotypical and misleading conceptions about recorded sound in many diverse areas and objects of study, from bioacoustics to experimental music, from phonographs to hard disk recorders, from birds to cosmic radio emissions.”

Chimps are now making movies. It’s true. And their movies are getting screened on the BBC. A bunch of chimps were given access to specially designed chimp-proof cameras as part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other, and could also use some touchscreens that allowed them to view remote parts of their enclosure. This was all part of a natural history documentary, and the relevant chimp clips were shown as part of the program Chimpcam on BBC 2.

When Chimps Make Noise
Am eternally indebted to Jim Knox ( I Flips Me Lid ) for casually pointing out that the makers of the Get Smart sitcom also made Lancelot Link, a 24 episode detective series with a cast entirely comprised of chimps. Which isn’t to say they held back on the storyboarding. As well as car driving chase scenes, there were water skiing chases, camel rides in the desert with falcons on shoulder, chimps dressed as undercover surgeons performing surgery – and so on. And then some. Complete with musical interludes to break up the show, with magic trick performing MCs introducing the ‘live band’, of instrument wielding chimps, bashing along in time to some sixties psychedelic sitcom rock. ( More on that here ) The chimp band’s name? ‘The Evolution Revolution’.

Inside The Chimp Mind
Radio Lab at WNYC produce an excellent weeklyish radio show and podcast, where on given themes, they carefully craft together a show using a range of interviews, sounds effects and themselves making provocative jabs at each other. That the end result comes off as so freewheeling and conversational is testament to their editing skills, but anyways – a recent show was about the Animal Mind and they asked whether it was possible for one animal to know what is going on in another animal’s mind, and looked at the problems of anthropomorphising too much (Said one animal scientist : Expecting that every other creature perceives the world as humans do, vastly reduces the complexity and diversity if the world ). Can we really see inside a chimp mind? Or they, ours? What type of communication is really possible? The one hour show is worth listening to for the interesting scientist perspectives, but it’s the tale involving a large, floating whale eyeball that did it for me.

No Chimpee, No Cry

Carson Mell is “an artist/filmmaker living in Hollywood, CA without a wife or an animal”. It said so on the internet : vimeo.com/user520733. Animal owner or not, Carson makes great short films, as featured on the also wonderful Wholphin DVD compilation ( from McSweeneys ), and it’d seem from the sprawling animated carcass of his short about an aging touring rocker, Chonto, Carson and animals, they have a special relationship. Get your Chonto fix at vimeo, or over at http://www.carsonmell.com. (Or aye, full-length atyou-toob )

Chimp Shout-Outs
It’d be appropriate here to mention, Soda Jerk’s The Dawn of Remix which features a wonderful scratch video section using the apes from Kubrick’s 2001 to great effect. Soda Jerk? Those Sydney cine-remixers behind the likes of Picnic at Wolf Creek, Pixel Pirate II. They spend a residency in India recently, so future work may have a Bollywood tinge, and they’re currently working on ‘The Dark Matter Cycle’ of videos, exploring the intersection of death, temporality and cinema. “Go(o)d times”.

And Then There Were None
Did you know there are as little as 21,000 chimpanzees and 25,000 gorillas floating about? As it turns out – around ‘1.2 million years ago, only 18,500 early humans were breeding on the planet- evidence that there was a real risk of extinction for our early ancestors, according to a new study‘. We’ve managed to rise to 6.8 billion now. Is is possible there’ll be more chimps than then in another 1.2 million years? Not at our current rates of deforestation. If there is however, what will the future chimps think of the ANIMATED series, Return to Planet of the Apes?

Also : image up top from infamous Melbourne beatmaker, Monkey Marc’s new album, As the Market Crashed.

VIDEO
REEL DIRECTOR – $9.99 and a video editing mobile (3GS) now lives in your pocket. Although understandably limited in scope, it does allow to assemble different clips from your library onto a timeline, edit those, and add a variety of transitions.
REEL MOMENTS – by the same company, is all about creating time lapse videos.
SLOMO – let’s you make videos 8 times slower or 2 times faster – with an option to change audio pitch or not.
AClapboard – $7.99
VINTAGE VIDEO MAKER $3 – Adds a retro effect. Not really sold on one-filter apps, but it’s probably a while away before there’s going to be an After Effects killer on a phone. Key frames on trams.

PHOTO / GRAPHICS / ANIMATION
pCAM Film + Digital Calculator $47.99 Calculates Depth of field, focal length matching, running time to length, underwater distances and other long lists of technical details useful for Directors of photography, film, visual effects etc.
phone photos swapped with others randomly?
SKETCHBOOK MOBILE – $5.99 from Autodesk. Multitouch 2500% zoom, paintbrushes 3 layers / import photos. Closest to a mini-photoshop in your pocket I’ve found yet.
PETIT DUMMY – Add any photo, add audio track, select mouth points, create moving animation.
FLICKMATION – Frame by frame animation with layers, onion skinning ( transparency which let’s you see the last frame while drawing the new one ) and a stamp system that can be made from existing photos.
STORYBOARD COMPOSER – $23.99 – An excellent storyboarding app (formerly Hitchcock ), which is possibly the most native feeling app I’ve used. It just seems to harness the touchscreen and gesture controls well, has easy integration of photos, has a great interface, and has a certain immediacy to playing with it, that really encourages exploration.
REAL CAM SP – $1.19 – onscreen menu items to help control iphone camera better… digital zoom, white balance for specific areas in frame etc. That said, there’s a LOT of one-function photography apps out there, with their one cheesy effect that can be added easily to your snap of the day.

INTERACTIVE
TOUCH OSC – $5.99 – Let’s you send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a wi-fi network using the UDP protocol. Which means controlling software on your onstage-laptop, from the dancefloor or in front of the speakers / screen etc. Faders, sliders, an X/Y pad, multi-touch. And a visual editor available from their website.
MRMR – Another OSC app, this one’s free and multi-user by design.
OSCEMOTE – $5.99 multitouch TUIO, accelermoter xyz
ispy Cameras $1.19 – view + control camera from public cams, take screenshots
TONETABLE $9.99 – produces a control tone – for controlling a digital vinyl system – eg serato scratch live / traktor scratch / m-audio’s torq etc. It also allows easy jumping between different pitches through a series of buttons. By the makers of Mix Emergency ( a video mixing app for use with Serato ). And included in this visual app list, because the digital vinyl system can control video as well.
VLC REMOTE $3.99 – Because you wanted a way to browse your hard drive of Al Jazeera recordings from the comfort of your bed.

Shout out to CANABALT, a kind of one-finger Bruce Willis platformer, which has captivated this week. ( My record? 5204m )

When Cinemek’s Jonathan Houser dream of ‘making innovative film tools’ met the iPhone in his pocket, a new mobile storyboarding application was born: Hitchcock. Utilising the iPhone’s touchscreen and built-in camera, Hitchcock adds a layer of fun to location scouting, planning for films and storyboarding sequences. The app has two modes – a panel view that focusses on each shot ( gathered from the photo library ) and allows easy overlays of character stand-ins, camera and character movement and text overlays. The sequential mode allows a finger to slide the panels into a sequence, and control the timing between each shot. There’s something great about the immediacy of being on location, arranging a sequence, and watching it playback to see how well it works as an idea. Hitchcock is a simple app, but executed wonderfully, with a gorgeous interface that encourages play and re-use. When done, press a button and email your completed PDF storyboard. Future developments include : drawing functionality, adding audio, ability to add custom stand-in characters, export to .mov, etc. Cinemek’s Jonathan Houser was happy to answer a few questions about it below.

More : cinemek.com/hitchcock
Tutorials : vimeo.com/channels/hitchcock

How do you feel about Hitchcock today?
I’m pretty pleased with how Hitchcock turned out as it is version 1.0. It really accomplishes what I set out to do which was create a lightweight mobile app that allows creative people to jot their ideas down in a visual medium. 

What has the iphone platform been like to develop for?
As a non-coder I was really supprised at how easy it was to design the app under Apples specifications. They provide developers with tons of tools and free API’s. The hardest part for me was to find a person who had the calibre of coding necessary when you reach beyond those free API’s. Jason Thane at General UI did a great job with this. 

What changes would you like in future iphones / the future iphone development environment?
There are many small things that I would like to see. The biggest for me is Apple’s payment process. They are really ambiguous about how they pay you. You may receive reports for a given months sales and the actual fund paid are 20-30% less than what those reports reflect. The worse part is actually contacting them about such problems. It’s pretty messy but I’m sure it’s getting better. 

What’s missing for you to develop Hitchcock on Android?
Right now, proven demand. We have been talking to other developers and the success rate for Android porting is very very low. We have not by any means ruled it out, we are taking it one step at a time. There are many updates to the iphone version of Hitchcock we hope to do before we port to other platforms. 

Hitchock feels like the beginning of an interesting animation sketching app – have you had any thoughts about creating an app that tilted more towards animation?
Yes, we are definitely exploring different specialized uses for Hitchcock. I think the animation community is large enough to warrant a application designed directly for that community.

Other iphone apps that impress?
There are so many – for filmmaking, the guys at Chemical Wedding just released an app called Artemis. It’s a professional director’s finder for the iphone. It contains just about any lens you can think about shooting on. REALLY cool. As for non filmmaking apps, Convert bot has a really cool interface. Its just a conversion app, but the UI team did a great job with the design. Shazam is still such a cool app. There are a bunch of Augmented reality apps coming out which will prove to be pretty useful. 

What aspects of the iphone are least utilised by apps?
I think the biggest aspect of the iphone that is least utilized is multi-touch. It seems like most developers design their apps as ported desktop versions of their app. The buttons are too small and do too little. I think there will be more apps in the future which utilize the whole iphone. 

Do you have a gallery of favourite storyboards submitted by users anywhere?
Not yet. But we are planning on creating a community for that. Keep checking in. 

Popular feature requests?
.mov export is the biggest request. This will be available really shortly. Possibly the beginning of December. Local PDF creation and emailing. Available in the next update as well. Sharing Hitchcock files. This will be available in the Pro version. Many people want to be able to import more PNG’s for stand-ins. We are working on a slick way to exchange PNG’s on a server. This will be a great tool for people who work on specialized projects. Ie car’s, Zombies, Dogs, people with guns etc. 

Other iphone app areas you’d like to explore in the future?
I have a few projects which involved the ipod touch as the software/hardware interface. They are in their infancy still so I cannot go into detail, but they are oriented towards the filmmaking community. 

Hitchcock Demo from cinemek / Hitchcock on Vimeo.

Via Germany : Yes, MAXForLive is near, which should turbocharge audiovisual performance capabilities, bringing together the custom sophistications of MAX/MSP and MAX’s visual Jitter objects, with the musician grade sequencing capacities of Ableton Live, enabling the easy creation of complex and dynamic audio and visual relationships.

Via Hungary : Animata is open source real-time animation software, was built in Kitchen Budapest . It was especially designed for interactive theatre and projections, and
“… the animation – the movement of the puppets, the changes of the background – is generated in real-time, making continuous interaction possible. This ability also permits that physical sensors, cameras or other environmental variables can be attached to the animation of characters, creating a cartoon reacting to its environment. For example, it is quite simple to create a virtual puppet band reacting to live audio input, or set up a scene of drawn characters controlled by the movement of dancers.”

Via Finland: Thanks to Mansteri / Monsteri, a DJ/VJ, Animata can now be controlled with a quartz composer patch and OSC.

Via Hungary : As well as the free open source VJ software CoGe, the http://coge.lovqc.hu/forum also offers two useful quartz composer plug-ins for real-time compositing. CoGePSBrushes is a free and open-source Quartz Composer plugin, which enables photoshop brushes to be used within a quartz composition. And CoGePSDLayers is another Quartz Composer plugin, which allows separated photoshop layers to be played with inside Quartz. Real-time animation.
Via U.S. : You like to code with Open Frameworks? Thanks to Vade, your OF code can now swim happily within Quartz composer.

Theme from above? Quartz Composer. ( Hello summer tutorials )

Hardware?
Via the UK : DVI mixing comes a step closer, ie a mixer is being developed which will input and output VGA and DVI, and allow you to do what nothing else will: dualhead at 1600×600, triplehead at 1920×480, HD at 1920×1080@60Hz. In other words mixing of the good digital signals being given out by a computer, and to a range of screen possibilities. Toby *spark gives more details on his blog, about future availability and potential developments ( add + multiply blends etc ): The project is one where Toby is connecting a manufacturer with potential buyers ( there’s a form to register interest ), but apparently “The Swedes won’t buy a pig in a sack”, so a video is promised to show the existing DVI mixer in action.

Lightning Bolt Down Under
Drummer and bass player duo with a supposedly religious experience type live show, they are touring Australia in late November ( Bring The Noise! ), and get mentioned at weloveyouso for a recent video clip which features someone dressing up in a home-made Wild Thing costume (DIY music video wardrobe stylists, rep-re-sent! ) and wandering ( veering madly all over the footpath, scattering people as they go ) through the streets in stuttery stop-motion style ( which suits the song to a tee ). Release dates mean that by the time Lightning Bolt are touring Oz, the only way to have seen the film locally will have been by the inevitable cam-held recordings made in Northern hemisphere cinemas, and released as torrents online. We get it in cinemas in Dec in Oz, but really – what’s with release dates a few months apart in the 21st century?

Paper Rad
- are an art-flouro collective whose output seems to alternately thrill and revolt, and amongst their posse is Jacob Ciocci, who has a new 45 minute DVD-R out ( Peace Tape ), with soundtrack by Extreme Animals. This is discovered of course, through weloveyouso, alongside an interview snippet with Ben Jones, another artist in the ‘Paper Rad Orbit’ :
“Any really good artist, or just any happy smart person can explain quickly and simply why things like fame, or the art world, or war are essentially meaningless and then also how these things attract young stupid white kids, or people with mental problems, or classic Americans as a result of the of these populations having low consciousness and/or intelligence. If you really are into the art world or TMZ or the Taliband it means you have a type of retardation.”

Web Cam Synchronicity
Weloveyouso posts stem from a variety of folk, but occasionally from director Spike himself, including a link to the recently popular ‘Sour’ music video which was shot by people all over the world on their webcams. It’s an incredible video, full of relentless ingenuity and all made with tightly interwoven webcam contributions from a large number of people. So it’s hardly surprising people have been linking to it everywhere, but it must be nice for the producers to read Spike Jonze write :
“The amount of pre-planning and choreography by the directors Masashi Kawamura, Hal Kirkland, Magico Nakamura and Masayoshi Nakamura remotely from the other side of the world is of Michel Gondry level complexity.” Which in turn is followed up with an interview about how they made it. ( Zero budget filmmakers win the day (again)! )

http://threeframes.net/
Got hooked on this a while ago. Click. Click. Click. A sea of next pages to be explored, each with animated GIFs made up of 3 frames from a movie scene, micro-stroboscopic events that say so much and so little. Thanks for the reminder Wild People.

Wild Things Skate
Well directors of such films do anyway, how else to amass a crazy back catalogue of genre-stretching skate videos, and count the likes of the infamous Mark Gonzales amongst your friends. Inevitably Mark gets mentioned a few times, including this link to an art gallery video, where he had invited to exhibit work, and ended up dressing up and skating at high speed in a variety of goofy poses around the gallery and it’s audience, at times blasting coffin style through a tunnel made from cardboard boxes. No chardonnay seemed to have been spilled during the making. Unsurprisingly there are also a range of Wild skate decks available, which Spike decided to give away a set of for the best movie poster mash-up. Max On Wire, featuring a tiny silhouetted Max racing along a tightrope between the two world trade towers was a particular favourite.

And Sure, More Self-Promotion
But aren’t you curious about ‘a book by Dave Eggers adapted from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and based on the screenplay by Eggers and Spike’ ? And isn’t it refreshing to see movie-makers that actively encourage movie-poster remixes? And if moviemakers must show photos of their new movie billboards, it’s refreshing to see the director exclaim that he loves the graffiti modifications people have done to it, and looks forward to seeing more people painting over them.

The Vinyl Arcade by Lucas Abela* (aka. Justice Yeldham aka DJ Smallcock )
Upstairs : Sit in a dodgem car and watch the results of your steering, on a projector screen ahead of you.
Downstairs : A remote control car with record needles underneath it, zooms around a floor made from vinyl records all over the ground.
The mind’s ear might like to imagine this process resulting in distinct grabs of music being pumped out of the speakers – a little Stevie Wonder here, a little classical violin there, but the actuality was more akin to a stuttering noise orchestra. Didn’t seem to matter though, delightfully executed : simple, ingenious, stupendous.

* Experimental turntablism eh? Try : “stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bound on amplified trampolines, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hospitalised by high powered turntables, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and most recently touring the world armed with nothing but a sheet of glass.” Guess we can add remote controlled cars on vinyl racetracks to that list. Toecutter in assistance below.


The Church of Pimmon
A former church is the head quarters of the Renew Newcastle project, whose 30+ empty shops now inhabited by artists and galleries certainly added to the festival’s saturation of the city, and it was in this highly appropriate venue, that Pimmon delivered a beautifully surging and serene performance ‘like a slow-motion whitewater torrent.. in space’. Even included some laptop microphone vocal work towards the end, albeit just one subdued layer rippling amongst the haze. Gorgeous. ( Listen to his weekly ABC radio show: Quiet Space, Pimmon on twitter, and audioboo – an iphone audioblogging tool )

Let’s Paint TV
John Kilduff’s blurb:
“Host of, and genius behind, the art damaged Los Angeles public access program “Let’s Paint TV”. He teaches you, the viewer, how to paint, blend drinks, and keep yourself healthy all whilst jogging on a treadmill. Kilduff believes in breaking down the barriers between art and pretty much everything else, in the ultimate aim of embracing failure.” Add 25 people in fluorescent clothes, buckets of paint and foodstuffs, a loud sound system, and put them all in a small glass room, and mix heavily. This happened twice daily.

Wade Marynowsky’s Dancing Robots
Great to see one of these ‘in person’. As well as witnessing it in action, Wade gave a great talk, aided by his electrical engineer Aras Vaichas, about the process of building 8 robots that could detect audience members, dance around them, and occasionally fire lasers directly into their souls. Or just y’know, spook people with seemingly intelligent commentary / engagement. ( More : http://marynowsky.net/ )

Screenings
The Japan Media Arts Festival 2008 animation program was awesome – virtuoso technical animations, but also relentlessly imaginative and diversely themed. ( )

Electro-Projections curated by Michael Prior and Matthew O Shannessy, featured a great selection of unusual and engaging work ( eg the humourous abstractions of Justin Kelly ). Getting a particularly strong crowd response was Skate bang by Damon Packard, an absurdist piece that reveals the power of the edit – cutting between close-ups of snipers shooting rifles, and skaters falling over on handrails, never seemed to wear out it’s welcome, even if the clip is nearly all punchline. Apparently he got an inheritance sometime ago, and decided to spend it all making and remaking films, sending a few thousand DVD’s of them out to random celebrities as well. Aaaaaaaaanyways…

Gig Highlights
DJ Ripley! Fave act of the festival! ( aka Larisa Mann aka PhD Candidate on the social implications of copyright aka just listen to her mixes! ) She seemed to enjoy the festival too… and plays Melbourne this Friday 9th @ Roxanne Parlour.

Bum Creek – Performance art? Music? Elaborate prank? Crowd ate them up naturally.
Qua – Featuring Laurence Pike on drums, James Super Melody and Cornel on electronic wizardry, reliably engaging, definitely won new fans over.

Not Enough Hours in the Day
Ok, so I missed the zombie rights march, the carpark ghetto aerobics ( well, it was on Sunday morning, the Sabbath! ), the zine fair ( usually such a great selection of DIY comics, books, CDs etc at this ), The DeConverters ‘Witness in the Wall’ project ( combining surveillance cameras and theatre ), a session about how video in theatre was bad ( ie lots of room for reinventing it ), and scheduled at the very same time as I gave a presentation about ‘opportunities for real-time video’, there was actually a Brazilian live cinema practitioner giving a talk somewhere else ( Bruno Viana made 2 feature films, and uses this weird circular interface beside the screen to let the audience see how his live editing process is reacting to them. Hope to interview him later on. )

Speaking of ‘blurred and frozen time’, I also missed Katherine Bennett’s exhibition, but over a chat with her ( Assistant Professors of Physical Computing, Rep-re-sent! ) on the way to the light-house, managed to catch Mika Meskanen’s Temporary Sauna, a square roomed tent nestled amongst the sand dunes, with chimney, makeshift oven and sauna rocks.

Below, Indonesian trees testing the screen before my audiovisual performance with Dan MacKinlay ( am going to write some more about that later, particularly the Indonesian part of the set, which was based around a performance we did at the OK Video festival in Jakarta in late July 09 ). To the side, Brisvegan Tom Hall setting up for his audiovisual performance later ( which was nicely engaging for such an abstract piece ). Swiss sound artist Gilles Aubry also performed that night, a quite loud meditation on ‘planes’.

Lars Denicke and Peter Thaler, editors of ‘Prepare for Pictopia‘ offering some insights from Pictoplasma’s mammoth archive of character design.

Pictoplasma?
A Berlin based group dedicated to exploring contemporary character design, which has included an ongoing archival of characters since 1999, a series of curated exhibitions, an annual animation festival and conference, and a series of DVDs and books, of which ‘Prepare for Pictopia’ is the latest (shout out to book designers Janna Davidjants + Alex Fuchs of wiyumi.com ), a chunky colour picture-dense tome of 326 almost A4 size pages.

Page Flipn
Wheeeeee! The thing is gorgeous, full of delights. Crackpot collage ( hello Franceradium ), whimsical illustration ( Andrew James Jones, come on down.. ), giant helium filled characters floating above a sea of people on a Miami beach ( Word up, FriendsWithYou), Mongolian death worms on the streets of New York ( and yes, they are in Motomichi Nakamura’s trademark minimal palette of black, red and white ), Mark Ryden’s seductive paintings, the three dimensional double headed tigers of woodworker AJ Fosik, and so on and so on.

Australians Crashing The Party
Melbourne artist Dylan Martorell : featuring both his intricate layerings and colour saturated sculpture-costumes.
Ben Frost : his multi-layered pop-art is well known, but the relative stark simplicity of his ‘Self-Regenerating Bambi’ is refreshing (a series of miniature Bambi deers are piling up under Bambi’s rear end, one in mid transit.)
Rinzen : extending their vector based schwing to sculptures and murals etc
Sam Gibbons : vivid mandalas of decomposing cartoon characters.

Who Else?
Nagi Noda ‘pushing pet culture deeper into artificiality’ ( remember her poodle fitness video? )
Boris Hoppek’s bimbo / gollywog character – exploring themes of immigration, racism, violence and sexuality..
Hideaki Kawashima ethereal ’stylised feminine beauties with wafting hair’
Olaf Bruening’s photographs of masked and recontextualised characters in strange places..
The psychedelic crystal ink work of Charles Glaubitz.

But Wait, There’s More
“Insert your finger or tube into the finger prosthetic.”
Essays. You get a bunch of them in the book, including a typically visceral, anti-corporate anti-figurine essay / stream of consciousness covered in paint / body fluids rant from Paul McCarthy. Lev Manovich desktop-chimes in with a piece about ‘Remix after Software’, and a bunch more tackling the uncanny between animation and animism, the human machine and masks and the body. Recommendo~!

Let There Be Light
And there was light. Back in nineteen thirty-five. Which was when New Zealander Len Lye (1901 – 1980) produced the first ‘direct film’ screened to a general audience, a glowing example of a new genre of camera-less film making that saw artists directly painting onto film stock, making scratches, etchings, punching holes in it, burning it, gluing and taping objects onto it etc. His film, ‘A Colour Box’ was a wildly vibrant work, featuring bold and playful colourful shapes tightly synchronised with a Cuban jazz soundtrack, and went on to inspire other luminaries to explore the field such as Stan Brakhage and Norman McLaren (who aside from an illstrious animation career, also wrote “How to make animated movies without a camera”). From here Len Lye only pushed his handmade explorations of rhythm and motion even further, and the decades that followed are the focus of the current free exhibition at ACMI, a smorgasbord of vivid film prints, paintings, sketches and most impressively, a good collection of his gorgeous kinetic sculptures.

Kinetic Sculptures
“Kinetic experience lies deep in our bones, It is a more constant experience than any other.  Our hearts beat, blood runs, rib cages expand and contract, eardrums resonate, lungs vibrate, every attitude we enact we enact kinetically.”

Inspired by the idea of ‘composing motion’, Len Lye’s attempts to do so extended beyond film to a large range of mesmerising motorised steel sculptures, which ranged from small scale to landscape based, such as the 45-metre high seaside Wind Wand, and the The Water Whirler, which although designed by Lye was never realised in his lifetime, finally installed on Wellington’s waterfront in 2006. Len saw film and kinetic sculpture as aspects of the same “art of motion”, which he also wrote about in essays. Wandering into the sculptural component of the ACMI exhibition, we are treated to a variety of gentle whirs and pulses, as a combination of motors, clever positioning, gravity and the surprising elasticicity of large metal shapes helps shift the sculptures into slow hypnotic dances, the dim lighting allowing the metallic sheen to trace gorgeous patterns as the shapes ebb and flow. The sculptures alone are worth visiting, but those on top of a chance to sit and watch his vividly executed films and explore artefacts from his artistic process, makes this an exhibition worth checking out multiple times.

Lecture on Movement and Time in Film
Sun Sep 13 ( 2PM ) sees a special one-off related event, Gary Simmons delivering a lecture on the remarkable elasticity of cinema time: speeding up, slowing down and playing with our sensory experience of the world. Taking as his departure point Gilles Deleuze’s theories of cinema, Gary Simmons examines the capacity for screen-based media to modify space and time. This kaleidoscopic movement and possibility for multiple temporalities will be explored in a cross-section of films and artworks by the likes of Len Lye, Maya Deren, Ivan Sen, Michel Gondry, the Wachowski Brothers, Stanley Kubrick, the Dardenne Brothers and Richard Kelly. ( Free Tickets available on the day from the ACMI Box Office. )

Len Lye Resources
The Govett-Bewster Art Gallery ( NZ) which houses much of Len Lye’s work, Wikipedia, Youtube, Particles in Space ( Lo-res version of a particularly stupendous scratch film that seems to employ 3D camera movement around a series of tiny scratches dancing in time to tribal percussion. Handmade, yo! )

4 days. 378 performers from 26 different countries. Almost 300 performances, workshops, talks and demonstrations. An open exchange of knowledge, inspiration, technology and live audio-visual experiences, events running nonstop from mid afternoon ’til 5am each day. Quite an achievement for the organisers, who run LPM as a non-profit and have managed to grow the event steadily over the last 6 years, whilst maintaining a clear emphasis on making the artist connections the most important outcome of the event.

The heart of this year’s LPM was it’s central meeting room, a space large enough to act as a workplace and rendezvous for artists as well as the site of various installations, open-platform discussions and presentations. The atmosphere in this room was great – friends and strangers alike shared bench space, laptop chargers, offered technical advice and eagerly enquired about your work, your performance and whatever hardware/software you were playing with at the time.

Workshops and performances were spread across the rest of the complex and the main AV stage boasted a serious 9-projector setup, with screens wrapped around three of the four walls, a suitably impressive and immediate visual impact for the performers, and allowing multiple signals to be distributed across the room for ‘VJ clashes’ later in the night – apparently a bit of an LPM tradition that sees groups of artists all take the stage together in the wee hours of the morning.

Vidi-Yo!
Mr.Monkeypresso (Hungary) used a triple-head to span his work across the whole nine screens, his performance, Serpendity, a half hour show played entirely from a custom-built Quartz Composer patch. Much of the imagery was certainly very QC-graphics heavy (think cubes, spheres, line work) however Monkeypresso deployed these elements with a rare level of finesse and sophistication, using them very carefully in combination with narrative film footage and harnessing QC’s audio-responsiveness to synchronise the whole piece unshakably to it’s soundtrack. Never entirely abstract nor entirely pictorial, Serpendity pulled you into it’s dark, dense interior like some kind of semi-suppressed nightmare. A stunning show and for pure visceral impact remained unsurpassed the whole weekend.

Another favourite performance, was the incredibly fun last-minute collaboration between Oigovisiones (Spain) and German video artist, e (from e-Gruppe Berlin ). Bumped along by a stellar music set from Rafa Gonzalez and Nin Petit (Spain), the combination of Oigovisiones’ bright cartoon animations and e’s super crisp, subversive vector backdrops was refreshingly original and watching all four crew members bouncing around behind the stage, extremely entertaining. Oigovisiones’ dance moves and exuberant Spanish exclamations could have carried the show alone (I wish someone had handed this man a mic..) but the killer visuals, sublime jumpy techno-bop, and enthusiasm of the performers made it hands-down the most contagiously enjoyable set of the event. Oigovisiones said after the show; “I want people to know i am enjoying myself – that I am happy to be up there” and I really don’t think anyone could’ve been left in any doubt.

Other highlights?
The beautifully simple video installation by Marco Calderón (Mexico ) which saw a ping-pong game variously write and erase sections of text from ‘The Aleph’ by J.L Borges. A theatrical piece from Italy, in which a rather bored looking femme fatale had her face and body explored with a micro-camera by a Mexican wrestling-mask clad man. Servando Barreiro (Germany ) and his techno-tambourine, a homemade ‘post-music’ controller, complete with accelerometer, built into a 20-pack plastic CD case. Attending an excellent Quartz Composer workshop run by Belfast artist Shakinda and having QC guru Vade (New York ) turn up for two inspiring guest lectures. The U.K’s Toby *spark, during an AVIT talk pushing home our potential to create a shared and meaningful community. And hearing the artists behind RomaEuropa Fake Factory ( a subversion of an Italian arts competition that did not allow remixed or open-source content to be submitted ) explain that their version of the competition had been so successful it had actually influenced the original site to change it’s entry requirements (they also had a WC installation at LPM allowing you to literally flush copyright down the toilet).

Across the entire weekend, I was struck by the complete lack of competitiveness amongst the artists. Despite the quality of the work, the performances at LPM are extremely transient, which in a sense equalizes the event for everyone. Opportunities, gigs and events were passed on happily and regardless of your medium, aesthetic or background, there was nothing but support and interest from the other artists. The whole event feels like one big overblown family get together; a sprawling party of new friends and shared experiences. And it’s not just at the venue – back in the hostels and hotels provided for the artists, the exchanges continue. It’s quite something to wake up in a youth hostel and find a bunch of AV artists stretched across the kitchen, twiddling knobs, jamming to music and discussing software over coffee and juice.

Sure there were bad points – the tight schedule invariably led to pushed-back timeslots, doubled-up performances and general confusion about who was on where. But given the nature of the event, you tended to just have another drink, start another conversation and soon all was forgiven. For my part, my half hour set on the last night turned into a five person mashup with my travel partner, Shakinda (Ireland ) and some new friends made at the event. But to be honest, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

[ See also, Lucy's review of the 2009 Mapping Festival ]

Real-Time Vidi-Yo Puppetry!
http://animata.kibu.hu

Bored with mere live triggering of video clips or visual effects? Using the real-time animation software Animata ( free, open-source ), it’s now possible to control the limbs of virtual puppets in real-time, either with simple computer keyboard or midi controls, or a variety of physical sensors, cameras, audio levels etc. Designed for stage use, the software allows simple creation of scenes ( characters and backgrounds ), that can be controlled easily in real-time. Say the Hungarian creators:
“Creating and moving characters is as simple as loading an image and attaching a skeleton to it. ( On the basis of the still images, which serve as the skeleton of the puppets, we produce a network of triangles, some parts of which we link with a bony structure. The bones’ movement is based on a physical model, which allows the characters to be easily moved. )”

Once various characters and scenes are set-up, the various limbs and joints can be animated in real-time by external applications, such as hardware midi controllers or software like Max MSP or Quartz Composer ( A quartz patch has been made, which allows Animata to be controlled directly from within popular mac VJ software, VDMX ). In other words, instead of rendering out a variety of animated loops for triggering over time, animations can be made fresh on the spot. This offers all sorts of live performance and installation possibilities, limited only by the imagination and preparation time.

Elsewhere on Planet Quartz
http://openemu.sourceforge.net

Also running wild, Open Emu is an open source project that brings game emulation to OS X ( Sega Master System, Game Gear, SG – 1000, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Sega 32x, NES/Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Game Boy Advance etc ). Which is all fine, but it’s recent porting to Quartz Composer means that old ROM computer games from the above consoles, can be used within quartz compatible video software and controlled live. Says Team EMU:

Use audio or MIDI input to drive game characters and input
Use the same input signals to control multiple ROMs at once from the same joystick/gamepad
Add 3D effects or image processing to the game image for interactive 8bit visuals
VJ with your favorite games, in realtime, with effect responding to game input

*Bonus Nerd Utopia Level : Open Emu QC includes a separate plugin just for the Nestopia engine, which supports extended features, such as ROM glitching, cheat codes and game rewinding. You can now software ‘bend’ a virtual NES, in realtime, with your favorite Quartz Composer-compatible VJ applications.

So that’s Space Covered. What About Time?
Abundant live manipulation of video is indeed already here. An embarrassment of pixel riches. On the other hand, while there are some sequencing solutions and workarounds ( eg using midi and Ableton’s time controls to trigger video clips ), many video artists are still waiting for better time-based control and sequencing of video clips. The release of Max for Live later in 2009, will undoubtedly explode live audiovisual possibilities and sophistication, when it brings together Ableton’s sophisticated and musically precise time controls, with the custom visual effects possible within Jitter, the visual component of Max. In the meantime, another sequencer contender has emerged, a step sequencer for Resolume, built as a Max patch, and using the OSC protocol to control the clip launches in Resolume. More.

Controlling It All?
http://www.osculator.net/wp/
“OSCulator is software that links your controllers to your music and video software. For example, with OSCulator, your Nintendo Wiimote or iPhone can talk to major MIDI sequencers or your favorite console emulator or even the Kyma sound design workstation.
OSCulator supports the OSC protocol which makes it able to be used with a wide variety of software and devices like SuperCollider, Processing, Max/MSP or the Lemur multitouch controller.”

And Outputting to the Projector?
Maybe you’ll be needing one of these : an as yet to be bulk manufactured, but awaiting your order, hardware dvi mixer. Which means being able to mix digital signals in high resolution between 2 laptops. The UK’s Toby *spark and D-Fuse are behind this effort, with further updates ( and requests for orders ) to come.

Below, a selection of highlights, crammed from six screens into one…

Animals Really Are Funny People from jeanpoole on Vimeo.

Electropical? Bleepy cumbia? Such hybrids are inevitable, given a generation raised on candied synthetic computer game sounds, and the speed at which localised bass variations now travel from shore to shore. They are also core chunks of the Meneo sound, alongside ‘electro-gameboy-reggeaton’, which describes their recent CD, Santa Nalga ( mastered @ Mad Decent ), as well as their recent EP, Papi. Rigo Pex makes the music, Raul Berrueco makes the video, both use gameboys to do it. Music, videos, nude performance photos and more : http://www.entter.com/meneo/istheshit.html

What’s your quick and easy definition of ‘reggaeton’ ?
Rigo: Old School reggaeton= booty marathon with ass sweat dripping down your ankles. Current reggaeton= boring ego rap, with some exceptions to both.
Raul: Atun Con Pan!!!! Yeah… it’s kind of a joke ’cause the rhythm sounds like saying in Spanish ‘atun con pan, atun con pan’ which literally means: tuna sandwich.

I am gathering your happy blend with many other styles, which of these are you enjoying a lot at the moment?
Raul: Gabba Lounge, nah kidding… we both love the new electronic cumbia made by artists like Uproot Andy and Sonido del Principe
Rigo: Yep, all that comes out from the Zizek and Bersa labels…also dubstep never stops to amaze me.

How does the Gameboy fit into your musical processes?
Rigo: I use LSDJ, a gameboy sequencer made by Johan Kotlinsky.. It’s actually a tracker. I love the way you can alter the values that define the sounds to come up with noises that you never heard before, digital rawness.

What kinds of tools and techniques do you use to get that chunky retro graphic style?
Raul: At the beginning I go through a lo-tech process where I use applications designed by freaky programmers without girlfriends. I’m talking about ROM hacking and prehistoric hardware/software emulators, but I also use the pencil tool to draw pixel by pixel sometimes. When I put all this material together I use more conventional languages like Action Script while wearing my cool designer specs.

In what ways do you collaborate / build performances / audiovisual sync / themes?
Raul: we are into creative freedom, so mostly we don’t talk about doing this or that, we both do our own stuff with almost no feedback and then show it ’till we’re on stage…like some Dadaists did back in the day. In that way, we keep the surprise even to ourselves and focus more on feeling than acting. When we let go, things flow depending on the stage, public and energy.
Rigo: Then there’s the part of capturing what happens on stage and communicating it through pics, blogs and overall media management, which is truly an important part where we really work as a military team.

Nakedness seems to be a visual trademark too, care to explain some more?
Raul: we usually do it if we feel good on stage, so if the sound and visual equipments are working all right, then they get a technical seal of approval… MENEO √.
Rigo: It also means that we can safely climb up to the stage roof and then jump into the speakers while the crowd is licking each other’s sweat to a 280 bpms backward version of popcorn.

Santa Nalga ‘was mastered by DJA at Mad Decent..’ What were you happy with about that album, and what differences are there coming up in your next release _Bitnik?
Rigo: Santa Nalga was pretty much done in 2006, when reggaeton and 8bit was still something whacky for me, but since it was the first album it took some time to surface. Diplo liked us and pointed us to DJA, who was great for achieving that bouncy epileptic feeling we like. The soon to release BITNIK album has more of a band sound an less club breaks, since it’s mostly all 8bit coming from the game boys sound that shred more than a million distorted guitars and their marshalls put together.

Your thoughts on the wii, iphone and other portable competitors to the Gameboy?
Raul: In 20 years will say “wow, we were really into waving a stick in the air, like it was a tennis racquet…hahah!
Rigo: there are no competitors to the gameboy… no portable game will stick around for more than 8 years these days… and even if technology didn’t changed so fast, it would be hard to achieve such a strong graphic and audio personality: the gameboy chip limits were it’s advantages.

What would be your ideal gig, and who else would be playing at it?
Rigo: Meneo playing on the greek coliseum with John Bonham on drums, the bass player from Primus, Milli Vanilli as choir…
Raul: and a 3d screen so everybody could wear those amazing 3d glasses!!!

Shuffling Pixels in Berlin
Yeah, another bunch of laptoppers in Berlin, who’d have thought? Aside from the DVDs though, Pictoplasma have maintained a character design archive since 1999, and organise annual conferences ( Berlin, NY, Argentina etc ), all dedicated to exploring contemporary character design, and ‘the importance of contemporary characters in today’s visual understanding’. Which’d maybe suggest an overdose of puffy vinyl toys, or cutesy cartoon creatures, but thankfully their approach is much wider than that.

Characters In Rhythm

Although the disc is organised into 3 sections, for the most part the clips could’ve fit easily everyone of the sections, generally being a music video of some sort, or short film, the character(s) displayed inevitably following some kind of narrative arc, exploiting the rhythms and unreal world motions that animation allows. Plenty of highlights in this section anyway. Daniel Garcia’s clip for TV on the Radio ( whose recent shows in oz sold out far too early ), featured gorgeous model set design, within which a meek bird-human of felt(?) feathers gets to unfold it’s personality, framed from a range of nicely composed angles, foregrounded tree branches often hiding part of the character. Imery Watson’s ‘Sloup’ presents a train-window view of a landscape passing by, complete with the ebb and flow of electrical power lines. Her visual punchline is satisfying though, as the tall electric power towers begin to run of their own accord. Nicely executed, and similarly well framed, nicely subdued animation. Others of merit include the well celebrated ‘War Photographer’ by Joel Trussell ( keywords : viking, flash ), and the ultra-minimal and macabre graphic stylings of Motomichi Nakamura for his Knife clip : ‘We Share Our Mother’s Health’.

Characters In Motion

Gangpol Und Mit get a mention here, not because this piece showcased here is necessarily their best work, but because they are a relentlessly inventive pair of audiovisualists, deserving of more credit. Not that the piece showcased here is terrible, it’s just not the best example of their demented lateral excursions into flash geometry and alternative realities. 1st Ave Machine’s jaw dropping and photo realistic mutant plant 3d animations are included as well, their sublime combination of outdoor video footage blended with organic otherworldly mechanical plants losing none of it’s power despite the clip’s saturation online.

Characters In Narration

George Gendi’s ‘Middle Dog Gets Angry’ is a delightfully tender portrayal of a world where neurotic whippets and humans share the same bodies, all personality conveyed with simple emotive illustration styles. Ben Hibon’s ‘Codehunters’? Stunning work – think Manga meets Jim Jarmusch’s b+w characters in Dead Man. Guilherme Marcondes manages to bend 3d animation into a more transcendent place than most. And Wayne Horse ( would’ve been a fun name at school), gives us ‘Tell Tales’, the large cardboard heads of real people in an apartment, providing the perfect canvas for animating facial reactions in an unfolding drama.

Coming Up?
The third Pictoplasma conference in Berlin March 2009, presumably another DVD, and plenty of time exploring the gallery at their site.

(And thanks to wunderkid Jaana from betamag.ee for the disc! )