Some February eyeball snippets..

Sculpture
http://tapebox.co.uk
http://vimeo.com/sculpture
Dan Hayhurst: Music, Reuben Sutherland: Animation
“DIY music and animation duo, who use zoetrope record deck, tape loops, cassettes, samples, and lo-fi electronic noise, cross-fertilizing analogue and digital techniques to generate vivid sonic and visual collages.”

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.

Long-time live cinema enthusiast, (Toby) *spark from the UK, released a video about it this week, a decent attempt at exploring some of live cinema’s essence. What is live cinema? Who makes it? Why? How? The video features interviews with some live video luminaries, as well as a glimpse at what an ideal live cinema software interface might look like.

New kinds of cinema will inevitably continue to form and mutate. Video can now be chopped, shuffled and processed nearly as easily as audio, projectors continue to cheapen and shrink, and audiences practically expect moving images to appear in ever new screen and surface arrangements. Live cinema is just one of those possibilities, and within the video Toby explains part of why it appeals:

“Compared to Hollywood, it’s more like live jazz, a storytellers version.. telling different stories everytime – it’s not because there’s a definitive story, but because it’s more interesting that they have a sea of memories, every story they navigate through the sea making different associations, drawing different things in in different contexts. We can do the same with digital media as performers.”

Fellow Londoner, Mike from D-FUSE is less drawn to the narrative aspects, but still strongly attracted to what is possible with live cinema:

“It’s about the feel of it, as opposed to the other side of the tv, telling you a story… it’s about the texture, and the sound, like going back to a surrealist painting… ”

Toby welcomes feedback on the video, so have a watch and zap him a line. Myself, I think the Live Cinema aspect depends on a lot on context – where is the cinema and who are the audience? In that respect, his video would benefit from showing that better, rather than just clips detached from their screening context and audience. The live clips of the Light Surgeons used work best for that reason, but even then the wider context of the audience, or even audience reactions is still invisible.

And why does Live Cinema Suck?
It’s really, really, hard to produce a compelling feature film or create a compelling hour of music. Trying to do something in between both, and without a team of supporting cinematographers, actors, musicians, recording engineers, producers, and without any funds, means it’s a significant project for any solo laptopper to attempt, and yet it is often one or two people who are generally making ‘live cinema’. Playing with video in a more poetic way, and exploring with loops and rhythm, can reduce some of the burden, but it’s still a major challenge. Beyond merely producing a live cinema show though, what are the characteristics of a good live cinema show? And what are the cliches and easy pitfalls for producers? What makes a bad live cinema show? Why is there often a sense that they are fun for the creators but not the audiences? ( The same can be said about drunken bongo playing around a campfire ) Maybe this is a bit like the earliest scratch DJs a few decades ago trying to talk about what a good DJ mix is – from their limited perspective, the evolved styles, technologies and diversities of today’s DJing would’ve been unimaginable. But addressing some of these problems means identifying what works and also what doesn’t in a live context.

Elsewhere VJ Solu has articulated nicely some of the ways Live Cinema can distinguish itself :

“The traditional parameters of narrative cinema are expanded by a much broader conception of cinematographic space, the focus of which is no longer the photographic construction of reality as seen by the camera’s eye, or linear forms of narration. The term “Cinema” is now to be understood as embracing all forms of configuring moving images, beginning with the animation of painted or synthetic images…… Even though performance is a vital element in the live context, creating new narratives for visual culture should be equally important.”

Elsewhere she closes in on an important difference between cinema and live cinema, while showing how one can inform the other:

“Lost Highway (1997) directed by David Lynch.. is remembered for its long shot of a dark highway. I believe these kind of shots are the basic material for live cinema performances: the transitions, the movements, the pure visual beauty and intrigue, the atmosphere.”

Or as VJ Iko from Portugal put to me back in the day:

“Live video is as much about lighting and colour control as it is about creating interesting content. See the people watching the screen? See how the colour of their faces changes with what’s happening on screen? The light bouncing off their faces, that’s what you have to try and control.”

In the end, despite the ongoing quest for software and hardware holy grails, there’s already today immense capacity for provocative and beautiful live cinema to reward both audiences and performers alike. Technologies aside, zooming in on exactly what makes live cinema unique and interesting, will hopefully help evolve the form for everyone. Shout outs to Toby for putting his take on it out there.

Other People Thinking Lots About Live Cinema
Brazilian Live Cinema: And as well as ideas, they also build festivals and hardware live cinema interfaces. “Live Cinema is cinema that unfolds live. It´s an audiovisual perfomance where the director, creator, performer or artist presents his work in person, before the audience. Imagine an artist being able to change his film’s ending, simulate new sounds and images, new sequences, and above all, create different narratives based on the audience’s reactions to the work.”

VJ Falk : Long time Berliner Live cinema prototyper : http://prototypen.com/beamaz + http://prototypen.com/lc/blog

http://www.vjtheory.net : Well curated group discussions about the possibilities for ‘performers, performance, interactors, audiences and participators’.

http://avit.info/vjtalk : A range of mostly VJ talks ( surprise! ) but touching on some relevant live cinema areas.

Timothy Jaeger : Had a good book online a while ago called Live Cinema Unravelled. Missing in action.

VJ Solu : Especially of interest, her thesis which “reviews the influences and explores the characteristics and elements of live cinema, a recently coined term for realtime audiovisual performances. The thesis discusses the possible language of live cinema, and proposes “vocabulary and grammar”.”

Slothdom has never looked so good, or been so lazily achievable. Reduced emissions from schedules of slackness, being able to outsource our workloads to increasingly rad software, better health, wealth and good fortune: all this and more are bundled up in The Way Of The Sloth.

Sloth Emissions
Like the twentieth century cyclist t-shirt slogans : ‘two wheels good, four wheels bad’, sloths have a message for the moment, and it is this :
“Less is more.” Or less is better, especially when it refers to expected global temperature rises this century. At the recent gathering of climate slash policy heads in Copenhagen, most preferred the idea of restricting that temperature rise to 2 degrees – which would still deliver a 50% chance of catastrophic climate events. Unsurprisingly, developing countries who would bear most of the brunt of this ( having coastal areas affected by rising sea levels, and densely populated areas that can’t afford further food and water difficulties etc ), wanted a limit of 1.5 degrees. Neither target was agreed upon ( in part due to Chinese Wrestling techniques), but there were still some hopeful signs : significant initiatives and funds were set-up for large scale rainforest protection, there was agreement on the science and the need for action, and there’s potentially a good foundation for the next climate meeting in Nov 2010 – which is being held in the sloth-friendly capital of Mexico City. Hammocks, siestas, cumbia : where better to sign an agreement for slowing the rate of emissions?

(Sloth shout-out to Melbourne’s Cumbia Cosmonauts who are on a roll. )

Sloth Software
Sure, military superpowers can build giant hi-tech infrastructure and send pilot-less drones spying over borders. But why bother with the work of competing with that, when there’s hashish in the hills to be had, it’s too hot to move, and as the Wall Street Journal reports:
“Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber –available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds.. ”

The even lazier militants in the desert of course, would likely bypass shopping for such software and just grab the relevant torrent file from Pirate Bay ( no, really. Hat tip to Coburg’s military surveillance connoiseur, Francis Bear ).

And maybe when the sun sets a little and it’s time for some moderate exercise, something like this iphone controlled helicopter might come in handy. ( See the copter’s camera view on your screen, tilt to steer. )

Sloth Visions
Both budding sloth cinephiles and ascending sloth auteurs have much to be happy about. For those who like to watch, the continued splintering of the mainstream provides much of merit. District 9 and the ongoing Wholphin DVD compilations were amongst my favourites in the summer haze, along with an abundance of bookmarked shorts bookmarked online :

vimeo.com/jeanpoole
youtube.com/jeanpoole
delicious.com/jeanpoole/video

For the sloth-maker, it’s an interesting time. After 100 years of cinema, the cinema system is needing to reinvent, and creative and distribution opportunities abound. Who knows what we’ll look back on in fifty years time, who knows which changes with visual storytelling and exploration will seem significant. In the meantime, ongoing visual software developments continue to excite (documented well at createdigitalmotion.com), as does crowdsourcing ( hello kickstarter.com ). Perhaps it’s those that creatively leverage these everyday network technologies to create in ways that haven’t been possible until now ( have you seen the sour webcam video yet? ), that will seem like signposts in years to come. At any rate, fun ahead. And shout out to the the animated webisoders over at http://slothvision.com ( & bonus sloth / major lazer remix).

Supposedly there’s an app for every splinter of today’s needs. Ask T-Pain and Trent Reznor. Time for a quick scan then, of the creative tools available for pixel-heads, visualists and cinematographers.

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 )

Storyboarding is fun with Cinemek’s Hitchcock iphone application. (also known as Storyboard Composer )

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.

Audiomulch ( Built in Melbourne! ) the ‘interactive music studio’, has long held a near cult status amongst electronic music producers, and upgraded to 2.0 a few months ago ( including a native mac version for the first time ). For those desiring more lateral performance approaches than Ableton Live allows, but without the steep learning curves of Max / MSP, the newly tweaked Audiomulch 2.0 might be just the ticket.

Vat Ist?
The AudioMulch elevator pitch : “Software for real-time sound synthesis, music composition and performance-oriented audio processing.”
Translation: Easy to grasp ( even for a pixel-head ) modular software that focusses on the flow of an audio signal through a range of ‘contraptions’ which are ‘patched’ together in a window with patch cords from the input and output of various contraptions.

Contraptionism?
AudioMulch’s signal processing modules (’Contraptions’) include:
Signal Generators ( eg drum machine, bassline synth, loop player, arpeggiator etc )
Effects ( eg Reverb, flanger, delay line granulator, ring modulation, pulsar comb filter, 16 channel live sampling looper etc )
Filters ( eg Parametric EQ, resonant comb filter bank, granular filtering, resonant lowpass with pattern triggering etc )
Mixers ( Mono and stereo mixers and gain elements, crossfader, matrix with variable fade times. )
Your  VST  plugins ( AudioMulch supports VST audio effects plugins )

Humming Like A Bird
Key to the ‘feel’ of Audiomulch is the ease at setting up a chain of contraptions for processing your audio. The interface is deliberately kept simply to three areas : A ‘Patch window’ where contraptions can be chained together, a ‘Properties’ window where the details for each contrpation can be viewed or manipulated, and an ‘Automation window’, which allows you to define the way selected parameters change over time. Automation can be applied to the values of knobs, sliders (both single-value sliders and Range Sliders), check boxes and Contraption Presets.

eg start off with a ’sound out’ contraption, connect a mixer to it, connect a loop player to one channel of the mixer, a bass synth to another, some effects to another and off you go.

Importantly, everything happens in real-time and all of your experiments with signal flow can be heard immediately without any drop in responsiveness. If in doubt of this, understand that this has been the choice of live performance software for every gig in the last 9 years, for that sweaty man who covers his laptop in gladwrap at gigs to avoid sweat pouring onto it ( aye, that’d be Girl Talk ).

Other Features
- MIDI – every knob and slider on the user interface can be controlled with a MIDI controller.
- multichannel input and output, with support for up to 256 channels ( great for live mixing, multichannel speaker arrays )
- Clickable built in help on every contraption ( great for beginners and advanced users alike )
- Metasurface – unique to the mulch, ‘the Metasurface lets you blend smoothly between dozens of parameter settings on a two dimensional plane’, Instead of having to turn one knob at a time with the mouse.’ This can also be automated and looped.

Audiomulch Resources
audiomulch.com
vimeo.com/audiomulch
twitter.com/audiomulch
facebook.com/group.php?gid=5443009226

Requirements :
PC : Windows XP or Vista
Mac : OS x 10.4 or later, Intel processors only.
Cash : $US189 ( with generous unlimited 60 day evaluation option )

Verdict
This’ll be the sweet spot for many producers and manglers of sound, easy to explore and yet offering incredibly lateral and complex audio manipulation and performance possibilities. Double thumbs up.

UPDATE : When asked about whether OSC support would be included at some point, Ross from Audiomulch wrote back :
“In terms of the roadmap OSC support fits into the “possible enhancements” which may (or may not) happen later in 2010 – basically it will depend on what users want the most when I get to that phase. I’m not convinced that OSC is useful without a mapping layer to translate OSC messages (ie a scripting language or some such) so I’m still trying to work out how that would fit in to AudioMulch.”

Hey guess what? It’s a thrill to present an interview with one of the founders of E.B.N., pioneers of audiovisual radness, and inspiration to many since way back in 1991. Yeah, those guys beaming their live video sampler performances from a bunch of TVs atop a station wagon on the Lollapalooza tour, the guys that made a video remix ‘album’ from Gulf War footage, and opened U2’s ZOO TV tour. That was E.B.N., and they paved the way for much of today’s live video. Although long disbanded, Brian Kane and the other founders, Joshua Pearson and Gardner Post, have each continued exploring various multimedia technologies ( links to each and more E.B.N. details / videos etc at their wikipedia page ). Brian’s thoughts below.

Back in 1992, you invented VuJak, the worlds first video sampler. What real-time video software impresses you today, and what surprises you about the ways video software has developed?
Ableton Live is amazing, and I also like the Pioneer DVJ line. I still use Max/MSP/Jitter because you can do so much and I have worked with it for many years. The Cycling74 folks have done a great job with Max, and Josh Clayton’s Jitter objects are the greatest thing since sliced bread.  I’ve seen some incredible things done with Processing, though I haven’t used it yet myself. What interests there is Mobile Processing, I am more and more interested in mobile/handheld video applications.

YouTube is now serving 1 billion video views a day, so it’s hard not to be impressed with YouTube. They got it right, and they continue to drive video usability, which has helped make online video become so popular.

One of the main goals of making the video sampling tool was to give people a way to deconstruct/reconstruct the media. When you deconstruct television, it helps you see how messages are created and used to manipulate peoples emotions. So I had always seen VuJak as a counter-ops measure to help the public fight back against manipulative media and propaganda. This has certainly taken hold in the laptop era and in the modern art world. These days it’s called an intervention, but it’s basically a force multiplier for the public against perception management.

Emergency Broadcast Network left quite a footprint in the live audiovisual arena. What extent of your original video sampling vision did you manage to execute?
Video sampling and cut-up is mainstream now. Yesterday I saw a segment on CNN called Mashup where they cover remix videos on YouTube. Remix culture has become its own art genre and has been pushed beyond anything I had imagined in the early 90’s.  There are some very talented artists putting their work on YouTube – such as Kutiman – which blow me away. Auto-tune the News is great, too.

The same is true for the generative school of video art, too. It has become mature as a genre and and the tools are robust. So now we have the tools to do anything, but what should  we do? So now I think it’s all about content.

For me, the big “oh yeah” moment was in 1991 when I managed to get a quicktime movie tied into Max. The first time I pressed a midi keyboard note and saw a movie play, I knew it could be done.

What are your thoughts on today’s live audiovisual acts, or the evolution of AV performance? What has improved? What has stagnated?
My favorite recent live acts are Addictive TV, ColdCut, Hexstatic, eXceeda.  DJ Yoda is amazing, I wish I could’ve seen him with Shlomo. The production quality of shows has improved vastly, and there is essentially no barrier to entry as well, which means there are lots of people doing it, which I believe is a good thing. Audience interactivity in live shows hasn’t yet taken off on in a big way, but I could see that happening now, since everyone has a cell phone. My only criticism these days is that I think it’s boring to watch two guys fingering their laptops on stage.  I’m guilty of this myself. But I’d like to see more fun presentation styles for live shows. There’s a lot of room for fun input devices using things like Arduino boards and such as well, too.

What do you see as the various interesting trends amongst live video at the moment?
I’m fascinated with the new micro-projectors that are coming out, and expect to see interesting innovations there. Also of personal interest is optical mixing with multiple projectors, as well as L.E.D. architecture. I want to play Pong on the side of a mountain.

What did you learn about humans and technology from your online casino days?
Humans are unpredictable as individuals, but predictable in groups. People don’t mind losing money if they are having fun. 1 attention unit equals 7 seconds. People prefer playing with a machine to playing with people. 1 button is enough.

What about commercial holography, where has that gone since the early nineties?
The latest generation of large scale full-color holography is truly impressive.  Zebra Imaging produces the best in the world. Full color, full parallax. Optical computing is progressing rapidly, too, which will bring about the next major advance in computing.

And to continue this techno trajectory of art forms you’ve been involved with, what were you doing with robotic software?
In 1994 I started to believe that the screen image is useless – meaning that people have become numb to video images and that there is simply no way of communicating with people in a meaningful way via screen images. This is a deep and long conversation, and in many ways I still believe it is true. So I stopped working with video and became interested in building physical experiences for audiences – moving objects in the real world that people can have a relationship with.

At that time, I met artist Chico MacMurtrie who was building robotic sculptures, and we started to work together. George Homesy had build a midi-to-voltage control box for the machines, but the software piece wasn’t robust yet. I wrote a variety of max patches which control the machines and sequence them into shows. Some of the machines required feedback to operate and so we needed an intelligent system to drive those, while at the same time allowing for improvisation within the framework of a master sequenced show. We toured extensively in the 90’s with a large show, and over time this became a rather complex system, all built with Max.

I continue to work with Chico to this day, although the latest piece, the Birds, is an autonomous installation piece.  There is more information on my website and on http://amorphicrobotworks.org.

What kinds of ideas are you hoping to provoke with your sculpture series?
I’m interested in taking the virtual experience into the real world.  Creating physical manifestations of our shared virtual experiences.

I see these as documentary objects which capture a common cultural snapshot of the present and preserve it for the future. As our present shared virtual culture decays though continuous obsolescence, very little remains beyond its’ designed 18 month life cycle / memory cycle.  So by physicalizing these experiences, we can archive them for the future.

As people switch off their televisions, projects like wikipedia spawn from their free time. Or like Urban Dictionary, which I noticed you’ve been contributing to. What draws you to that, and what are some projects that point to more interesting group dynamics and collaboration?
I’m drawn to Urban Dictionary because it is funny as hell.  I went through a period when I was putting in words, but that seems to have passed, like most transient newisms these days.  One of my entries was Urban Word of the Day, so I guess that means something.
Flash mobs are another great new form of collaboration, as well as local currencies.

Three things you’d tell a class of young interactive designers today?
Fast. Fun. Easy.
Design for humans.
Pay attention to the way humans behave. Watch what people do.
If an application is pretty, people are impressed for a few moments.  If an application is useful, people will use it repeatedly.

Thanks Brian!
Plenty more to visit over @ slashboing ( eg speed baraka / double game / meat water / HDADD™ – Attention Deficit Cinema / etc etc )

Another year, another super-soaking of inner Newcastle with a spray of the bizarre to the sublime. Density of programming, and that everything happens alongside the National Young Writers Festival, Sound Summit ( a gathering of independent record labels and artists), Critical Animals ( post -grad theory critters), and The Crack Theatre Festival – means everyone’s festival is quite different, the following of one path denying the surprises that thrilled others elsewhere. These are the shards that stuck to me.

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’.

Six legged video projection anyone? You’re going to need a miniature projector and cables, you’re going to need a Mexican video artist by the name of Fernando Llanos, and most of all, you’re going to need, a chihuahua. Fresh from their recent Mapping festival performance, Fernando explains some more.

You are sitting at an airport with a chihuahua, laptop and video projector. A Californian with long blond hair wants to know what the ‘Videohuahua’ sticker on your laptop means. What do you tell him?
It’s a project I made as an artist, it started with me becoming a superhero, VIDEOMAN, and projecting video on the streets, like videograffiti, and now my Chihuahua projects some video too. I’m like Batman, a weird man with no super powers but some technology and lots of guts, and Chamaco is like Robin. 

Still curious, he wants to know :  ”What kinds of places you project with these ingredients?”
Different places, I have been projecting in 5 cities in 4 years. I call them “urban accupunture”, they cause certains reactions, that in certain ways help heal the city or the people that saw them. For example, the first video projection I ever made was called: POETIC TERRORISM, and was the projection of airplanes having accidents on the Airport of Porto Alegre in Brasil.

Impressed that you brought your chihuahua to Switzerland, the Californian is inevitably wanting to know how difficult it is to bring a four legged creature around the world, during times of such cross-border disease phobias. 
It’s easier than you thought! You just pay, have the papers ready, and that’s it. Nobody told me anything in Switzerland when I arrived. When I arrived to Zurich I made a passport to Chamaco, now he is European.

“And what kinds of things do you project? Do you use sound as well? How does the dog feel about all of this? Is it ever integrated into the show somehow?”
The first time we did the VIDEOHUAHUA, Chamaco got really scared, so while I was putting the equipment, he pissed. People in Europe are more sensitive to this, when they saw him shaking and scared, they started telling me things like DOG ABUSE, etc. But I didn’t care, he’s my dog and he has to work, it’s like in a circus, there’s a price the animal has to pay, in order to eat foagra in France and jamón in Barcelona.

The first videohuahua projection was called: CHIHUAHUA’S ATTACK!! And was some video of some Chihuahuas barking really mad at the camera, with sound as lound as we could play: Chamaco got that in his back so he was really afraid!

“And what other kind of art do you do?”
Drawing, Guitar in a band, all kinds of videos, I’m writing a book, published first on my blog and I also like to cook.

The guy at the airport fumbles for his drivers licence, and smiles sheepishly at you. He wants to point out he’s from California, that he knows California and Mexico were once part of the same nation, before California shifted away to join the U.S. in 1846, and you, are not sure why he is telling you this. You receive a text message, and use this as an excuse to turn away briefly, before reading an invitation from a friend in Mexico City to participate in an upcoming show. You are excited by this, the event has a great range of Mexican artists, and a typically creative approach to how it will be happening. What is this event, and who else would be involved?
Actually today I got an email, with an invitation, and I got very excited, it’s a review of the 20 years of FONCA, like the official art support institution in Mexico, they are inviting me to participate, everybody is there!

“Ahh. So who are some interesting digital Mexican artists / art collectives?”
Arcangel Constantini,
Ivan Abreu,
Fran Ilich,
Alfredo Salomon
Hector Falcon
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Rogelio Sosa

And if you speak spanish, check my radio programme.

And which airport are you at, anyway, and where are you going?
I was travelling too much, Switzerland, France, Spain, Buenos Aires, Chile, Tijuana, San Luis, etc…. but now happy at home!!

Soon to be (multimedia) Dr.Wade Marynowsky, aka Spanky, aka AC/3P, aka The Old Sydney Town 8 Bit Gimp, aka Mr.Mutantric Australiana, has an exhibition coming up. With dancing robots. ‘The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons’, extends Marynowsky’s development of custom-built robotics and interactive, performative media and opens Thu Aug 13 @ Performance Space / The Black Box, Bay 19, CarriageWorks, Redfern. Wade kindly took time out from arc-welding arduino units, coding his pirouette routines and cracking whips on the robot assembly lines, to feed our robot fetishes some more.

The local bingo organiser wants to know what your show is about. Your quickest bingo-friendly explanation?
Its a masquerade ball for robots, people are intruders (party crashers) into the space from another dimension. It consists of 5 larger than life autonomous mobile robots, which we have developed programs / behaviours for. The programs also allow the robots to avoid collision and naviagte the space, follow each other. The intention here is to develop robot choreography, the bots can spin trigger lights and sound (voice) and hopefully dance togther.

What would Freud say about your desire to build 5 life-sized robots wearing ball-room gowns?
Uncanny….How freudian , you must love your mum.

You work references ‘The Uncanny Valley*’, which suggests that “in designing humanoid robots one should not aim for total human likeness, but for an alternative to an uncanny appearance”. What drew you into this territory? Or should we say, where were you exactly, when a robot spooked your spine?
(*According to Japanese robotic scientist Professor Masahiro Mori, the Uncanny Valley effect refers to when “…familiarity increases with human likeness until a point is reached at which subtle differences in appearance and behaviour create an unnerving effect.” )

I am actually more interested in making the uncanny experience, I hope to give people the opportunity to be afraid or sightly unnerved like the experiences I had as a kid a various theme parks and wax museums.

Which robots have exhibited the most signs of life to you?
Hmm most are kinda quirky and you get over it real quick. I like David Hanson’s Phillip k Dick robot head that you can talk to.
(( “Somewhere on a shelf in a cavernous warehouse in Alabama rests the life-like noggin of Philip K. Dick, quietly dreaming of electric sheep. Or maybe the robotic head of the legendary sci-fi author got blown up. These are among the possible explanations for the bizarre disappearance of an artist’s homage to Dick.” ( more on Robot Dick’s head, over @ Wired )))

How’ve audiences responded to your previous robot installations? Did they react in any ways you didn’t expect?
One older lady put her scarf around the robot and had her photo taken with it. People have been convinced that I was inside the robot and that the robot was intelligent in some way.

[Guest post by the esteemed Lucy Benson ( VJ Nosis / Melb-Belfast-Berlin-Zurich etc ), for my Threeworld column, full version and more photos over @ Lucy's. ]

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 ]

Monkey Marc’s renewable energy powered beats go back a long way ( Combat Wombat, LabRats, remote Australian desert tours and workshops, festivals the nation wide ), and the upcoming release of his long awaited solo and solar album debut, provided a good excuse to visit his portable shipping container studio in Melbourne (@ the Collingwood children’s farm).

In The Beginning
To trace some of Monkey Marc’s pre-solar-studio history, we need to go back to the Lab Rats Solar Sound System (Monkey Marc + MC Izzy ), which was formed to bring music to the Jabiluka uranium mine protests in 1998, transported there by a diesel van converted to run from vegetable oil ( “We actually get more miles per gallon on veggie oil than we do on diesel. Also all the oil we get is old oil so it’s all recycled and free. We’ve done just over 20,000 km’s around Australia for basically nothing, and it puts out much less pollution than a normal diesel” ).

At the same time, the Lab Rats van was also fully equipped as a mobile studio running off solar panels on the van’s roof. Which made it perfect for post-Jabiluka desert nomadics – the Lab Rats “travelling the country working in many remote Aboriginal communities across Australia with indigenous kids creating socially conscious hip hop, conducting cultural preservation workshops and oral history recordings”.

Add DJ Wasabi and MC Elf Tranzporter to the mix, and Combat Wombat was born, a super-charged political hiphop group who eventually released a very well received album on Elefant Traks Records ( Unsound System – which was written and recorded using renewable energy ). ( Download music, videos and more )

Powering Up
Cut to the Collingwood Children’s farm, and nestled in a corner is Monkey Marc’s fitted out shipping container, with nearby horse trailer from which 6 solar panels provide the energy to keep everything running. Inside the container, his dub weighs a tonne, one end entirely filled with shelves of vinyl, the other end dominated by a large mixing desk ( RTW / Telefunken Broadcast mixer / Mackie 1604 ), and a second hand basketball floor (!!) has been cut up and attached to the floor, walls and ceiling to improve the acoustic properties and make the studio a bit more liveable.

Monkeymarc need 4 panels to complete his ideal set-up, and any would-be solar panel donors are encouraged to contact him. In the meantime, his 6 solar panels provide 5.5 full days of continuous energy in summer, before the 12 x 2 volt ( 1100 Amp Hour ) Deep Cycle Batteries need 1.5 days to recover before repeating. In winter the panels give 4 days of power running before needing 3 days off to recharge capacity. There’s also a 400 Watt Airstream Wind Generator on the roof for topping up the batteries too, and an 1800 Watt sine wave inverter allows all the energy to flow compatibly into the studio equipment.

Electricity Eaters
Aye, the power, it flows to a wide range of gear : an Akai MPC 3000 ( signed by Public Enemy no less! ), EMU SP 1200, EMU SP 12, Studio Electronics ATC 1, AKAI S3200 XL, Rhodes 73 Electric Piano, Roland TR 808, Casio F2-1, Publison Infernal Machine, Roland Space Echo 201, Radar 24 recorder, a laptop running Ableton and that Telefunken Broadcast mixer / Mackie 1604.

And So:
Currently gigging in Europe ( Glade Festival in UK, Paris end of July, see www.myspace.com/monkeymarcbeats for venue details ), Monkey Marc launches his solo and solar album ’soon’ with a series of gigs around Australia in the months to come. Beyond that, the studio can be easily transported for ‘around $200′ to remote parts of Australia on a project by project basis, so who knows what the next renewable powered chapter will bring?

Many pieces of the live video puzzle seem to be snapping into place lately. A few of my favourite things:

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.

Having been meaning to post a sample of this project for ages, but the arrival of Melbourne winter seems to be helping nicely. So yes, ‘Animals Really Are Funny People’ is a screen panorama made in 2007 while in Istanbul with artificialeyes.tv. We’re talking an 8:1 screen ratio, 20 metres of pixels sync-ed up using Dataton Watchout software, and the combining of hand-drawn animations, photos in Barcelona and Istanbul, various green-screened characters (( monkeys on (actual) segways, giant squids, giant plant-men, etc )). Making a 3 minute piece for six screens seemed to plague it with rendering bugs, DVD burning bugs and courier delivery bugs, but perseverance paid off, as it ended up winning the 2007 MONA Horse Bazaar International Panorama prize. Music : “Egg Yolks Yo” by Lewis Cancut( Full track available over in the scatterblog sidebar ).

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!!!