The slow fade out of Melbourne’s summer = an opportune time to re-spark the skynoise engines. It’s also likely I just miss writing things longer than 140 characters. Especially since I’m just about to finish reading a 3000 page novel ( The Baroque Cycle, Yo!). Regardless of the roots….. expect some fruits..  scattered across the next few months – riffs about visual culture, and likely some weirder tangents too. That’s what ma bones are saying. And sooner than that – some long overdue reviews:

• Quartz Composer book from ILQC
• nVeil (SVG based visual FX software)
• Millumin (interesting timeline based visual performance software)

Below – the summer that kept skynoise drooling on its pillow:

Dec 2012:
Stereosonic –  Touchscreen video booth installations for an energy drink tent. (photos got animated, projected and sent online.)
Sampology at Falls Festival Dec 30 ( Marion Bay ) + Dec 31 ( Lorne ) ( Mixing camera sources with Sampology’s live video).

Jan 2013:

MONA FOMA Projections on a 4 storey fire escape stairwell, and custom animations for the FAUX MO cinema. Fun was had. Some keywords to throw in a blender: Chicks on Speed, No Zu, Digital Primate, Soda Jerk, a sequined ninja, MONA, David Byrne’s reflections about MONA, and Richard Flanagan’s New Yorker article about MONA founder, David Walsh - the professional gambler responsible for “building a private art museum in Tasmania dedicated to sex and death”. MONA museum is also famous for ‘The O‘ – “the mobile device given to all visitors who walk through Mona’s doors… there are no labels to be found anywhere on the walls of the museum.. these devices provided access to information about the art.”

Feb 2013:

Developed an audiovisual performance with The Swiss Conspiracy ( Moses Iten from The Cumbia Cosmonauts, and Christoph H. Müller from Gotan Project ) , which was performed at The Swiss Festival. The show ended up featuring footage shot at Alpenrail, the largest Swiss Alps railway model replica in the Southern hemisphere ( gopro train tunnels! ) and goats from a Swiss goat cheese farm SW of Hobart.

Rebirth of A Firebird – Helped out with some live projections for a couple of sequences for a ‘hip-hop sci-fi’ short film being made by Alan Nguyen (aka 2 Pants Rotation – in his giant monster rapping mode).

Mar 2013:

At the Adelaide Festival – did live video for The Cumbia Cosmonauts at the fun pop-up venue, Barrio. The theme for the night was ‘Animal House’ – which meant there was a camel, piglets and geese nearby, as well as dog masseur doing live demonstrations on a table.

And Then It Was Now:
- Developing an audiovisual performance for Wide Open Spaces, a wonderful desert festival held out near Alice Springs in May. Longtime collaborator Suckafish P Jonez is back from Barcelona, and we’re excited to be exploring AV again. Weekly rehearsals!

- Am co-hosting a studio elective at RMIT within the design faculty, looking at video production, projection and installation – from an interior design perspective (which tends to include a lot more materials and building related research / development). It’s a fun studio, which uses mapping processes, and comic / graphic novel storytelling techniques to help inform video installations.

- Am slowly rolling out a series of updates to the skynoise.net/projects page, finally uploading documentation from a range of projects… including the snippets below, developed for 360 last year.

Elsewhere:
I PREFER VIMEO:  ((Better quality encoding/resolution/interface/community comments etc))
OTHERS PREFER YOUTUBE:  ((More eyeballs. And clients sometimes want it here.))

FACE IS THE PLACE : ((Finally succumbed – click facebook.com/JeanP00LE - for all your Zuckerborgian messaging / subscribing / liking needs)).

More words soon! *I, promises.*

Above : more proof that Space Is The Place…. at least when it comes to Mexi-Australian tropical bass genres.

That’s the fruits of a few quick projection and filming sessions with the Cumbia Cosmonauts, featuring custom graphics made by the CC VJ – Martin Hadley (I especially liked his spaceship control deck!). I’d like to think if there’s ever a Mexi-Australian space program, that it looks something like this… ie has that Ed Wood in space vibe about it, maybe with styling by Lee Scratch Perry & Sun Ra.

The Cumbia Cosmonauts are a Melbourne band who are celebrated around the world with their take on Mexico’s cumbia music, and so fittingly, they release their new album, Tropical Bass Station, on the Berlin label, Chusma records, on Nov 23, 2012. The track ‘Our Journey To The Moon (And Back)’ comes from that album.

(Other recent video projects)

4 days later, and am still buzzing from the Elefant Traks vs Dr Seuss show at the Sydney Opera House.

Developed and performed for the Graphic Festival – it was an audacious project – inside a tiny time frame, create 18 songs and animations to reinterpret or remix the books of Dr.Seuss for the stage. It never felt like enough time – and yet, the amazing zoo / crew at Elefant Traks pulled it together and nailed a dynamic audiovisual smorgasbord (that apparently had some of the Seuss publishing folk moved to tears!).

My role was to develop and live trigger the animations for the show, which was akin to developing a feature film in 6 or so weeks.. while liasing with around 20 different musicians… “hey man, I’ve got this new idea for a beat / I’ll get you those lyrics soon.. etc etc” – so I wasn’t surprised to find myself still rendering out clips on stage, right up to the last minute.

I’m going to put up some more animation info later, over at skynoise.net/projects, but for now, while still floating, I wanted to put out a huge thank you to:

- Jono ‘Dropbear‘ Chong + Darin Bendall, who did an amazing job, animating half of the tracks between them.
- Urthboy - who oversaw the crazy production, as well as performed throughout the show
- Unkle Ho, who helped tie together the visual production, and developed his own flash-based interactive visuals for the show, AV jamming on a wii-board to Green Eggs & Ham, with Jim from Sietta + Angus from Hermitude.
- Luke Snarl Dearnley, who did a stellar job as technical producer, keeping the whole show smooth as butter.
- Owen Field, who covered all the logistics with grace and calm…

And that list could go on and on – there were endless Elefants who who were such a pleasure to collaborate with…

Some Elefant clips:

X-Continental, a clip I did for the Herd back in 2001.
Urthboy, Ozi Batla, Solo, The Tongue and L-FRESH: Cipher at the Opera House
and below, Dropbear’s fantastic animation for ‘And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry st’, which was performed as the first track of the show, by Urthboy, Jane Tyrrell + Angus from Hermitude. Ozi Batla had just given his show-intro in an aviator costume, and hooded Urthboy came on to do a quick rap about Dr Seuss, before pulling back the hood as the lights came up, the decks started up, and MCs roamed the stage with this as backdrop:

I cried last night, upon reading that John Wrake, aka Run Wrake, has passed away.

I’d first learned of his cancer diagnosis a few months ago, after wandering once again to his youtube page, and noticing a short and simple message underneath his most recent short film:

Award-Winning “Rabbit” Director Run Wrake Dies, 47
The Most Talented Dude You’ve Never Heard Of
A Genius Gone Too Soon. British Animator Run Wrake Loses Battle With Cancer.

“It is with incredible sadness that I have to let you know that our darling Run passed away very suddenly at 5am on Sunday morning as an end result of his cancer. He had spent a beautiful Saturday with his two children Florence and Joe, his sister Fiona and myself. We left him at 7pm doing what he loved best- drawing and animating with peg bar and paper.
I was with him for his last moments. We love you Run.
Lisa Wrake.”

Above, hard-drive snapshot of some of my favourite RunWrake animations.

I first learned of Run Wrake around 10 years ag0, through his compilation Gas DVD, “Dinnertime”. Somehow it had laid unwatched in a pile of media for a few months, until late one evening I spied it again and lazily inserted, then pressed play. What followed was dizzying and overwhelming – that mix of exhilaration and exhaustion when discovering an artist so consistently good, so relentlessly inventive, and so utterly prolific that you’re left wondering if they exist under different laws of time and space.

A few years later, I was thrilled when Run Wrake agreed to an interview (published in 3D World magazine, as well as skynoise in 2006).

A snippet below:

Where did ‘Run Wrake’ come from? 
Actually a nickname earned whilst keeping wicket particularly badly during a game of cricket aged 11. A friend was sent in for sarcastically shouting ”Run”, as the ball went thru’ my legs for four.

With so much animation under your belt, what has it taught you?
It’s taught me that I’m very lucky to have the desire and ability to scrape a living doing what I enjoy, and that you will never make a piece of work with which you are entirely satisfied.

To what extent do you storyboard your clips? Or how do you approach narrative?
”Rabbit” is the first film that I have rigorously boarded, with a view to telling a story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the discipline.

Any desire for feature films, or longer works?
Absolutely, watch this space*.

(*As of 2012: Wrake was devel­op­ing an ani­mated fea­ture, The Way to a Whole New You, with writer Neil Jaworski for BBC Films.)

One of my questions was whether Run Wrake had ever animated a skateboarder, and Run Wrake was kind enough to add a note at the end saying that he’d done an ad featuring a skater, and that he’d attached a little quicktime movie of it for me. One of those wow moments – a favourite artist sending me something they’d made?? Below, a screenshot sequence from it, which demonstrates one of his trademark ‘perpetual zoom outs’…

A glimpse at his biography (have you seen a more delightful online CV?), showed some of how this was all possible. Run Wrake had gone through the Chelsea College of Art and Design, and the Royal College of Art, before achieving a breakthrough with his 1990 student film Anyway on MTV’s Liquid Television. With Anyway, several strengths were already evident – an eagerness to playfully deconstruct form, an ability to adapt and incorporate many kinds of media and animation styles, and an incredible capacity for fluid transitions – smoothly morphing into wildly different scenarios or character transformations.

The DVD documents the development of all those strengths, as well as introducing others  - a highly attuned sense of animation rhythm and pacing, and a flair for visualising sound and loops. That kinship with music was partially nurtured over time with his job as an illustrator for NME magazine,  (the DVD includes a virtual gallery of these illustrations, narrated by a flying turtle-armed boy.), but is most evident across his trajectory of music videos, most notably those with long-time collaborator, Howie B.

Some favourite moments?

The alarm clock sequence within ‘What is that?’

How he plays with loops, one minute into Music for Babies by Howie B. (At time of writing, vimeo had just made the clip a ‘staff-pick’, in honour of Run Wrake’s passing.)

The intro sequence to ‘Jukebox’ – no, actually, just all of it…

The ‘Buttmeat‘ clip for Howie B. (All those liquid visual transitions!)

Music video directed by Run Wrake for Spacer’s 2001 single ‘The Beamer‘. (Love the scene transitions, and the disregard for time/space conventions).

And below – a sequence transition from Lessons in Smoking (this video link showcases it better),- produced by Run Wrake  for his compilation Gas DVD, “Dinnertime”.

With all that under his belt, it’s easier to understand how he gets to describe his career highlights as including…

“my first job, commissioned by an Elvis suited Jonathan Ross to make a title sequence…making Jukebox, my first animate! commission, a two year slog…meeting and working with Howie B, initially on a short film to accompany the release of his album Music For Babies, and subsequently on a series of freeform promos…presenting storyboards to Roy Lichtenstein in his New York studio for U2′s Popmart Tour visuals…and the critical acclaim for Rabbit, a short film completed in 2005.”

Less easy to understand is why Run Wrake wasn’t better known, even amongst animators. Even though he worked on U2 tours, and Rabbit won plenty of awards, it still felt that there was an animation giant walking amongst us, and not enough recognition of how much terrain his work covered. That was at least partially remedied, earlier this year, with a Run Wrake Retrospective at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, with the title referencing one of his favourite characters:

RUN WRAKE: MEATHEADS, RABBITS AND THE DAWN

Below, artwork recently donated by Run Wrake -  as part of CEL: an online fundraising project to keep the Animate Collect online, ‘On The Brink of Manhood’.

Runwrake.com
Runwrake on youtube
Runwrake on vimeo
Runwrake reworking personal home movies for live Audio Visual sets. ( Yes, he VJ-ed occasionally! )
A video interview with Run Wrake about his animation process.

RIP Runwrake…. thanks for adding your splash of colour to the world.

(Above, a messy example VDMX interface of mine. Click screenshot to see full version)

Here’s a review brewed since I got my review copy back in 2005 (when VDMX first turned 5, says the Vidvox software museum*). Now that it’s 2012 and we’re at Beta version 8.0.8.1, it seems as good a time as any to declare VDMX 5 ripe and ready. Let’s do this.

What is VDMX 5?

VDMX 5 = A ‘modular, highly flexible realtime performance video application‘ developed by vidvox.net.

What does that even mean? The six word executive summary by @Protostarrr :
‘A hipsters version of After Effects‘ is cute, but misses a crucial difference – VDMX is software built for real-time usage – ie no waiting around for rendering, it means live adjusting, manipulating and sequencing of video clips and video parameters – during a theatre performance, while musicians play on stage, within an installation, or to create some hybrid of what might be called live cinema. Just as hiphop and electronic music producers have long been playing live with audio samples, we now have the ability to shift from a studio production mentality, towards using video samples in a live setting.  This means VDMX must be capable of letting it’s users adapt and respond to any unfolding events – and the importance of having that flexibility is reflected with how Vidvox define their software:

“VDMX5 is a program that lets you assemble custom realtime video processing applications. This is an important distinction- instead of being stuck with a fixed processing engine and a static interface, it gives you the freedom to assemble not only whatever custom processing backend you desire, but it allows you a great deal of creative control over how you wish to interact with your backend.”

(Example search for ‘VDMX interface’ )

So what can VDMX 5 do? 

- Trigger separate clips for playback across different projectors ( a desktop with multiple outputs, or an external graphics card for laptop is also needed)
- Mix several clips together to create layered collages and compositions (multi-blend mode options / compositing options / cross-fade options / customisable quartz transition modes)
- Map separate video layers onto physical objects (VDMX5  has basic perspective mapping functions, or can send video layers via syphon to other mapping software)
- Organise video layers into groups (which allows composition or FX parameters to be adjusted per layer or per group)
- Re-route any video layers into other layers / compositions (enables easy creation of visual feedback loops, or addition of more organic complexity with FX)
- Adjust or control any video parameter or Fx parameter easily with an onscreen slider or button – and in turn, control these by various data sources (eg mouse / midi / audio analysis from built-in laptop microphone / LFO oscillators and wave values / midi + OSC controllers / wii controller / iOS or android controller etc ), and these values can be flexibly refined by using a range of in-built math behaviours ( eg invert values, smooth values, multiply values etc).
- Build Control Surface Plug-ins – which are ways to consolidate various controls into a a customised interface ( eg have 4 meta sliders, each of which may control any number of other parameters, when activated )
- Capture camera inputs, apply effects to these. Can also record and playback camera samples in real-time.
- Capture the visual output from a window of any other application running, and re-route this through the VDMX signal chain (eg mix in a live webcast from a browser, bring in a photoshop sketching window, bring in a skype window etc )
- Record your clip-triggering and visual FX experiments to disk (Fast and reliable, records directly into a VDMX media bin for immediate re-triggering / remixing / recording and etc etc )
- Use a built in step sequencer for arranging clip-triggering or FX over time.
- Save and trigger presets in extensive ways (global, per layer, per FX chain, and per slider. And more recently, we can cut and paste parameter settings between sliders. Very useful for quickly copying refined parameter and interactivity settings from one effect to another.)
- Tightly integrate customised quartz composer patches and FX, including customised interface elements – where each of these can be controlled by the various methods described above. (It’s hard to overemphasise how useful and powerful this is).
- Use flash, text and HTML files, as well as Freeframe FX.
- New : send DMX (Artnet) data – to control / interact with lights / lighting desks… (I’m yet to play with this, but it’s a great addition. Requires a computer to DMX box such as the Enttec ODE. )

There’s much more, but you get the idea – it’s flexible, and can be adapted to suit your project by project needs. These open ended possibilities are both a strength and weakness of VDMX – it’s fantastic being able to make your own customised interface to suit a particular workflow or project, but first time users tend to find can be daunting to approach for first time users.

Below, an example of 3 layers being mapped to suit particular shapes. (The canvas controls can be enlarged for easier mapping / alignment, with pixel increment adjustments on corners, available by pressing arrow keys )

Understanding the VDMX Workflow

With the above multitude of options, getting to know the ropes is pretty important. Here’s a few learning pathways:

1. Plug N Play… aka ‘explore’ : Even within the downloadable demo software, VDMX5 comes with built-in template projects that can be accessed through the topscreen menu. These can be easily modified and used as a foundation for your own projects. Playing with each template will show some of the features and variety on offer.
2. Vidvox Wiki : Extensive, detailed listing and explanation of the progam’s various parameters. Read over, then go back to step 1 and play some more.
3. tutorials.vidvox.net : In-depth video tutorials from the pixelated horse’s mouth.
4. VDMX forums : Over time, I’ve probably learnt more about the program here than anywhere else – as with any software of depth, the possible solutions to any particular problem posed, are multiple and varied, and am regularly learning new ways to use VDMX through the discussions here. The developers also contribute frequently, debugging problems, clarifying how various aspects work, and helping point beginners in the right direction.

Some Example VDMX Projects

Aka – here’s some links to material I’ve used VDMX for.

- Compositing video for 3 different projections and walls at Cockatoo Island, Sydney. ( Pattern Machine, at Underbelly performance )
- Generating and recording audio-reactive visual textures (with VDMX and quartz) (Visual backdrops for Audego)
- Generating textures and audio-reactive elements, then mapping these to suit physical shapes I’m projecting onto  (Mat Cant music video)
- Triggering live video onstage with Gotye (so the right part of each animation happena when the live musicians reach the chorus etc )

VDMX Elsewhere:

How to set up the VDMX basics.. 
Learning VDMX at the Audiovisual Academy, Videos - Part I, Part II and Part III.
A 32 minute intro to VDMX (via visual-society)
Iso50 overview of how he uses VDMX …
Connect VDMX to Madmapper (via official Madmapper blog)
How to send multiple outputs from VDMX to Madmapper… (via destroythingsbeautiful)
(Actually, Destroythings is destroying things for VDMX (mostly VDMX ready-quartz patches )
Making loops live with the Wii and VDMX ( 4 video tutorials via moongold)
VJ Kung Fu: AV Sequencing with Live + VDMX + Monome
Using VDMX to create stop motion animation – by synchronising video projection playback with the sequencing of time lapse photos. (by Zealousy )
How to use a window from any other mac software, within VDMX (eg for live photoshop painting etc / via 1000errors)
How to create a 16 frequency graphic equalizer for Ipad Lemur to use sound for controlling various FX in VDMX. (via 1000errors)
Creating a Sound Visualizer with VDMX + Unity 3D (via creativeapplications)
Experiments with Quartz Composer patches in VDMX (via Goto10 at vimeo)
Telecommuting the mix: VDMX, Syphon, CamTwist, and Skype (via noisepages)

Requirements :

• Mac computer with an Intel processor
• Mac OS X 10.6 or later
• NVIDIA or ATI Graphics Card
• 4+ GB of RAM

Verdict?

[[*VDMX software museum visitors and yesteryear software interface fetishists might also like: VDMX 2 review (2002) or VDMX 4 review (2003) ]]

For the TZU ’Beautiful’ music video, I recently found myself out near Hanging Rock, with plastic-wrapped laptop, projector, camera, lights, and a mini-crew – filming ghost projections in the night winter rain. Despite the weather drastically mismatching the supposed forecast, slowing everything to a snail’s pace, we salvaged the situation as best we could, reworking the storyboard around some of the less exposed areas, and soldiered on until about 5am. Not the end result we’d aimed for, but am happy with what we managed in the circumstances. So it goes. Full credits/links, and a series of behind the scenes photos over at the project page.

NOW READY FOR ORDERING….

“The *spark d-fuser lets you crossfade between laptops. Whether switching between presenters or pushing avant-garde pixels, hands-on control for mixing DVI and VGA signals is now available in a compact and affordable package.

If you want to know more or see it in action, jump straight to the demo video below. If you’ve been following the project, the message is simple: pay and yours will be produced. Orders are being taken on September 5th, the manufacturing run will then take six weeks from there. Price: £710 ex. VAT, £852 inc. VAT.”

We have no jetpacks, but soon it seems, we will have affordable mixing of digital video signals, thanks to the herculean efforts of 1 x Toby Harris aka *spark aka ‘card carrying Timelord amongst VJs’.

Rattling along in the tube, in between bankers reading 50 Shades of Kindles… Toby envisioned a better world, a world where VGA and DVI signals could be mixed without repercussions, and a world where smooth crossfading could happen with a device carried in your backpack. It was also a world that he would have to build himself, and a couple of years down the track, here we are. In between priming conveyor belts and supervising factory elves, Toby was kind enough to answer these questions:

What have you enjoyed about using your prototypes during performances?

The mixer for me is in support of the laptop, and damn have I enjoyed pushing crazy pixels with my laptop. Using it two-up in a D-Fuse show with Mike, I’m freed from the need for it always to be my mix on screen, so I can rip down, prepare and experiment with the mix. Makes me push things much further! That, and I’m freed from the fear of my bleeding-edge software taking down the whole show.

The surprise for me was the tap buttons, I love them. The original prototype didn’t have them, I envisaged a cross fade from one to the other and not much else. But in the expression of interest form, lots of people asked, so on they went… and wow, tapping in a slight variation of the main laptop’s mix is a really powerful thing.

What sorts of firmware additions would you like to see / develop? (you mentioned multiply mode as an option once?)

Mix modes are in the realm of possibility. The processor has the power to compute a soft-edged key for every pixel, so there’s some per-pixel computing power to play with. Additive is the bangs-for-your-buck upgrade here, and I think would really creatively transform what is possible with the mixer as you get the ability to truly composite the two sources together. I talk about this at the end of the demo video, and I’m really trying to make it happen.

I’d love to see the processor lose its line limit of 2048 pixels, there’s the naive observation that TripleHead 800×600 should be possible given that is actually fewer pixels to process than the 1920×1080 it definitely can handle. TV-One have in a way already answered this in the 1T-C2-750‘s sibling, the 760. It can do 2880×900, but at the price of being able to fade both sources.

You have to realise however it’s TV One’s processor, and the firmware that runs it is very much their core product, their IP. There’s no possibility of them giving it to us to do, and them doing anything for us is a decision intertwined with their wider business plans. I wish it weren’t so, but the sheer fact they designed the 750 and produced it for an affordable price is something to wonder at.

Why release the firmware as Open Source?

The frustrations above should go some ways to answer! If you need to tweak, extend or optimise, its in your own hands, and in the best case that gets shared back to all. Simply put, its what I would want if I were in the community buying one. There is more to it than that, and there certainly are risks, so let’s call it an experiment and see how it plays out.

Why has the video hardware world been so slow in releasing affordable digital mixers?

Well, one thing I can say is that this project has been one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever done in terms of effort and reward – if I had an eye on the bottom line I’d have stuck to bespoke development and on-site fees! There’s obviously a quantity sold at which point that changes, but I’m not sure that quantity is comfortably within the VJ market, and I’m doubly not sure of that if you have the overheads of a worldwide corporation.

I’m surprised however that VJs haven’t been able to co-opt generic presentation kit, the 750 is as close as I’ve seen.

In what kinds of ways have you played (live) with the OSC / DMX and ethernet capacities?

The simple answer is I haven’t – the ability to have that is everybody’s gift back to me for doing this project, along — hopefully — with additive mixing. Come the first D-Fuse gig with the new controller, we’ll be rocking the OSC out. Finally we can cut between visual laptops and have the audio follow!

Orders for the *spark d-fuser are being taken on September 5th, with a manufacturing run from the 10^th September. Price: £710 ex. VAT, £852 inc. VAT

[Another interview with Toby, about Live Cinema, in 2008]

Aka A Music Video in 3 Steps:

1. Re-created Middle-Earth on a kitchen tabletop… (hello – every backyard plant we have, hello – fallen moss covered branches from the park across the road, hello – turntable, hello – flashing bicycle lights, hello – wonky lampshades and plastic toys.)

2. Made some custom animations (Quartz composer, After Effects), and projected these onto Middle-Earth, using software to manipulate the projections (VDMX, Madmapper, quartz composer).

3. Recorded the results (Canon 7D, various lenses), and edited together (Premiere).

Song = Make Believe (Original mix), by Mat Cant (Scattermusic)

And yes, animated, directed and edited by myself in whirlwindy short amount of time.

QUARTZ COMPOSER WRESTLING

Ingredient 1:

The basic RSS patch that comes with Quartz Composer…

(Entering the skynoise RSS feed URL into the patch on the left, generates the output in the viewer on the right.)

Ingredient 2:

Generating an RSS feed from a hashtag.

Although Twitter doesn’t offer up RSS feeds, it turns out they can be generated by using the following URL

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23hashtag

and replacing the word hashtag with your word of choice eg

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23KONYtattoos

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23cannibalsvisitingIKEA

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23butmorriseysaysmeatismurder etc

Which means – this URL can be used to populate your Quartz patch, with any tweets published by people using that hashtag.

So I edited that quartz composer file, so each tweet was composited the way I wanted, in a 16:9 image, and details like date etc were turned off.

(Uploaded here: http://skynoise.net/qtz/RSS_twitter-test2.qtz.zip )

Problems:

The Quartz patch didn’t seem to continually update from the twitter RSS feed – but starts to cycle back through older tweets in a loop after a while… ( like 10-15 tweets ? ) + couldn’t figure out how to display author, alongside the text … Tried looking through the RSS info to find author parameters, then see where these might be adjusted within the quartz patch, no dice.

Solution: ( via @lumabeamerz / aka Mr.Coge : check his software out! )

I posted a description of the problem to pastebin and asked on twitter.. and @lumabeamerz kindly wrote back *and* adjusted the quartz patch, noting…

“If you put your mouse pointer for a moment to a structure’s output, you will see what is “flowing”, like this:

So, 0-4 are indexes, “…” are keys. Basically, we need the member of key “authors”, which will give use an other structure. The index 0 member of structure is good for us, and give us an other structure. From the last structure, we can extract the name with the key “name”. It is simple if you are a programmer, since the method is same in the Obj-C land to access structures. For the updating, I connected a Signal patch to the RSS patch’s update signal input, so it actually refreshes in a 60sec. period.”

Here’s the final quartz patch, edited by @lumabeamerz - which continuously updates any tweets from a particular hashtag, and displays author name alongside. Maybe it’s a useful template for you to modify however you wish?

http://skynoise.net/qtz/RSS_twitter-test3-lumabeamerz-edit.qtz.zip

And below, the patch inside VDMX:

(See above: when triggered from a VDMX media bin, the quartz patch, gives an option for writing in your preferred hashtag. If you want to add more controls, such as changing the colour, size or position of text – you can publish the relevant parameters in quartz, so they become available for use inside VDMX. )

For more industrial options – see the *spark screenrunner

Recently Gathered Quartz Composer links: 

- cv at github shares 14 example quartz patches as tutorials, available for download and playing with.

- Superfleamedia 3 part tutorial about using iterators-in-quartz-composer

- http://quartzcomposer.nodepond.com/ - Patches and various how-to’s, by Nodepond - specialists in Mac OS-X and iOS graphic tools.

- Pixelnoizz on how to turn a quartz patch into a Pixelmator filter

Learning Quartz Composer Part 1
Learning Quartz Composer Part 2
Learning With Quartz Part 3: DIY Anchor Rotation FX for VDMX
Learning With Quartz Part 4: 3D Objects With Video Textures in VDMX

A recent major upgrade at the good ship Resolume, takes both Resolume Avenue + Resolume Arena to version 4.1.

Resolume Avenue 4.1
Pitched as a HD video mixing desk, this does everything you’d expect of modern VJ software. Detailed specs listed here.

Strengths At a glance?
- Instrument like interface  - built for performance. The screen layout simplicity that avoids complex navigations. It’s built for quick and easy triggering…and gives an easy visual overview of the overall composition, selected layers, and selected clips. There are plenty of nice interface touches - eg click columns for all clips in that column to play on each layer ( makes for easy switching between combinations of clips ), or adjust transition timings for new clips in each layer to trigger as fades or cuts, and custom dashboards for quick viewing of FX parameters.

( Above : the tightly arranged mixing section )

– Solid playback of video, audio and image files. ( Includes very fast custom codec, DXV, see below for codec comparison.)
- Audiovisual effects and integration – many features including VST FX for audio, easy combining of audio and visual effects, and the ability to easily crossfade just the video, audio, or both at once.
- Plays back interactive compositions – eg quartz composer, and flash animations including AS2 and AS3 scripting. It also handles FFGL plugins eg the IR Mapio plug-in which can be used for mapping videos to projection surfaces.
- midi / osc – use any hardware or virtual controller – and nicely, it includes preferences for starting clips an adjustible few milliseconds further in the timeline to deal with delays that midi triggering can incur.
- BPM Tempo + Snapping - Everything can be linked to the global (Beats Per Minute) tempo to create a fully synchronized audiovisual performance. Automatically pitch the audio and video and synchronize parameter automation. Use the beat snap function to trigger clips in sync with the beat.
Audio analysis – Utilise environmental sound to bounce any clip parameter to the music.

New to 4.1?
- Native Syphon support on MacOSX. This means you can re-route Resolume into other video apps, and vice versa. ( hello madmapper, VPT, quartz, jitter, VDMX, Modul8, Unity Game Engine etc )
- Layer Routing – ‘create a clip that takes the input from any layer below’. ( All kinds of remixing and compositing capacity )

And The Flipside?
Some complexity and versatility is lost with the design decision to streamline the interface performance. eg You can’t easily preview, compare or adjust effects on 2 or more layers at once. I also asked a group of Australian VJs who’ve used Resolume much more than me, what they’d like improved:

- some still prefer earlier versions for stability reasons (V4 crashes – with V3 decks loaded / when too many notes are fired in Ableton)
- lack of a search function in the file browser + effects list
- needs a text tool
- needs an audioreactive timeline like v2.0
- midi can sometimes be inconsistent

Generally though, people seem pretty happy with the evolution to version 4.
( Thanks to VJ Zoo / Richard De Souza / Vdmo Kstati / Simon Kong for input )

Avenue 4.1 Requirements

- € 299.00 Euro for 1 computer. (50% discount available for staff/students) ( Includes all 4.x.x updates, eg 4.1.1 that came out just as I got ready to press publish)
- Windows 7 or XP: ATI Radeon 9600 or better. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 or better. 2GB RAM.
- Mac OSX 10.4.9 or later. Intel processor. Quartz Extreme graphics card (Resolume is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors). 2GB RAM. DXV Codec.

Resolume Arena 4 Media Server

Arena has all the features of Avenue aaaaand..

- Screen Warping & Video Mapping  – In the advanced output window you can now create as many slices from your composition and position and transform them to your liking – good for multi-surface projections. New – route layers directly to slices, masking and cropping now added to the Advanced Output of Arena – and use bezier curves to map video onto curved screens.

- Soft Edge – With soft edging to seamlessly project 1 widescreen image with 2 or more projectors. Or wrap around the composition for 360 degrees seamless projection.

- SMPTE Timecode Input – “With SMPTE Timecode input you can run you clips in sync with anything you want. Lights, lasers, even fireworks!”

- DMX Input – Control Arena from a lighting desk using DMX. It works similar to MIDI so it’s very easy to configure. Input can be done via ArtNet or an Enttec DMX USB Pro.

These features will appeal to some ( esp perhaps PC users who don’t have access to the easy mapping capacities of the mac only Madmapper ), an interesting option compared to much more expensive hardware media servers.

(Above: the mapping related bits inside Arena’s advanced output. )

Arena 4.1 Requirements

(Same tech requirements as Avenue 4.1)

€ 699.00 Euro for 1 computer. (50% discount available for staff/students)

BONUS ROUNDS:

Check out the Resolume Manual / Resolume forum and the Resolume ‘Stock Footage Shoppe’ which now includes customisable quartz patches alongside stock footage.

“We’re always saying generative content is the future, so it’s about time we proved it! The original Quartz Composer patch is included to create endless variations yourself”

DXV + High End Codec Comparison

H.264 helped popularise web video with it’s intensive file shrinking while maintaining a lot of visual quality. It’s terrible for real-time VJ software though, because of the relatively painful CPU intensity required to decode it. I do use it sometimes ( the Canon DLSRs record natively as h264, and sometimes I’ll just throw a clip straight in, and it’ll play fine, but it’s generally best avoided. Photo Jpeg at 75% seems to work nicely on most platforms, though Apple Pro Res and AIC give a slightly better image quality when a gig / clip needs more detail. So where does DXV fit into this?

“Regular video codecs require the CPU to decompress the frames before they can be pushed to the videocard for display. With our DXV Codec video frames are decompressed by the videocard’s GPU which can do this much more efficiently than the CPU. The DXV codec can also store the alpha channel. This is essential for preserving translucency in complex video compositions.Hardware accelerated playback is only done when played in Resolume – the video will play in any other software but it will not be hardware accelerated.”

A quick lo-fi test for comparison’s sake then?

1 minute 1920 x 1080 / Pro Res video in Resolume Avenue 4.1 with no FX.
(On a 2010 macbook pro running the usual hundred apps / million browser tabs open)

(Note: Pro Res + AIC plays/encode on mac, only play back on PC)

Other high end codecs worth a look at? AJA software codec / DNxHD / Cineform HD / Sheer codec by Bitjazz

 Resolume 3 Review, 2008

Thank you, @fustar! (+ fustar.info).

“It’s like zoologists trying to determine if they’ve discovered a new species of butterfly by looking at a meadow through binoculars. From 16 miles away.”

From the above Guardian article, I learnt that all the matter we can see in the universe accounts for only 4% of the total, and the Higgs Boson might help us figure out the other 96%. That seems odd in a Douglas Adams kind of way, that we’re so blindly adrift. And he would’ve been thrilled today if he were still around. Though he’s probably flicking someone with a towel somewhere inside that 96% we can’t see.

The Higgs boson, the Guardian also explains – is the force-carrying particle that helps transmit the effects of the Higgs field. And the Higgs field? A kind of cosmic “treacle” spread through the universe. As particles travel through the treacle they slow down, lose energy and get heavier. Kind of like cake mixing really.

And so, a significant day for science, a landmark that’ll be looked back on in decades and centuries to come apparently.

And then the next thing in my feed full-screen floors me… I don’t mean to get all Californian on your ass – but these are some of the thickest slow-motion barrels I’ve ever seen anyone surf through – we’re talking some serious overhanging slabs of ocean here. We’re talking some serious mass. Try keeping your jaw up at 2.29, 3.33, 4.29, 5.23…..  Physics eh?

[[That was by Chris Bryan. Also check out his 12 minute show-reel shot with the same super-slo-mo Phantom cameras (in an underwater body).]]

Apologies if you’ve arrived in search of Tobin Tax discussions (a tax on market speculation proposed by Nobel Laureate James Tobin as a way of managing exchange-rate volatility..). Here we have only a murky swamp of audiovisual performance questions, all of them generated by Amon Tobin’s recent performance of ISAM in Melbourne.

ISAM?
- AKA  >> An album. And a projection mapped, audiovisual extravaganza, premiered at Mutek, 2011.
- Lengthy behind the scenes article, including video and storyboard examples .. over at the Touch Designer blog, the software used to run the show.
- Pixel creation by V Squared Labs and Leviathan, production design by Alex Lazarus, stage design and set design by Vitamotus.
- And yes, the stage set was designed to fit within a few inches of biggest possible travel container. Precision mapped, video glimpse.

Ramblings / Rants / Observations

1. First up – some congratulations are in order – ISAM’s a stunning and well fleshed out achievement, raising the technical benchmark for live audiovisual shows. And perhaps because of that, the next 22 points are an assortment of thoughts the show triggered during and after. What is this live audiovisual thing, anyway?

2. Some of my favourite bits were the more imaginative transitions – the projected video morphing between different content, while simultaneously transforming the type of perspective being overlaid on the cubes. ( eg shifting from a scene where the three dimensionality of the cubes were being emphasised – with each surface mapped as walls / textures of a spaceship… and then a zooming morph that ‘flattened’ everything to more of a cinema screen showing a spaceship shrinking away into the distance…). I remember thinking these bits appealed because they were moments where imagination seemed more dominant than visual plug-ins or render farm hours.

3. How much of this was real-time, how much was choreographed? Does this matter? Paging Toby. From my vantage point, it was clear that the visual director/ technician / booth operator was doing very little behind his console for many of the tracks, arms literally folded as he leaned against the desk.

4. “It’s like we’re watching something that happened 12 months ago”, said a friend, referencing the online saturation of ISAM over the last year, and perhaps, that the visual creativity was mostly employed long ago in pre-production, rather than the live arena.

5. If you were looking at the audience for most of the gig, it would’ve been hard to tell whether they were at a screening or a concert. Does this matter?

6. After the visual avalanche – the outside world seemed more vivid… and on several occasions while riding my bicycle home afterwards, I found myself thinking – this is way more beautiful than the show -  the crisp and vivid  silhouettes of spotlit cathedral architectural elements ( flanked by fluffy night clouds ), later - a golden second floor window streaming light out onto a bunch of autumn leaves, composited within a mostly pitch black sky, and while crossing train tracks, looking right and catching bright red train lights reflected in the curve of shiny metal train tracks, glistening lines in the dark. ISAM is visually exquisite – but something bugged me – and it’s possibly the complete emphasis on synthesised environments, which alway seek to simulate but can never quite get there. A lot of the charm of Amon Tobin’s music comes from the way he uses field recordings and everyday sounds as part of his heavy digital processing – I wonder why the visual aspects weren’t considered the same way?

7. The window reveals of Amon inside the structure worked great, the lighting perfectly compositing him within the overall picture. Where and how else could rear lighting have been used playfully with the structure?

8. The music! Oh yes. Almost forgot. Periodically closed my eyes, and alternately felt the music was less – or more – interesting without the visual. Lots of the set featured luscious sound, but after a while the compositions themselves struggled to distinguish themselves from the rest of the set. The bass heavier finale hinted at directions it could’ve gone in, and friends mentioned the after-show DJ set by Amon was musically much better.

9. Wonder how modular / flexible that structure and overall software system they have is – how easily could they re-fit / re-model the shapes differently in another space?

10. What would the combined creative crew do differently if they were starting this project from scratch again? How much could their combined system be considered a platform / foundation for a more flexible / organic approach next time?

11. If it did feel a little bit like early cinema viewings, where the audience swoons at a train coming at the camera, where will the process of video-mapped surfaces go from here?

12. Are we starting to see an increasing divide between what’s possible with a few clever friends with some imaginatively deployed DIY tools – and larger scaled spectacles with matching budgets and limitations?

13. What’s with the overdose of mechanical sci-fi imagery? Galactic Giger transmissions might be contributing to the oversaturation, but surely there’s room for a projection mapping palette that expands beyond a Quake skin, to aesthetics that might include organic shapes, lifeforms, or even characters (whether narrative driven or not)? Not everyone has to be Gangpol Und Mit, (1000 people band, yo!) but other spatial composition palettes are possible!

14. Yes, there was more than visual-machine-lust, we also got geometric deconstruction – sophisticated even, but still, there it was, almost like a logo popping up logo for a software plug-in, the virtual form outlined, crumbled and rebuilt. What other ways can we play with spatial composition?

15. I was definitely transported at times, enchanted.

16. DJ as cloud? The kinect bit was effective, transforming the stage cubes with a swarm of Amon dots, as he manipulated his DJ booth gear. Was kinda arbitrary though, equivalent of stepping on a giant FX pedal during a song, and letting it utterly dominate the composition. Which is fine… but yes, trains coming towards the camera. Great effect – how could it be integrated meaningfully?

17. The audience was often quiet, near motionless. Weird for a music gig of an esteemed producer. A constant nearby soundtrack? People laughing in an excitable disbelief ( kind of like a cough-laugh) as though they were watching a sideshow circus of things that possibly shouldn’t be happening.

18. Overheard outside: “I think Melbourne is now out of weed.”

19. No matter the cost of the algorithm or render farm rental, an object artificially shattering into pieces still looks like 90′s desktop publishing. Or Lawnmower man. If you’re contractually bound to deconstruct, stylise it to some interesting degree, or show us some actual ruins, or some hybrid of your go-pro kite in Baghdad and your abstract shape plug-in of the moment.

20. So you’ve watched / listened to ISAM in Montreal, Melbourne and Manchester. How different were those shows? How different could they be?

21. Was that a pair of stacked Christie projectors?

22. Who knew the Palce in Melbourne went 4 levels high? New to me and quite the vantage point from up there, gave the cubes a much more pronounced 3D effect, from the floor it definitely felt much more cinema screen flattened rather than 3dimensional.

23. I was impressed by ISAM rather than seduced by it. Undeniably a really accomplished show, it deserves the praise, but I’m wondering if it left other live-video-heads with such mixed feelings about what was sacrificed as part of the production upscaling.

Totally curious as to what any other folks thought.

PS. I did a phone interview with Amon a long time ago, and he seems like a lovely guy.

IF Felinology = the study of cats and their anatomy,
THEN: GIF-felinology = Kind of like the torture scene from A Clockwork Orange, where eyes are propped open by pins… and as a piercing cat midi loop blares, an avalanche of cat tumblr feeds scratch away at the poor researchers eyes, until nothing remains but twitching and furballs.

I survived though – and am now a semi-professional animated cat-gif expert (contact me for rates). Catch the clip below ( or over at the projects page, where I now archive + document my video activities), or see it on the big screen during Sampology’s upcoming Apocalyptic AV tour.

Next up: more apocalypse, preparing ‘post-apocalyptic visual backdrops’ for upcoming TZU tour…

Elsewhere: holy felines, batman!

Warning: playing around long enough with 2D billboards and sprites (to display images) inside Quartz Composer, will eventually lead you to a third dimension. Fear not, inept explorers before you have survived, and they’ve even left some string at the edge of the cave:

Playing with 3D in QC

1. Create a new clear patch. This creates a blank background, choose colour in its inspector.
Type ‘clear’ into the library window, drag and drop a ‘clear’ patch onto your editor window.

2. Drag a ‘cube’ onto your window too.
Drag a movie from your hard-drive, into your window. Attach the image output to one of the image inputs of the cube.
Play with the rotation and x / y / z values of the cube in the inspector, and you should see video on one side of the cube.
( Tip - When adjusting Quartz parameters, adjust at 10 x speed by pressing shift at the same time, helpful for quicker compositing.)
You now have video playing on a 3D object in QC. Woo!

To easily put video on all surfaces – create an input splitter – by right clicking on the cube. Select ‘Insert input splitter’ and choose the the cube image input you’ve been using. Drag from the output of the input splitter, to as many of the cube image surfaces as you wish.

3. For easier 3D space manipulation try using a trackball. Drag one in from the library. Click and drag to select your cube(s) and movie files, then press command + x to cut them. Leave the clear patch. Double-click the Trackball patch to go within it. Paste (command + v) your cube here. Now try clicking and dragging on your QC viewer window – the trackball enables this more intuitive navigation / perspective alignment. (Click edit parent in the editor window to go back to your upper layer patches at any time.)

(Similarly, the 3D Transform patch can be used to allow easier control of 3D space. For example, placing several 3d objects inside a 3D transform, allows easy perspective adjustment of the whole scene by changing the 3D transform parameters.)

4. To add complexity – drag a ‘Replicate in Space’ patch from the library into your editor window, and place beside your cube. Again select your cube(s) + movie(s) + cut these. Double click to go inside the Replicate patch, then paste these inside. Play around with the Replicate parameters and watch the results.

3D experiment quartz patch ( Update the movie location to match a video file of yours, or delete the included movie link, and drag a movie into the editor)

Playing with your 3D QC file inside VDMX

Option 1: Drop it into the media bin and it should playback the 3D model with pre-connected movie.

Option 2: To use the QC file as an effect – allowing any clip being played in VDMX to appear on the cube – we need to do a few things :

- So that the video input is user defined rather than pre-defined, the root macro patch needs ’an input splitter of type ‘image’ set up receive the incoming video stream‘.

- To enable any of the QC parameters to be adjusted live inside VDMX, we need to adjust the relevant parameters in the QC patch. This is called ‘publishing an input in quartz’ ( and enables that QC parameter to be adjusted within VDMX -  see instructions). However – slight complication – these need to be published in the topmost layer of quartz ( ie the root macro patch) to be accessible in VDMX. So if you’ve published an input within a subpatch of your main patch, this won’t show up in VDMX. To solve this, publish the input at the layer of QC you are in ( eg inside a replicate in space patch), then go up one level – this published input will now appear listed in that patch ( eg replicate in space). Repeat the process of right clicking to publish again, and it will appear in the next patch up, and so on until it appears in the root macro patch.

- Save the QC within your VDMX QC FX folder. Select it from assets ( if needed, refresh via VDMX > prefs > User paths ). Whatever VDMX clip is playing will now be composited onto the cubes. Dude! OH: and click-dragging in the VDMX preview window works for the trackball navigation, the same way it does within QC.

3D experiment quartz patch for VDMX  (Drop into VDMX QC folder. Change parameters in this QC patch, save as new name in the same QC FX folder, and you’ve got as many new 3D compositing tools as you want.)

Playing With 3D Models

Download and install Vade’s v002 Model Loader - which allows you to “load 35+ 3D model formats into Quartz Composer, including animation data.”

Drag the v002 model importer into your editor. For ‘model path’, enter the address of a 3D model. (Drag a 3D model to the editor, click it, select path in inspector, copy and paste into v002.)

Connect an image or video to the v002  Model Importer ‘image’ input, to texture your model.

Read the included notes for more fun – including models with embedded 3D animation parameters.

Recording Your QC Experiments

Install Syphon Recorder.
Install the Syphon for Quartz Composer plug-in.
Put ‘Syphon server’ into your toplevel Quartz editor window. To use the OpenGL scene as the source, set this patch to be the last (top) layer rendered. ( ie – click on the right of your syphon server box, and ensure it’s number is higher than other layer.) This enables the Quartz output to be displayed within Syphon Recorder.

Open ‘Syphon Recorder’. Your quartz video should be already visible. Adjust recording preferences to suit (it handles 1080P fine on this 3 year old macbookpro), and hit record. It seems to manage 1080P HD recordings fine, and it even records alpha channels ( ie you can record audio-responsive 3D models on a transparent background, for easy compositing later into the likes of After Effects.

(See also: QTZ Rendang - Free software for rendering out quartz patches. Potentially useful for non-real-time rendering out intensive patches that give slow playback. Haven’t tested that yet though.)

Special shout-outs:

- to Vade for providing both the v002 model importer, Syphon and the Syphon recorder, which makes a lot of the above possible.

- To VJ Shakinda ( co-author of a forthcoming book on QC with @momothemonster) for his trilogy of 3D tutorials on youtube, which really helped me get to grips with 3D in QC. If you found this stringy guide helpful, wait until you’re bungee jumping with this fella:

Above, 3d objects moving to music in 4 mins. Also tasty: 3d beat reactive scenes – part 1 / part 2 / part 3.

Previously on Breaking Bad:

Learning With Quartz Part 3: DIY Anchor Rotation FX for VDMX

Learning Quartz Composer Part 2

Learning Quartz Composer Part 1

Aphex Twin played in Melbourne recently, which also meant a chance to catch the pixel mutations of his regular tour VJ, Weirdcore. After a summer of stage screens saturated with glossy, void-of-personality motion graphics templates, it was refreshing to catch live tour visuals that were ambitious, sophisticated and raw – very obviously being generated and manipulated live, mistakes and all. Probably not many other ways to approach a set for Aphex, and apparently he does improvise a different set every single time.

Below, a diagram from Weirdcore’s artist profile at vidvox.net, explaining his video set-up**.

“With additional FX programming from Andrew Benson, Flight404, and Vade this is one of the wildest tour setups we’ve seen in a while… but you wouldn’t expect anything less for the worlds most known electronic musician. Pitchfork may have said it best, “First, we can’t really talk about anything until we talk about the visuals.”

[[ **"UPDATE: Weirdcore mentions that diagram is now dated (was for his 2011 set-up), and he intends to shift everything to jitter, with one computer direct to LEDs, much simpler and less likely to fuck up." ]]

Above : 1 x Richard D. James + 1 x Kinect, flanked by L.E.D. Screens of the face-replaced crowd at the Palace, Melbourne.

Below : The Kinect in action at The Future Music Festival ( Bonus Melbourne software plug : kinectar.org ).

Aside from general pixel mangling and the fast and fluid Weirdcore style – I was curious to see how effective the live face-replacing would be (snippets of it in live Aphex shows have been glimpsed online for a couple of years now). The software and camera set-up seemed to take a while to tune, but when it locked in the effect was mesmerising, updating fast enough to cope with panning cameras of a boisterous crowd, all while being relentlessly modified and further manipulated.

The face-tracking was also put to work in a section of the show that is customised for each location. Weirdcore had asked for feedback on the list of Aussie celebrities he’d compiled, so I threw him a few more names, including 1 x Wally. Crowd reactions varied, but were probably loudest for the photo below of Julia Gillard, and Weirdcore mentioned later that for whatever reason – unlike most other countries, the response had been loudest for politicians at Australian gigs.

Aphex + Die Antwoord Live

[[ Die Antwoord? If needing a crash course in South African cartoon-rave-gangsterism - spend 15 minutes of your life inside the short film, Umshini Wam made with Harmony Korine ( Gummo, Kids, etc). ]]

If the Aphex Palace gig wasn’t overloaded enough, 3/4 through the set  - on top of a cacophony of Aphex – Die Antwoord burst out from backstage in orange flouro suits and rapid-fire a couple of tracks, one of which has ninja rapping from above the crowd he has stage-dived into. There are almost enough camera phones in the air, for ninja to get back onstage by walking across a bridge made of gadget. Another highpoint of weirdness is reached when ninja + Yo-landi rasp in their South African accents, ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie’ and the crowd eats it up, barking enthusiastically back ‘Oi, Oi, Oi!’. Somehow it all makes sense, including the ideas that future Die Antwoord videos are to be made by Weirdcore and later by Chris Cunningham. One extended global mutant franchise. And yes, after Die Antwoord depart, Aphex still has plenty in reserve (as do the lighting and laser operators), so by the time  it’s done, we can only depart exhausted.

**

Thanks to Weirdcore and his tech companion Fede for taking some tour time out to meet up and chat about pixels.

Be sure to check out  his video projects, including works for MIA, Chuck D, Cassette Playa + Simian Mobile Disco etc, and this Weirdcore video interview at the Creators Project.

( Thanks also, to juanjocruz for letting me use his zoomed in photos, the best on flickr for the Melbourne show. )

R.I.P. Moebius, aka Jean Giraud, ( 1938-2012 ).

Sadly, we’re now without a living Moebius. All the more reason to revisit (or explore anew) his wild and fantastic creations. Most people might recognise his graceful intergalactic palette as some of the best parts of Heavy Metal magazine (originally Metal Hurlant in France) – but even the comic-less would be familiar with his work and influence on films such as Alien, Tron + Blade Runner. Indeed, we’ve lost a gentle giant.

Some Moebius links to dive into?

official site ( French )
Moebius on wikipedia
Airtight garage, a fan site / tumblr-collage tribute (named after one of his books).
There are several feature-length Moebius documentaries available. Here’s a video interview with Moebius drawing on a Cintiq screen-tablet.
And then there’s the Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky film version of Dune they never got to make. It was also to feature Salvador Dali and Giger amongst others, so the documentary about this, Unseen Dune (see trailer), should at least be pretty interesting.

If looking to do an out of print Moebius comic binge on your ipad ( including say, The Incal, his series with Jodorowsky) … Stanza - is a free app that can read CBR + PDF comics.

[Update: 2 great, long-read, illustrated Moebius tributes - on sci-fi sites io9 + Tor.com]

After being invited to perform at the Australian Natural History Museum in Sydney ( back in Aug 2011), I couldn’t resist the chance to project onto a dinosaur skeleton. I was performing video in the foyer with Pattern Machine as part of the Museum’s Jurassic Lounge evening series, and the museum staff were super helpful in squeezing in this extra request during an already hectic night ( which amongst other things, included a silent disco and live taxidermy!).

The Muttaburrasaurus was apparently a herbivorous Aussie dinosaur that lived 100 million years ago, around 8m / 26 ft tall and weighing around 3 tonnes. To project onto it, I connected my camera to my laptop and used Madmapper‘s spatial scanner function to generate an image mask, tidied this up in photoshop, then played with the masked image using VDMX.

Soundtrack by Pattern Machine ( patternmachine.possumpalace.org , see also: related field recordings at soundcloud )

Thanks to Barry Saunders for the invite, and Chanele Moss for general museum awesomeness.

Congo Tardis #1 are an absurdly talented trio of Melbourne turntablists, who recently asked me to put together a micro-budget music video for their new EP. Part of their pitch was that they already had some green screen footage of the guest vocalist (hula-hooping extraordinaire: Marawa the Amazing), so ‘hopefully a quickly composited clip wouldn’t take too long’. The green screen footage, of course, turned out to be a drunken ninja fest: most shots cut off part of Marawas’ head, or featured the camera wobbling on the tripod (when the cameraman wasn’t busy zooming in and out). And yeah – it featured juggling of *green* limes. There was enough gold slithers to make it work though, and making it reminded me how useful VJ tools can be for video production today.

Integrating VJ Software Into Post-Production

Congo just wanted a series of composited scenes cut to music, rather than any narrative, so given their tropical flavour I set about designing some lo-fi cosmic jungle compositions. Typically that’d involve playing with images and video files in Photoshop and After Effects, but being easily able to record HD video with Syphon suddenly makes software like VDMX all the more useful for generating customised textures / timings / visual effects.

- Play music track. Adjust visual parameters with the knobs and sliders of a midi controller and record as you go.

- Playback instantly, see what worked, then rinse, repeat and refine. Or remix that video for a more layered effect.

- Throw these recorded clips into After Effects for some ‘mastering’ / fine-tuning / colour grading etc

The current Adobe Premiere + After Effects integration is another great contributor to an improved video workflow. Using what they call ‘dynamic linking‘ many rendering steps can be cut out and this can make a great difference for putting together a video. It allows precision editing a clip within Premiere, easy offloading into After Effects for parameter adjustments, then re-importing the newly adjusted clip back into Premiere – all without needing to render. Or work on a complex composition in After Effects, then import just this composition into Premiere for timeline cut-up. And of course, the end result of these processes can be exported and used within the likes of VDMX for further real-time splicing, remixing and layering, and easily recorded – for reintegration into… etc etc. THIS MAKES ME HAPPY!

The Sweet Lime (FT Marawa the Amazing) is available now on the Number 1 EP as a 7″ Vinyl, or digital download via congotardis1.com or scatterblog.com.

[[ PS. Thanks to Pineapple Donut, Skynoise now has a dedicated and dynamically updating projects page, so there's a place I can put stuff like this Congo Tardis music video...  without it getting lost in the archive-ether. Or you can release your comment hounds, while viewing it directly over at vimeo ]]

Even as the VJ software market matures, it’s refreshing to see with releases like CoGe – that there’s still room for new players and perspectives. From deep in his East European code-bunker, creator Tamas Nagy was kind enough to provide a review copy and an interview.

Features

“CoGe is a semi-modular, Quartz Composer® powered VJ application for Mac OS X®, designed for real-time media mixing and compositing.”

So – aside from the usual playback and manipulation of clips, what distinguishes CoGe? At first glance, the VDMX-like modular framework is immediately obvious, enabling CoGe to be easily customised for different performance styles or needs. Of the modules available, of notable merit is the very easily used sequencer.

A comprehensive wiki outlines the structure and approach ( the rendering chain / how the modular structure works / various automations+ mappings etc ) / clip synths, and a useful forum is fleshed out with fans eager to push it forward (At time of writing, CoGe 1.2.1 was just released, with significant performance increases ( lots more FPS on HD clips).

Quartz Composer is also quite deeply integrated into the software, which makes sense – given Tamas has developed a whole range of QC plug-ins which can be used within CoGe – eg PSD Brushes  / PSD layers Textfile readers / Webkit ( rendering webpages within CoGe )Beat Detektor / GPL reader ( reads GIMP palette files ) / Mouse co-ordinates etc. As well as possibilities for integrating customised Quartz files and effects, CoGe allows use of  3D animation meshes (Collada .dae format) and flash files alongside any movies and stills used for mixing and compositing. Want to build your own CoGe module using QC? Tutorial – how to create a simple effect for CoGe with Quartz Composer. And yes, rendering is through the graphics card for maximum performance, and double yes – syphon is well integrated too, for easy sending or receiving video to and from other applications.

Interface

It only took a little while to adapt to the CoGe world, and what initially seemed quirky, now makes some sense. The interface elements are easily moved, re-arranged and intelligently grouped together using what CoGe calls ‘aligners’ to “arrange other windows together into manageable organizational ‘buckets’”. It might look a little ravetastic, but it makes for easy navigation and visual feedback while performing, and the sequencer action is great.

Overall?

A welcome addition to today’s VJ software library, it’ll be interesting to see if CoGe manages to continue developing in some interesting directions, given what is being covered elsewhere.

Requirements:

$US99 (custom + educational pricing also available)
A Mac computer with 10.6.7/10.7 or later with a dual-core CPU and at least 1 GB of Ram.

**

Interview with Tamas Nagy, creator of CoGe VJ Software

Given there’s quite a range of existing VJ software – what inspired you to build CoGe?
It’s a kind of funny story I saw a first vj gig in 2001 in a music festival, and I fell in love with that thing. Never thought about being a vj, I made music before, so I’m from audio land. Then, when I got my first Mac in 2006, and saw Quartz Composer and saw how Quartonian works, I just think I can do something funny_ – never thought about to make a commercial application, haha – with a kind of sync with the music, so just tried it. It was the early version of CoGe, called LovQC, haha You can find some test videos made with it on Youtube.

Then I spent more time on the software, added lots of new features, and with 2 friends we just created a VJ team Luma Beamerz and CoGe was born. Anyway, the first version of the app was a 50mb QC composition with just an interface, then I started to learn Cocoa, Obj-C, OpenGL and other stuffs - Vade helped me a lot with the GL stuff, so CoGe now is a “real” application.

Anyway, I never used any other VJ softwares, I just created my own for my own wishes: triggering different points of movie on beat, sequencing still images, etc.

So, I think the big difference between applications is the workflow, so it depends on how you, the user think about creating things. All VJ software has a bunch of same features, triggering files, change speed, colors, etc., the big difference is the workflow, so I think an artist will choose software which works like his/her workflow. For an other example, modularity is a great thing, but a lots of users happy with built-in features in apps and never thought about it can be different.

It’s integrated into your app quite a lot – but what attracts you to Quartz Composer?
The great thing with QC is very easy to learn the basics and use for non-programers too, you shouldn’t be a coder to do a simple image rotation for example. On a developer side, the system integration – using QC stuff inside an application is easy – is a very important thing in my opinion.

It also have a lots plugins, and great media handlers, so a lots of things is possible with QC – basically, CoGe just connects QC stuffs under the hood, nothing magic.

What impact does Syphon have on how developers might approach VJ software today?
I think Syphon has a lots of potencial and its a very great stuff – connecting different sources into other applications is really opens some doors, just think about “sending” images from Max and Processing, and you can mix them in CoGe in a very simple way. That couldn’t be possible before Syphon.

Do you have opinions about whether VJ software should provide more advanced audio controls? And sequencing controls? Or is it better to sync VJ software to something like ableton?

I really like sequencing, using clips and stills in sequencing can provide really good things. With audio controls you can have some fun, but the really good choice is syncing with an audio host if you would like to make real AV things.

What are the challenges of making a good performance interface?
It depends on your workflow and what you wanna do in the performance. I recently just using 3 layers with a lots of media presets and some simple effects. If you using a lots of things the new Aligner stuff helps you to make smaller groups on the screen, I think its a very important feature.

What are you happy about in CoGe today?
CoGe 1.1 release makes me happy, i got a lots of positive feedback on it, and saw some really nice things created with CoGe. Also happy because i have a lots of ideas for the future

Thanks Tamas!

2012. Zowie. Time flies. And as the year ticks over, it turns out to be 3 months since I last posted.

Mostly I’ve been busy (doing video on the Making Mirrors tour with Gotye / making a set of motion graphic video clips for Audego ).

Partially, the skynoise part of my brain has been ant-eaten away by the likes of twitter.

There’s also a whole bunch of almost-ready posts waiting to be covered in finishing sauce :

- CoGe review (including an interview with Tamas Nagy)
- VDMX 5 (Beta 8 ) review ( it is now 10 years since I reviewed VDMX 2, including a tiny interview with Johnny DeKam )
- Resolume Avenue / Arena review
- Web Aesthetics by Vito Campanelli, book review
- Art Rage Pro Review
- Sydney Film Festival + Melbourne Film Festival reviews
- another Quartz Composer tutorial / set of links + observations
- science fiction books set in the non-anglo world
- reflections on touring with Gotye..

Expect those to start trickling through in January. And after that, probably occasional longer form pieces on current obsessions, and more with images and video, less of the pop cultural snapshots. That said – everything about 2011 was probably covered in David Weinberger’s amusing top ten list of top ten list of top ten lists. And as Umberto Eco reckons, liking lists is part of the human condition.. we face infinity and our mortality by making lists / catalogs / encylopedias / museum collections etc .

Anyways,  2012 – what a cracker - and only 360ish days until everyone stops talking about Mayans..

This week’s mission – finish off a video clip for Congo Tardis, using wobbly green screen footage sent by their charismatic guest vocalist, Marawa the amazing.

*PRIMATE-FIST-BUMPS*

(( PS. The duo above, aping the Gotye bodypainting filmclip with 35 million views(!!), were wandering around at the 2011 Peat’s Ridge festival, and they became a pretty apt 2012 countdown backdrop on the big screen.. ))

Reasons you might find yourself wanting to read this very long but very awesome Raquel Meyers interview:

- Because you love 8bit graphics and people who push them to their limits

- Because Raquel makes rad stuff ( eg her recent DVD of ‘fighting washing machines and killer lego ducks’, full of videoclips, remixes and collaborations with chiptune musicians and pixel pushers – Useless Yet Crucial).

- Because you want to find out about her ascii storytelling experiments with the C64 shredding musician Goto80.

- Because you love reading about how artists wrestle with their processes.

- Because you need a crazy and wonderful collection of visual links in your day.

Who knows, but I hope you enjoy these responses as much as I did. Thanks Raquel~!

- What’s inspiring you these days?

At the moment I am experimenting with storytelling and text-based graphics like Ascii, Ansi, Petscii and Teletext with Goto80. I’ve changed both the tools and the purpose of what I’m doing during the past months. I guess what I’m doing now is formally similar to text adventures, cartoons, silent movies, text art, demos…

I’ve been mostly inspired by animations and short movies from the 20th century, like “Little island”(1958) by Richard Williams or “Cowboys”(1991) by Phil Mulloy; and also, children’s books. Because of the brutal style of the “Simple storytelling”, the combination of a drawing plus a short phrase who builds a full dream up. This one makes me think about 2 frames animation, and how something simple it become even more brutal, especially working with the C64.

In the case of the short movies, the animation comes before the music, so the video is not the slave of the music (music video style). Sound effects increase the tension and the verve of the animation, and could be use in a shorter way like an interlude, or something longer. But the main thing is the story behind it, whit out it you cannot go further.

A cinematic new age terror is coming!. It operates in text mode, only using characters of the Commodore 64 and Amiga. This applies both to the graphics and the music.

[[ EDIT: Terror is now live - witness “2SLEEP1”, a "66-minute playlist of audiovisual performances in text mode, designed to make you fall asleep. Press play, go fullscreen and lie down. Made by Raquel Meyers and Goto80." screenshots below:]]

- What hardware and software do you use to create your animations?

I use several computers. A C64 with Letter Noperator and DigiPaint. An Amiga 1200 with DPIV, Brilliance, Prism and also an Amiga 600 provided by Archeopterix. A PC and Mac, with Flash, Photoshop, video editors and the (unreleased) petsciibrush software made by Linde. Soon I will add a Teletext device.

I’m not a gear freak. I don’t really care about the tools. I used to work primarily with Flash and Photoshop, which was a pain in the ass for the things I was doing. But I still liked it. Now I use old things (Amiga and C64), and that’s also quite painful sometimes. So to answer the question – I blend old and new technologies. It doubles the pain!

I am not a purist, I am a blender.

- How much of your creative process is defined by the limitations of such technologies?

I prefer to talk about possibilities instead of limitations. I think the technology is not the limited one, is the human behind it. It doesn’t matter how old or new the technology is, there is always something new to discover and learn. It’s not a such a big thing to use old technology, it doesn’t make everything more special, different or better. In my case, I use it because I like it.

But the things I do in Flash are different from what I do on C64. So the process is different. But I don’t really like to think too much about those things.

- Is there some cut-off line for retro computer graphics, where they are too new for you to use? What is it about 8-bit that manages to sustain appeal for you?

At least not for me, I’m not interested in the retro version of 8-bits, so I don’t think about if something is too new to use or not.

I remember playing pong with my brother in the TV console, meet my friends at ‘ la sala de máquinas’  and how I had stuck in my head every night before going to sleep the Tetris song. I grow up with arcade games and graphic adventures but, it wasn’t until 21 century when I discover a C64 music archive on Internet, and all these memories becomes something else because of the music.

It wasn’t a revival, it was something else, the imaginary frame in my head that before was a picture now become pixels looking for to be animated.

I don’t really know, but I think what keeps my interested in 8-bit is the brutalism. Big blocky objects, raw animation techniques, few frames, cuts, etc. I think it’s better if the animation method is brutal, because then it contains so much more than with some detailed video where there’s less room to think on your own.

- What do you find interesting about making live visuals versus production work?

A Live Performance is always open to improvisation and mistakes, meanwhile production work is always under control in the time line. You can rehearse or planning live visuals but at the end you don’t know what is gonna happen. Is really fun put yourself in a non control mode, keeps the spark. And since I don’t really use VJ-software to perform, it’s always a challenge.

- What work have you done on combining and compositing 8-Bit and recorded video together?

As part of Entter (2000-2007), the video clip Fantasy’ by Goto80, and ‘Dietetic Music’ by Eat Rabbit with graphics from Otro. Both of them were my earliest works in the 8-Bit, 2004 and 2005. Based on video recordings and post-production. In latest video clips, I mixed photo animations and graphics like the ‘Droidduck’ by Psilodump (2010), ‘Pink Snow’ by La belle Indifference (2010) and ‘Polybius’ by tr1c3 (2010), based on the main live cinema project ‘Polybius’ with Goto80. Also parts of the vj set contains video and graphics mixed. The reason of that is because my first background was Analog photography. I started when I was 14 years old, with black & white films and experimenting in the lab. The first thing jumping in my mind is always a static picture, a frame. My work is based in the movement or animation of such frames.

- Can you describe your AV set with musician Goto80, Polybius? ( and your aims behind it?)

Polybius …. the idea came from a post I read in my brother’s blog in 2007. The post was about an urban myth about an arcade game from the 1980s (Polybius) that created a sensory and cognitive deprivation in its users. So I started to talked with Goto80 about it and how much I would like to do something with it and with him.  The basic idea was explode the links between fiction and reality by encouraging a loss of senses. But it was not until 2009 when the french collectif ‘Homemade’ invited me for a 2 weeks residence at Le maki (Angoulême, France) when the Polybius experience become something else tahn talks. I developed there a first 20 min version, using a ‘cute’ character like a rabbit to hide my really epileptic and apophenic purpose, and Goto80 was working in the audio online from Sweden. The project was officially presented at the Cimatics festival the same year.

In the beginning of the 2010 we develop together in Berlin the second version who combines line vector aesthetics with video manipulation and 8-bit technology to induce feelings of apophenia, amnesia and panic. The Polybius experience – invented and created by us in the form of a white rabbit with a sectarian-politonic-track to be stuck in your head.

[[ Tangent alert! See also: previous 'C64 Shredding interview with GOTO80', and 'Cappadocia Skies' - a clip I'd made about a hot air balloon ride, with music by one of GOTO80's aliases, Extra Boy. ]]

- What’ve been the challenges of developing that, and what has worked or not, when performed live?

One of the biggest challenges was working in the distance via Spain-Berlin-Sweden thought Internet. Because we build the project together from the beginning and sometimes was really difficult to define and create the content without being in the same place. When we presented the project at Cimatics, we realized we need to meet physically to develop a second version and special place to performed it, out of the club experience. So in the beginning of 2010 we meet in Berlin for a week to prepared the second version, because we were invited by the PlazaPlus Festival in Eindhoven NL to performed it in january. We made a special pass before for the visualberlin collective at fh.meppen (Berlin) to test the extended version of 32min and got feed-backs from the public. The third and last version is pending, who icludes the physical game and an installation. But for this we need budget and maybe a residence to develop it. It’s one of the most complicated projects I have ever done.

- To what extent are you able to adapt the visual side of that with each performance?

My set is manual. To be able to adapt to whatever happens in the live performance. Before I was only using one laptop running an aplication who host all the visual content (graphics, animations, videos …) controlling by hand with the keyboard. So the rhythm was build in the way I click on the keyboard and load the different content. Now I’m working in a new set, who consists in a C64 and an Amiga, still in process, so I used the laptop as extra support with the same technic. A video mixer is used to change the sources, but there is not so much effects involve. The thing that takes more time is making all the animations, graphics and videos. I only used my own material, and always try to made a special set for each performance.

- Have your computer / animation processes ever entered / filtered / affected your dreams in any way?

Yes it does, because I listen so many times the songs when I’m working with it and also I dream with the animations. But ‘Polybius’ was something really insane, I had one of the tracks stuck in my head, like a trance mode to my own sense deleting experience.

- At the ‘Artists-Who-Inspired-Raquel Meyers’ Award Ceremony, who gets the following awards? 

- Visual artist who most steps outside the echo chamber of contemporary styles?

Nam June Paik, the retrospective exhibition ‘The Worlds of Nam June Paik’ in 2001 at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao I saw, put him for me in this category, like the “Magnet TV”.

- Visual artist with the most exquisite and hard to understand technique? 

Poison, I know the technique, but is not enough, because even if you use the same software you cannot have the same results. As PETSCII graphician was really impress how he made ’2frames’ animations and graphics for the C64.

- Visual artist who best gets under your skin? ( transcends technique to grab your emotions ? )

Otromatic, he is my favourite 8 bit graphician. He become one of the reasons why I start to make Lo-fi graphics and animations.

- Best coherent, integrated audiovisual act?

Gangpol & mit. Really impressive performance, one of my favorites. I really enjoy the animations.

But wait, there’s more:

This is something really difficult to do because inspiration doesn’t come only from visuals. They are so many things involve in this process. Here there is some of them, older and newer inspirations:

- Visions of Frank. The dreamlike world of ‘Frank’ a comic by Jim Woodring converted in animations.

- Jan Švankmajer and his surreal animations like ‘Meat Love‘.

- Professor Balthazar, a cartoon series for children, created for television by the Croatian animator Zlatko Grgić. Watching this as a child build a surreal imagery, who come up when you become older.

- Poison, C64 graphician. The ‘Notemaker Demo II‘, all you can do just typing characters.

- Russian and Eastern Europe cartoons (like Suur Toll- Estonia), even if we don’t share the same language, I can feel the eerie atmospheres.

- Bernd and Hilla Becher and their industrial buildings photographies. The motives of my early photographies were the factories buildings from my hometown at night when I was 15 years old.

- Kohei Yoshiyuki and his soft-core voyeur’s manual.

- Stalker, film by Andrei Tarkovsky (1979). This one change something inside me in the 90s.

As always, his arguments focus on the emergence of significant ideas in the past, from where he traces a path – to how they’ve impacted  the world today. And so, he explores the effects of Ayn Rand‘s ideas on American financial markets, looks into the selfish gene theory which holds that humans are machines controlled by genes, and examines how “the ‘ecosystem’ myth has been used for sinister means”. It’s fantastic as televisual essay, even if that essay repeats bits of his other essays, and occasionally feels like he may be stretching a point or ignoring others – so that his narrative threads can stay intact.

As ever, music features prominently (and if you like his style of music heavy editing, you try his even more musical co-production with theatre company Punchdrunk, It Felt Like A Kiss, featuring music composed by Damon Albarn from Blur.)

It also has an episode titled: “The Monkey In The Machine, and the Machine in the Monkey”.

But don’t trust me, try Adam’s blog at the BBC, which provides great background to his various research topics, or try these radio slabs of Jarvis Cocker interviewing Adam Curtis. As you might expect, Jarvis gives good interview. part 1, part 2, part 3 (via @emilezile). Bonus round Charlie Brooker show segment - How We All Became Richard Nixon ( aka paranoid and weird ).

And Then Comes The Parody

Above, The Loving Trap Of Pandora’s Nightmares, Written, edited and narrated by Ben Woodhams aka Psychonomy.

Narrates Ben, over the top of some creative commons licenced footage:

“This is a short film about a documentary film maker who made critically lauded films for the BBC, and about how, along the way, he proved that style always triumphs over substance. In 1992, a strange and brilliant That’s Life researcher with a Skinny Puppy CD embarked up on a career producing documentaries about how ideas can spark social movements. Adam Curtis believes that 200,000 guardian readers watching BBC2 can change the world. But this was a fantasy. In fact, he had created the televisual equivalent of a drunken late night wikipedia page with pretensions to narrative coherence.

Combining archive documentary material with interviews, Curtis filled the gaps by vomiting grainy library footage to the screen to a soundtrack Brian Eno and Nine Inch Nails. He had discovered, that it did not matter what footage he used, so long as he changed the shots so bewilderingly fast that the audience didn’t notice the chasm between argument and conclusion. This was especially effective when he simply cut the music mid-bar.”

The Gertrude st Projection Festival

This grows nicely each year, transforming lots of shopfronts and buildings in Gertrude st for a week. Above, a nicely mapped facade by Olaf Meyer. There was apparently a pretty good opening night party of projections, which I missed due to projecting elsewhere for the Scattermusic label launch party. Below, a mapped sculptural piece by studio neighbour, Kit Webster, alongside a fancy dress store where peering into a camera projected your face onto that of a shopfront scuplture. (More projection photos).

Inherent Vice

The National Gallery of Victoria convinced some local comic artists (Pat Grant, Mandy Ord, Michael Fikaris and Simon Hanselman + more) to transfer their private studios into the the public spotlight for a few weeks. The results included a zine fair, 24 hour comic jams, tents and drum-kits set-up in the studio, drawing lessons, an Inherent Vice tumblr and a steady stream of bug-eyed kids and adults wandering through. Check the article in the Australian, or the artist interviews on the Age website.

Winterpark Exhibition of Artworks Inspired by Album

I went to this because local video artist Lucy Benson, now in Berlin, had a hypnotic piece in it - ’Gotta Sleep now’, but my camera phone couldn’t really capture her shimmery work. Below, a sculpture that nicely incorporates video and little people. Can’t figure out from the event page who actually made it though, maybe you can. Nice idea for an exhibition, and great to see the different interpretations of the tracks.

Nosaj Thing Live at Kensington

Hadn’t even heard of the warehouse venue Nosaj was playing at – Revolt – and arrived to a building crazily decked out with technical and bar infrastructure, including pyramid mapped video sculptures by Kit in the distance. Came complete with a 90s black light chill out room. The Nosaj set was great, the rest of it got a bit wonk-saturated after a while.

Audiovisual Performances

Zeal and Time Shield have been steadily honing their AV performances around town, and recently Zeal invited me to do an AV set at Bar Open in support of his threepiece Virtual Proximity (see above). I was quite happy with this set, playing with some ambient music, ocean footage and quartz patches in VDMX. Elsewhere, Sampology came down from the subtropics to do an AV show, and Naysayer and Gilsun more recently launched their new AV set. There be audiovisual things happening. (Often at Racket – first thursday of each month at Miss Libertines in the city, and Plug N Play – last Thu of each month at Kent st bar, Fitzroy. )

MÖBIUS by ENESS

MÖBIUS from ENESS on Vimeo. This ‘collaborative stop motion scuplture’ was the brain child of Benjamin Ducroz, an extension of his work with time lapse and physical sculpture – this time using lots of help from public volunteers in rearranging the pieces over and over throughout the day.

And yeah, Melbourne International Animation Festival and the 60th Melbourne International Film Festival just whipped past. Quite a few delights and surprises in there. Will bundle together a short post and some links to the films I liked in a while. This’ll have to do for now. Springtime!

End result: Lots of fun – and a new set of challenges to deal with. Spatial composition with video is getting easier and easier, and as we outgrow the novelty of seeing buildings lit up / architectural deconstruction by light, there’s such ripe terrain to explore with today’s software. And as the barriers to entry continue to lower, it’ll be the imaginative approaches that prove most successful.

[[ Oh yeah - and that video - not a manifesto for spatial video by any means, just some example snippets from a fun night with the Scattermusic Sound System.. still getting my head around how this can all work well. And there be photos too. ]]

After doing live video for 2 shows there last weekend with the Gotye band, I can add to that list:
- It is a rabbit warren under the sails.
- The salad sandwiches in the green room are very ordinary.
- The elevator under the concert stage is faulty (I was trapped there with a weary tech guy for 5 tense minutes.. )

I got roped in to do live video for Gotye’s tour for his just released Making Mirrors album, which has accompanying animations for most songs. There’s some pretty nice work amongst it – I’ll have to do a follow-up post soon with links to all the animation houses. For me, my work is mostly editing and formatting to suit the main screen and 2 vertical side screens, then while the band plays – triggering short sections of these clips to ensure the right visual moments are synchronised with the band playing live.

Despite an almost comical list of headaches – long fog delays at Melbourne airport, animations arriving at the last minute, software quirks, a compressed set-up time, hardware quirks, that elevator(!) and so on – the first shows of the tour ended up running really well. Having a crack team of musicians (and tech folk) definitely helps in that regard (including Tim Shiel aka ‘Faux Pas’ beside me onstage). Below, the band and my hard-drive covered laptop during sound / vision check at the Opera House.

And the VDMX interface spreading its wings up on the screen briefly during rehearsal.

And once again, with people.

( More Gotye gig photos )

The Graphic Arts festival

Awesome choice for tour opener – showcasing an album and animations within a festival dedicated to comics. Graphic Arts had some great highlights this year:

- Jim Woodring, the author of FRANK, did a pretty mind-expanding talk on DEATH-CAKE apparently, and fantastic inking masterclass (attended by comic-friend Gregory Mackay (Francis Bear)).

- Tekkon Kinkreet - fantastic animated film – with accompanying live soundtrack by Plaid (Warp) + Fourplay (strings) + Synergy (robotic rubber limbed percussionists). Really luscious sound, really luscious film.

- Silent Comics – a series of comic panels projected while musicians provide a soundtrack. This included sound foley artists, Captain Beefheart-esque carnival bands, Seekae, Wally from Gotye in splinter-sample mode, and probably nailing it best, Plaid. Great idea for a session.

- Scott McCloud – from ‘Understanding Comics’ (also used as a multimedia bible in explaining media and visual storytelling concepts ) did a great one hour presentation, which harnessed visual support material as effectively as you’d hope a guy like him would. Lots of interesting points, though I found myself laughing at his interface observation-  ”Why does Tom Cruise need a glove to do all that in Minority report?”. He also ended with this pretty funny reading of a scrolling comic that involved monkeys mutating into progressively crazier proportions.

- Pete Kuper – aka the guy who did Spy Vs Spy from Mad magazine.

- An assortment of Aussie comic artists doing talks and workshops – including Mandy Ord, Pat Grant and more.

Sadly Robert Crumb wasn’t part of the mix – but I was amused to learn from the Festival organiser about the communication process they had – “Yes, Robert uses email, but that involves….” –  his assistant scanning his recent emails, printing the interesting ones, highlighting the relevant bits, cutting those out and putting them in an envelope and mailing them to Robert, who replies on the back with his pen. When he’s around.

So a while ago I interviewed Fernando Llanos, a Mexican artist with a huge catalogue of artworks under his belt. Notably, this included the Videohuahua project – which involved a micro projector strapped to the back of his pet chihuahua. Turned out he was bringing a video blimp to Australia for the Splendour in the Grass festival, and was spending a few days in Melbourne afterwards – so we made plans to meet up.

A couple of days later, I was introduced to Gonzalo who runs the enchanting Magic Lantern Studio ( 155 Brunswick St, Fitzroy, Melbourne ), which is filled with puppets, optical illusion and vintage pre-cinema moving image devices. At some point I noticed he had a few paintings of chihuahuas on the walls, and we got talking about them – and then I mentioned Videohuahua – Gonzalo stared at me, then lead me laughing to his computer where he showed a series of paintings that feature chihuahuas with cameras strapped to their heads.

Inevitably Fernando’s Melbourne visit had to include a trip to Magic Lantern, where it turned out the art and chihuahua anecdotes flew thick and fast ( mostly in fast-forward Spanish). Below, Fernando on the left, Gonzalo on the right, in front of the shop and a painting of a chihuahua with an electric shaver as head. Photographed and blogged, so I can say, no, I am not making this up.

See also art, politics and the daschund.

Above, Pattern Machine, the fruits of a recent fourway collaboration in a weeklong residency on Cockatoo Island ( a former prison and shipbuilding yard in Sydney Harbour), during the 2011 Underbelly Arts Festival.

By the end of the week, after much tech configuration, island sampling*, and software wrestling, we’d concocted a work in progress that was deemed seaworthy enough for 3 x 45 minute audiovisual sets during the public exhibition night. And during that day the space was filled with people wandering around the inflatable sculpture, while cocooned by a generative surround installation busy mutating captured island sounds into new species. Turns out the accumulated ferry rides, nautical rust and winter winds were worth enduring in the end, as the performance seemed to go really well, much of the pieces falling into shape on the very last evening before the event.

For myself, it was very satisfying to have an opportunity to explore video composition in a great setting, and in a more spatial way – using an external graphics card to send a different signal to 3 different projectors simultaneously, using madmapper to position and map the video from each of these, and having the luxury of returning each day to experiment with equipment that was already set-up. And it was super-satisfying to be doing that with…

These 4 People = Pattern Machine

Jean Poole: spatial video composition and live video manipulation with 3 projectors, vdmx, quartz composer and madmapper.
Dan MacKinlay + James Nichols: Quadrophonic soundscapes using field recordings, vintage synthesisers and heavily customised super collider patches. (They don’t have much vinyl, but their phd maths books weigh a tonne.. )
Sarah Harvie: inflatable sculpture, tailor designed for our space with lots of late night industrial sewing machine sweat.

(( *My Cockatoo Island photo set, Dan’s photo set, and Dan’s stereo field recordings. ))

Underbelly Artists Shout Out:

Aside from the audacious setting, part of what made the residency great was the motley collection of artists also spending time on the island, each struggling with their own peculiar set of problems to solve. And it was inspiring to see everyone’s work evolving over the week. This extensive  festival review gives a good taste of how the exhibition day unfolded, and these were some of my favourites:

Case Study - This was my pick of the bunch, 6 artists who had the aim of building a new colonial society in their allocated portion of the island. Which they built out of everything they brought in their suitcases, as well as using their suitcases themselves to build individual artist houses. There were telescopes and projected moons, ornate water features, mossy forests growing from open suitcases and test tubes, every step a new photogenic overload.

Younes Bachir and Strings Attached got the jaw-drop-spectacle medal – with their meat-suits, paint-splashy aerial choreography ( imagine a dozen people 4 storeys up dynamically moving about in space ) and flair in abundance. ( This gives a good taste of why it excited.. )

Brad Miller’s Data_shadow video installation was super-slick, an exploration of memory, technology and how lusciously you can make a database of photographs and video wander across 4 screens with motion detection cues from visitors. Biljana Jancic‘s wooden boxed shafts of light played beautifully with the smoke machines, silhouettes and the industrial space and  SWANBRERO used inflatable car sales dancers to great effect in their piece - INFLATE MY HEART WITH 1000 GUSHES OF WIND .

Video it would seem, is slipping from the screen into the world around it. Increasingly we expect to see pixels sliding around us in three dimensional space – dripping down heritage building facades, climbing across weird geometric clusters surrounding a sound system, illuminating the edges of random urban infrastructure. Although we’ve long held the ability to use software for custom tailoring projections to suit specific shapes, Madmapper seems to have struck a chord because it arguably makes the process easier and more intuitive than anything else before it. (Above image: Madmapper makes easy work of industrial machinery at Cockatoo Island, during preparations for the Underbelly festival. More images. )

Vat Ist?
At its simplest – Madmapper is software for mapping textures to surfaces. This approach presumes the textures have been created elsewhere, or are being created elsewhere in real-time and piped into Madmapper. This avoids unnecessarily cluttering or slowing down the application, and allows Madmapper to focus purely on techniques for aligning textures onto surfaces. It’s a recipe which seems to serve it well, although means the application can at times seem undercooked when looking around for functions you’d expect in video software, that they’ve decided are best dealt with elsewhere. Below, the madmap used for the triple projector image up top.

The Basic Ingredients
That purity of focus is immediately evident in the spartan split-screen interface. In the left hand column, we get the ability to choose our source material textures ( real-time video from other software via Syphon, or images and movies drag and dropped into the column ). On the right side we can see what our textures look like, the shape of the surfaces they are going onto, or textures and surface side by side. Within that, there’s a careful attention to detail which makes the mapping process as seamless and non-complicated as possible. Below, zooming into the interface, first the triple screen map, then a closer view of the map for the industrial machine.

Interfacing
There’s a lovely level of refinement to the Madmapper interface – it’s simple, but it works as you’d expect, and sometimes better. For example, click-dragging the corner of each surface to skew it in a direction isn’t too remarkable, but by pressing the left, right, up and down arrows on a keyboard, that corner is nudged in tiny increments – perfect for tiny alignment adjustments. No weird menu bottlenecks, it’s just there in front of you. Click on the surface inside the corners and the arrows move the whole surface pixel by pixel, and for the surface’s very handy scale and rotation buttons, the arrows again provide incremental help.

Bonus Features?
Plug in a camera and use Spatial Scanner to turn your video-projector into a 2d scanner.
Grid warping ( similar to mesh warping in After Effects )
Ability to use existing photographs as a preview background, to test out a mapping design.
Ability to export your image as a PDF.

What’s Missing?
Sitting in a dusty warehouse with a projector pointed from a weird angle, projecting onto a weird industrial shape – is a fairly good test of it’s versatility, and once you get wrestling with very specific problems, it becomes evident how well thought through their interface and features are. On the other hand, this almost elegant sophistication makes it all the more jarring when some things are missing – Madmapper can feel a little too minimal at times – especially given its price.

Wishlist?
- an ability to create bezier curves
- ability to create lines or circles ( it only includes capacity to create triangles, squares and polygons )
- no ability to set shortcuts for keys / midi to trigger features, fade to black etc.
- no ability to switch between presets.
- can only receive one Syphon source ( it’s possible to provide multiple sources by making a collage in other software, but it seems like work that could be avoided )
- being able to control aspects of surfaces such as colour or outlines. Madmapper prefer that to be done elsewhere, but this would very conveniently streamline some aspects of mapping onto shapes.

(To their credit, some of these features are listed in their help forums for inclusion within future upgrades. )

Performance?
Given that the surface transformation ninja moves are likely happening on the graphics card, Madmapper seems to add hardly any major dent when running on top of VJ software. Haven’t seen a single crash yet and all of the interface seems really responsive.

Requirements?
An Intel Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.
To use the Spatial Scanner function of MadMapper, you’ll need either a QuickTime compatible Firewire camera
or Canon camera models that are compatible with the Canon EDSDK.
MadMapper v1.0 license for 2 computers €299
MadMapper v1.0 license for 2 computers for of owners of an existing Modul8 2.6 license €199
Educational pricing is also available.

Support?
Aside from their forums, Madmapper have cleverly published a series of very thorough tutorials that stretch from the basics through to integrating with a variety of VJ software, and detailing some quite sophisticated processes. In particular, a shout-out is needed to this post that deserves a parallel life on an avant garde architecture blog: Turn A Building Into A Giant Equalizer. See also: Using After Effects to prepare a map for a detailed building.

Overall?
There are other free and paid software choices for projection mapping, but the elegant focus of Madmapper minimises the amount of time spent bogged down in complicated processes. It’s expensive software, but by removing some of the technical barriers, it opens up projection mapping to ever more complicated futures. Super-like.

Above, after much hair-pulling : VDMX merrily sending out 2400 x 600 pixels across 2 screens and 1 projector, via the set-up below.

ie – 2010 Macbook Pro –> mini display to DVI convertor –> DVI cable –> Matrox Triplehead2go Digital Edition –> DVI to VGA adaptors x 3.

According to Matrox, only the Triplehead2go DP ( Display Ports in/out) edition is compatible with the 2010 Macbook Pro. I wasn’t able to get that to send a signal to projectors, using display port to VGA adaptors. The DP-VGA adaptors by themselves worked fine on the ends of other cables, but when put after the TH2GO DP box, no signal. Weird science.

[[ UPDATE : Finally got Triplehead2go DP edition working with DP to VGA... with some new DP to VGA *active* adaptors. These adaptors apparently come in active and passive flavours, and active is needed. The previous batch of adaptors I'd received from ebay were supposedly active, but didn't work. I found some others locally recently, and they worked fine. Seemed capable of 3 x 1280 x 720 and 2 x 1920x1080 without a problem. Didn't try 3 x 1080P because of the projector set-up.]]

Was just about to sell the older Matrox Digital Edition, which ended up incompatible with my last machine, but aaaaaanyways. THREE SCREENS OUT. And with less than 3 hours til airport-to-Sydney time, for tomorrow’s video installing on Cockatoo Island, this is a good thing. Also good – the holy software trinity of VDMX, Syphon + Madmapper all worked perfectly across the 3 screens.

Below, Madmapper stretching across screens, even as computer leads are being stolen away from it and shoved into a bag.

Have been doing some experiments recently with Troy Innocent, involving laser cut characters, everyday scenes and projection mapped video. We’re trying to figure out what works well for us, with an eye to fleshing out something some kind of developed work later. Troy has access to a laser cutter at work, and obviously the attraction there is to play with the unique levels of intricacy that a laser cutter allows with materials such as plastic and thin plywood. Taking that a step further, we thought it’d be fun to develop some simple low frame animation loops with these physical characters and record them moving about in stop motion. We’ve done some simple tests outdoors which worked well, surprisingly popping to life when played in sequence onscreen, and most recently we tried an indoor shoot, which gave another chance to test out Madmapper.

Re-Routing Video in 2011

First up, the whole routing video clips between video applications thing, enabled by Syphon, is really fantastic. For me, this means VDMX to Syphon to Madmapper to the projector. Manipulate video in your preferred real-time software, then at the end of the chain remap this video onto what Madmapper calls ‘surfaces’, creating, positioning and reshaping as many of these surfaces as you like. This makes sense and so far the addition of running Syphon + Madmapper alongside VDMX hasn’t seemed to dent the performance of VDMX at all. That might change with more complicated projection mapping – we’ll see.

Some Madmapper Observations

As seen above, the Madmapper interface is minimal and intuitive, and this helps mapping happen super quickly. For our test mapping onto some paper skyscrapers, it was a simple process of selecting which part of the video to be sent to a surface, then clickdragging the corners of the virtual surface until it the video filled the actual surface of the paper skyscraper in front of the projector. Total time to line-up video on the sides of 3 buildings? About 5 minutes. This is a very simple example, and possible with other existing software – but this software certainly makes the process a breeze. Am going to post a full review of Madmapper soon, and discuss some of it’s strengths and weaknesses for dealing with more complex scenarios. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that although it’s pitched as a solution for reconfiguring 2D imagery onto 3D shapes – Madmapper’s ease of use also makes it a very attractive option for just even compositing imagery within 2D environments. From the close-up below it should be evident how straight forward it is to select portions of video, and quickly composite this into desired shapes.  More laters!

Now that I’ve finished marking all of the respective assignments from classes at RMIT and Swinburne, am looking forward to biting properly into a few long neglected creative projects / overloaded bookshelves / learning curves etc. And that overdue skynoise overhaul so it better reflects the 2011 web and myself. Next up though, a video island adventure in Sydney harbour.

As part of the 2011 Underbelly Arts festival, I will be creating video projections to accompany long time audio wizard collaborator Dan MacKinlay, James ‘Dubtable’ Nichols ( that’s him in the photo), and Sarah Harvie whose specialty is inflatable sculptures! We’ll be doing this as ‘Pattern Machine’ in the space photographed above, which is one of the ancient ship building rooms at Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. Pattern Machine has a tumblr and a twitter account, where we’ll be documenting our preparations and experiments, and also has a festival page, alongside all the other festival artists.

This year’s festival was pitched as an island residency for developing some works in progress. Looks like it’ll be quite an interesting collection of projects, with many artists practicing / building / tinkering on site in public view, followed by a performance  and exhibition day on July 16th, showcasing what has been explored during the residency.

For our part, the work in progress will mean explorations into location sampling and weird algorithimic audio with Super-Collider (eg “New No New Age Advanced Ambient Markov Music Machine” and attempts to intertwine inflatable tendrils around the machine relic within our inherited room. Pixel-wise – I’m hoping to do some projection mapping experiments onto that machine relic, re-animating it as it were, in real-time response to the sounds happening, and similarly try to create some kind of responsive visual designs on the inflatable structures. Aside from that, I’ll also be testing out a triple screen external graphics card ( matrox triple head 2 go ) to experiment with simultaneously projecting various scenes onto the wall behind the machine and inflatable sculpture. For the scenes projected on the wall, will be playing with some simple responsive graphics and some filmed / composed sequences of various events / stop motion / locations from around the island. My tools of choice : VDMX + Quartz Composer, with Madmapper for the projection mapping (Madmapper review coming soon).

Below, James and The Machine, moustache not to scale:

June 5th, 2011.

Due to a weird Sydney Opera House ticket mix up – I ended up at YO GABBA GABBA live this weekend – instead of the planned pilgrimage to Chris Cunningham’s triple screen live cinema assault. Priceless. Etc etc

More laters…

Earlier Quartz Wrestling delivered a splitscreen effect which took any clip playing in VDMX, and replicated it 9 times to provide something like a video-wall. It also customised a few of the Quartz based VDMX transitions, and identified a new range of problems when creating in Quartz. After some more noodling, and helpful tips from both Dan Winckler and Joris de Jong (hybridvisuals.nl), I managed to solve some of these problems, and custom build an effect I’d wanted (attached below).

1. How to select a custom anchor point in Quartz, for rotating an image or video?
The idea here was to be able to generate rotations from a corner, or from create arcs of rotation, with the rotation centre being far below the image. None of the various Quartz patches I could find seemed to have an ability to adjust an anchor point.

The solution? “Reposition the clip so what you’d like to be the anchor point is in the center of the screen, then place it inside a 3D transformation patch, and use the rotation Z property of that patch to rotate it.” (via Joris)

Understanding three dimensional space is best done when you have at least a slithery grasp of 2D first, and it took me a while to figure out why the width of a quartz patch always seemed to fill the screen when it had a value of 2.

Welcome to the Quartz Composer coordinate system:

The width of a Quartz Screen is always 2, because Quartz treats the centre as 0, and gives the left and right borders of the screen the coordinates of  –1.0 and +1.0. The coordinates of the top and bottom borders depend on the screen aspect ratio (AR). In the case of a 4:3 aspect ratio, the values at the borders are +1.0 / AR = +0.75 and –1.0 / AR = –0.75. ( From the Quartz Guide written by Apple’s basement dwelling engineers. See also: Quartz Composer User Guide (PDF))

Ok. So rotating a video and changing the anchor point.

The 3D transform patch that Joris suggested placing the clip inside, is a macro patch (which in Quartz have square borders, unlike the rounded corners of most patches). Macro patches can be created as usual in the Quartz editor window, but can host subpatches within them (after double clicking them. Clicking ‘edit parent’ takes the user back up the hierarchy to the editor window containing the macro patch). Below, the anchor patch with the 3D transformation macro patch:

Some notes from that screenshot – the viewer window is showing the combined result of 3 layers – each of which is contained within the macro patch. One of those is an image of red manga speed lines (set as the top layer, with blend mode set to add), and the others are a VDMX input, and a mask image to frame the VDMX input. As you can see, the centre of the image is black – because there is no VDMX input at the moment. Creating quartz patches for VDMX seems to involve a weird workflow of using say a webcam ‘video input’ while building a patch, and then swapping over the ‘VDMX video input’ when saving, then testing to see how it works in VDMX, then going back to Quartz and reconnecting the webcam and making adjustments, before reattaching the VDMX input and saving again.

Previously I’d only been working with Billboards in Quartz, which helped avoid 3D space – billboards ’render a quad positioned with 2 coordinates and which always faces the viewer’. I’d been routing clips and effects in patches to a billboard, which generally meant  the viewer was filled with my video. So to create this anchor patch, I put a Billboard inside the 3D transform patch and set about trying to adjust the subpatch. This didn’t work, and Joris explained why:

“Billboards don’t work in 3d space, so you need to work with sprites. Sprites are basically the same as a billboard, but you need to do some of the height and width calculation yourself. I’ve attached an example of how to offset the anchor point, and how to size the sprite correctly based on different input images.”

The example included the image dimensions patch, which “gives you access to info about your current rendering environment (resolution in pixels and QC measures). You can then use the Math patch to further process this info to fit your needs. This way, when your output changes from 4×3 to 16×9 for instance, your patch will update accordingly. The QC coordination system takes a bit of getting used to, but using the RDD patch to keep things dynamic is a good practice.”

Rotations applied to the 3D macro patch, transform all of the sprites inside it, so I figured I’d try and add a few sprites and create a layered result that could be rotated at will within VDMX. Clicking on a sprite patch reveals in the settings, blend modes of ‘reveal’, ‘add’ and ‘over’. And I figured PNG images with transparency, or videos with alpha channels would allow masking and compositing within Quartz. After a bunch more trial and error, some blending tips via Dan came in handy:

“PNGs with transparency: alpha channels aren’t respected when the Blend Mode of Billboards and Sprites is set to ‘Replace.’ Choose ‘Over’ or ‘Add’ and you’ll see your black backgrounds disappear.

Blending in general: The drawing order of renderers (layers) is determined by the little 1,2,3,n… dropdown box at the upper right corner of blue Renderer patches. Make sure your Clear patch is set to 1 (first/bottom).

Other blend modes: if you type ‘blend’ in the Library search box, you’ll see all the Photoshop-esque blend modes. Again, it’s not like a video mixer — play with the patching order (the Image and Background Image inputs) some. Better yet, make your compositions into plugins and do your mixing/blending in VDMX or another QC host app!”

And eventually, I ended up with this custom masked anchor rotation effect for VDMX – which composites whatever video VDMX is playing, underneath the speed lines, masked by a circle, into the centre of the screen and allows real-time control rotation. Which is really satisfying – custom tuning an effect for a particular purpose. I’ve included the patch below – click on the image sources to replace them with your own, play around with the 3D transform values to create your own rotation variants, and for any parameters you’d wish to access inside VDMX, publish the relevant inputs and splitters.

Download the patch (with inbuilt masks. 2.3 mb) here to play in quartz, and here to use in VDMX ( place it in your QCFX folder and it should show up).

Thanks again to Joris and Dan, who provided insights at just the right times!

Previously:

Learning Quartz Composer Part 1

Learning Quartz Composer Part 2

The downturn in advertising revenue was blamed variously on the GFC, a downturn in clubbing and an increasing shift by promoters to the internet. It was often weird writing a very net focussed column for a weekly print mag, but never more so than this week. And it has certainly been an eventful decade for a column about media technologies. ]]]

</TECHNOSCAPE>

1998: Remember when that new search engine came out, promising better results with it’s algorithmic interrogation of linked relationships online? That was Google, in its PRE-VERB DAYS. Paypal launched that year too.

1999:     Napster. RSS. SETI@Home

2000:    Blogger.

2001:     Wikipedia. Creative Commons. Bit Torrent. The first ipod arrived.

2003:     Myspace (remember that?). Skype. Second Life. the ITunes store. 4chan. Pirate Bay. Delicious. WordPress.

2004:     Facebook (Yep, it has only been that long). World of Warcraft. Flickr

2005:     Youtube. Google Earth.

2006:     Twitter, and a little site called Wikileaks.

2007:     Tumblr. The first iPhone arrived.

2009:     Kickstarter. FourSquare.

2010:     Instagram. Quora.

While I’d like to be able to say I was writing Technoscape since BEFORE GOOGLE EXISTED, I don’t think that was quite the case. 3D World on the other hand, goes back further, splashing it’s first club culture ink in 1989, before Facebook, before MySpace, before Youtube, before Google, BEFORE THE FIRST WEB BROWSER in 1993. Imagine – a time before the web even existed, and there were so many people dancing in dusty warehouses, that they needed their own magazine. In a time BEFORE STATUS UPDATES.

That loose timeline also shows we have no clue about what yet-to-be-invented internet services we’ll likely heavily rely on in only a few years time, and serves as validation for the ‘future proofing’ strategy of installing high bandwidth fibre optic under the NBN scheme. Less validating? Australia’s proposed net filter.

In 2001 some new fledgling software called Ableton Live was born in Berlin. You might’ve been using Photoshop 6.0, Final Cut Pro 3, After Effects 5.0, Cubase VST32 5.1, Pro Tools 5.0, Rebirth(!), Arkaos, VDMX and so on. And today, are we really much better, faster, stronger? A few quick keywords show how our tools and processes and possibilities have evolved: kinect hacks / serato bridge / maxforlive / processing / vvvv / syphon recorder / madmapper / quartz composer / touchOSC. More sophisticated, yepz, but arguably not much different.

3DWorld, it has been a fucking pleasure. Stay in touch via skynoise.net or twitter. I can’t believe this is the very last Technoscape sentence, and it is now exactly 400 words.

Straight Up
Touchscreen tablets are great media browsing devices and provide lovely accessible software interfaces. No argument there. But when it comes to fine, detailed control, touchscreen tablets can only manage the tiniest fraction of a graphics tablet’s input sensitivity.

But wait – your friend has paid money to a kickstarter project which will be sending them a newly designed conductive texta pen for use on their ipad. Or they’re getting a Bamboo stylus for the iPad. That’s awesome, but it’s still effectively only fingerpainting resolution. Fun to apply direct to the screen (and much cheaper than Wacom’s direct to screen Cintiq Interactive Pen Displays), but still very limited when it comes to precision and detail.

And when it comes to precisions, the Intuos 4 has the highest sensitivity of any graphics tablet available today (5080 lpi resolution, and 2048 levels of pressure). It also comes with a precision pen (60 degrees of detetctable tilt), customisable shortcut buttons and a radial menu system (think ipod) with LED labels (visible in the photo above). So when you’re ready to shift from fingerpainting little animated flipbooks on your touchscreen tablet, to creating highly detailed worlds, the graphics tablet is your new best friend.

Special Features
I’ve owned an Intuos 2 in the past and was skeptical there’d be much difference, but a range of carefully implemented design changes make the Intuos 4 noticably better to use. The physical shape has been slightly adjusted to feel more comfortable, the USB cable can be attached from 2 locations to suit left or right handers (there’s also a wireless Intuos option), the pen has been made more ergonomic (it actually feels better), and the express buttons and a touch ring have been nicely integrated beside the drawing surface, for easy access to whichever software menu items you set them up for (on a global or application by application basis).

What really brings it all together though for this version of the tablet though, is the addition of LED labels that accompany the express keys and touch ring, as these lit up labels help enable easy navigation of complex customisations and menu layers, which makes it possible  to avoid your keyboard for long periods of time when manipulating software.

The four mode Touch Ring for example, can be used for accurate and intuitive control of actions such as scrolling, zooming, changing brush size, rotating the canvas, flipping through layers, and more. Click the ring to select a mode such as brush size (which is LED displayed), then slide around the ring controller to change the actual size of the brush. Use one hand to modify tool properties, while the other continues on the tablet with the pen. It’s an effective combination, and can be customised to suit whatever combination of onscreen tools and menu items you need.

Whether seeking an alternative to the mouse or just seeking to avoid RSI, the precision and comfort of the Intuos 4, along with its newly lit-up custom shortcuts, make it an attractive input device for those wishing to manipulate their graphics, animation, audio or video software. Well worth a look!

Requirements for Intuos 4 tablet (USB Version):
Windows: Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3 or Windows Vista
Macintosh: Mac OS X 10.4.8+
Cashola: The Intuos 4 Medium is $449 from buywacom.com.au